Daz, you told me that you have been working on remixes over the last weekend. How did that go?
We actually just finished two remixes and tested them at the club this weekend. On tune was for Fania records, the salsa label that is being run by V2. It is called "Plastico" by Rubén Blades, and it came out really nice. We got all the original parts from when they did the tune. I had to chop them up and make sure they all run in time to match one constant beat. This was a live recording and the tempo just varies by a few bpm. That was the hard work, and once I had done that and everything was perfect bar by bar, we just started working away on the tune. The next tune we remixed was by SK Radicals. That tune turned out really nice as well. We used a lot of Native Instruments programs on both tunes, and they have been working great for us.
BUGGING OUT
Bugz In The Attic have been an integral part of the UK's music scene for more than a decade now. The Bugz In the Attic collective (and their numerous solo and side projects) are often cited as the leading exponents of the West London broken beat sound- a distinct sub-genre mashing up influences of soul, funk, house and drum'n'bass. Besides producing and remixing, Bugz In The Attic are also active live musicians and party promoters. They have taken their shows all around Europe, the US, Australia, and Asia. Daz-I-Kue is a founding member of the group and one of its musical masterminds alongside Orin "Afronaught" Walters and Kaidi Tatham. In this interview, Daz gives us an insight into how his love for music evolved from collecting records to starting his own soundsystem and getting into computer-based music production with a busy schedule of remix assignments.
Daz-I-Kue
How do you approach a remix? Do you usually know a lot about the background of the original piece?
No, usually not. I don't like having to hear the original tune they did before, because it influences you a lot in what you do with it. With the "Plastico" remix it was different, because I had been playing the original for a long time, actually played it at every gig for a while. I was so excited to do that one, because it was one of my favourite Fania tunes. The harmonic changes in that tune are just incredible.
The way Bugz In The Attic approach a remix is that we all take the parts away and work on them separately. We then vote on whoever got the best out of each element, and we continue to work with that one. I did the beats for the last few tunes, except for the "Plastico" project. Orin did those. Usually Kaidi plays the keyboard parts, all of us are doing some programming or play some extra keys on top of what Kaidi has done. Then we start arranging everything. Orin is really, really good at creating dope arrangements.
One of the things that we do make sure is that the remixes are danceable, so that people can really get into it. In that respect, we try to make it better than the original piece itself. Then, hopefully, the focus will come on us rather than on the original tune, and people will recognize it as a tune by Bugz In The Attic. So that's what we do, put everything under our own quality control, making sure that all the elements are perfect.
Do you have one collective studio for Bugz In The Attic where you assemble everything?
Yes, we have our own studio. However, of late we have been working in our own environments and been communicating through the internet. Back in the days, everything used to be in one room and we all would be working on one tune. That was great for the time, but sometimes it would get a bit claustrophobic for me. But it was one of the best times. Nowadays, people are living in different areas of London and they are busy with their lives. So we all got our own little setups and communicate via iChat. For example, I would be working with Kaidi, have the iChat on and send files back and forth and talk about how we should do things. Especially for me living partly in Atlanta, this is the only way I can be working with Bugz In The Attic. And it has been working out really well. I don't have to go anywhere and spend money travelling, it just saves the planet!
How did you get involved with music technology in the first place?
From my early days, I have always been into music. Even before I was born, when my mother was pregnant with me, she used to go to all these parties with the American GIs and they would be DJing really good American music. When I was about five years old, my mother took me to the parties and sit me next to the DJ. And I'd be happy as larry sitting there and watching! That's when my love for music started.
I got my first record at that age, the Jackson Five's "The Love You Save". From then on, I have been slowly collecting all my records. I've got a small but nice collection, definitely not the biggest in the world, but very nice. Then, when I was sixteen years old, I started a soundsystem with some friends from school. We skipped classes and had our first gig at a girls school in Central London. We started to promote our own parties and managed to get all the big KissFM DJs before they were famous and got invited to the big parties.
One of my partners in the soundsystem went to the School of Audio Engineering, and so I wanted to learn more about my soundsystem as well. He recommended for me to go to this audio engineering course, which I did. This was in 1990/91. And from the time I first saw the Akai S950 sampler, I was hooked. Around that time, I was made redundant from my job and got a nice compensation, which I used to buy my first set of equipment. I teamed up with a guy I met at the SAE and we started making music and building our own studio. Eventually, we put our first release together. It was called "Sinclair Project Daz Jaz", and we were quite excited to get our own vinyl and go through this whole process we didn't know anything about. We struggled on end, but got it all worked out, and that was very enjoyable. I have not turned my back on music ever since. One day, a guy called Noodles took me down to Kickin' Records, and that's where I met all the guys, Orin and the whole crew. I started working with them as an engineer and that's how I got around meeting everybody.
Did you start out with a computer when you bought your first set of equipment?
Yes, I bought an Atari with Cubase and the Akai S950, a Technics SL1200 turntable with a mixer for sampling purposes, and a cheap Mackie mixer. We basically just plugged everything into our HiFi system and used its speakers as monitors. That was my first set of equipment.
The computer obviously still is the mainstay of my work today. I am really comfortable working on the digital domain. I have worked with analog gear, and I can handle it, but I really know my stuff when I am working on the computer. There, I can get the sound I need. Native Instruments plays a big role in that. I am a long-time user of Battery, for example. In the last remix for SK Radicals I used Bandstand, and I think the sounds are incredible. I have virtually used all the Native Instruments software at some point in time. Other than that, I use Waves plugins. Those are the two things that are essential in my life in terms of my remixes. As audio interface, I use the AUDIO KONTROL 1. It's really good for vocals! People can just come up to my house and we'll do the vocals right there. Plus it has a MIDI-interface, so I can do my thing with a MIDI keyboard I am using to play my beats. That is such a neat box!
Do you use the controller features of the AUDIO KONTROL 1 as well?
I have not properly investigated that yet, but I will be using it more. Because of time, I have been using the basic setups on the AUDIO KONTROL 1. But I will be looking at that. It seems to be a phenomenal way of doing automation. I am going to check it out over the next few weeks, do some experimentation and see how it all rolls.
Do you have a different live setup than what you work with at home?
The setup at home is very reduced, as I wanted to keep it really, really small. I've got a big, powerful Mac computer, the AUDIO KONTROL 1 and my keyboard, and that's it. I'm rolling everything from the computer. When we play live, we have loads of keyboards, two to three laptop computers, a hardware sampler, and triggers for Matt Lord's drums. We actually have sampled drums in addition to the live drums, both being triggered at the same time. It's all about recreating the sound of the Bugz In The Attic records, and this has been working out really well. It's a revolution how you can create a great studio sound with today's software, and also play it live as well.
Is the typical Bugz In The Attic synthesizer-sound mostly achieved using hardware synthesizers, or does software play a role in that as well?
It's a mixture of oldschool analog equipment and software instruments. But the software synthesizers have to sound authentic as well, since we are using them to recreate what oldschool synthesizers were sounding like. When we produced the last album, we made a conscious effort not to use anything like the Rhodes or similar vintage keyboards. That way, you automatically create a more electronic sound. However, we tried to keep it very soulful. This was an experiment to see what we could do without the Rhodes, because we usually use it in every tune. The music that came out of this was totally different compared to a lot of the stuff that was going on in the scene at that time, but we kept the soulfulness of it right on.
Have you tried any of the Reaktor ensembles with more advanced synthesis methods?
I am getting into that. On the next few tunes I am doing, I will be using all that Reaktor stuff, and Massive as well. I really want to start using those more modern sounds. So far, I have been using the Pro-53 a lot. That thing is really, really good! It's a phenomenon, it really gets you all these oldschool sounds. It's all there, I don't need to go anywhere else. But now, I'd like to start using other sounds as well.
I have not touched FM8 and Massive yet, they are very scary to me as they are new instruments, and I don't yet know how to use them. That changes, of course, as I get into them. The only way I can do this is by producing a tune with them. That's exactly what I will be doing in the next months. What you will probably hear is one tune done entirely with Massive and one that is all FM8. So watch out for that, Massive and FM8 are going to be used a lot! I'm having fun exploring these things, learning what my abilities are with them. And Native Instruments has already changed my sound, putting new elements into it and essentially widening it a great amount.
Daz, thanks for these answers, and we are really looking forward to hear you new songs!
You are absolutely welcome, and you'll be the first to hear them!
