TC: Pretty much set up in my bedroom, yeah. I’ve got an old analog mixing desk, a couple of drum machines, a lot of it’s sample-based, so I’ll just load samples, I’ve got a massive sample library, old school, obscure sounds. I’ll just load them into the keyboard and play my riffs with them like that. I’ll chop a lot of sounds from old records, say there’s a nice bassline, I’ll chop the sound, load it into my keyboard and then play my own riffs with it.
TP: What kind of keyboard are you talking about when you say sampling keyboard?
TC: Casio, stuff like that. Nothing major. But they do the job. They’re effective.
TP: Sounds incredible. That’s the thing, these days, people are so obsessed with gear, but if you look at Derrick May, you look at Larry Heard, any of these guys in the early days of house music or techno, they’re just doing what they can with what they have. The sound of tape hiss, when you’re using samplers from the 80s that have a really low bitrate, there’s a real nasty hiss on top.
TC: Adds character!
TP: It’s amazing, that’s what’s missing. It feels like you are engaging with a living thing when you hear those artifacts. Do you still predominantly work at your home studio or do you have a place that you like to go to do work?
TC: I’m still running the same setup, stick with what you know.
TP: How many channels is your mixer?
TC: It’s an old 32 channel. I got it passed down to me off one of my dad’s mates when I was first starting to get into it. I think it’s an old Allen and Heath mixer.
TP: Did you grow up playing music or did you start making electronic music as your first foray into music?
TC: I’m not classically trained or anything. What it was, I was probably around 15 when I started getting into house music. It was all over the radio and it kind of blew up over here on the charts. But then I started to veer more into the underground stuff, did a little bit of digging, and that’s where I found the early Chicago stuff, New York stuff, and then I just fell in love with that.
TP: Do you prefer to make music during the day or at nighttime?
TC: Probably nighttime, early hours in the morning. That’s when a lot of the magic seems to happen.
TP: When you sit down to make a track, is it different every time? I personally like to start with drum programming, whether it’s Ableton or if it’s with a drum machine. Do you start off with drums or is it different every time for you?
TC: I’d say the majority of the time, it would just be a bassline and then I’ll go program the drums and then go from there. A lot of my tracks are just a bassline and drum machine, some effects added. That’s what I’m into, the percussion side of things. Drum programming, complex drum programming. Not just one bar looped like a lot of the modern stuff. Snares.
TP: A lot of your production does remind me of the Mayday stuff. I think Derrick May’s drum programming is very kinetic. His hi-hats are always so alive, they jump around and I can definitely hear that in your music. It sounds like you do have an element of hardware magic in your process, where you like to have a hands-on approach. Would that be true? Do you like to be able to touch knobs while you’re making music, or is it not so important to you?
TC: It’s more of a hands-on kind of thing, I like to have a hands-on approach to it, yeah.
TP: What do you think of modern house music? I’m talking more about the contemporary underground scene rather than the stuff that’s huge.
TC: There is a lot of cool stuff out there. A lot of young people, like myself, I’m only 22. But a lot of people are starting to get into the bleep-y, obscure kind of stuff. I reckon it’s definitely making a resurgence.
TP: That’s a good thing. What is it about the older stuff on labels like like Transmat or Nu Groove that is still so potent to you?
TC: I’ve never been able to put my finger on it, and I don’t think many people can, it’s just got the edgy, obscure, proper underground kind of vibe. Just a dark kind of vibe.
TP: I think it comes down to what you were saying, people making music and releasing it as it comes. They get to the desk, behind the drum machines and then two hours later they have something, they’re editing it down, and then it’s being pressed on vinyl.
TC: That’s the same with me. I make most of my tracks in one sitting. I don’t like coming back to it a track, because by the time I’ve come back to it I have a completely new idea. So I’m one of them, I’ve got to get it done there and then, so I’ll stay up for hours and just try to do it in one sitting.
