In case you didn’t know, Monolithium, Hrdvsion and Rennie Foster, have Victorian roots, as in “from Victoria, BC” and even though they don’t all still live in this beautiful city, they are undeniably our home-town heroes. Also, it just so happens that they are all gracing Basscoast’s Pirate Radio stage in sequence this year. Not to be missed on Saturday night!
Anyway, we sparked up a little familial chatter among them to see what they had to say; we figured they miss each other. The topic: Basscoast 2014.
Rennie 2 Nathan:
why have I still never remixed any of your tunes? I know I don’t hang in Berlin and wear fashionable minimal shirts.. but goddamit, I’m worth it! We have to trade though, because I’m poor. Also, at Bass Coast, will you be trading remix parts with me, or will you be my sworn enemy?, there is no “in between”.
Nathan: hahaha hahaha ok! I’m not sure if I have ever had any remixes of my stuff done….oh, that’s not true, inkwell did one, and the mole did one too. I guess Monolithium aka Chrissy Snow has been working on a remix as well, but you should ask him how stick-up-the-butt I am about giving my parts away. So many rules and conditions. No friendship should be like that. That being said, send me the parts for devil’s water this week and you’ve got a deal. :)Rennie: Devil’s Water? hmmmm.. well, that song basically belongs to Rebirth.. so a remix of that would just be for Soundcloud or something.. I’d be more hyped to get a remix I could actually release…Nathan: I guess that’s the same problem on this end. Label’s in control of all the tracks….
Nathan 2 Rennie,
why can’t you see how amazing squarepusher is? there’s got to be SOMETHING you like of his that you can play….he isn’t just a logic demo. :) #neverforget I mean… how about some acid?
Rennie: I actually like Squarepusher a lot and used to play “Red Hot Car” all the time! I used to think all the crazy edits on the beats were kind of demonstrative (like “look what I can do”) BUT, compared to some ofl that “glitch hop” stuff that’s around now, it’s down right subtle!
Rennie 2 Monolithium, the remix you did for me (see how we do that Nathan?) is AWESOME with a capital Z, what gear did you use in the creation of it? and how does your studio set up compare to the set up you will perform with at Bass Coast?
Monolithium: Despite my gear lust and constant documentation of it, the remix is almost 100% sample based and was composed primarily on headphones sitting on the couch next to my wife while she watched Coronation Street. I was locked into a couple of specific elements of the song’s vocal and the hand drum line. Around those I aimed for something spare and cracking but rhythmically complex. It took a while to get those rims where they needed to be, but I am really happy with it. It has a “Bass Coast vibe” to me, if something that specific exists… I was definitely thinking “Dark Forest, Tribal Vibez.”
My live rig is quite a bit more stripped down than my full studio. The live setup consists of:
- Microbrute
- Ohm 64 midi controller
- Memory Man delay pedal
- Eventide Space Reverb Pedal
- Soundcraft EFX8 mixing desk
- a couple of stereo channels of DBX Compression
- MOTU sound card
- Macbook Pro with Ableton
My full studio features some other crucial pieces, most notably a DX7, Dave Smith Evolver and of course, my trusty Juno 106.
Chrissy Snow 2 Hrdvsion,
What do you think our collab album that we’re going to write in August should sound like?
Nathan: don’t know what our album SHOULD sound like, but I know what it WILL sound like… all emo-y and electro! I THINK that’s a good thing.
Nathan 2 Monolithium, if i give you 20$ will you sneak some squarepusher into your live set this year at bass coast?
Monolithium: Possibly, since there is a very real chance that I may run out of music ;) Would definitely be “Tomorrow World”…
Monolithium 2 Rennie:
You have a long history with an active involvement in electronic music scenes that extends far before most of Bass Coast’s lineup. As you’ve documented so many times, sub-genres and scenes come and go, with house & techno always remaining as the core at the centre of underground dense culture – is there a specific sub-genre/style from the years past that has now faded into obscurity that you feel was under-rated or is worth revisiting?
Rennie: It’s funny you should ask that, because I do. In the early 90s there was a lot of buzz around the “Acid Jazz” label, and the music of that period that mixed jazz with dance/DJ music of all kinds came to be known as “Acid Jazz” as well. Other labels, like Talkin’ Loud,
Mo Wax, Eightball, and many smaller imprints explored it as well, and it was an “inclusive” thing, House and Hip Hop was a part of it, not separate from it. Older jazz funk and soul records were re-explored, and “rare-groove” was a regular add-on to be heard in many different DJ’s sets. Then suddenly, it was just gone. I know there is an underground niche of it still continuing, as with most things, but I always wondered why it didn’t evolve on the path it seemed to be on, and it went from really being a “thing”, to not being a thing at all. No one hated it or anything,
it just stopped, seemingly for no reason.
why have I still never remixed any of your tunes? I know I don’t hang in Berlin and wear fashionable minimal shirts.. but goddamit, I’m worth it! We have to trade though, because I’m poor. Also, at Bass Coast, will you be trading remix parts with me, or will you be my sworn enemy?, there is no “in between”.
why can’t you see how amazing squarepusher is? there’s got to be SOMETHING you like of his that you can play….he isn’t just a logic demo. :) #neverforget I mean… how about some acid?
What do you think our collab album that we’re going to write in August should sound like?
You have a long history with an active involvement in electronic music scenes that extends far before most of Bass Coast’s lineup. As you’ve documented so many times, sub-genres and scenes come and go, with house & techno always remaining as the core at the centre of underground dense culture – is there a specific sub-genre/style from the years past that has now faded into obscurity that you feel was under-rated or is worth revisiting?
Mo Wax, Eightball, and many smaller imprints explored it as well, and it was an “inclusive” thing, House and Hip Hop was a part of it, not separate from it. Older jazz funk and soul records were re-explored, and “rare-groove” was a regular add-on to be heard in many different DJ’s sets. Then suddenly, it was just gone. I know there is an underground niche of it still continuing, as with most things, but I always wondered why it didn’t evolve on the path it seemed to be on, and it went from really being a “thing”, to not being a thing at all. No one hated it or anything, it just stopped, seemingly for no reason.