I guess our daily tasks as dark sky are more centred around production than they
are djing even though like we do have a massive passion for collecting records
and discovering new music. I was playing the drums quite a few years having that
kind of rhythm backbone has helped a lot also a great way to just like come up
with new rhythms go to the studio and then try and program the beats into the
computer the one thing I remember from school actually is like during our lunch
breaks we were like 'where's Matt? oh Matt is in the music hall having a drum lesson'
I never made that sort of connection of like study music. I was more concerned with
listening to music rather than actually recreating or producing it wasn't until
years later and Matt was like way ahead of us in that respect.
I suppose our sound kind of evolved as we kind of grew, our tastes kind of matured
and going out clubbing I don't think we would have created the music we
created if we hadn't been born in London. If you look at like New York and
that sound, Japan, cities around the world, they all have their sounds. We have a
radio show on NTS which we love digging for music for having that release where
you can leave the studio and play something that you've been working on
tracks that you've kind of been digging, to share them with people that's the
best part of music being able to share it. I guess nothing excites me quite as much
as music, just infatuated by it. I do love other things like film
but I'm not really that concerned about say who directed that film and
what was a previous work from that director whereas I am like say 'oh who
mastered that album and who produced that'
We got to a point after the second album where we were kind of spent for ideas
and we wanted to try fresh approach just to make it interesting for us.
Tom was taking these photos, it was looking really cool. Photography is just
another art form is another outlet for me to be creative.
We actually looked at pictures during the writing process and then I guess it
was all about trying to soundtrack that picture.
The initial concept was kind of like taking a photo very literally so pick out
an element whether it's like a jagged edge in a fence and if it's been
repeated that could be transferred to an LFO on a synthesizer. Really going
literal but that kind of idea kind of faded it away and kind of became more
about the the tone and feeling that was kind of coming off the photo and how
that shaped the sound.
Matt is the main engineer, producer but what was cool about writing
the album we were both like just jumped on whatever we had set up and just
both just noodle away. We were just treating the computer like
the tape deck really, rolling big takes of audio.
Maybe an hour, two-hour three-hour jams and then just go back and we'd have like
60-minute arrangement pages with a few beats on them and then maybe just like start
working in on a one.
Some days we might do sound design days and try and record a load
of LFOs and something which I want to do more of is just build up our own
library of sounds that you can call upon and then just whack them into a
production and you know you've built them from scratch and they're your
sounds.
I feel like technology does shape the sound of a generation if you look
back at music from the 70s and 80s and the 90s and how music could have
changed and the gear was evolving with the music that's been put out. It's
exciting with all this equipment to see how far
you can push it.
We've got two SP-16s which are running the drums for every track that we perform.
We're using four individual outs on each SP-16 and that's just essentially
the kick drum, snare, hats, maybe a bit of percussion and then like a musical
element coming out the fourth one and they are routed into the desk so one track
I might be controlling the drums bringing them in and then for the next
track matt will be bringing in the drums like mixing in via the EQ. Also you could
use the built-in effects to add extra layers like flangers and distortions
bit crushers. I'm also for a couple of tracks using
the SP-16 to control via MIDI the AS-1 just a top line
sequence and then I might add a couple of notes just jamming along. Yeah
it's really well laid out and user-friendly once you start getting
in to know the shift functions, you know, you can just, everything becomes second
nature. Like just being able to jump through
different sections oscillator, oscillator 2 using the shift category you can quickly
just get to what section you're looking for and when you start using the
on-screen editor that comes with it you get your head round it. What's great
about the SP is the slice function on there. It's really easy to use especially if
you come from an Ableton background and then rearrange the groove basically live
Being able to color code what pads are for the instruments is just amazing, so
we have all our kicks and red all the snares in blue and hats in green and
then have that on both machines so I could be on Tom's machine and know
exactly what that is without having to look at the screen. Then also you've got
all the parameter lock options where you can map them to the effects so you can
do step locks for a certain effect. Each scene represents a different track in
the set and then within those scenes will have different patterns which will
switch into as the track progresses. You can see we've got two elements in here
it is just a drum and a bit of percussion which is running from the AS-1
We came from the MPC background and we were just having issues, things not
loading up, compact flashes crashing and clock going out time and then like this
changed everything like we could relax a little bit more, soundcheck became a lot
more stress-free. We've been refining the show each time
we play and I've really taken note what's working, what's not and how the
crowd is responding to certain tracks and then going back and tweaking it. Just
having everything at your fingertips lets you re approach tracks and in ways
that might sound completely different to the original which makes it exciting for
us every time when we're playing
and it's just so much fun to be able to make music and then present that to
people and then them be able to enjoy it and then transfer that energy.