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27
Oct

gary b - good one, cheryl

1 Comment

The long-

awaited

Gary b

(-arftits)

concept

album –

good one, cheryl

– out now!

25
Jun

/Q ‘n’ A/ with Deadcode’s Nathan B.

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q’s by Matt N.

Here’s a little q ‘n’ a form that I had Nathan fill out about his new Deadcode release, Remix ‘n’ Mingle, out now on instincto. Take a look:

Q.1:) You have a new collection of songs under the moniker dj
deadcode, called “remix ‘n’ mingle” (INO-034). How does this newest
offering reflect the stuff of your previous musical output?

/Remix ‘n’ Mingle/ represents four years of playing with electronic
music software for the first time. Over the course of that time, I
was also working in two other band-duos: Fit with Darren Frayne and
Telum with Grant K. While I worked with Climate and Telum, I was very
focused on the melodic aspects. Grant K is a genius with the drum and
bass. I do the melodic and lyrical work, and we split the ambiance
pretty much down the middle. /Remix ‘n’ Mingle/ is a work egregiously
giving the audience “what they want” melodically, which is more
difficult in the scope of my other projects because my co-conspirators
have a higher artistic calling.

Q. 2:) I have only heard the pre-release mix of the album, but you
seem to have created a synthesis here of “furniture music” and pop
music, moving back and forth from one to the other. Does this sound
accurate, or is there anything you would like to add to this
description?

You’re right on target - I usually classify my music as Post Smooth
Jazz because of that genre’s direct lineage from furniture music. In
fact, part of the original songs (the quieter ones) are adapted from a
series of ambient techno songs I wrote for my alarm clock cd player.
They crescendo from really quiet to really loud and then stop because
that’s the most comfortable way for me to wake up.

Q. 3:) You do some nice covers of quite a few songs on this album –
“tide_is_high” by Blondie, “cotton_fields” by Lead Belly, (or
traditional); a couple by friends: “npr” by Early Lines, and one
called “head_up” by a member of Early Lines, Dan Doyle — any I
missed?

“Ask for Your Freedom” is a 24-hour remix project I did for my friend
Jay’s band in Los Angeles, On and Off Superfast. “Close Your Eyes” is
a remix I did for Faris McReynolds of Ex-Detectives (also of L.A.).
The first track is a cover of a Guy Clark song. I think he might be
offended if he ever heard it because the original is a really delicate
Texas folk song. Guy Clark has doubtless been the biggest influence
on my songwriting. I got his autograph in the backroom at Poor
David’s Pub before a show when I was eight years old. He asked me
what song I wanted to hear during the show, but I froze up and
couldn’t think of anything. Guy Clark, if you’re there, I wanted to
hear “Rita Ballou”. For the Razorlight cover I started with the
intention of recording vocals myself, but it was way out of my range
and just sounded awful. So, I used the AT&T Speech Synthesizer to
generate the lyrics for dissection and syncopation. There’s also a
“remix-cover” of an untitled Seth Sherman track I called “Shown Me”.
I sampled his acoustic guitar playing and some of his singing and then
laid instruments around it. I couldn’t isolate the vocals very well,
so I just recorded my own. So, it’s a remix-cover(TM). It’s mostly
the same deal with the Daniel Francis Doyle track. I created a
virtual Lil’ Danny D Drumset in Battery and triggered that via MIDI.
The Early Lines cover is a throw back to ‘00, when Dallas was really
on fire as a music scene, and the collective future didn’t look so
bleak (you were there, too, you know it). Mosley’s lyrics couldn’t be
any more apt than for today.

Q. 4:) “Remix ‘n’ mingle” has a new song called “man_of_the_year”.
Time Magazine named “you” their 2007 Person of the Year. What’s up
with that?!

“The Man of the Year” was written in 2005.

Q. 5:) But seriously, you have long been considered a Bruce
Wayne-type character here at the instincto bullpen. On behalf of
instincto records I would like to thank you for requesting and
accepting the mostly honorary title of INO-REX label-mate, and greatly
contributing to the startup of the new website, INO-REX dot COM. Is
there anyone you’d wish to thank for making your new album possible
that didn’t make it into the credits of “remix ‘n’ mingle”?

Matt and Matt and Grandma & Grandma (and Shelley & momAndDad). Also,
Grant K’s kind of upset that he didn’t have an “official” guest spot,
even though he’s almost the only person I’ve worked on music with for
the last ten years. He doesn’t like for me to have other friends. I
have to call them “acquaintances” around him. So, I’d like thank him
or otherwise face the consequences.

Q. 6:) Now let’s get down to business — could you discuss the less
boring technical aspects of the making of this album (the software you
used, poss. type of midi input device and other equipment, minutiae
that others may find interesting regarding recording, file types,
mastering, etc.)? You know, gear head stuff.

The core of this project was Ableton Live 6, the Greatness Of. I had
a master project that contained references to the individual track
builds. Then there were 24 individual projects for the various
tracks, except “Campus Sweethearts” and “A Few Clouds” because they
were originally part of the same song. At the end of a session I
would export the mixdown to the main project and it would
automatically be loaded when working on the thing from an album
perspective. The whole album should be listened to as a single track
if you can handle it. Some parts of the recording are a little too
hot aurally because of the original performances, and I really would
like to get it professionally mastered some day. I did all the
mastering myself with Izotope Ozone 3, and it was really, really,
really difficult. The album should sound pretty much perfect in a
mid-2000’s Volkswagen with a Monsoon Sound System because that’s where
I did most of my reference listening. Owners of that car era are also
my target market, so it works out well in the end. In the studio I
used Event 8’s and a KRK sub with an M-Audio Firewire 410. Several of
the songs were started in 2004 in FL Studio on my laptop at work while
I had little to do and a corner cubicle that no-one ever visited. The
main VST Instruments I use are all from Native Instruments: Battery 2,
Kontakt 2, and Reaktor 5. I took some ambient noise samples from the
FreeSound Project archive (just Google “freesound”), where all the
samples are released under the Creative Commons License (same as
Wikipedia). I would release this whole album under the Attribution-No
Derivative Works 2.0 Generic license of the CCL, but since I sample
other works and cover some “published” songs, I don’t want to get into
legal trouble. I think it’s kind of iffy, as is, especially with the
Guy Clark and Razorlight tracks, which are highly proprietary.

Q. 7:) I suppose with these kind of questions it is important to keep
in mind that one should answer the questions they wish they were asked
rather than what is actually being asked, as Robert McNamara would
say. Are there any questions that you wish were asked? (Please feel
free to be frank.)

Not really. I’m excited to be released on Instincto. It’s got the
spirit I want to be associated with.

Special thanks to Nathan for his in-depth and insightful responses to this custom-made questionnaire.

Order a copy of Deadcode’s debut album, /Remix ‘n’ Mingle/ (ino-034), available now through instincto and djdeadcode.com .