INTERVIEW: Luke Slater
- Krisjanis Gale
(Part 1 of this interview appeared in the September 28 issue of Consumable, located at http://www.consumableonline.com/1999/09.28 )
CO: What inspires you when you're trying to get new sounds?
LS: To create something that sounds new, and exciting, and fresh. To do something that I would buy in a record shop. I'm always on the road DJ'ing, or whatever, in Europe, and I always carry a G3 Powerbook everywhere. And I record just anything, you know, ambient shit at airports, and restaurants, any noise.
CO: Is there anything on Wireless that just came together all at once?
LS: "Bolt Up" - which is probably the hardest track on the album. It was really quick. I'd written all the lyrics for it on a plane coming back from France, I hooked it up in the studio, and just threw it together, it just had such a power to it. And I just left it like that.
CO: Do the rigid mechanics of electronic music frustrate you?
LS: The mechanics of it. Yeah, sure man.
CO: There has to have been thousands of times when you were tempted to try not to sequence something, and then do it live.
LS: You could do that.
CO: And then you realize that it's electronic music, so something has to have a solid beat. It's sort of a necessary evil.
LS: I think we're moving into an age where studios aren't going to be like studios anymore. I'm always trying to write things outside the the studio, because I don't really like sitting in a studio with a lot of machines in it. I haven't got a thing for machines in that way. I've got a thing for technology, but I've got a thing for technology that makes things less...technological.
CO: So your ideal situation is having some beautiful piece of software on your G3.
LS: Well, that's basically what I do. Some of the tracks were quite constructed on the G3. I've got a lot of programs for it; I've written a lot of stuff on the road. When I'm sitting in hotels for a long time, that's pretty much what I do. And that's great, because you couldn't do that a few years ago. But that's the way it should be.
CO: I don't know. I saw Juno Reactor live, and they did everything off a Powerbook. One synth and a Powerbook, and the whole show was done on the computer.
LS: That's cool. I don't think we can get our live show down to one synth and a Powerbook; we drag the whole studio around. As much as I love computers. I'm still real hands-on. I like to have the control of things be pretty quick.
CO: What's the core of Space Station Zero at the moment? What piece of gear could you not live without?
LS: The computers. Apple Macs, man. Without them... nah. That's a lie. Because if I didn't have them, I could still write stuff. I don't know. My ears? (laugh)
CO: So you've got no gearlust for a particular piece of kit.
LS: Not really. I've got a bit of a fetish for say, the DMX drum machine. That's something that goes back, for me. If you want to buy a synth now, you can choose absolutely millions of sound modules, synths. A lot of them are kind of the same. There's not really that much difference about them.
You can buy an analog synth, and there's millions of them. That's kind of slowed down now, whereas one point, when analog synths were made, nobody really knew why they were making them. It wasn't like "We're making it for the dance market" or "We're making it for the rock market," they were just making them. But now it's gotten a bit more pigeonholed where synths are being made for a dance record. I don't really join that gang. For me it's more interesting to make things out of instruments that aren't really made to do anything in particular. Everything I've written has really been done on basic equipment.
CO: So you have a greater interest in sampling something and turning it into something.
LS: Ah, samplers, man. I couldn't live without samplers.
CO: I was listening to Tresor 78 - Joey Beltram's "Places" - and it sort of reminded me of Freek Funk. If you had to try to put Wireless right alongside another artist, who would it be?
LS: I don't know. One of the old school electro guys; the whole thing for me just goes back to the old school.
CO: There's a lot of breaks on Wireless, more so than on Freek Funk. What started you down the path of "Well here's a really good break, now, how can I fuck it up and put it on my track?" (laugh) That's sort of - getting less electro, and more breakbeat.
LS: They're both the same to me. Electro and breakbeats. It's the attitude of using them, rather than one's with a drum machine and one's just a break. We made a lot of our own breaks on the album. Al and I were both drummers when we were kids - that's how we kind of met, because we were both drummers. We actually did a two-hour session in the studio, with both of us playing the drums live. We put it on tape.
CO: The songs, both on Wireless and Freek Funk, either go really harsh or really ethereal. That's especially true of "Sum Tom Tin" or "Body Freefall," and then you have a song like "Weave Your Web." What motivates both extremes? Because there's no real grey area in the middle.
LS: No. That's because I don't like middle-of-the-road, man. I like to be on one side or the other.
CO: Wireless is a radical departure, not only from Freek Funk, but from a lot of other albums out right now in the electro genre. Where do you see yourself, coming from Wireless, to your future work?
LS: I don't know yet. I think Wireless is something quite new, and it feels to me we're kind of out on our own doing it, and playing it live. We're just doing what we're doing, and take it where it goes.
