Electronic Musing

From Entirely Atari to Restrictedly Reason (Propellerheads / Artist Stories)

[Vibert] has found that the best way to mediate between his pedantic parameter tweaker side and his let-the-music-flow spirit is to work patiently and methodically for as short a time as possible. That is – work in loop mode, tweak like mad, get all the levels and fiddly bits right, then get out. The practical upshot is that he now sits on a stockpile of hundreds of perfected grooves ready to be fleshed out into full tracks.

…

“I nearly always start with the drums to get a groove going. The rest of the time I start with a funky loop, or a not-so-funky loop I’d like to make funky, and build around that. But yeah, usually I create a Redrum and get one live and one electronic kick. Sometimes I go crazy and make a whole drum machine of ten kicks. I work in cycle mode for as long as I can take it and if I’m happy with the track I save it to a folder called “Done” where I’ve got maybe 500 tracks like that. At some point later on I go back and see if I find anything I’d like to make into a full-blown track. If I do, I usually start by copying everything like 10 minutes on (to some point I know I’m never going to reach), and then get busy. I always liked that part, it’s like making a story, an animated film or whatever.”

Luke Vibert Promo (Dailymotion)

“If I don’t have fun when I’m doing something… it’s crappy, it turns out to be crap. I know if I had plugins, I’d just be there all day with one loop, just putting different plugins on it … I’ve seen it happen to my friends, like… I shouldn’t name names, but like Cylob and Aphex even…”

Luke Vibert: 2003 (Fun-In-The-Murky)

Do you think that humour is a vital ingredient in music that many people forget?”

“Yeah. Yeah, a bit right – especially modern kind of stuff, in a way. I thought for awhile people were going to start lightening up a bit; I can’t remember when – mid ’90s, maybe – but they haven’t really. I think most people still take things too seriously in a way – same old chord changes that other people have done, and they do it really seriously, and you think ‘oh, come on’!”

Good Vibrations (The Milk Factory)

Where do all these influences come from?

It’s just different moods. Maybe, I’ll be doing mostly drum’n’bass, and then I can’t stand doing drum’n’bass, so I have to do something different, so I’ll get to do disco for a bit, and after two or three months, I’ll be like, I can’t do anymore disco, so I’ll do some hip-hop. I just like doing something for a little bit. Sometimes, I’ll do one drum’n’bass track, then the next track is hip-hop. Sometimes every track is different. I just need to keep myself amused. I do get into periods when I do loads and loads of drum’n’bass or loads of hip-hop, but my record releases don’t reflect that. All I try to do is keep myself amused when I’m working, make it fun for myself. If something’s not fun, I’ll just stop, do something else, and get back to it when it seems more fun. It’s hard for remixes that way. It’s not fun, but you have to do it. It’s like an essay, you usually leave it to the last minute, and then you have to rush.

Luke Vibert Interview (Barcode Zine)

I’ve always been into Acid House actually but I don’t think I had the bottle, I don’t know if that’s the right word, but it did take me ages to release the more simple stuff. My first releases on Riding High wanted to be clever or intellectual, even though the music I enjoyed by other people was a lot more simple, clubby, banging kind of stuff. But somehow I didn’t feel I could make that, maybe I thought it was too black and I was too white, or some awful thing like that, so it’s just taken me years really to think, fuck it, I’ll just do whatever I want whether it’s hip hop, acid house or drum’n’bass.