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David Langley

Writer, Blogger, DJ 

David Langly

Blogger for UK Arts Directory

 

David Langley Interview, The Freestylers

 

This week I caught up with one half of seminal dance act The Freestylers, Aston Harvey for a chat about the new album “The Coming Storm”, playing dance tunes as a band and how you go about making an album, this is what he had to say.

 
 
Me; Your new album titled the “coming storm” is out now to buy, so what where your influences when putting it together?
 
Aston; With all our albums, apart from our first which was an old skool hip hop album, which was just a total picture of the music we grew up listening to and using all those influences and subsequent albums have been a real mish mash of everything, I guess this album is another sort of mish mash of everything we like in music and what I listen to. I listen to lots of different styles and some people might say “Well there’s too many different things going on in there.” But the name of our act “The Freestylers” is quite apt because we’re pretty much not tied to anything, so if we want to do a breaks tune, or a drum and bass tune, or a reggae style breaks tune it can all be mixed in there. At the time we were doing the album, dubstep was fairly popular but we didn’t get too influenced by it, we didn’t want to make any out and out dubstep, but just some of the sounds that were being used in it.
 
 
Me; Where there any acts you where listening to at the time which reflected on the album?
 
Aston; Of any of the dance genres I listen to a lot of drum and bass and there’s loads of good drum and bass artists I like, for instance Nu Breed, Camo and Krooked, Tantrum Desire, Loadstar, Break… There’s loads of good drum and bass artists around.
 
 
Me; So, how did you approach making the album?
 
Aston; I’d just come into the studio, mess about with some beats or listen to some old records. Youtube makes it a lot easier to sourcing old funky stuff a lot easier, its instant compared to grabbing all your old records… It’s a bit lazy but it works.  Then we just go from there and depending on what beats we’ve started with, I’ll just play some keys. A lot of its bass and drums related, so I find a particular bass sound will make me do a certain thing, like the most out there tune on the album is “All for nothing” and that started of with a Black Sabeth break. It just this relentless beat, a kin of slow crashy, thrashy beat and I thought it sounded like something Jay-Z might rap over, so I just started working towards that. I wanted  to get like a weird bass noise, like a drum and bass/dubstep bass noise and do something hip hoppy with it because the beat led me in that direction and everything else followed. But everything starts differently, “Is it possible” was loosely based on a sample, so they all begin life similarly, but they’re all approached in a different way.
 
 
Me; So, when you’re in the studio making tunes, what hardware and software do you favour?
 
Aston; We use logic and basically use everything that’s in logic, but saying that we’ve got loads of old gear in the studio, like my akai sampler and my juno 106 and obviously the most important thing a turntable with loads of records, but that other stuff doesn’t really get much use any more.
 
 
Me; How has the edition of Chris Bishop (Stero:Type) to your production team reflected on your sound?
 
Aston; Well I usually mix everything and normally its down to my ears, but Chris has added a more polished sound to the tunes… I don’t know, some people might not like it, some people love it, but I think its always good to have some out sourced influence. Chris is pretty musical and he’s helped with some of the writing and production on the album.
 
 
Me; So what’s Chris’s roll in everything when it comes to being in the studio?
 
Aston; Well me and Matt are both pretty versed on keyboards but we’re not brilliant, but Chris is, you know? He’s got perfect pitch, so if we’re playing something, he’ll be able to say “Oh that’s in E flat” just from hearing it and if samples are slightly out of tune he’ll hear it. We’re pretty good at that anyway, but its just like second nature to him.
 
 
 
Me; You’re currently rehearsing with your band to do a Freestylers live tour at the moment. How does studio made dance music transfer to a live band set up and what goes into making something like that happen?
 
Aston; Well our first show is next Monday (29/07/2013) at a festival in Budapest. When we first started of with the live band through a suggestion of the record company, they said “no ones really doing it, so why don’t you get a band together?” So to start, there was a lot of experimenting in how to make it work, we used to take loads of gear with us when we first started off to make it work and subsequently learnt on the job and eventually technology caught up and made it easier to put together. That’s the most exciting thing for me, is when I making a piece of music and then hearing it performed by the band. I’ll leave certain things in, sometimes the drummer will have the heavy kick and snare on triggers, the bass player will recreate some of the sounds, I’ll have some sounds running live. I play keyboard, vocoder, the sound fx and scratching, so it sounds like a live, electronic version. It really comes alive and makes all the music come alive.
 
 
The new album is out and available to buy from ITunes, Beatport, Amazon and Spotify
 
The Coming Storm
 
 
Check out the website for more in for http://freestylersmusic.co.uk/


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