"Another Level Of Potential Manipulation": Introducing Second Storey

While this might be an articleset out to introduce Second Storey, the subject of our interview isn’t strictly new territory for us for Second Storey is the next phase of the Bristol based Alec Storey (formerly known as Al Tourette)’s machine funk styled output. There’s long been a shade of boundary pushing evident in Storey’s work; he never seems to produce straight up bangers, there’s constantly many elements at play within the rhythmic elements in his tracks. It’s something that becomes even more clear when you listen back to his Al Tourettes era back catalogue: like in the off kilter darkness of ‘Swan Sketch’ lifted from his contribution to Darren Aronofsky’s superlatively disquieting Black Swan film score or even the metallically punishing ‘ When I Rest I Rust’ - where the beat pattern feels to be constantly shifting and shuffling never resting on a groove as a laurel. And it’s this advanced approach to constructing beats that is at the heart of this new wave for Storey. In the studio he’s not just doing the obvious to create the flow and sense of a track he’s just not being that obvious at all. Earlier in the year he made his opening statement as Second Storey with his debut EP, entitled Margosa Heights, for our artist led Houndstooth label and with work fully underway on his first full album we thought it a good time to really go in deep with Storey about how this change of name and direction will influence the forthcoming output. Plus, as he’s just a generally busy person we also fitted in some chat around the beat constructor’s next visit to Farringdon this Saturday where he’s set to join his Bristol homie Appleblim on stage in Room Two for their London debut of their collaboration as ALSO. Stream: Second Storey - Recorded Live 02/04/2013 in full on fabricfirst We’ve already kind of done the introducing thing with you here, talking about your influences and beginnings so I guess we should start by talking about you changing your name from Al Tourettes to Second Storey. Can you tell us a bit about where the moniker Second Storey came from? I felt slightly constrained by the Al Tourettes name in terms of what I thought suited it music wise and so wanted to use something that I felt had a wider scope for experimentation, and also not necessarily confined to a dance music framework. Aside from the obvious connection in that Storey is my second name, It's also my second incarnation, my father is the first Storey and if you'll pardon the pun is a level up which is where I'm trying to get to musically… Do you think that as well as being a different way to present your music have you felt that there’s a shift in what you produce? In some ways yes, I still love writing crazy dance music but I think now I'm more concerned with making music that affects me on different levels and not solely in a club focussed context. Though of course I still totally have dance floor in mind when I'm making tracks and I'll always keep that, I'm also exploring the emotional aspects of melody and harmony more confidently now in different forms. A track might start off as a Techno jam but end up turning into a soundscape piece so it's a case of allowing the music to go there rather than thinking, ‘oh everything has to be tailored for a peak time rave scenario’ or return to that somehow. I'm also trying to be more focussed in the music's identity rather than trying to cram a million ideas into just one track. I’ve had a privileged listen to some of the ideas you’ve sent over to Houndstooth for the album, it feels like you’re really exploring a whole new depth of sound and not particularly rhythm based track... I'm a huge fan of ambient and beatless music so it's something that I find exciting to make. My background as a drummer means that in a way it's more of a challenge to write not explicitly rhythmic tracks. Of course you can hint at rhythm but not in such a direct way, so finding the internal rhythm and structure of a sound that wanders, mutates and interlinks with other sounds is very satisfying. It allows you to engage with the sounds and progression in a different way, as you aren't directly anchored to the structure and time by the beat. Even in some of the more rhythmic tracks I'm writing I'm trying to bring out the more abstract or tonal elements a lot more now. It sounds like you've been working on manipulation on your sounds, is this something you spend a lot of time working on? What kind of processes are you going through to work the sounds like this? Yes I do spend a lot of time working on how I can develop and contort a sound throughout the track, trying to get the most out of it. For instance I might start off with a synth sound and write a passage of music with effects and parameter changes but then record the whole thing into a sampler so that I have another level of potential manipulation available to me. The original passage might still be there but the sampled version has the potential to transform into something else entirely, such as a rhythmic element or atonal sound effect, so it comes down to trying to extract everything I can from the source sounds really. How are you approaching its structure? As a complete work or are you just jamming out tracks in general to compile together? I am definitely approaching it as a complete work in a sense it will certainly be meant to be taken as whole, but at the same time there isn't an overriding concept either. It's just music that I feel and that I want to listen/dance to and that I hope represents where I'm coming from as an artist. Are there any other Second Storey releases planned in the interim? At this stage I'm concentrating purely on getting the album done so putting everything into that. You’re also involved in quite a few projects now like your project with Appleblim – ALSO what can we expect from your live set in next Saturday it’s only the second time you’re playing out together right? Officially it's only the third time we've done the set, the first one was at Space last year with the second being at Arc Festival in Bristol in April. The set incorporates extensions of some of our previous work along with a load of new tracks we've done together. We’ve uploaded your set from the Houndstooth launch earlier in the year – can you tell us a bit about your approach to DJing? I know it’s important for you to have that CD and vinyl set up even though you do work a lot with Ableton… For me I like to keep that separation between production/live performance and DJ'ing. Of course I could use Ableton with loads of crazy effects etc and I may still do that one day but I still love the feel of mixing 2 records together and finding those unique blends through using vinyl or CD and the very physical nature of it. It's even down to searching for a tune in the record bag, not being able to find it and choosing something else that you find out mixes better that is really exhilarating. It's a release away from the ever-present computer screen. It’s a great journey from some warm athmospherics to real gritty machine funk grooves – being tasked with the warm up set did you put an particular thought into this with your planning? I haven't done that many warm up sets in the past so it was actually a real treat to be able to open the room without that instant pressure to make people dance. Hearing some of the more atmospheric stuff at the beginning through that huge rig was a pleasure to behold. I did think about the set a fair bit as I think a warm up set is a good exercise in restraint, just about holding back till towards the end. Of course it was equally fun to bang it out for the last bit too... Any big favourites that we should listen out for in the mix? The opening track by Michael Bundt is a classic and there's some great tracks from Luke Abbott, Letroset, Juju and Jordash, The Wee Dj's and John Heckle, plus some new bits of mine on there, as well as an ALSO track called "Formation (work as a team)" inspired by Shanti from Rinse Fm's MC'ing line (though you probably wouldn't guess it from the tune itself!) The full stream of Second Storey's DJ set at the launch of Houndstooth earlier this year is available to fabricfirst members via their dashboards. Non-members can sample a 20 minute segment in the player above.