Audio: Introducing Psycatron and their fabric Promo Mix

Belfast based techno duo, Psycatron, have a lot to thank to the rich techno led culture they emerged from and the social media platform that helped them become a part of it: Myspace. The site helped them get a foot in the door with one of the world’s most revered labels, Carl Craig’s Planet E, but after that they kinda made it on their own as their music spoke for itself earning them releases on a pretty impressive roll call of labels that includes R&S, Hotflush and Tresor. They’ve started up their own imprint themselves pretty recently and named after naming it Inflyte, the guys have got some pretty impressive stuff coming up in the next few months. We find out about it all in our interview with Paul Hamill, one half of the outfit, ahead of their return to Room Two next Saturday. He’s also recorded us an exclusive promo mix as a further introduction into the Psycatron sound. DOWNLOAD: Psycatron fabric Promo Mix For our readers who may not be familiar with you yet, can you please introduce yourself? Dave Lievense and myself Paul Hamill. We're based in Belfast and have been mates for years although just started making music together since around 2008 - we've made records for the likes of Tresor, R&S, Hot Flush, Tronic, Bedrock and Planet E as well as our own label Inflyte. We do a residency at the Stiff Kitten and Shine in the city as well as touring around Europe and farther afield on a regular basis. So we can get an idea of your background – where was it you grew up? Was there a musical thing going on that encouraged you to get into music making? We both pretty much cut our clubbing teeth at David Holmes' nights at The Art College in Belfast, there was Sugar Sweet which then became Shake Ya Brain. These nights were the first big events to bring European house and techno DJs to the city and were amazing times - they were the kind of places when people ask if you remember hearing a particular record for the first time, chances are it would have been here. There was a point in the mid-90's were Belfast was pretty much a techno town with amazing gigs on all over the city. One week you'd have Bandulu playing live, followed by Carl Cox, Luke Slater and even Orbital. Shine kind of came along in the wake of both these nights and that's where we ended up becoming residents coming up to ten years now. It was through going to these nights I suppose that we first got to know each other but didn't start working together for long time as we both had our own separate projects on the go. Dave's been producing for years, whereas I've been DJing for probably just as long, so it was great to get our collective heads down and work on Psycatron together. Who were your biggest inspirations? Musically there is a lot of Detroit in you and you find yourself releasing on Detroit based labels – what is it about the Motor City that got you hooked? It's not even so much Motor City, as the music that inspired those guys to do what they did, when they did. I'm talking about Kraftwerk, New Order, Depeche Mode, it was all the early new wave stuff that has had the biggest impact in helping shape the development of electronic music in its formative years that still influences what we do today. In saying that, labels such as Planet E and R&S were among the first records I ever bought when I was 15yrs old (Energy Flash and Throw), so there's obviously some part of owning those records that shapes what we do. Sub-consciously we make split second decisions in the studio based on the music that influences us the most and those decisions translate into how a riff develops, how an arrangement is structured, what sounds to pick, that type of thing. It's not a pre-meditated thing. I would never want to say yeah we're all about the Detroit, because clearly we're not, but it is a big part of the picture and in terms of being a little part of that it's been good to us no doubt, and we've been lucky to work with some amazing people primarily as a result of the connection we have to the city. You ended up going to release on Carl Craig’s Planet E – he’s for many totally untouchable when it comes to respect – how’d that come about and how much did it mean to you or Carl to dig your tunes? There used to be a website called MySpace that people used to send music to DJs and labels on. We sent a demo, heard nothing for weeks then received an email out of the blue saying Carl wanted to sign it. We'd only made one or two records together at this point so it pretty much changed everything for us. You launched your own label last year, Inflyte, can you tell us more about it? What artists are you releasing and your ideas behind the label’s conception? Our next release is by two friends from Belfast who go by the name of Fractious & JC Williams. It's out on vinyl next month with remixes from Rod and Remy Unger. Then we have a Nuno Dos Santos EP with a Gregor Tresher remix, an EP from Patch Park and some of our own stuff to follow - so that's three releases in a row all with Dutch artists! We just set it up as an outlet for working with other people and to push some of our own stuff out there, but it's bloody hard work to do it right. There's a belief that it's dead easy, you just upload some files and bang that's it. Hmm not quite. Kudos to those labels who have been at it for so long and are consistently great at what they do. What’ve you got coming up? Heading stateside this week for a couple of shows at SXSW in Austin Texas, then flying straight back for fabric on the 16th. Barcelona, Italy and Berlin all coming up shortly too. Release wise, we're trying to nail the final track for our next Planet E release, prepping an Inflyte release with Francesco Tristano and have remix of Locked Groove lined up for Turbo soon as well. In the studio – what’s your set up looking like at the moment? Dave has a full-on set-up with a lovely collection of outboard everything from the Yamaha CS1D, Korg Triton, OB8, Moog Phatty, Korg MonoPoly all running through a Midas Venice and Mackie desks with Cubase 5 at the hub of it all. I've a much more slim line set-up in my basement running Logic 9 with Ableton rewired, all going through a nice pair of Mackie HR824s. He's getting on-board with Logic now which will make collaborating between studios much quicker and easier. We used to work exclusively at Dave's because I was never really happy with the sound in my studio (and he's got all the toys) but since I got my place acoustically treated (best discovery ever) we've started working together at my place too, which is a nice change of scene. I’ve noticed on your Facebook there’s an iPad in there so you are obviously enjoying what it has to offer – what would you say to the naysayers out there who seem to be dogging apps over hardware? I don't really care to be honest. It's like the vinyl vs digital debate, Traktor vs Serato - who gives a shit? Do the best shows and make the best music you can with the resources you have at your disposal, if people are into it then that's what matters. The versatility of having effectively a plug-in on a dedicated piece of hardware like the iPad with a touchscreen surface is what really appeals to me as it takes some of the pressure off the laptop and it's obviously very portable. What would be your favourite ones to recommend to our readers? The Korg Polysix is amazing, Animoog and of course the iMS20. Would love to eventually see some of the D16 plugs on iOS eventually. You’re playing live here – how does it differ from your studio arrangement what can we look forward to on the 16th? It's obviously much more scaled down. It's Ableton 7, APC 40 and an iPad now running a couple of synths, hopefully in sync. The set-up has recently been re-jigged so the 16th is the first time actually using the iPad for synths which I'm really looking forward to as the last set-up we were using felt a little too safe and not spontaneous enough. Sometimes it's what you might perceive as the flaws in your performance, the accidental mistakes, that people can connect to the most and part of that connection is how you deal with these things you're playing live and what you do with them. It's pretty much St Patrick’s Day and Slam are in the building too, so who knows what could happen. See you then!