Back to Back: Logos & Mumdance In Conversation

Production partnerships must be a pretty tricky thing in practise. Relinquishing a little piece of control over anything can be an oddly weird and yet slightly liberating thing to do; accepting that the outcome is fully a product of however many parties involved rather than just you. But sometimes when two people click, the process isn’t laboured at all, it just becomes the process. And in talking to both Mumdance and Logos, a duo of producers we’ve featured quite a lot lately, it feels like that’s exactly what happens when they’re both together in the studio. Both admit to being gear nuts, hardware freaks or hands on programmers but what’s also pretty noteworthy is that they both make music that relies on a lot more for inspiration than just other people’s interpretation of the genre they’re (kind of) operating within. Logos’ new album, Cold Mission, is a stark and often unsettling contradiction of the hallmarks of grime music. In places in bears more similarity to the work of Vangelis than it does Da Vinci (the landmark grime producer, not the Italian Renaissance polymath). But that’s precisely what makes it such a unique body of work. The album has the scope, breadth and the vitality to dissect the impact of grime music and stretch it out over passages of abstract ambience creating music that thrives off the same type of darkness but imparts its punch subtly through passages of drawn out sound design. It gives tracks like ‘Seawolf’ - one of the all-out gun cocking bangers on the album - the cleansed palette really necessary for it to fully assault your ears from, jumping out like a hidden from the safety of the uniform shadows. Mumdance has also been working on new levels, merging his variant loves of shoegaze music and grime into some weird, super stylistic hybrid. His latest mixtape, Twists & Turns, made a bit of a feature out of all his different ideas, creating something that got him recognised again after a short period of radio silence. The two London based producers have already collaborated on more avant thinking tracks like ‘In Reverse’ (taken from Keysound’s This Is How We Roll compilation) but the duo followed it more solidly recently with The Genesis EP (also on Keysound), which both cemented their relationship and yielded pretty emphatic drum workouts like ‘Wut It Do’. Ahead of their back to back headline set at the Keysound hosted Room Three this Friday, we asked Logos and Mumdance if they wouldn’t mind taking the time to interview each other. Hopefully giving us all the opportunity to learn a few things through an avenue of questioning that’s not possible to get without spending hours cooped up in the same room trying to get random boxes to talk to each other properly… Logos: After starring in those FACT TV videos, you are known as a bit of an analogue gear head... what’s your favourite recent purchase? Mumdance: I got a 303 the other day as an addition to my live show; I’ve literally just spent the whole past few days in an acid tweaking daze. It’s one of the most fun bits of kit I’ve got. It’s so instant and it sounds amazing. I can’t wait to hear it through a massive system at the weekend! In terms of other stuff, I’m really enjoying processing sounds with guitar pedals and moogerfoofgers at the moment, my floor is a whole mess of wires right now… L: If you could have sat in on the studio session on one track or album what would it have been? MD: Hmmm… that really is a hard question. I think I would have liked to have been around in Detroit in the Hitsville USA, Mowtown studios; all those recordings have some serious magic about them. L: Care to impart a one-line musical tip to our audience? MD: Have your kick and sub peaking at around -12 db and mix around that Those were actually pretty good questions, mate. I’m gonna throw ‘em right back at you. You yourself are a fellow gear head... what is your favourite recent purchase? L: I've been after a DX100 for ages and I've got one now...I can't believe how grimy the sounds are and it’s such a tiny unit. It’s very immediate in terms of the sounds but equally a bit of poking around the inner workings produces some interesting results. Big up Yamaha. MD: If you could have sat in on the studio session on one track or album what would it have been? L: Goldie and Mark Rutherford making ‘Terminator.’ Eventide chaos! MD: Oh shit! That’s a great call on the Goldie/Rutherford session! So what would be your one-line musical tip? L: Keep a track of your power supply units. Serious. MD: Do you think as a producer it's more important to develop a 'style' or to keep reinventing and overhauling your sound? L: I could answer this a few ways... in a sense it should be what is personally satisfying to you (I think art is partly a selfish activity although the power of music is its ability to communicate before the need for language or critical analysis). If by reinvention and overhauling that actually means watching face and worrying about what other people think, or your popularity, then no. Style is important. One of the things I liked about Hatcha in the early days was that he drew from a small network of producers who he knew and cultivated - the same with Slimzee. That to me is one aspect of what style means: the ability as a DJ or a producer to care about the music you select or make and to restrict your palette in order to get the best from limited materials. MD: Yeah, I definitely hear what you are saying with that, but equally I think that progression and keeping things moving is important too. I know producers who have been making the same stuff for 10 years and I just can't see how they do it! For me I like to think of it as like short periods or eras where an artist explores an idea and develops it into something that they can fully call their own. Then through doing that, or through any other number of extraneous factors, it might lead them down an entirely different path, so their next body of work sounds entirely different. It’s like when people talk about "Berlin Era" Bowie, he was making music that reflected a time in his life, but then his other albums sound completely different reflecting his growth and journey as an artist. I want to work like that. I think both of my mixtape albums Different Circles and Twists & Turns explore a completely different set of ideas which reflected where my head was at at the time of creating them. They both sound completely different and map my progression as a producer. I think I'd like to carry on that trajectory. Do you think your production style and technique has evolved or changed in the time from when you started the album to when you had finished it? L: I hope my mixdowns have got slightly better as I've gone along. My gain structure (for the nerds) is more disciplined and I've learned how to programme one of my favourite 80s synths properly (which will remain nameless... sorry) - so that's all to the good. Speaking of Bowie incidentally I bought (an overpriced) copy of The Idiot by Iggy Pop a few weeks back in Oxfam - that is a brilliant Bowie produced album from the Berlin period. And the track ‘Mass Production’ on there in particular is excellent and you could argue it pretty much wrote the book for Joy Division (perhaps...). So where do you see 2014 taking you? MD: I feel like I’m just about starting to come into my stride production wise and I have a couple of mixtapes under my belt now, so I think I’m going to gear up for a proper studio album. The problem is just deciding which direction I want to take it in. Alongside that obviously we’re going to do our collaborative album too, which I’m looking forward to getting stuck into. Aside from that I have always wanted to produce an album for a vocalist or band, so hopefully something will present itself in the near future. Also over the last year or so I’ve been focussing on DJing a lot more and getting this live show in order, so I’m looking to tour that next year Where do you feel you are it in terms of your creative cycle? Now you have written an album do you feel you need some time to recoup? Or has it got you into a groove so to speak to keep producing more? L: I'm having a bit of a break at the moment but am going to start sketching ideas for the second LP in the New Year... probably. We'll just see where things go. The good thing about finishing an album is you feel you have time to do some R&D on your synths without the pressure of deadlines. But yeah, apart from that, more collaborations with you and other producers really – taking on as much music as I can. Do you have any plans to work with MCs again…? MD: Yeah I definitely do plan to work with MCs again. I go through stages of writing instrumentals and more club focused tracks. I’ve been doing a load of club tracks recently so I feel like it’s time to write some instrumental tracks for some MCs. I’ve been speaking to Jammer a lot recently so I think we are going to do some more stuff together. I prefer to work with both people in the one room rather than over the internet, so now I’m back in London it’ll be 10,000 times easier to work with MCs. What about you? How does your creative process work? Do you have an idea beforehand and then try to realise that, or do you just go with the flow and let things shape themselves? L: I tend to work from samples first or re-sampling synths then take it from there. There are no preconceived ideas about the final form really, except maybe a vibe or idea from a track from my collection or something I've heard on YouTube. What is your favourite form of synthesis and why? Or is it all just a tool box? MD: I do definitely get a joy from programming synths and samplers, but it can be quite a laborious task sometimes – it’s all to do with the interface of the instrument you are using. I am a bit of a glutton for punishment when it comes to synthesis and I do enjoy programming my DX7. A lot of people hate FM synthesis, but I find it quite therapeutic. I used to really enjoy programming my Moog Voyager when I had it too, as it had a dedicated knob for pretty much every function, so it was really hands on and a joy to use. I think I’m going to have to get another one sometime in the future…. What’s your least favourite bit of kit? L: Probably Logic to be honest! It's a versatile tool and very powerful but the audio manipulation engine leaves a lot to be desired in my opinion. I moan to you about it at least three times per studio session, I reckon. MD: [laughs] Yeah, you do! L: So let’s wrap it up, what’s your favourite track of the moment? MD: Again it’s always hard to choose as there is so much good stuff around right now, but my favourite tune of the moment is ‘Ariel VIP’ by Murlo and Famous Eno. Murlo is a master and seems to really be coming into his own at the moment. My hot tip for the next few months is Rabit, I could definitely play a whole set of his tunes! Also look out for Tsunga and Gage; they’re both making some really interesting sounds at the moment What’s your favourite track of the moment? You got any hot tips? L: My favourite 12" release of the year is probably the Kowton ALL CAPS thing, ‘TFB’, which is just a brutally perfect slab of grime crossed with techno. But I agree about ‘Ariel VIP’... Murlo is making moves right now.