Catching Up With Riton About His 'Can't Stop The Clock' Tour

If you do a certain thing for a considerable portion of time, people start to expect that from you. It’s a simple equation and it’s one that often leads to a lot of mislaid preconceptions about certain artists or styles, but it’s definitely one idea that people should be looking to challenge more often. It’s something that Riton will be doing live in Room Two next Friday when he brings his Can’t Stop The Clock tour to the Marble hosted lineup. You’ll probably know Riton more for his Kosmiche tinged electro/techno output championed by labels like Ed Banger but he’s long been a fan of hip hop and more sample based production. "I always loved the sampling aesthetic” he offers. “It still interests me the fact you can make a song without playing one note. I don't think anybody had ever come up with a more radical and punk way to make a song to date.” And his Can’t Stop The Clock project is a mixtape that makes prominent use of that way of thinking considering that he took vocal lines from existing songs and then built club beats around them. “In a sense it’s kind of a reverse mixtape,” Riton continues. “Where normally you might find rappers using other people’s beats and samples for them to showcase their vocals on, I had the vocals I wanted already, so I built new instrumentals around them.” To celebrate the drop of the mixtape on 1st July, Riton’s developed a stripped back live show that uses a 909 drum machine, a Teenage Enginnering OP-1 portable synthesizer and Traktor to convey the directness and the energy of these new productions. With all this in mind we grabbed him quickly to ask him a little bit more about both the project and the performance. Can you explain the idea behind ‘Can’t Stop The Clock’? It’s a bit of different approach to production from you isn’t it? Yeah this was a bit of an experiment... I really enjoyed it and think I'll try for a part 2 next year. It was heaps of work but it's really good practice just studying tracks like 'Might Be Somebody' by Aaliyah; the beat's super simple and then I remade all the stabs and stuff but there's so much more going on than you would think! This Timbaland guy... Would it be fair it’s a bit of a simplification of the whole process – like you working with existing vocals and building your music around that specifically with the club in mind? Well yes... Actually you could have more effective club tracks but I think I've found a good balance; tracks like the Cassie one get really lush at the end. To perform it live, you’re essentially just using an OP1, a 909 and Traktor… Does the live set reflect a bit of a simplification in that regard to? Well I'm pretty good at DJing and working a 909 so I wanted to use those skills in the performance. I'm considering moving to this format completely because the 909 all synced up to the loops just sounds crazy phat! What made you want to perform this material live? To be honest, I just thought it could be nice to do a something a little different than what people are used to seeing me do. It's just a short run, I'm only doing 6 shows. What else is coming up for you in the future, after this mixtape? I'm pretty well into a new EP for Ed Banger and there's a couple of shows with Mark Ronson coming up this summer, too.