Full Transcript:

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John Kennedy: Hello and welcome to Tape Notes, the podcast that looks behind the scenes at the magic of recording and producing music.

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John Kennedy: Every episode, we’ll be reuniting an artist and producer and talking through some of the highlights from their collaboration in the studio.

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John Kennedy: So join us as we lift the lid on the creative process and the inner workings of music production to see what lies beneath.

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John Kennedy: Hello, I’m John Kennedy, and joining me for this episode of Tape Notes are Rudimental to talk about how they wrote, recorded, and produced the album Rudim3Ntal.

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John Kennedy: Rudimental are a British drum and bass band consisting of Piers Aggett, Kesi Dryden, and Leon Rolle.

00:00:46.495 –> 00:00:52.195
John Kennedy: The group originally formed in 2009, starting as a production duo with just Piers and Kesi.

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John Kennedy: Their first release, Sexy Sexy, featuring vocals by Natalie May, came out in 2009 and helped establish their presence in the UK music scene.

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John Kennedy: In 2013, Rudim3Ntal released their debut album Home, which featured collaborations with some of the UK’s top artists, including Emily Sande and Becky Hill.

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John Kennedy: The successful blend of genres such as drum and bass, dubstep, R&B and house led the album to receive widespread critical acclaim and it reached number one on the UK albums chart.

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John Kennedy: Over the past decade, Rudimental have followed in their first album success to become one of the UK’s most successful dance acts.

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John Kennedy: They have amassed billions of streams worldwide, toured extensively and released multiple chart-topping singles.

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John Kennedy: Their achievements also include numerous nominations and wins at the Brit Awards, notably for the hit track Waiting All Night and a Mercury Prize nomination cementing their status as influential figures in the British electronic music scene.

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John Kennedy: More recently, they have announced the release of their fifth studio album Rudim3Ntal, featuring collaborations with Khalid, Jess Glynn, Idris Elba and many more.

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John Kennedy: Today, I’m at Strongroom Studios and I’m joined by Piers and Kesi.

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John Kennedy: And what better way to start than by hearing something from the new album.

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John Kennedy: This is Rumpa.

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John Kennedy: It is Rudimental with Rumpam.

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John Kennedy: I’m so hard to resist not jumping up and going crazy to that.

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John Kennedy: Sounding fantastic.

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John Kennedy: I’m very pleased to say that I have Piers from Rudim3Ntal.

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John Kennedy: Hello, Piers.

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Piers: Hi.

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John Kennedy: And Kesi from Rudimental here, with the Strongroom Studios, which is actually a place you’ve used quite a bit in the past.

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Piers:Yeah.

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Piers: Yeah, we’ve made some of the first album here, and some of the recent album, some of the tracks we’re talking about today.

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Piers: Yeah, we made two of them here.

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John Kennedy: Right.

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John Kennedy: Brilliant.

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John Kennedy: Even though your studio is just around the corner.

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Piers: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Piers: Sometimes it’s just nice to like get out of your comfort zone.

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Piers: Strongroom is a great inspiring place.

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Piers: They’ve got some good equipment here.

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Piers: So yeah, it’s just nice to have a change every now and again.

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John Kennedy: Yeah.

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John Kennedy: So as we speak, the album is yet to come out.

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John Kennedy: It’s still in a kind of gestation slightly, but nearing completion.

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Piers: It’s very near.

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John Kennedy: And there’s still debate about the title, and there’s a lot of, it’s quite an interesting position to talk to you in.

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Piers: Yeah.

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Kesi: Yeah, I think we’re close with the title.

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Kesi: Well, we’ve decided on the title now.

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Piers: Yeah, we actually just decided now.

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Piers: Yeah.

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Piers: Yeah, it’s close.

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Kesi: Rudimental with a 3.

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Kesi: I think it’s a bit of a new era for us this year with the tour inside of Things.

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Kesi: We’re not doing a live show anymore.

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Kesi: We’ve got this new sort of free man DJ back to back show that we’re really excited about.

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Kesi: And a lot of the music kind of reflects the DJ sort of club environment that we’ve been making recently.

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Kesi: So yeah, it’s a bit of a new era for us, and it’s super exciting.

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John Kennedy: Yeah.

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John Kennedy: So with Rudimental 3, do you mean that the E in Rudimental changes?

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Piers: We flipped it.

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Piers: Exactly that.

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Piers: Yeah.

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Piers: It’s kind of like Kesi said, a very club.

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Piers: And this new show is really exciting.

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Piers: We’re about to go on tour in Australia and take it there.

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Piers: And then we’re going to be doing it this summer in a lot of festivals.

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Piers: And it’s all linked to that.

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Kesi: And it’s also our first solely drummer based album.

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Kesi: All our previous albums have been multi-genre.

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Kesi: But this one, we’ve actually homed in on the drummer based sound.

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Kesi: So, yeah, we’re looking forward to putting it all out and getting on tour.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, it’s exciting because, I mean, you’ve been delivering all these amazing tracks over the last 12 months, you know, non-stop.

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John Kennedy: It’s been, well, even going back further the last couple of years, really.

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John Kennedy: So you’ve got a lot of different tunes to choose from and try and work out what to include in the album.

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John Kennedy: Plus, you’ve got some new songs that are going to be on the album, which we’re going to be talking about today as well, which is very exciting.

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Piers: Yeah.

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John Kennedy: And in fact, we should go straight into one of those, which is the first song we’re going to look at, which is Chop Dem Down.

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John Kennedy: So maybe if you play a bit of that, we can get a little taste of it.

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Piers: Let’s do it.

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John Kennedy: That’s sounding so good.

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John Kennedy: That is Chop Dem Down by Rudim3Ntal from the new album.

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John Kennedy: And this song, Piers, has quite a history to it.

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Piers: It’s pretty heavy.

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Piers: It’s a 1991 collaboration.

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Piers: He’s a producer, smashing it in the D&B scene.

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Piers: I love his work.

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Piers: I literally hit him up on, I think it was Instagram, and I was just like, we gotta get in the studio, because I play a lot of his songs in our DJ sets, and I’m just a big fan, right?

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Piers: So I hit him up, and we actually worked on The Feeling, which is a track we recently put out, and we were in the studio.

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Piers: We basically had this horn line, so once we’d finished working on one collaboration, which has come out recently, we played him the horn line that we were just like, let’s think about something else, and I played him this horn line that we recorded about eight years ago in Jamaica, and it was also a vocal that we’d, from a song that we wrote in this room with a Bayesian artist called Roro, we’d used the horn line to make a whole nother song.

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Piers: And I just had the thought that maybe if you sped it up to DMB, it would sound good.

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Piers: But yeah, the interesting story about this record really was this horn line that we used and recorded in Jamaica was by a trombone player called Namba Robinson.

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Piers: And this is a picture of him.

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Piers: And he played with the Whalers, Bob Marley, for years and did his own albums.

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Piers: Incredible artist and musician.

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Piers: And we made some songs with him in Jamaica years ago.

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Piers: It never quite fitted what we were doing at the time.

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Piers: We made, and it was on our hard drives.

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Piers: And we brought it up for this session.

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Piers: We were in this room with Roro.

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Piers: So fast forward another six years, no, a year ago, two years ago, we were in this room with Roro.

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Piers: So I’ll play the song that we made with Roro in here.

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Piers: Roro is a sick artist, by the way.

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Kesi: Yeah, she’s amazing.

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Piers: She’s from Barbados.

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Piers: Right.

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Piers: And she’s just incredible, like.

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Piers: So completely different vibe, as you can hear.

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Piers: I mean, on this, I thought I’ll quickly talk about VPS, because this bass line sound, I downloaded VPS Avenger about two years ago, and it changed my life, and I made like every song with it.

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Piers: It’s just got crazy, loud, obnoxious sounds, like presets in it.

00:09:12.555 –> 00:09:16.935
Piers: It’s got this 90s pack, which you can download, and it’s just mad.

00:09:16.935 –> 00:09:19.095
Piers: It’s one of my favorite synths.

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Piers: It’s really easy to use.

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Piers: Anyway, so we made this song, and this happens a lot with us.

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Piers: The track seems to really go through journeys.

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Piers: Now, the really amazing, the tune we created here was sick, and then the funny thing about with 1991, we played it to him, and he was like, oh my gosh, give me that, give me that.

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Piers: We spread it up to 170 BPM, and basically, he went and did his thing, and it sounded like crazy.

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Piers: I think the most wonderful thing about this is the use of the horn line.

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Piers: Namba Robinson passed away in 2017, which we found out around the time.

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Piers: So, it was just, I’ve always wanted to use it, and just the fact that we’ve been able to use it finally in a tune really means a lot, you know, because he was such a gem, he was such an amazing person, and I always remember that session, and his music will live on, and we’ll be able to put this tune out, and you know, we’ve been playing it on stage, and it’s just been going off.

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John Kennedy: So, and did the Hornline go get released with the Roto-Tune as well?

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Piers: No, we haven’t put that out yet.

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John Kennedy: Oh, so that’s still to come for the one that you played us?

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John Kennedy: That’s still to come.

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Kesi: That’s coming on the album, yeah.

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John Kennedy: Wow.

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Piers: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Piers: Oh, yeah.

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Piers: So, look, we can just dissect a bit of what 9091 did, and I think doing the stuff that he does, like this mad stuff, and it just sounds so good fast, and I love the lyrics, I love the Hornline, and it’s one of those things that’s been really going off on stage.

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Piers: This tune, like we played a festival in Belgium, you know, all over in America, and yeah, it’s just great, it’s got a lot of energy.

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Piers: I like the Jack and the Beanstalk reference, you know, it’s just got a lot of fun going on, and yeah, man, like it’s a beautiful journey, and that’s what I love about music, it’s like, you know when something’s good, and the Hornline was always good, and it was like we always remembered it, and we’d actually, I think even before the Roe Roe tune, we made another song.

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Kesi: We’ve tried it a few times, we’ve tried it a few times, but I think as soon as Roe Roe heard it, she just knew what to do straight away, it was like an instant, she had the melodies, I think she was writing for about five minutes and came at that line, and we was all just like, oh my God, what have you just done there?

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Kesi: Like, it’s sounding amazing, and I think him being Jamaica and her from Barbados, the Caribbean feel, she just knew, as soon as she heard that Hornline, it made sense to her.

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Piers: Yeah.

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Piers: Rest in peace, Nambo Robinson, man.

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Piers: What a legend.

00:12:15.075 –> 00:12:15.435
Kesi: Yeah.

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John Kennedy: Fantastic that you get to release this.

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John Kennedy: And with that other version that you’ve done with Roro, will that see the light of day?

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Piers: I think so, because it’s a vibe.

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John Kennedy: Yeah, it’s great.

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Kesi: It will do.

00:12:23.835 –> 00:12:28.255
John Kennedy: And it’s interesting, though, that you can’t let things lie, as it were.

00:12:28.255 –> 00:12:34.335
John Kennedy: If something that good, you want to try it in quite a few different situations to see how it works.

00:12:34.335 –> 00:12:38.395
John Kennedy: Now, I love that freedom as well to pass it on to 1991 and see what he will come out with.

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Piers: That’s it.

00:12:38.655 –> 00:12:50.275
Piers: That’s what’s fun about doing producer clubs, because we’re producers, but it’s as fun, if not funner, when you meet another producer that has mad techniques and styles and you’re just like, I’m like, how do you even do it?

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Piers: I’m like, bro, how do you get that snare?

00:12:52.115 –> 00:12:54.595
Piers: He’s like, it’s seven snares, seven layers.

00:12:54.595 –> 00:12:56.115
Piers: I was like, yeah, but what layers?

00:12:56.115 –> 00:12:57.975
Piers: Like, you know, you get you get techie with each other.

00:12:57.975 –> 00:12:59.635
Piers: And it’s amazing because it’s a real nice.

00:12:59.895 –> 00:13:05.175
Piers: It’s a real, you know, creative coming together of ideas.

00:13:05.175 –> 00:13:07.035
Piers: So I love it.

00:13:07.075 –> 00:13:09.935
Piers: And then, yeah, Night In No One’s a sick producer.

00:13:10.255 –> 00:13:13.335
Piers: And it’s been so much fun making the two records.

00:13:13.575 –> 00:13:15.615
Piers: We’ve got two on the album with him.

00:13:15.615 –> 00:13:16.215
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:13:16.215 –> 00:13:21.975
John Kennedy: And should we hear a bit more of Chop Dem Down just to get a fuller picture of what else happened on the track?

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Piers: Let’s do it.

00:13:22.675 –> 00:13:25.575
John Kennedy: Especially as this is, you know, this is kind of upfront and exclusive.

00:13:25.575 –> 00:13:26.015
Piers: Let’s do it.

00:13:38.115 –> 00:13:49.775
John Kennedy: And going back to that original session with NAMBO, I mean, when you’re working with a musician like that, who can obviously turn his hand to doing lots of different styles, how do you set up the vibe?

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John Kennedy: How do you set up the situation?

00:13:51.115 –> 00:13:55.575
John Kennedy: Because obviously, you know, that whole beat and everything, and that vocal didn’t exist.

00:13:55.575 –> 00:14:00.115
Piers: No, well, this was him playing to another one of our beats at the time.

00:14:00.115 –> 00:14:03.475
Piers: I was like, Kez, I asked Kez the question, because it was a long time ago.

00:14:03.475 –> 00:14:11.215
Kesi: Yeah, we actually went to Jamaica to finish a previous album, and we got there and just spent 10 days making reggae music.

00:14:12.695 –> 00:14:15.275
Kesi: The label weren’t too happy with us.

00:14:15.275 –> 00:14:19.615
Kesi: So this is actually the first thing we’ve used from that trip, I would say.

00:14:21.495 –> 00:14:22.655
John Kennedy: When was that trip again?

00:14:22.655 –> 00:14:25.015
Kesi: I think it was 2016, roughly.

00:14:25.015 –> 00:14:28.295
John Kennedy: So this would have been for your second album?

00:14:28.355 –> 00:14:29.715
Piers: Yeah, it was around that time.

00:14:30.095 –> 00:14:33.215
Piers: It was around the second album, World Really Generation.

00:14:33.215 –> 00:14:39.075
Piers: I think like we did know we used Max Romeo on the second album on a track.

00:14:39.075 –> 00:14:40.795
Piers: So we did use some things.

00:14:41.495 –> 00:14:48.495
Piers: And we actually recorded this in Tufkong Studios, which is Bob Marley’s studio.

00:14:49.115 –> 00:14:58.495
Piers: I recently watched a film and I was just like, I can’t believe I’ve been there and recorded a member of The Wayless, well, the bonus from The Wayless.

00:14:58.495 –> 00:15:05.255
Piers: And it’s incredible the journey that we’ve been on as producers and as music fans.

00:15:06.295 –> 00:15:20.955
Piers: And I’m really grateful for, I guess, the Rudimental Journey, because it’s really took me on some wild things that maybe 15 years ago, I would have been like, Oh, yeah, whatever, mate.

00:15:20.955 –> 00:15:24.695
Piers: I’m really going to be there, you know, and I’ve been pinching myself sometimes.

00:15:24.695 –> 00:15:25.435
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:15:25.435 –> 00:15:31.135
John Kennedy: But to think that you went to Jamaica for 10 days, recorded lots of stuff, but it hasn’t really seen the light of day.

00:15:31.135 –> 00:15:32.395
John Kennedy: No, no.

00:15:32.395 –> 00:15:35.455
John Kennedy: But it still could, because obviously, you’re going to draw on that.

00:15:35.455 –> 00:15:36.715
John Kennedy: No, it’s really interesting.

00:15:36.715 –> 00:15:37.375
Piers: Yeah.

00:15:37.375 –> 00:15:38.875
John Kennedy: Amazing.

00:15:38.875 –> 00:15:40.595
John Kennedy: So we’re going to look at three tracks today.

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John Kennedy: So the next two, you’re going to dive into more of the tech side of things.

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John Kennedy: So maybe we’ll just round up with a bit more, another blast of Chop Dem Down.

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Piers: Yeah, let’s do the second drop, because it really kicks off.

00:16:25.842 –> 00:16:26.962
John Kennedy: And what is that bass sound?

00:16:26.962 –> 00:16:28.682
John Kennedy: Is that VPS, the one that…

00:16:28.682 –> 00:16:31.022
Piers: That is actually something that 9091 did.

00:16:31.022 –> 00:16:33.662
Piers: So we’re gonna have to call him, but…

00:16:35.422 –> 00:16:38.122
Piers: I know he uses a few different things.

00:16:38.122 –> 00:16:42.162
Piers: Serum, I use Serum a lot.

00:16:42.162 –> 00:16:45.702
Piers: Yeah, just different bass synths.

00:16:45.702 –> 00:16:50.402
Piers: Between Serum, VPS and Diva.

00:16:50.402 –> 00:16:51.202
Piers: I like using Diva.

00:16:52.862 –> 00:16:55.742
Piers: But yeah, this is when…

00:16:56.182 –> 00:16:57.322
Piers: This is way…

00:16:57.482 –> 00:17:01.742
Piers: In terms of D&B, this is probably the hardest, more heaviest D&B tune that we’ve ever done.

00:17:01.742 –> 00:17:08.282
Piers: And that’s kind of classically the sound of something that 9091 would do.

00:17:08.282 –> 00:17:11.602
Piers: So it was nice to get that spin on the tune at the end.

00:17:11.602 –> 00:17:13.862
John Kennedy: Yeah, sounds fantastic.

00:17:13.862 –> 00:17:16.802
John Kennedy: Before we move on from Chop Dem Down, is there anything else we need to hear, Piers?

00:17:16.802 –> 00:17:19.622
Piers: Yeah, I just wanted to mention the horn line again.

00:17:20.562 –> 00:17:24.622
Piers: Why it sounds so fat and warm and slightly distorted.

00:17:24.622 –> 00:17:32.842
Piers: It was in the days of actually, we’ve got one of these, the real actual hardware in the studio and we used to run lots of stuff for it.

00:17:32.842 –> 00:17:36.562
Piers: We do that less now because it’s all online.

00:17:36.602 –> 00:17:38.662
John Kennedy: But what’s the piece of hardware?

00:17:38.662 –> 00:17:42.722
Piers: Culture Vulture, Thermonic Culture Vulture.

00:17:42.722 –> 00:17:50.382
Piers: As you can hear, it’s just like the distortion you get from it.

00:17:50.382 –> 00:17:56.622
Piers: It’s just so nice distortion without sounding horrible.

00:17:56.622 –> 00:17:57.402
Piers: That’s why I love it.

00:17:59.142 –> 00:18:03.302
Piers: I think it really added to the vintage warm sounds of the brass.

00:18:03.882 –> 00:18:10.162
Kesi: Also, credit to him as a trombone player as well, because he had the most powerful lungs I’ve ever seen.

00:18:10.162 –> 00:18:12.602
Kesi: I haven’t heard the trombone sound like that before.

00:18:12.602 –> 00:18:17.322
Kesi: The rasp he got out of it when he was playing that horn line was pretty amazing.

00:18:17.322 –> 00:18:19.702
Kesi: His cheeks would just fill right up.

00:18:19.702 –> 00:18:21.582
Kesi: He was like, it’d blow you away in the room.

00:18:23.542 –> 00:18:29.382
Kesi: Credit to him, but also the culture of vulture does make it sound really fat as well.

00:18:29.382 –> 00:18:33.722
John Kennedy: And so the culture of vulture was used after you’d recorded…

00:18:33.722 –> 00:18:41.482
Piers: We took it back to the studio around the corner and ran his horns through the kit.

00:18:41.482 –> 00:18:44.322
Piers: I always remember that because we used to run drums.

00:18:44.322 –> 00:18:49.462
Piers: We’d do a lot of drums for it because you’d get a drums bus, put it through the culture of vulture, horns and drums.

00:18:51.062 –> 00:18:54.242
Piers: Not too much distortion, but it just warms it up a bit.

00:18:54.242 –> 00:18:55.302
John Kennedy: Fantastic.

00:18:55.302 –> 00:18:56.282
John Kennedy: So, that’s Chop Dem Down.

00:18:56.282 –> 00:18:57.682
John Kennedy: We’re going to take a quick break.

00:18:57.682 –> 00:18:59.642
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at is Thank You.

00:18:59.642 –> 00:19:00.462
John Kennedy: Is that right?

00:19:00.462 –> 00:19:01.142
John Kennedy: Yes.

00:19:01.142 –> 00:19:01.602
John Kennedy: Excellent.

00:19:01.602 –> 00:19:02.942
Piers: Let’s do it.

00:19:04.462 –> 00:19:11.522
John Kennedy: Our partners at Tape It, the iPhone recording app for musicians, have just added one of their most requested features, layering.

00:19:11.522 –> 00:19:14.782
John Kennedy: We ask every artist who comes on the podcast to try out Tape It.

00:19:15.202 –> 00:19:23.482
John Kennedy: One guest in particular had this very specific request to be able to record over voice notes, stack parts and build on an idea.

00:19:23.482 –> 00:19:27.602
John Kennedy: Well, the team at Tape It listened, and now layering is here.

00:19:27.602 –> 00:19:36.642
John Kennedy: You can record over your voice notes, which means trying out top lines, building up instruments, jamming with yourself and stacking as many vocal harmonies as you can.

00:19:36.642 –> 00:19:42.462
John Kennedy: It’s honestly one of the most exciting features Tape It’s added so far, and it still keeps all the things we love about it.

00:19:42.782 –> 00:19:51.062
John Kennedy: Multiple recording options, automatic instrument detection, the ability to add markers, notes and photos to your recordings, and shared mixtapes for collaborating.

00:19:51.062 –> 00:20:00.842
John Kennedy: Whether you’re in a writing session at rehearsal or just singing into your phone at midnight because something just popped into your head, Tape It helps you capture and organize it all without the usual chaos.

00:20:00.842 –> 00:20:07.242
John Kennedy: To find out more and try layering for yourself, head to tape.it forward slash tape notes and download Tape It now.

00:20:07.242 –> 00:20:11.582
John Kennedy: And for even more, use the code Tapenotes for 20% off Tape It Pro.

00:20:12.022 –> 00:20:15.342
John Kennedy: That’s Tape.it forward slash Tapenotes.

00:20:15.342 –> 00:20:19.342
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at by Rudimental from the new album is Thank You.

00:20:19.342 –> 00:20:22.342
John Kennedy: So Piers, if you give us a blast of The Master, that would be fantastic.

00:20:22.342 –> 00:20:22.762
Piers: Let’s do it.

00:21:17.877 –> 00:21:20.277
John Kennedy: It is Rudim3Ntal with Thank You.

00:21:20.277 –> 00:21:29.457
John Kennedy: And I know, because you were telling me, Piers, that this is quite a departure in a way for Rudim3Ntal in terms of how you created this, because you don’t normally use samples.

00:21:29.457 –> 00:21:34.457
Piers: Yeah, yeah, like it was a really interesting journey.

00:21:35.697 –> 00:21:36.917
Piers: We were in Fraser T.

00:21:36.917 –> 00:21:44.877
Piers: Smith’s studio, and I think he maybe like dug up this sample, well, he did dig up this sample.

00:21:45.537 –> 00:21:49.337
Piers: And he was like, why don’t we work with this sample?

00:21:49.337 –> 00:21:51.817
Piers: It was an idea of his, basically, he brought this sample to the table.

00:21:51.817 –> 00:21:57.277
Piers: And at first, my first reaction was that, like, you know, let’s just play some instruments.

00:21:57.277 –> 00:22:03.057
Piers: But we got into it and yeah, it worked out amazing.

00:22:03.057 –> 00:22:12.417
Piers: Yeah, I played the original sample because even when he first played it, I was like, I wasn’t sure where we would or how we would.

00:22:13.057 –> 00:22:15.317
Piers: And there’s this one part which Fraser T.

00:22:15.317 –> 00:22:17.817
Piers: Smith identified, he was like, let’s mess with that part.

00:22:17.817 –> 00:22:19.557
Piers: And I was like, you know what I mean?

00:22:19.777 –> 00:22:21.497
Piers: I could hear it.

00:22:21.497 –> 00:22:27.257
Piers: So I’ll play the sample that he came to the studio with and then we can look at how we did it.

00:22:27.257 –> 00:22:27.437
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:23:17.147 –> 00:23:18.547
Piers: The 70s is the best.

00:23:18.547 –> 00:23:19.227
Piers: I think this is the 70s.

00:23:40.447 –> 00:23:41.987
Piers: So, see, that was a bit resampled, right?

00:23:49.662 –> 00:23:51.042
Piers: But yeah, big up Fraser T.

00:23:51.042 –> 00:23:54.502
Piers: Smith, because I think it was kind of slipping out of my comfort zone.

00:23:54.502 –> 00:23:58.062
Piers: And when I heard that bit, I could hear what he, like…

00:23:59.622 –> 00:24:16.602
Piers: So we got it into Logic, and then we used the Izotope Rebalance, like the AI, you know, I mean, there’s lots of AI online things you can do, which rip, you know, you can get rid of vocals, you think it filters, it filters things around.

00:24:16.962 –> 00:24:21.622
Piers: It uses a filter and a gate, I think, and AI, right?

00:24:21.622 –> 00:24:27.322
Piers: I’ve got a music rebalance, it’s part of Izotope.

00:24:27.322 –> 00:24:29.882
Piers: And here you go.

00:24:32.102 –> 00:24:35.622
Piers: So what we did is we took out the vocals.

00:24:35.622 –> 00:24:36.662
Piers: It was really interesting.

00:24:36.662 –> 00:24:38.522
Piers: I’ve never done this before ever in a writing session.

00:24:39.502 –> 00:24:42.602
Piers: As you can hear, there’s no vocals.

00:24:43.742 –> 00:24:53.322
Piers: We basically wrote a new song, new lyrics, about just wanting to say thank you to someone.

00:24:53.322 –> 00:24:57.402
Piers: And we used this music and repeated it.

00:24:57.402 –> 00:24:59.842
Piers: And Kesi went on an MPC, Fraser T.

00:24:59.842 –> 00:25:02.662
Piers: Smith had an MPC, right?

00:25:02.662 –> 00:25:05.762
Piers: And he jumped on and I’ve got it somewhere.

00:25:08.002 –> 00:25:10.802
Piers: This is Kesi on the MPC.

00:25:10.802 –> 00:25:13.642
Piers: And we literally just, like, Kesi started jumping it.

00:25:13.642 –> 00:25:15.942
Piers: And we did that and it was a hip hop vibe.

00:25:15.942 –> 00:25:16.762
Piers: And then we were like…

00:25:24.742 –> 00:25:27.922
Piers: So we basically wrote the whole song, really, over that vibe.

00:25:29.022 –> 00:25:29.442
Piers: I think.

00:25:29.442 –> 00:25:31.082
Piers: And then the good thing about Fraser T.

00:25:31.082 –> 00:25:35.862
Piers: Smith’s Studio is there’s loads of toys, fun stuff to play on.

00:25:35.862 –> 00:25:39.482
Piers: And I remember from the session, there was like a Melotron.

00:25:40.502 –> 00:25:42.762
Piers: Where’s the Melotron?

00:25:42.762 –> 00:25:44.362
Piers: We were just like putting random bits on.

00:25:44.362 –> 00:25:45.202
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:25:45.882 –> 00:25:49.402
John Kennedy: But this is really interesting because, so you haven’t used the vocal sample at all.

00:25:49.402 –> 00:25:49.922
Piers: Exactly.

00:25:49.922 –> 00:25:53.422
John Kennedy: You’ve taken the music from it, but you’ve kept some of the feel of that vocal.

00:25:53.702 –> 00:25:53.822
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:25:53.822 –> 00:25:58.522
Piers: It was inspired definitely by the vocalist.

00:25:58.522 –> 00:26:00.602
Piers: We kept the vocals in the beginning.

00:26:01.642 –> 00:26:04.282
John Kennedy: Right.

00:26:04.282 –> 00:26:07.122
Piers: And that kind of inspired where the melody would start.

00:26:07.122 –> 00:26:08.142
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:26:08.142 –> 00:26:11.142
Piers: But we wrote a new song, Keeping the Music.

00:26:13.702 –> 00:26:15.622
Piers: Honestly, I don’t think we’ve ever done that before.

00:26:15.622 –> 00:26:15.802
Kesi: No.

00:26:15.802 –> 00:26:16.622
Kesi: It was the first time.

00:26:16.622 –> 00:26:17.582
Kesi: It was the first time.

00:26:17.582 –> 00:26:21.662
Piers: It was a whole new experience, and it really was so much fun.

00:26:21.942 –> 00:26:24.002
Kesi: It was quite fun as well in Fraser T.

00:26:24.002 –> 00:26:24.942
Kesi: Smith’s studio.

00:26:24.942 –> 00:26:28.402
Kesi: He’s got, as Piers was saying, he’s got tons of different synths.

00:26:28.402 –> 00:26:29.962
Kesi: Everything’s plugged in.

00:26:29.962 –> 00:26:32.882
Kesi: Pianos are plugged in, drums, everything’s plugged in.

00:26:32.882 –> 00:26:41.222
Kesi: And you can just have something on loop and just wander around the room and just start playing around on something else, and just add layers to a track.

00:26:41.282 –> 00:26:52.122
Kesi: And yeah, he’s very good at making you feel welcome in his space and sort of free to create, which a lot of the time in the producer world is one of the main things you need to do, really.

00:26:52.122 –> 00:26:59.162
Kesi: If you’re doing a collab with somebody and you’re going into a new studio or something, one of the key things is to make people feel comfortable in there.

00:26:59.162 –> 00:27:00.122
Kesi: And that’s something you really need to do.

00:27:00.122 –> 00:27:07.562
John Kennedy: But this must be a key thing that you have, because you collaborate with loads of people, you work with loads of different vocalists, and to make them feel comfortable and at ease with you.

00:27:07.562 –> 00:27:08.042
Piers: Totally.

00:27:08.042 –> 00:27:10.962
Piers: But it was nice to have it on the other end, like Fraser T.

00:27:10.962 –> 00:27:15.782
Piers: Smith was doing that to us, and that was so nice, like, this is Kesi on the piano.

00:27:17.962 –> 00:27:20.222
Piers: But it’s actually me and you on the piano.

00:27:20.222 –> 00:27:25.442
Piers: I’m playing the chords, and she’s singing in the background, or is it the vocal playing, whatever.

00:27:25.442 –> 00:27:27.062
Piers: It’s just the vocal playing.

00:27:28.702 –> 00:27:33.422
Kesi: There’s a funny recording of both of us playing the piano at the same time.

00:27:33.422 –> 00:27:34.562
Piers: That is us, I think.

00:27:34.562 –> 00:27:35.982
Kesi: It’s both of us.

00:27:35.982 –> 00:27:44.722
Kesi: It could have easily been one person, but sometimes, in the moment, Piers is doing one hand, and I was doing the other hand, and he was like, what are we doing here?

00:27:44.782 –> 00:27:46.442
Kesi: But it sounded good.

00:27:46.442 –> 00:27:49.762
Piers: This is that point where we change a chord to a major.

00:27:51.102 –> 00:27:53.862
Piers: But we’re just having fun with it.

00:27:55.222 –> 00:28:00.042
Piers: So then I think, it’s hip hop, it’s a great song.

00:28:00.042 –> 00:28:04.042
Piers: How can we put it into the rudimental world?

00:28:04.042 –> 00:28:07.062
Piers: And then that’s where we sort of dug up the jungle loop, I think.

00:28:09.782 –> 00:28:11.742
Piers: We’ve got like a bank of loops.

00:28:11.742 –> 00:28:16.122
Piers: Like I use a bit of Splice, use a bit of Loopmasters.

00:28:16.122 –> 00:28:20.562
Piers: They’re really, really handy tools if you want to search a certain style.

00:28:20.562 –> 00:28:26.402
Piers: But then what I’ve found over the years that’s really important is to try and log all your favorite sounds.

00:28:26.402 –> 00:28:31.442
Piers: So I have a folder which is like Fave Drums or something.

00:28:32.642 –> 00:28:35.642
Piers: And that’s just from a tune that we’ve made that I love them drums.

00:28:36.722 –> 00:28:38.242
Piers: You know, we’ve got…

00:28:41.622 –> 00:28:42.082
Piers: Over the…

00:28:42.082 –> 00:28:43.202
Piers: Oh, look, thank you Drum Loop.

00:28:43.202 –> 00:28:44.962
Piers: I mean, I’m trying to…

00:28:44.962 –> 00:28:45.962
Piers: I can’t remember where…

00:28:45.962 –> 00:28:48.602
Piers: I think it was Loopmasters that got that from, but…

00:28:49.762 –> 00:28:50.342
Piers: You know?

00:28:50.342 –> 00:28:51.902
Piers: Like, just…

00:28:51.902 –> 00:28:53.242
Piers: It’s good to have them there.

00:28:53.422 –> 00:28:58.322
Piers: It took me a while to realize that organization is really important as a producer.

00:28:58.322 –> 00:29:00.742
Piers: I’ve only really been doing this for like the last three years.

00:29:00.742 –> 00:29:01.922
Piers: And then you’ve got it all there.

00:29:01.922 –> 00:29:03.842
Piers: So every time you want to drop it into the session, it’s there.

00:29:04.342 –> 00:29:07.242
Piers: It’s really important that that was not the loops.

00:29:07.242 –> 00:29:10.042
Piers: We put an 808 underneath once it drops.

00:29:18.474 –> 00:29:22.374
Piers: We also got our friend Eddie to play bass guitar on it.

00:29:24.094 –> 00:29:28.894
Piers: And I’ve got like a synth going, ba-ba-ba-ba, to accent that.

00:29:30.354 –> 00:29:38.014
Kesi: Eddie’s a bass player that plays in our live band, and we’ve actually been playing this song for the last year or so on the live show.

00:29:38.014 –> 00:29:39.814
Kesi: So he’s been killing it on stage.

00:29:39.814 –> 00:29:44.834
Kesi: So we knew he would elevate the song if we brought him in and got him to play live on it.

00:29:44.834 –> 00:29:45.134
Piers: Yeah.

00:29:45.474 –> 00:29:47.254
Piers: And I think that’s what’s amazing about this tune.

00:29:48.874 –> 00:29:52.634
Piers: Because we made it about two years ago now.

00:29:52.634 –> 00:29:54.894
Piers: We’ve been playing it on the road like Kesi said.

00:29:55.134 –> 00:29:58.714
Piers: And then I contacted the sound engineer when we were finishing it.

00:29:58.714 –> 00:30:08.254
Piers: I was like, he just sent me all the stems from the rehearsals because at the end of the song and on our live shows, Beanie, our drummer, would do this mad, mad, mad fill.

00:30:08.314 –> 00:30:11.474
Piers: And Kesi, I was thinking this should be the last Chakni album.

00:30:11.474 –> 00:30:11.794
Piers: Thank you.

00:30:11.794 –> 00:30:12.494
Piers: Thank you for listening.

00:30:12.494 –> 00:30:13.434
Piers: Thank you.

00:30:13.434 –> 00:30:18.114
Piers: You know, many meanings to the song, right?

00:30:18.114 –> 00:30:20.134
Piers: Thanks to Soul Music.

00:30:20.134 –> 00:30:26.314
Piers: She’s obviously talking about that you just want to call someone and tell them you appreciate them basically.

00:30:26.314 –> 00:30:41.074
Piers: But anyway, like, so I actually dropped in all of our rehearsal parts and so throughout the song there’s bits of our synths that we play on stage or blended in to kind of create this wall of sound.

00:30:41.074 –> 00:30:43.854
Piers: Like, for example, there’s this synth here.

00:30:43.854 –> 00:30:47.894
Piers: That’s me playing either on stage or at rehearsals, I’m not too sure.

00:30:47.894 –> 00:30:52.254
Piers: I just took what I could get from the sound engineer.

00:30:52.254 –> 00:30:54.694
Piers: Now, I used at the end of the song.

00:31:03.015 –> 00:31:06.715
Piers: And I used a sample, a show of our own.

00:31:10.695 –> 00:31:13.015
Piers: That’s lucky, saying that to a crowd.

00:31:14.435 –> 00:31:18.815
Piers: But I had to re-record the drums as well, so that…

00:31:18.815 –> 00:31:20.915
Piers: I even re-recorded some fills and used…

00:31:20.915 –> 00:31:28.775
Piers: So what I love about this tune as well is we really threw everything at it, you know, mixed live and we also got strings.

00:31:28.775 –> 00:31:30.115
Piers: Where’s the strings at?

00:31:30.115 –> 00:31:31.795
Piers: The strings made me cry when they came in.

00:31:32.275 –> 00:31:33.935
Piers: I’m not going to lie, Kesi, you remember I said…

00:31:33.935 –> 00:31:35.015
Kesi: Kesi Dryden Yeah, I remember.

00:31:35.015 –> 00:31:37.155
Piers: Leon Rolle Sadly, she sent me strings.

00:31:37.155 –> 00:31:38.215
Piers: Where are they?

00:31:38.215 –> 00:31:40.555
Piers: Strings.

00:31:40.555 –> 00:31:44.095
Piers: Sally Townsend, she did strings for album one for Powerless.

00:31:46.035 –> 00:31:50.155
Piers: And her and her husband just record layers and send them back to me.

00:31:52.435 –> 00:31:57.675
Piers: And it was just so much fun throwing music at it, you know, and like…

00:32:01.655 –> 00:32:07.215
Piers: From start to finish, it’s just all been about like, like the sonics of music and the messing with it.

00:32:07.215 –> 00:32:11.275
Piers: And yeah, it was a real amazing experience, really, from start to finish.

00:32:11.275 –> 00:32:11.895
John Kennedy: Yeah, it’s true.

00:32:11.895 –> 00:32:19.155
John Kennedy: It’s really interesting to think that, you know, it was partly inspired by this sample, using something that you would never have done before.

00:32:19.155 –> 00:32:31.595
John Kennedy: But then you pile so much on top of it, you know, from so many different kinds of drums, from using something like Loopmasters, but then also doing something on Mpc, getting some real live drums on there.

00:32:31.895 –> 00:32:35.595
John Kennedy: And in turn, the same applies to every single instrument, it seems.

00:32:35.595 –> 00:32:37.855
Piers: The Mpc drums are hard.

00:32:37.855 –> 00:32:39.975
John Kennedy: They’re just…

00:32:39.975 –> 00:32:40.715
Piers: I don’t know, wait, what?

00:32:40.715 –> 00:32:44.615
Piers: There’s some loop as well that I think you threw in there.

00:32:44.615 –> 00:32:46.215
Kesi: Yeah, no, it’s fun on the Mpc.

00:32:46.215 –> 00:32:49.135
Kesi: A lot of the time, we’ve just got one for our studio now.

00:32:49.135 –> 00:32:53.895
Kesi: But in our studio, we just use the keyboard and make drum patterns on the keyboard.

00:32:54.035 –> 00:32:59.475
Kesi: But it’s a lot more fun using the Mpc and it’s a whole different feel.

00:32:59.475 –> 00:33:03.455
Kesi: Yeah, we’re about to get stuck in with our one after this show actually.

00:33:04.135 –> 00:33:09.195
John Kennedy: Did you chop these drums afterwards to create them in the way that they finally are?

00:33:09.195 –> 00:33:10.555
John Kennedy: Or did you need to do that?

00:33:10.735 –> 00:33:13.095
Piers: We actually need to do that with the Mpc, no.

00:33:14.095 –> 00:33:16.135
Piers: But with the Jungle Loop, yeah.

00:33:16.135 –> 00:33:18.855
Piers: Yeah, that Jungle Loop was…

00:33:18.855 –> 00:33:23.335
Piers: I had to adopt to that, especially the verses.

00:33:24.875 –> 00:33:27.235
Piers: It’s got a really cool little James Brown thing.

00:33:27.235 –> 00:33:30.175
Piers: It’s not James Brown, but it’s got like a James Brown-esque.

00:33:33.655 –> 00:33:37.235
Piers: I had to take out a kick to match with the groove.

00:33:37.235 –> 00:33:39.655
Piers: And I had to, you know, simple things like…

00:33:41.995 –> 00:33:45.595
Piers: I had to get that EQ sounding right.

00:33:45.595 –> 00:33:50.235
Piers: Another thing, I swear, but I love the Eden in UAD.

00:33:50.235 –> 00:33:51.535
Piers: And then if you…

00:33:51.635 –> 00:33:52.995
Piers: I love a good preset.

00:33:52.995 –> 00:33:56.695
Piers: You find a good preset, I use it every single time for everything.

00:33:56.695 –> 00:34:01.295
Piers: Vintage R&B, and then just try not to make it too boomy.

00:34:01.295 –> 00:34:04.575
Piers: But Eden sounds amazing on bass for UAD.

00:34:04.575 –> 00:34:06.915
Piers: It’s just like my go-to.

00:34:06.955 –> 00:34:08.575
Piers: It just sounds warm.

00:34:10.955 –> 00:34:13.355
Piers: Yeah, UAD has got some amazing things really.

00:34:14.415 –> 00:34:17.995
Piers: I’ve been really enjoying that over the last few years.

00:34:17.995 –> 00:34:32.795
Kesi: Yeah, also another thing interesting about this track is over the years, we’ve always tested new tunes on the road, playing them live, and then bringing them back to studio and adding bits and changing structures and stuff.

00:34:32.795 –> 00:34:42.135
Kesi: But this is the first time we’ve actually used recordings from on stage in an actual finalized piece of music.

00:34:42.135 –> 00:34:43.275
John Kennedy: That’s so exciting though.

00:34:43.275 –> 00:34:47.975
John Kennedy: I love that idea that you’ve taken yourselves, put yourselves back into the recording.

00:34:47.975 –> 00:34:53.955
Kesi: Then listening back to the ending, it gives me goosebumps because I remember the moment of performing at the end.

00:34:54.915 –> 00:34:58.515
Kesi: It’s just such a great way to end the show or album.

00:34:58.515 –> 00:35:01.295
John Kennedy: But also the fans, the fans are in there, they’re part of that recording.

00:35:01.315 –> 00:35:02.075
Kesi: They are.

00:35:02.075 –> 00:35:02.915
Kesi: We’re going to have to cut them in.

00:35:03.155 –> 00:35:05.435
Kesi: Don’t think about that.

00:35:05.435 –> 00:35:08.255
Kesi: 20,000 people in the credits.

00:35:08.255 –> 00:35:08.975
John Kennedy: Fantastic.

00:35:09.355 –> 00:35:15.315
John Kennedy: One of the trademarks of Rudim3Ntal is your ability to find and work with incredible vocalists.

00:35:15.615 –> 00:35:27.535
John Kennedy: You’ve often given a lot of people their first ever break or opportunity, but also you must have some great way of relating to them, because you seem to bring the best out of them.

00:35:28.095 –> 00:36:04.095
Piers: I think also it just really inspires in the session if you find this thing that can really sing amazing, and sometimes you need to work at it on the day, and it takes sometimes, I mean, I think John Newman famously, we took like 10 hours to record that hook, but once we got it, it was incredible, and he was just so raw, and I met him in a pub, and it’s so much fun as a producer when you get to work with someone, that you can kind of create that kind of amazing sonic groove.

00:36:04.095 –> 00:36:04.375
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:36:04.375 –> 00:36:15.695
Kesi: A lot of the time, I think some of the chord progressions and styles we use are quite soulful, so it naturally brings out the sort of beautiful tones of different singers’ voices.

00:36:15.695 –> 00:36:29.915
Kesi: And yeah, as you were saying, over the years, we’ve been lucky to work with some amazing vocals, and I think for some reason, when we get in a room with a lot of singers, it feels like we just, I don’t know, it’s hard not to.

00:36:29.915 –> 00:36:39.215
Piers: Yeah, I think soul is such a big influence, song music, so I think it does bring it out.

00:36:39.215 –> 00:36:47.495
Kesi: And also a lot of the time, I think we spend quite a lot of the time just saying, just be completely free with it and just go somewhere else.

00:36:48.195 –> 00:36:54.095
Kesi: And we give a lot of vocalist space to completely go out and break the ice a little bit.

00:36:54.095 –> 00:37:03.975
John Kennedy: Yeah, because I wondered how you do it, because obviously with the kind of music that you make, it’s evolving all the time within the time of creating that song.

00:37:03.975 –> 00:37:06.415
John Kennedy: And things shift.

00:37:06.415 –> 00:37:09.115
John Kennedy: So how much is prepared beforehand?

00:37:09.115 –> 00:37:10.635
Kesi: Nothing was prepared for this one.

00:37:10.655 –> 00:37:13.055
Piers: Yeah, but Fraser Teasmith was prepared for this more.

00:37:13.075 –> 00:37:22.075
Kesi: Yeah, his studio was booked and he had loaded a few different samples that he thought could be a nice little icebreakers to start the day with.

00:37:22.075 –> 00:37:23.355
Piers: Yeah, and this popped out, didn’t it?

00:37:23.355 –> 00:37:30.055
Piers: And we were like, when he played that part of the song, my brain did explode and I got what he meant, whereas you could work with this.

00:37:30.055 –> 00:37:31.895
Piers: Because it was like, boom, ka, boom, ka, boom.

00:37:31.895 –> 00:37:34.215
Piers: And it felt like Jungle, like that beginning.

00:37:36.435 –> 00:37:37.775
Piers: It’s just like exciting.

00:37:37.775 –> 00:37:44.075
Piers: And it was slow, but in my producer head, I was like, if you speed that up, that’s going to be amazing.

00:37:44.075 –> 00:37:45.675
Piers: And then like, that will be the drop.

00:37:45.675 –> 00:37:49.135
Piers: I sort of almost thought that before we wrote the song.

00:37:50.995 –> 00:37:52.175
Piers: I imagined it.

00:37:52.175 –> 00:38:00.655
Piers: So I think like, yeah, I think naturally as a producer, you do just like your brain fast forwards to the end product sometimes.

00:38:00.655 –> 00:38:02.175
Piers: And that happens with singers as well.

00:38:02.595 –> 00:38:06.575
Piers: Like you get a vocal or hear something.

00:38:06.575 –> 00:38:09.435
Kesi: And every session is different, you know.

00:38:09.815 –> 00:38:12.455
Kesi: There wasn’t much to start with in this session.

00:38:12.455 –> 00:38:20.595
Kesi: But then, for example, Dating Back Years, like the John Newman, Feel the Love, the whole song was sort of written and he just came in at the end to vocal it.

00:38:20.595 –> 00:38:22.535
Kesi: So sometimes it’s like that.

00:38:22.535 –> 00:38:25.495
Kesi: Sometimes it’s starting something from scratch.

00:38:25.495 –> 00:38:28.235
Kesi: So yeah, there’s no formula to how we work.

00:38:28.235 –> 00:38:29.575
Kesi: And I think that keeps it fresh for us.

00:38:29.595 –> 00:38:30.055
Piers: Totally.

00:38:30.055 –> 00:38:31.775
Piers: And sometimes I feel like I should be more prepared.

00:38:31.775 –> 00:38:33.235
Piers: I should go to sessions.

00:38:33.475 –> 00:38:37.755
Piers: I’ll turn up to writing sessions and not even have Googled the person I’m with, right?

00:38:37.755 –> 00:38:39.775
Piers: Because the management will put me in with them, right?

00:38:40.295 –> 00:38:41.915
Piers: But the managed thing is about this.

00:38:41.915 –> 00:38:48.615
Piers: This is like, if I had done that with this session, he might not have gone to saying, can we, what about this sample?

00:38:48.615 –> 00:38:56.755
Piers: But it’s like, you know, actually sometimes just turning up and seeing how the room feels is a lot what we do and it can really work.

00:38:57.315 –> 00:38:57.775
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:38:57.775 –> 00:39:04.515
John Kennedy: And but do you discuss subject matter, lyrical ideas, direction?

00:39:04.515 –> 00:39:09.595
Piers: Actually for this song, I was quite heavily involved in the concept.

00:39:09.875 –> 00:39:13.135
Piers: And we really crafted the song together.

00:39:13.135 –> 00:39:21.895
Piers: And it was, we were talking about the concept of that just calling someone and you never get a chance to say to them.

00:39:21.895 –> 00:39:22.835
Piers: You just really appreciate them.

00:39:22.835 –> 00:39:24.155
Piers: And I thought it was a really nice concept.

00:39:24.555 –> 00:39:36.755
Piers: So, yeah, you do really kind of, when writing, even though we focus on the music, I think, yeah, it is nice to, because music kind of provokes emotions.

00:39:36.755 –> 00:39:41.195
Piers: So like, it tends to like, a lot of the time dictate concepts sometimes.

00:39:41.195 –> 00:39:46.275
John Kennedy: But I always think when I listen to your tunes, that there’s a message that you get from them.

00:39:46.275 –> 00:39:49.295
John Kennedy: Usually a really positive thing that is really uplifting.

00:39:49.295 –> 00:39:58.035
John Kennedy: And I think that’s one of the reasons why they connect with people, because you can go back to them and use them when you need them, if that makes sense.

00:39:58.035 –> 00:40:02.495
John Kennedy: Going back to the actual recording, so you work with loads of different vocalists.

00:40:02.495 –> 00:40:06.495
John Kennedy: Do you have a particular process to record that vocal?

00:40:06.495 –> 00:40:07.615
John Kennedy: Do you apply to everybody?

00:40:07.615 –> 00:40:09.975
John Kennedy: Or is it person by person?

00:40:09.975 –> 00:40:11.455
John Kennedy: Is there a vocal chain that you use?

00:40:11.455 –> 00:40:12.575
Piers: Yeah, I mean, there is a vocal chain.

00:40:12.595 –> 00:40:28.535
Piers: I was going to ask you, Joe, it’s sort of the Neve preamp, either a Manley Ref C or Bach, which is modeled on the 251, it’s like the UA Bach thing, they modeled on the 251.

00:40:28.535 –> 00:40:38.055
Piers: But yeah, like a Neve preamp and a really good cardioid, Manley Ref C and a compressor, I’ve got an 1176 at home.

00:40:38.055 –> 00:40:43.175
Piers: You know, 1176, Neve and Manley Ref C, there’s not much you can do wrong there.

00:40:43.175 –> 00:40:47.975
Piers: I feel like to capture a really great vocal and you don’t need to then compress it.

00:40:47.975 –> 00:40:54.855
Piers: What I find, if you get the compressor settings right on a good vocalist, you’ve just got to put reverb and delay on it if you want in Logic.

00:40:54.855 –> 00:41:01.675
Piers: You know, you don’t have to like spend time and it’s easier for the mix engineer, easier for you as a producer because the vocal is ready to go.

00:41:01.675 –> 00:41:08.855
Piers: Obviously, you know, budget permitting, we’ve come to the stage in our careers where we can afford to do that and that’s amazing.

00:41:09.575 –> 00:41:13.975
Piers: Back in the day, it was just, it was like Rhodes mics and 57s.

00:41:13.975 –> 00:41:19.675
Piers: But 57s also, if you put a 57 on the right vocalist, sometimes we still use that.

00:41:19.675 –> 00:41:22.635
Piers: You know, 57s are incredible.

00:41:22.635 –> 00:41:25.055
Piers: So I feel like, you know, it’s part and parcel.

00:41:25.055 –> 00:41:27.595
Piers: The vocalist and the signal chain is important.

00:41:27.595 –> 00:41:27.835
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:41:27.835 –> 00:41:33.355
John Kennedy: And would you spend much time on the day worrying about that kind of thing beforehand?

00:41:33.355 –> 00:41:35.475
John Kennedy: Because I don’t know, would time be lost?

00:41:35.835 –> 00:41:40.055
John Kennedy: Would the vibe be lost if you ended up getting too caught up in trying to get them?

00:41:40.055 –> 00:41:42.435
Piers: Yeah, yeah, no, you can’t get too techy, especially when writing songs.

00:41:42.435 –> 00:41:49.975
Piers: I think it’s important to kind of just get it down, which is why the 57s are, I would say that SM57 should be in every studio.

00:41:50.095 –> 00:41:53.675
Piers: It pretty much is in most studios, most people’s production suites.

00:41:53.675 –> 00:42:03.915
Piers: Because it will capture a really good quality vocal, even if you haven’t got an Eve preamp, you can go straight into a UAD sound card, which are high quality 57 UAD.

00:42:04.215 –> 00:42:17.415
Piers: That would be, in fact, we do writing camps sometimes, we’ll travel somewhere, we were in Barbados in November, December, and that’s what we took.

00:42:17.415 –> 00:42:23.475
Piers: You can get a good vocal using their mics.

00:42:23.475 –> 00:42:27.255
Piers: I think you can always re-record things.

00:42:27.255 –> 00:42:30.955
Piers: It’s more important to get the idea down in some ways when you’re writing, I think.

00:42:30.955 –> 00:42:31.975
John Kennedy: Yeah, really interesting.

00:42:32.075 –> 00:42:36.535
John Kennedy: Is there anything else we should hear from the tune before we move on to the next one?

00:42:36.535 –> 00:42:37.195
Piers: Thank you, yeah.

00:42:37.435 –> 00:42:39.995
Piers: I think you can think of anything, Kenz.

00:42:40.435 –> 00:42:41.975
Kesi: I think I covered it all, really.

00:42:41.975 –> 00:42:42.935
Piers: Can you listen to the tune a bit?

00:42:58.475 –> 00:43:00.555
Piers: Here’s Mark Crown, our trumpet player.

00:43:02.195 –> 00:43:06.695
Piers: I think that’s live as well from the show.

00:43:06.695 –> 00:43:08.155
Piers: I love the Melotron.

00:43:09.795 –> 00:43:12.895
Piers: That choir sound on the Melotron.

00:43:12.895 –> 00:43:14.215
Piers: It’s like…

00:43:14.515 –> 00:43:16.235
Kesi: He had it going through a reverb, didn’t he?

00:43:16.235 –> 00:43:17.375
Piers: He did.

00:43:20.635 –> 00:43:23.495
John Kennedy: I think it really helps create that 70s feel to it as well.

00:43:23.495 –> 00:43:24.735
Piers: It does, doesn’t it?

00:43:24.735 –> 00:43:26.335
Piers: It’s such a good sound.

00:43:26.375 –> 00:43:26.895
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:43:26.895 –> 00:43:39.475
John Kennedy: And it’s interesting, quite a few of your live musicians are involved in this track and the evolution of the track and the final result, but the new live show is kind of taking them out of the equation a bit?

00:43:39.855 –> 00:43:40.515
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:43:42.255 –> 00:43:49.295
Piers: For this year, we’re kind of, yeah, just sort of focusing on the sort of D&B side.

00:43:49.295 –> 00:43:54.895
Piers: This is probably one of the most musical instrument-based songs.

00:43:54.975 –> 00:44:01.015
Piers: So, I think the live show, we will come back around to that when it feels right.

00:44:01.015 –> 00:44:11.435
Piers: And yeah, it’s exciting, this new period, because we’re doing things on stage that we wouldn’t have thought about if we had the band there.

00:44:11.495 –> 00:44:28.335
Piers: And so, then I’m really excited about when we come back around to getting the band back in, we’re gonna have the experience of our DJ back to back production with, you know, we’re going to a green screen after this to record some stuff for our new DJ show with ourselves.

00:44:28.355 –> 00:44:30.615
Piers: But you know, we’ve got loads of ideas going around.

00:44:30.615 –> 00:44:37.035
Piers: So, I think what we can create when we circle back around, I think will be immense.

00:44:37.035 –> 00:44:38.475
John Kennedy: Yeah, really interesting.

00:44:38.475 –> 00:44:39.195
John Kennedy: So, that was thank you.

00:44:39.195 –> 00:44:40.115
John Kennedy: We’re gonna take a quick break.

00:44:40.175 –> 00:44:43.935
John Kennedy: We’ll be back to look at green and gold next.

00:44:45.955 –> 00:44:51.495
John Kennedy: This episode is supported by Museversal, an amazing new service for working with session musicians remotely.

00:44:51.495 –> 00:44:57.215
John Kennedy: If you use session musicians or would like to, but it’s been too expensive or hard to organise, this is for you.

00:44:57.215 –> 00:45:00.655
John Kennedy: And we have an exclusive offer for any Tape Notes listeners.

00:45:00.655 –> 00:45:03.215
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00:45:03.215 –> 00:45:04.675
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00:45:04.675 –> 00:45:06.315
John Kennedy: But more on that in a moment.

00:45:06.315 –> 00:45:09.315
John Kennedy: I’ve got David from Museversal here to tell us more about it.

00:45:09.635 –> 00:45:11.355
John Kennedy: Hi David, great to have you on.

00:45:11.355 –> 00:45:13.175
John Kennedy: What is Museversal?

00:45:13.175 –> 00:45:14.675
David: Hey, thanks for having me here, John.

00:45:14.675 –> 00:45:16.095
David: I really appreciate it.

00:45:16.095 –> 00:45:22.735
David: Museversal is a platform to book unlimited remote recording sessions with world-class session musicians.

00:45:22.735 –> 00:45:29.715
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00:45:29.715 –> 00:45:35.075
David: So essentially what we did was we went and hired world-class recording talent, drummers, cellists, guitarists, etc.

00:45:35.075 –> 00:45:35.755
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00:45:35.755 –> 00:45:38.835
David: And then we created a platform where you can book live remote sessions with them.

00:45:39.075 –> 00:45:44.155
David: So it takes that complexity away and allows you to focus just on making great music with great people.

00:45:44.155 –> 00:45:48.695
John Kennedy: So we’ve had lots of great feedback from Tape Notes listeners already using Musiversal.

00:45:48.695 –> 00:45:51.435
John Kennedy: Can you tell us more about the musicians that they’ve been working with?

00:45:51.435 –> 00:45:52.215
David: Yeah, absolutely.

00:45:52.215 –> 00:45:56.315
David: So we have a super selective hiring process to make sure we’re only hiring the best.

00:45:56.315 –> 00:46:04.235
David: And the result of that is that we have musicians who’ve worked for the likes of Elton John, The Killers, Jay-Z, multi-time Grammy winners, you know, you name it.

00:46:04.235 –> 00:46:05.015
David: We’ve got it.

00:46:05.015 –> 00:46:06.695
David: We pay them a stable monthly income.

00:46:06.935 –> 00:46:12.235
David: And the benefit for you as a member is that you get a roster that you can depend on around the clock.

00:46:12.235 –> 00:46:13.315
John Kennedy: Very impressive.

00:46:13.315 –> 00:46:14.815
John Kennedy: How does it work?

00:46:14.815 –> 00:46:17.195
David: Yeah, so it’s designed to be extremely easy.

00:46:17.195 –> 00:46:21.775
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00:46:21.775 –> 00:46:27.155
David: You can send sheet music, a chord chart, audio files, and then tell the musician what you’d like them to do.

00:46:27.155 –> 00:46:29.895
David: You know, they can either play as is or improvise, right?

00:46:29.895 –> 00:46:34.235
David: And so then you’ll join the musician over live stream and they’ll start recording right off the bat.

00:46:34.555 –> 00:46:40.775
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00:46:40.775 –> 00:46:44.075
David: And then you’ll get your session files to download right afterwards.

00:46:44.075 –> 00:46:47.315
John Kennedy: And David, can you remind us of the offer for Tape Notes listeners?

00:46:47.315 –> 00:46:47.595
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00:46:47.595 –> 00:46:52.255
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00:47:01.375 –> 00:47:06.255
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00:47:06.255 –> 00:47:08.455
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00:47:09.555 –> 00:47:10.995
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00:47:10.995 –> 00:47:12.535
John Kennedy: Thank you very much, David.

00:47:12.535 –> 00:47:17.475
John Kennedy: To get the offer, find the link in any of our recent episode show notes.

00:47:17.475 –> 00:47:21.055
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at from the new album by Rudimental is Green and Gold.

00:47:21.055 –> 00:47:26.835
John Kennedy: But before we get there, I just wanted to pick up on something you were saying about the setup of the band.

00:47:26.835 –> 00:47:32.195
John Kennedy: So obviously we know Rudimental is this amazing live band with sometimes 15 people on stage.

00:47:32.795 –> 00:47:37.475
John Kennedy: And it’s always been part of a vital part of what you do and who you are.

00:47:37.475 –> 00:47:51.175
John Kennedy: And I just wondered about the very early days before we knew Rudimental, whether going back to this 3DJ thing is actually going back to the early days, or were you more musicians in a studio or were you…

00:47:51.175 –> 00:47:52.495
John Kennedy: What was the setup?

00:47:52.495 –> 00:47:53.595
Piers: We’ve always been a bit of both.

00:47:54.575 –> 00:47:56.515
Piers: We’ve always gone hand in hand.

00:47:56.515 –> 00:47:59.475
Piers: Pirate radio, DJing, making music.

00:47:59.475 –> 00:48:04.575
Piers: We used to make beats and then play them on Deja Vu FM.

00:48:04.575 –> 00:48:09.175
Piers: So for us, it’s always kind of blended into one kind of thing.

00:48:09.175 –> 00:48:09.595
Kesi: Yeah.

00:48:09.595 –> 00:48:17.655
Kesi: But also I do think you are right in a sense, because it is us going back to our early days of DJs and producers.

00:48:17.655 –> 00:48:28.515
Kesi: The live band side of things didn’t really happen until we’d written Feel the Love and it had gone to number one and we was like, oh, we’ve got a booking.

00:48:28.515 –> 00:48:29.595
Kesi: We thought we was DJing.

00:48:29.675 –> 00:48:31.915
Kesi: It was Radio One Weekender.

00:48:31.915 –> 00:48:36.215
Kesi: And then we found out two weeks before that we was booked to play live.

00:48:36.215 –> 00:48:39.055
Kesi: So we was like, wait, we’ve only DJed before.

00:48:39.055 –> 00:48:40.695
Kesi: How are we going to do this?

00:48:40.695 –> 00:48:47.015
Kesi: So we’ve got a core group of friends that are all musicians that we’ve known for years.

00:48:47.015 –> 00:48:50.555
Kesi: So we just told them we needed to come jump on stage with us.

00:48:50.675 –> 00:48:55.755
Kesi: And yeah, I think the first show, we probably had about 12 people on stage.

00:48:55.755 –> 00:48:59.675
Kesi: We had like 10,000 people come to our tent.

00:48:59.675 –> 00:49:00.855
Kesi: Like it was completely around.

00:49:00.855 –> 00:49:01.755
John Kennedy: And that was the first show?

00:49:01.755 –> 00:49:03.735
Kesi: And that was the first weekend.

00:49:03.735 –> 00:49:10.595
Kesi: We had a show the night before in I Love White Festival, which was like a tiny little tent.

00:49:10.595 –> 00:49:13.515
Kesi: And then the following day was the Radio One to like 10,000 people.

00:49:13.515 –> 00:49:17.115
Kesi: And that was like, that was a real moment for us.

00:49:17.115 –> 00:49:19.675
Kesi: And the whole vision of the band really developed from there.

00:49:19.755 –> 00:49:23.615
Piers: Yeah, the live show was like a child born out of album one.

00:49:23.975 –> 00:49:28.975
Piers: And we’ve been nurturing and growing that child over the years.

00:49:28.975 –> 00:49:32.035
Piers: Now that child is sort of is going to university.

00:49:32.035 –> 00:49:38.615
Piers: And we’ve kind of, we have kind of gone back to our kind of DJ pirate radio roots, in a sense, going back to back with each other.

00:49:40.155 –> 00:49:44.555
Piers: There’s still the musicality in our songs, you can hear it throughout the album.

00:49:44.555 –> 00:49:48.415
Piers: But yeah, we’re just sort of exploring a slightly different avenue.

00:49:48.515 –> 00:49:52.975
Piers: And it feels like this new album, it feels like the right thing to do.

00:49:52.975 –> 00:49:58.235
Piers: And yeah, it’s an interesting, I think it’s an interesting gear shift for us.

00:49:58.235 –> 00:50:01.875
Piers: I’m not sure everyone’s going to love it, that coming to the show, but we’re going to love it.

00:50:01.875 –> 00:50:02.795
Piers: So that’s what matters.

00:50:02.795 –> 00:50:04.635
John Kennedy: Yeah.

00:50:04.635 –> 00:50:06.735
John Kennedy: And I’m going back to the very early days.

00:50:06.735 –> 00:50:10.795
John Kennedy: So in love with music, were you learning instruments?

00:50:10.795 –> 00:50:19.295
John Kennedy: I mean, that ability to walk into Fraser T Smith’s studio and just use whatever’s there, is that born out of education or is there something?

00:50:19.715 –> 00:50:25.255
Piers: I think, yeah, like my dad was a musician and he was a bass player and a keyboard player.

00:50:25.255 –> 00:50:28.575
Piers: And he used to play, used to do like rock and roll at weddings.

00:50:29.075 –> 00:50:34.075
Piers: And like Chuck Berry covers weddings and pubs around East London.

00:50:34.075 –> 00:50:34.935
Kesi: He still does, doesn’t he?

00:50:34.935 –> 00:50:35.915
Piers: He still does, yeah.

00:50:35.995 –> 00:50:37.415
Kesi: You play with him sometimes, don’t you?

00:50:37.635 –> 00:50:37.915
Piers: Yeah.

00:50:38.415 –> 00:50:41.515
Piers: My son was doing BVs with him actually at New Year’s.

00:50:41.515 –> 00:50:44.975
Piers: But I think I was naturally surrounded by that.

00:50:44.975 –> 00:50:47.695
Piers: And I’m really blessed and grateful for that, you know, for my dad too.

00:50:47.695 –> 00:50:51.335
Piers: And he sort of sat me down and showed me some piano.

00:50:51.335 –> 00:50:52.755
Piers: I always wish he taught me guitar a bit more.

00:50:52.755 –> 00:51:07.095
Piers: But, you know, like I really had that amazing foundation of, I guess, music and keyboards and piano, learning a bit about blues and jazz and soul music and really helped me as a producer.

00:51:07.195 –> 00:51:15.535
Piers: I think and naturally it’s really important and it’s helpful, you know, when you’re in the room, like you say, and, you know, fast forward to 30 years on.

00:51:15.535 –> 00:51:16.655
Piers: And you learnt piano early.

00:51:16.655 –> 00:51:21.835
Kesi: Yeah, I learnt piano from, I think, from like six years old till about 12.

00:51:21.835 –> 00:51:24.295
Kesi: My mum used to take me to piano lessons.

00:51:24.295 –> 00:51:30.295
Kesi: And when I became a teenager, I wasn’t really into it anymore because it was classical.

00:51:30.295 –> 00:51:34.675
Kesi: And like I’d have to go and do exams and it just wasn’t something that I enjoyed anymore.

00:51:34.895 –> 00:51:41.475
Kesi: But it gave me the basis to like start producing and making my own chord progressions.

00:51:41.475 –> 00:51:44.715
Kesi: And so yeah, that was the start of things for me.

00:51:44.715 –> 00:51:52.855
Kesi: And like when I was like 13, I think at school, I had like the first computers with Cubase, I think it was, that was using back then.

00:51:52.855 –> 00:51:56.015
Kesi: And that was my intro to producing.

00:51:56.015 –> 00:51:57.075
Piers: Cubase and Reason.

00:51:57.075 –> 00:51:57.875
Kesi: Yeah.

00:51:57.875 –> 00:52:00.575
John Kennedy: And did you know each other at this stage?

00:52:00.615 –> 00:52:02.435
John Kennedy: So you were schooled together?

00:52:02.435 –> 00:52:02.715
Kesi: Yeah.

00:52:02.715 –> 00:52:10.375
Kesi: So Piers and Lucky, Lucky’s the other man, the Rudimental, went to, well, he was in infant school together, wasn’t he?

00:52:10.375 –> 00:52:13.015
Piers: Yeah, we were in nursery and we lived on the same road.

00:52:13.015 –> 00:52:13.575
Kesi: We lived on the same road.

00:52:13.575 –> 00:52:15.195
Piers: And you lived like five minutes.

00:52:15.195 –> 00:52:16.715
Kesi: I lived five minutes down the road.

00:52:16.715 –> 00:52:22.675
Kesi: And I sort of knew Lucky and I would see Piers about, but we wasn’t close then.

00:52:22.675 –> 00:52:25.975
Kesi: But then me and Piers went to college together.

00:52:26.015 –> 00:52:27.475
Kesi: And yeah, sort of came.

00:52:27.475 –> 00:52:29.115
John Kennedy: To study music or?

00:52:29.115 –> 00:52:32.635
Kesi: Well, we was just in A levels at the time.

00:52:33.115 –> 00:52:35.175
Kesi: Music was one of them, music tech.

00:52:35.175 –> 00:52:46.835
Kesi: It was funny because music technology was quite a new subject and they basically had a music teacher trying to teach music tech and Piers was pretty much running the class.

00:52:46.835 –> 00:52:50.115
Kesi: Piers seemed to know more than the teacher when it came to that side of him.

00:52:50.115 –> 00:52:52.715
Piers: I built him a synth and he got better marks.

00:52:54.095 –> 00:52:57.095
Kesi: What I was saying was that college and then when we went to Uni.

00:52:57.655 –> 00:52:59.175
Piers: Do you remember when I built you that synth?

00:52:59.175 –> 00:53:03.775
Kesi: Yeah, there was this one project.

00:53:03.775 –> 00:53:05.095
Piers: Reactor, do you remember Reactor?

00:53:05.095 –> 00:53:07.915
Piers: It was a program called Reactor and you had to build a synth.

00:53:08.635 –> 00:53:12.635
Piers: I basically made his synth really simple and he got the good marks.

00:53:12.635 –> 00:53:18.015
Piers: I made mine bare complex thinking I was some kind of scientific genius and I failed that module.

00:53:18.015 –> 00:53:23.115
Kesi: Yeah, I couldn’t get my head around it and all I wanted to do was make music, not build a synth.

00:53:24.755 –> 00:53:29.095
Kesi: I came to Piers and I was like, oh man, I’m really struggling with this.

00:53:29.335 –> 00:53:33.455
Kesi: Can I just have a really simple crap version of your one?

00:53:33.455 –> 00:53:34.875
Kesi: Then Piers gave that to me.

00:53:35.115 –> 00:53:35.915
Piers: I’m really not even.

00:53:35.915 –> 00:53:38.375
Kesi: My mom was really simple and effective.

00:53:39.795 –> 00:53:44.035
Piers: Well, I would say I’m not even like, I’m not that techie.

00:53:44.375 –> 00:53:50.935
Piers: I just love it and I try as hard and over the years, I’ve really learned a lot.

00:53:51.455 –> 00:53:54.195
Piers: And it’s more doing it, just doing it, doing it, doing it.

00:53:54.195 –> 00:53:57.335
Kesi: So we went college together and then we went to uni together.

00:53:57.355 –> 00:53:58.215
Kesi: Where was that?

00:53:58.215 –> 00:53:59.295
Kesi: That was in Leeds.

00:53:59.295 –> 00:54:00.635
Kesi: We went to Leeds Met.

00:54:00.635 –> 00:54:01.895
John Kennedy: To study what?

00:54:02.315 –> 00:54:04.035
Kesi: Creative music, technology.

00:54:04.035 –> 00:54:09.535
Kesi: I think that was when the collaboration really kicked off.

00:54:09.535 –> 00:54:13.155
Kesi: Before then it was, I’d make a beat or he would make a beat or Loki would make a beat.

00:54:13.155 –> 00:54:22.595
Kesi: But when we actually went to uni and we were staying in the same house, you would hear something from next door and I’d walk in and add something to what Piers was doing and vice versa.

00:54:22.595 –> 00:54:27.755
Kesi: He would hear what I’m doing and I think it was a very natural way to start working together.

00:54:27.875 –> 00:54:28.315
Piers: Yeah.

00:54:28.315 –> 00:54:30.155
Piers: That was at the birth of Rudimental I guess.

00:54:30.155 –> 00:54:30.835
John Kennedy: Right.

00:54:30.835 –> 00:54:31.355
John Kennedy: When was that?

00:54:32.755 –> 00:54:33.895
Piers: 2007?

00:54:33.895 –> 00:54:34.135
John Kennedy: Right.

00:54:34.135 –> 00:54:35.035
John Kennedy: Okay.

00:54:35.055 –> 00:54:36.295
Kesi: 2007.

00:54:36.295 –> 00:54:36.815
Kesi: Yeah.

00:54:36.815 –> 00:54:37.435
Kesi: Yeah, that was.

00:54:38.595 –> 00:54:41.175
Kesi: Me and Piers were up in Leeds.

00:54:41.175 –> 00:54:47.955
Kesi: Loki was still in London and we had sent what we’ve been working on back to him in London.

00:54:48.055 –> 00:54:54.315
Kesi: And then we had a pirate radio slot on Deja and he would play stuff on the radio.

00:54:54.315 –> 00:54:57.195
Kesi: And if we was back in town, we would jump on with him.

00:54:57.195 –> 00:55:02.335
Kesi: And it was a great way of testing out the records we’d just been producing in our bedrooms.

00:55:02.335 –> 00:55:09.755
Kesi: And what I loved about it was like people used to ring in, they just flash call if they really liked what they was hearing.

00:55:09.755 –> 00:55:15.395
Kesi: So you knew when you had something hot because the phone line would just keep ringing and you’d be like, oh yeah, we’ve got one here.

00:55:15.755 –> 00:55:17.175
Kesi: So it’s an exciting way of doing that.

00:55:17.175 –> 00:55:19.975
Piers: Before Instagram and YouTube, these are the days.

00:55:19.975 –> 00:55:20.995
John Kennedy: Yeah, that’s great.

00:55:20.995 –> 00:55:26.035
Kesi: I guess now it’s like Instagram, you post something and if you get a lot of likes, you know, it’s kind of like that.

00:55:26.035 –> 00:55:28.635
Kesi: Yeah, it’s just a different way of doing it for us back then.

00:55:28.635 –> 00:55:29.255
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

00:55:29.255 –> 00:55:35.215
John Kennedy: No, I just wanted to hear a bit about that because sometimes in a way, because Rudimental in a way took off so quickly.

00:55:35.215 –> 00:55:44.115
John Kennedy: Now once the Feel the Love came out, suddenly you were number one, you were there and that momentum has just kind of rocketed ever since.

00:55:44.195 –> 00:55:48.495
John Kennedy: And some of the earlier part of the story hasn’t been revealed so much.

00:55:48.655 –> 00:55:49.435
Piers: Yeah, totally.

00:55:49.435 –> 00:55:50.575
John Kennedy: Good to hear about.

00:55:50.575 –> 00:55:52.175
John Kennedy: The next song we’re going to look at is Green and Gold.

00:55:52.175 –> 00:55:54.575
John Kennedy: So maybe we should hear a blast of the master.

00:55:54.575 –> 00:55:55.095
Piers: Let’s do it.

00:56:54.272 –> 00:56:58.632
John Kennedy: So, this is one that more people will be familiar with, but it’s been out a little while.

00:56:58.632 –> 00:57:00.552
John Kennedy: How did this one come about?

00:57:00.552 –> 00:57:06.692
Piers: This one was made in this room, and the sofa was over there.

00:57:06.692 –> 00:57:09.412
John Kennedy: Yeah, we moved things around, too, to film things.

00:57:09.412 –> 00:57:22.512
Piers: We actually, the record label had put on a camp in this whole building, and we had, we were running different artists and singers coming through each day for like a week, just to kind of get some songs together.

00:57:22.792 –> 00:57:27.712
Piers: We just signed the record deal, and it was just one of them hooks, right?

00:57:27.712 –> 00:57:37.032
Piers: We had, it was the most, I say basic, I don’t think that’s the right word, but like, you know, we had this running.

00:57:43.552 –> 00:57:46.052
Piers: We just had that running.

00:57:46.112 –> 00:57:52.512
Piers: I like to put, like, the Stude on things, because it gives it a bit of crunch.

00:57:52.512 –> 00:57:57.272
Piers: I think it was a preset I had in Serum, called Bass You Know, right?

00:57:57.272 –> 00:57:59.672
Piers: It’s a bit like M1, and I think it was a blend.

00:57:59.672 –> 00:58:03.532
Piers: I had like the actual M1, right?

00:58:05.352 –> 00:58:11.952
Piers: We just had that rolling, and Dre and Charlotte Plank just started writing this hook.

00:58:11.952 –> 00:58:23.872
Piers: And when you, you know, when you had that feeling, I think it was one of them sessions, I was just like, I think I sent a video to the A&R, and then like my manager called me, was like, apparently you lot have got a hit, right?

00:58:23.872 –> 00:58:29.612
Piers: And I was like, yeah, yeah, the hook feels good, but we’ve not finished the tune, like everyone just chill out, I shouldn’t have sent the video, you know, I’ve got everyone gassed.

00:58:29.612 –> 00:58:36.572
Piers: It was one of those songs, where the hook just, the chorus felt really like, really good, really relatable.

00:58:36.572 –> 00:58:40.192
Piers: It had all the ingredients for like, to like feel a bit excited.

00:58:40.232 –> 00:58:44.132
John Kennedy: But Charlotte, so Charlotte was part of this week that you were-

00:58:44.132 –> 00:58:49.132
Piers: Yeah, yeah, she was that, that was the day that we worked with Charlotte and Drea in this room, right?

00:58:49.132 –> 00:58:50.532
John Kennedy: So you didn’t know them before?

00:58:50.532 –> 00:58:51.132
Kesi: No, we did.

00:58:51.432 –> 00:58:56.532
Kesi: We had a previous song that we released called Dancing is Healing with Charlotte Plank.

00:58:56.532 –> 00:58:58.572
Kesi: And that one went down really well.

00:58:58.572 –> 00:59:03.832
Kesi: So when we had this writing camp, she was one of the people that we wanted.

00:59:04.112 –> 00:59:06.352
Kesi: And yeah, we’ve got another amazing track of her.

00:59:06.652 –> 00:59:07.212
Piers: Yeah.

00:59:07.212 –> 00:59:11.652
Piers: And it just, I remember it like it was them.

00:59:11.652 –> 00:59:22.972
Piers: It was the shining song of that week, you know, like, and I think we all knew that it had great, relatable lyrics about the weekend, you know.

00:59:22.972 –> 00:59:25.792
Piers: You know, we love the weekend in Britain, don’t we?

00:59:27.572 –> 00:59:32.612
Piers: And it was about, you know, let yourself go.

00:59:32.652 –> 00:59:39.912
Piers: And I think talking about, it’s interesting, because you were speaking about Pirate Radio, it also happened to be the day that Rico Dan was coming through.

00:59:39.912 –> 00:59:51.952
Piers: Now, like, with a funny story about this, it’s not funny, but like, I was in, when I was 16, I was heavily into grime, like Dizzy Rascal, Wiley.

00:59:51.952 –> 00:59:57.612
Piers: Rico was part of Roll Deep, you know, and they were a big influence on me.

00:59:57.612 –> 00:59:58.792
Piers: I was a grime producer.

00:59:58.792 –> 01:00:04.012
Piers: I was probably the first music I started making, it was like hip hop and grime.

01:00:04.012 –> 01:00:06.212
Piers: And I used to like-

01:00:06.212 –> 01:00:07.172
Kesi: DJ Darker.

01:00:07.172 –> 01:00:08.652
Piers: Yeah, DJ Darker.

01:00:08.652 –> 01:00:11.492
Piers: I used to press my beats on Acetate in them days.

01:00:11.492 –> 01:00:15.272
Piers: This was 2004, 2003.

01:00:15.272 –> 01:00:17.952
Piers: There was a shop called Riven Division.

01:00:17.952 –> 01:00:20.412
Piers: I was sort of part of that whole kind of like grime crowd.

01:00:20.412 –> 01:00:25.252
Piers: And I was actually in, there was these youngers called Wild Out Ones with Descada, we got Descada.

01:00:25.252 –> 01:00:28.472
Piers: And like, you know, like I was in the younger crew.

01:00:28.472 –> 01:00:30.612
Piers: I was from Hackney, but the Wild Out Ones were from Bow.

01:00:31.012 –> 01:00:37.132
Piers: And I was actually in Rico’s Younger Lot as a DJ producer.

01:00:37.132 –> 01:00:39.452
Piers: And like, I just, it’s just mad.

01:00:39.452 –> 01:00:43.452
Piers: Like 30 years on, you know, he’s walked through.

01:00:43.452 –> 01:00:44.852
Piers: Where’s his verse?

01:00:46.232 –> 01:00:50.252
Piers: And I remember we’ve got the video, he was in that booth.

01:00:53.732 –> 01:00:57.052
Piers: He’s watching with a, was it an England top?

01:00:57.052 –> 01:00:59.172
Kesi: Yeah.

01:00:59.172 –> 01:01:01.012
Kesi: Was it Euros, a World Cup or something?

01:01:17.832 –> 01:01:20.132
Piers: And we did the whole wheel up, we all went mad in there.

01:01:24.552 –> 01:01:26.132
Piers: We did like this.

01:01:26.272 –> 01:01:26.892
Piers: Start going crazy.

01:01:28.972 –> 01:01:29.792
Piers: It was a good vibe.

01:01:29.792 –> 01:01:32.312
Piers: It was a great vibe that day.

01:01:32.312 –> 01:01:38.172
Piers: And it was nice for me that it meant a lot more because I’ve always respected Rico.

01:01:38.172 –> 01:01:45.912
Piers: I’ve always known him through people and seen him and his peers grow up, smash it.

01:01:45.912 –> 01:01:50.732
Piers: And now he’s been doing lots of great stuff with various producers.

01:01:50.732 –> 01:01:52.412
Piers: And I was noticing that before.

01:01:52.772 –> 01:01:55.772
Piers: So it was a nice moment really for me personally.

01:01:56.552 –> 01:02:04.792
Piers: I felt like in life when things just come right back round.

01:02:04.792 –> 01:02:08.892
Piers: And it’s like your 16 year old self really mattered.

01:02:08.892 –> 01:02:09.992
Piers: That’s what it felt like for me.

01:02:10.172 –> 01:02:12.152
Piers: Like everything you were doing there.

01:02:12.152 –> 01:02:14.092
Piers: I can’t listen to Grime for 10 minutes now.

01:02:14.092 –> 01:02:14.532
Piers: I’m old.

01:02:14.532 –> 01:02:15.512
Piers: I’ve got two kids.

01:02:15.512 –> 01:02:20.212
Piers: And don’t get me wrong that I love Grime, but it was such a part of my life and I was such a young kid.

01:02:20.932 –> 01:02:23.872
Piers: And it was like this whole thing that was happening.

01:02:23.872 –> 01:02:25.452
Piers: I thought it was exciting.

01:02:26.652 –> 01:02:29.672
Piers: There was some incredible music, incredible albums.

01:02:29.672 –> 01:02:35.572
Piers: You know, it was like our punk, like London’s inner city, like, you know, black punk.

01:02:35.892 –> 01:02:37.032
Piers: It was incredible.

01:02:37.612 –> 01:02:48.972
Piers: And I just think like when it swings back around like that and like you’re like five albums in, and then like, you know, you’re making a top, you got to 23, I think, at the top 30.

01:02:48.972 –> 01:02:51.312
Piers: Probably one of the biggest played songs last year.

01:02:51.312 –> 01:02:53.572
Piers: One of our biggest songs in the last few years.

01:02:53.572 –> 01:02:58.992
Piers: And the shows as well, like just seeing it perform like that on shows, having him come out.

01:02:58.992 –> 01:03:14.332
Kesi: Yeah, I think like just adding to what Piers is saying, after probably 12 years of like success with Rudimental, working with like some of the biggest artists in the world, coming back to work with someone like Rico Dan, that you knew and was a fan of when you were 16.

01:03:14.392 –> 01:03:24.052
Kesi: Like the new highlights now, we’re a bit old and we’ve worked with all these big people, it’s actually revisiting some of our childhood people that we used to look up to and work with them.

01:03:24.052 –> 01:03:27.272
Kesi: It’s like, it’s really like inspired us again.

01:03:27.272 –> 01:03:28.272
Piers: That meant a lot.

01:03:28.452 –> 01:03:30.772
Piers: And Rico just, he shut it down.

01:03:30.772 –> 01:03:33.292
Piers: He just like, he did delivered, more than delivered.

01:03:33.772 –> 01:03:35.092
Piers: And Charlotte Andrea delivered.

01:03:35.092 –> 01:03:39.272
Piers: And it was just like a really fun session, Skepsis.

01:03:39.272 –> 01:03:42.932
Piers: There’s also a big up Skepsis, because he was a big part to playing this tune.

01:03:45.612 –> 01:03:47.512
Piers: It was like he was in the room as well at the same time.

01:03:47.512 –> 01:03:49.332
Piers: And he was just throwing us things like this.

01:03:49.332 –> 01:03:53.512
Piers: We were all like, you know, like, them fun sessions where everyone’s on the same page.

01:03:53.512 –> 01:03:55.932
Piers: And he was like, I could see his brain was going.

01:03:55.932 –> 01:03:56.912
Piers: He sent me that.

01:03:56.912 –> 01:04:00.712
Piers: It’s called Skep, our offbeat, no idea where it’s from.

01:04:00.712 –> 01:04:03.812
Piers: But he had it, pinged it to me on AirDrop.

01:04:03.812 –> 01:04:06.892
Piers: And then he was also involved in the synth.

01:04:07.292 –> 01:04:08.472
Piers: You know, like when it drops.

01:04:17.235 –> 01:04:21.655
Piers: Which is a Diva, Diva pre-set.

01:04:21.655 –> 01:04:25.075
Piers: We had…

01:04:25.075 –> 01:04:28.995
Piers: And I also put like a nice little…

01:04:28.995 –> 01:04:30.855
Piers: thing under there that I think, I think that was…

01:04:34.255 –> 01:04:37.235
Piers: The PVs.

01:04:39.635 –> 01:04:44.195
Piers: And then also Skepsis did these mad things at the end, which I loved.

01:04:44.235 –> 01:04:46.615
Piers: That…

01:04:46.615 –> 01:04:52.775
Piers: Now that’s only Skepsis is gonna send you these types of sounds in the session.

01:04:52.775 –> 01:04:54.295
Piers: No idea where you got them from.

01:04:54.715 –> 01:04:58.635
Piers: Probably Diva or Serum, you know.

01:04:58.635 –> 01:05:04.175
John Kennedy: You’re saying that he’s in the same room, the same building, because you had this camp, so you had a few different people in different.

01:05:04.175 –> 01:05:06.735
Piers: The room was packed, like, because it was us lot.

01:05:06.735 –> 01:05:08.275
Piers: There’s a few of us in the band.

01:05:08.295 –> 01:05:17.395
Piers: We had Skepsis, and we had June and Charlotte on the sofa, Rico coming in, but I think Skepsis had a table with an iMac, and he was chucking me things.

01:05:17.395 –> 01:05:21.015
John Kennedy: So everybody’s kind of own little workstations in their own, in their headphones.

01:05:21.015 –> 01:05:22.695
Piers: Yeah, we do that a lot, actually.

01:05:22.695 –> 01:05:37.535
Piers: Even when we’re together on our own, Kesi will spin off in the corner and make another beat sometimes to start another idea once this idea is finished, or to add to the idea that we’re currently doing.

01:05:37.855 –> 01:05:45.435
Piers: And yeah, like we’re all just really enjoying ourselves because it was like mental sounds.

01:05:45.435 –> 01:05:46.695
Piers: I don’t know where he got that from.

01:05:46.695 –> 01:05:48.095
Piers: We’ll have to ask him.

01:05:48.095 –> 01:05:52.095
Piers: We’ll have to, or maybe he don’t want to say.

01:05:52.815 –> 01:05:54.755
Piers: The secrets of scepticism.

01:05:54.755 –> 01:06:05.275
John Kennedy: Because there are so many layers to a track, and all those little tiny moments are used to keep it interesting, keep it moving all the time.

01:06:06.475 –> 01:06:08.335
John Kennedy: And how many layers on this track?

01:06:08.335 –> 01:06:11.715
Piers: There’s quite a few channels, there’s quite a few layers, there’s quite a lot going on.

01:06:11.715 –> 01:06:15.675
Piers: This track did go on a little bit of a journey.

01:06:17.995 –> 01:06:21.695
Piers: You know, I think this was big up Jamie Spinks.

01:06:21.695 –> 01:06:24.375
Piers: He was like, we need some chords in the verse.

01:06:24.375 –> 01:06:25.595
Piers: We need something.

01:06:25.635 –> 01:06:27.495
Piers: This isn’t an A&R idea.

01:06:27.495 –> 01:06:29.415
Piers: You know, like, all right, I’ll do some chords.

01:06:29.415 –> 01:06:31.875
Piers: You know, like, so like, it went through so many journeys.

01:06:31.875 –> 01:06:39.835
Piers: And it’s like, it went through so much stages, you know, like, as well.

01:06:41.255 –> 01:06:49.095
Piers: I think going to the Mix Engineer, like, I remember this tune was just sort of like, we were back and forth quite a lot, getting the sonics right.

01:06:49.095 –> 01:07:02.335
Piers: I think what we like to do as well, is we like to sort of get ideas and sort of change, sort of sometimes, I think I actually learnt this off, was it Dre or Pharrell?

01:07:02.335 –> 01:07:06.035
Piers: No, it was Dre and Kanye, it was Dre and his producer.

01:07:06.035 –> 01:07:08.995
Piers: Either I saw it on YouTube or someone told me.

01:07:08.995 –> 01:07:10.475
Kesi: I thought they told you in person.

01:07:10.475 –> 01:07:12.815
Piers: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, Dre told me in person.

01:07:12.815 –> 01:07:33.635
Piers: But like, you know, if you get an idea, and you know what I was talking to you about, like the folder of drums, sometimes it’s just good to like change complete drum sounds, especially with D&B, because you might have a pre-made, like that might sound better than what you have and you don’t realise it.

01:07:33.635 –> 01:07:40.855
Piers: So we would do that a lot with this tune and it was quite a sort of team effort here, you know.

01:07:40.855 –> 01:07:50.755
Piers: And I think that’s kind of helped it get to, you know, the final stages and become quite a big tune, yeah.

01:07:50.755 –> 01:07:52.795
John Kennedy: What haven’t we heard from it?

01:07:52.795 –> 01:07:54.215
John Kennedy: Are there sound effects in there?

01:07:54.215 –> 01:07:55.695
John Kennedy: Do you use?

01:07:55.695 –> 01:07:56.575
Piers: There is, yeah.

01:07:56.575 –> 01:07:58.395
Piers: There’s all sorts in here.

01:08:00.295 –> 01:08:08.095
Piers: Some effects is probably from either Splice or Loopmasters.

01:08:08.135 –> 01:08:09.635
Piers: We got those platforms.

01:08:11.075 –> 01:08:14.535
Piers: I don’t know, what did producers do before Splice?

01:08:14.535 –> 01:08:15.255
Piers: What did they do?

01:08:15.255 –> 01:08:18.315
Piers: Did they have to go and record their own feel recordings?

01:08:18.315 –> 01:08:19.095
Piers: Do you know what I mean?

01:08:19.095 –> 01:08:20.075
Piers: We’ve got it good now.

01:08:20.275 –> 01:08:22.415
Piers: I honestly think we’ve got it amazing.

01:08:23.775 –> 01:08:28.175
Piers: Yeah, I think the drums were a bunch of loops.

01:08:28.175 –> 01:08:30.355
Piers: That’s one loop.

01:08:30.355 –> 01:08:35.115
Piers: It’s that mixed with two loops.

01:08:35.395 –> 01:08:36.635
Piers: They sound very similar.

01:08:36.635 –> 01:08:38.895
Piers: One’s got a little chug off.

01:08:38.895 –> 01:08:39.615
Piers: That’s the snare.

01:08:49.729 –> 01:08:51.029
Piers: Oh, that’s funny.

01:08:53.509 –> 01:08:58.749
Piers: That loop there that comes in is from Thank You, right?

01:08:58.749 –> 01:09:00.189
Piers: That’s the same Thank You loop.

01:09:00.189 –> 01:09:09.309
Piers: So I’ve thrown that in to break up the, you know, I’ve thrown that in, and that’s, yeah, the same loop.

01:09:11.949 –> 01:09:14.429
Piers: Add a little bit of energy.

01:09:14.429 –> 01:09:16.649
Piers: So yeah, it’s just always a bit of a mixture.

01:09:17.349 –> 01:09:21.469
Piers: And yeah, we always seem to go back and forth to other tunes we’ve made.

01:09:21.469 –> 01:09:31.749
Piers: It’s really good to have like that reference point maybe in a folder of like stuff that you’ve done that you, because of that Thank You lip, I would have spent a bit of time on it, and I might have run it through.

01:09:31.969 –> 01:09:45.289
Piers: I tend to like, you know, if I get a loop that we like, I like, I run it through either the Culture Vulture, or I’ve got SSL Fusion at home, which is an outboard gear, and I really like putting stereo images on stuff.

01:09:46.029 –> 01:10:02.509
Piers: And, you know, it’s fun doing that, sending out of your sound card into an actual outboard, recording that, and then I’ll sort of bank it, and just, and then it will be ready to use whenever I feel.

01:10:02.509 –> 01:10:13.749
Piers: And that process, like I was saying, I think before, is like, it’s only, it took me a long time to realize that that’s really important, because your workflow in this day and age, not even in this day and age, it just helps.

01:10:13.849 –> 01:10:21.969
Piers: It helps like if you’re writing a song and you can make it sound as close to the finished product as possible.

01:10:21.969 –> 01:10:29.329
Piers: It’s easier, I guess, to write, not only write a song, but like, hear where it’s going to end up.

01:10:29.329 –> 01:10:31.609
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, really interesting.

01:10:31.609 –> 01:10:36.069
John Kennedy: We have got some questions from our patrons, which we’d like to ask you.

01:10:36.069 –> 01:10:39.529
John Kennedy: We’ve also got regular questions we ask everybody who comes on the podcast about stuff.

01:10:39.529 –> 01:10:41.389
John Kennedy: Is there anything else we should hear from Green and Gold?

01:10:41.429 –> 01:10:44.069
John Kennedy: Is there anything that you think you might have missed out or?

01:10:44.069 –> 01:10:46.389
Piers: We’ve got Rico in there, we’ve got Skepsis in there.

01:10:46.869 –> 01:10:48.289
Piers: I think we’re good on Green and Gold.

01:10:48.289 –> 01:10:49.389
Kesi: Yeah, I think so.

01:10:49.389 –> 01:10:51.389
John Kennedy: So let’s have a blast of the masters around that.

01:11:45.033 –> 01:11:51.233
John Kennedy: It is Rudim3Ntal with Green and Gold, and this kind of links in to something we’ve been talking about.

01:11:51.233 –> 01:12:00.313
John Kennedy: So one of our first questions from Patreon is from Gustaf Nielsen, who says, I love your stuff, but do you ever get tired of the genre you’re making?

01:12:00.313 –> 01:12:02.953
John Kennedy: And if so, how do you cope with that?

01:12:02.953 –> 01:12:09.013
John Kennedy: And it’s an interesting one, because in a way, with this new record, this is a return to, well, no, it’s not even a return.

01:12:09.013 –> 01:12:15.153
John Kennedy: It is a return to the drum and bass roots, but at the same time, this is the first only drum and bass album that Rudim3Ntal have done.

01:12:15.153 –> 01:12:17.893
Piers: I mean, simple answer, yes.

01:12:17.893 –> 01:12:19.213
Piers: I get tired of every song.

01:12:19.213 –> 01:12:22.213
Piers: At one point, every song is rubbish to me.

01:12:22.213 –> 01:12:31.413
Piers: I’ve heard it too, because especially when you’re, you’re finishing, you’re taking in our feedback, you’re taking mixed comments, you’re taking skeptics, what’s that different than that?

01:12:31.413 –> 01:12:37.193
Piers: Rico, even on one song, you’ve probably played it about 500 times, right?

01:12:37.193 –> 01:12:43.013
Piers: So yes, I actually remember back in the day, like Rumour Mill, we were gonna cut, we were gonna bin it from the second album.

01:12:44.133 –> 01:12:46.853
Piers: We were gonna completely shelf it, cause we’d over listened to it.

01:12:46.853 –> 01:12:53.173
Piers: And yeah, I feel like you can get into this zone where you’re like, is this even good anymore?

01:12:53.173 –> 01:12:56.633
Piers: And that’s a natural part of being a producer or creative.

01:12:56.633 –> 01:13:05.373
Kesi: And you can, yeah, you can definitely get tired of one genre, but I mean, me and Piers would both tell you that in a week we’ve made probably every genre.

01:13:05.373 –> 01:13:07.513
Kesi: It’s just the public might not have heard it.

01:13:07.513 –> 01:13:10.233
Kesi: But if I’m at home, I’m not gonna make a DMV tune.

01:13:10.673 –> 01:13:15.913
Kesi: Like if I’m just chilling by myself in this right now, because we’re doing that for the album.

01:13:15.913 –> 01:13:19.533
Kesi: So I’ll probably make some house ideas or some R&B style stuff.

01:13:19.533 –> 01:13:28.693
Kesi: Or I think as a producer, you’ve got to get all these different genres out of you and just make something that you’re feeling on that day.

01:13:28.693 –> 01:13:37.253
Kesi: And it’s almost, it’s almost like a therapy, you know, if you’re angry, feeling angry, like make a dark song, if you’re feeling happy, make something happy, do you know what I mean?

01:13:37.253 –> 01:13:40.113
Kesi: And so yeah, you can definitely get tired.

01:13:40.193 –> 01:13:49.453
Kesi: If you were just solely one drummer, then yeah, but we’ve always been multi-genre, even though this is a one-genre album, but yeah.

01:13:49.453 –> 01:14:02.613
John Kennedy: But the roots, the kind of, the drum and bass, one of the interesting things is how you’ve managed to combine that kind of energy and gnarliness that you can get in drum and bass, even into a house tune.

01:14:02.893 –> 01:14:06.413
John Kennedy: There’s always a little edge to what Rudimental do, I think.

01:14:06.413 –> 01:14:15.873
John Kennedy: And yet at the same time, you usually combine it with some amazing hook, some amazing kind of pop feel that people can really latch on to as well.

01:14:15.873 –> 01:14:21.773
Piers: Yeah, I think it’s cult, like culture is just, is massive here, like culture in London and the UK.

01:14:21.773 –> 01:14:26.093
Piers: You know, if you’re from Bristol, like DMB is a big thing.

01:14:26.093 –> 01:14:43.333
Piers: And I think if you’re from London, like I remember even when like I was into, like when Grime was on, we would still play jungle in some of our, like when I was like 15, still play a terrorist, Try Effects, and I still had that Dreads recordings album.

01:14:43.333 –> 01:14:50.693
Piers: My dad was really into jungle, and my sister was into garage, and my friends, brothers were into jungle and drum and bass, but we were into Grime.

01:14:50.693 –> 01:14:55.953
Piers: But it’s like, it’s all this like culture, it’s almost like it’s just inside you, isn’t it?

01:14:55.953 –> 01:15:05.973
Piers: And it’s like, it’s like, it’s part of being, I think from the UK, like and we’re always going to be able to, I feel like we like to play with it a bit.

01:15:06.073 –> 01:15:11.193
Piers: I think like we like to mess with like, so, try things out.

01:15:11.193 –> 01:15:19.633
Piers: Yeah, I wouldn’t call us like the connoisseurs, drum and bass act, but I think like we love soul music.

01:15:19.933 –> 01:15:30.773
Piers: We love a lot of genres, we love all music and like, yeah, like drum and bass is so much fun and like some of our D&B tunes over the years, I’ve just had the most incredible reaction.

01:15:32.233 –> 01:15:39.593
Piers: And it’s great to see that, the way that scene’s grown from start to finish, from the 90s, the history behind it.

01:15:39.593 –> 01:15:43.793
Piers: It’s just incredible that it’s still going and that, you know.

01:15:43.793 –> 01:15:59.853
Kesi: And I think other things that kind of make it exciting within the genre still is, for example, Roro, the singer who’s on Chop Dem Down, she’s from Barbados and we’ve flown there and done a week in Barbados, and we’ve done lots of D&B tracks with her.

01:15:59.853 –> 01:16:04.053
Kesi: And there’s some of our favourite tracks on the album and she’s got an amazing vocal.

01:16:04.053 –> 01:16:13.513
Kesi: So doing things like that can keep things exciting even within the genre, rather than it all being at home and London based or Bristol based.

01:16:13.513 –> 01:16:19.793
Kesi: Or, do you know what I mean, go outside of the box, try new things because they can still work in the same genre.

01:16:19.793 –> 01:16:20.593
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah.

01:16:20.593 –> 01:16:22.093
John Kennedy: Fascinating.

01:16:22.093 –> 01:16:28.713
John Kennedy: We’ve got another question from Frannik who says, do you have any tips on creating atmosphere for tracks?

01:16:28.713 –> 01:16:29.173
Piers: Reverb.

01:16:31.053 –> 01:16:34.453
Piers: Honestly, I’ll share this now.

01:16:34.453 –> 01:16:41.613
Piers: There’s a few things that I swear by, and let’s just go to my favorite reverb preset.

01:16:43.593 –> 01:16:45.013
Piers: Let’s re-set the channel strip.

01:16:50.713 –> 01:16:51.753
Piers: Oh, that’s about cheating!

01:16:52.713 –> 01:16:56.213
Piers: Well, look, yeah, if you go to Echo Boy…

01:16:59.653 –> 01:17:00.733
Piers: Reverb Spaces…

01:17:03.653 –> 01:17:04.053
Piers: Where is it?

01:17:05.893 –> 01:17:06.953
Piers: Echo Boy Galaxy.

01:17:10.593 –> 01:17:12.193
Piers: And you turn up the saturation.

01:17:16.893 –> 01:17:19.593
Piers: It just has an amazing long tail.

01:17:22.493 –> 01:17:35.473
Piers: So you could let that ring on a drop, and then a good technique, you could bounce and place that and reverse it.

01:17:37.773 –> 01:17:42.073
Piers: You know, I think there’s lots of fun way you can do things with like reverbs.

01:17:43.393 –> 01:17:44.733
Piers: Reverbs is such a…

01:17:44.733 –> 01:17:56.653
Piers: Reversing a verb, going into a drop, you know, and then you can even, you can pan that verb with…

01:17:56.653 –> 01:18:00.153
Piers: I like to use the panner on UAD.

01:18:07.583 –> 01:18:12.303
Piers: I mean, that’s a very D&B thing, you know, for good techers.

01:18:12.303 –> 01:18:18.403
Piers: And it’s like, yeah, it’s just sort of exploring like the different ways you can use plugins, I think, like to create atmosphere.

01:18:18.403 –> 01:18:22.923
Piers: Obviously, pads, pads from synthesizers, analogue synths, they create great atmosphere.

01:18:22.923 –> 01:18:28.123
Piers: Prophets, if you can get your hand on a Prophet 6, there’s atmosphere in a synth.

01:18:28.123 –> 01:18:30.363
John Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

01:18:30.363 –> 01:18:32.003
John Kennedy: Chris Pearson’s got an interesting one.

01:18:32.003 –> 01:18:38.103
John Kennedy: What are some of the most interesting positive changes in the dance scene that you’ve noticed from the inside?

01:18:38.103 –> 01:18:39.283
Kesi: That’s a tough question.

01:18:39.283 –> 01:18:40.583
John Kennedy: It’s a big one, isn’t it?

01:18:40.583 –> 01:18:55.243
Kesi: I’d say in the dance scene, one of the positive changes I’ve noticed in the last three or four years, maybe longer, is just the people being more open to collaborate and the producer collaborations.

01:18:55.243 –> 01:18:59.583
Kesi: I think when we first started off, you didn’t see them as often as you do now.

01:18:59.583 –> 01:19:03.543
Kesi: And as producers, as people, you’re always learning life.

01:19:03.643 –> 01:19:09.963
Kesi: So you learn off other producers and the collaboration of two people to come together creates a new sonic and a new sound.

01:19:09.963 –> 01:19:15.923
Kesi: So the way that producers are collaborating more, I think is a definite positive.

01:19:16.083 –> 01:19:20.183
John Kennedy: I like the way that, say, just with 1991, you’re an admirer.

01:19:20.183 –> 01:19:23.203
John Kennedy: So you just reach out, say, hey, no, let’s give it a go.

01:19:23.623 –> 01:19:26.203
John Kennedy: And that’s, you just don’t know what might happen.

01:19:26.203 –> 01:19:26.963
Piers: That’s it.

01:19:26.963 –> 01:19:28.023
John Kennedy: Yeah, excellent.

01:19:28.023 –> 01:19:28.323
John Kennedy: Right.

01:19:28.323 –> 01:19:31.343
John Kennedy: So we always ask these questions of everybody who comes on Tape Notes.

01:19:31.423 –> 01:19:34.563
John Kennedy: So first is about gear, tech.

01:19:34.563 –> 01:19:36.583
John Kennedy: Is there anything that you can’t live without?

01:19:36.583 –> 01:19:39.723
John Kennedy: Or what’s your favorite at the moment?

01:19:39.723 –> 01:19:45.563
Piers: I’ve got to say that Soundtoys, Echoboy and the Galaxy preset.

01:19:45.563 –> 01:19:48.543
Piers: I literally, I put that on everything.

01:19:48.543 –> 01:19:54.383
Piers: It just, even if you turn the feedback down, I honestly put that on almost everything.

01:19:54.423 –> 01:19:58.703
Piers: Yeah, Echoboy, Soundtoys or Effectrix, that’s another good one.

01:19:58.703 –> 01:20:02.663
Piers: But yeah, Soundtoys, Echoboy is a great verb.

01:20:02.663 –> 01:20:16.603
Piers: And even if you just use like, what I love about Echoboy is, I’ve been stuck in Sunday, default, like you can whack that on, tired of all my mind games.

01:20:16.603 –> 01:20:17.943
Piers: Turn the dry up.

01:20:17.943 –> 01:20:22.383
David: I play along and everybody knows, that’s the way that the weekend goes.

01:20:22.383 –> 01:20:23.563
Piers: It just sounds great.

01:20:23.563 –> 01:20:25.383
Piers: Like I put that on most things.

01:20:25.703 –> 01:20:30.123
Piers: It’s just, no, it’s a good, it’s a good plugin.

01:20:30.123 –> 01:20:32.443
John Kennedy: We’ve got a question actually, that’s linked into this.

01:20:32.443 –> 01:20:36.983
John Kennedy: Alinex says, do you have a top three plugins that you think are DMB go-tos?

01:20:38.043 –> 01:20:46.623
Piers: Yeah, I think Serum is, for me, with all the presets you can download that are ready to go from various places.

01:20:46.783 –> 01:20:56.663
Piers: You know, Serum has that harsh kind of DMB synthy sound.

01:20:56.663 –> 01:21:00.563
Kesi: I’d say Nicky Romero Kickstarter, we use on a lot.

01:21:00.563 –> 01:21:02.663
Piers: Yeah, we use it on pads, Nicky Romero.

01:21:02.663 –> 01:21:06.063
Kesi: Gives a bit of movement to your pads and synths.

01:21:06.063 –> 01:21:28.223
Piers: You know, it’s a bit of a curveball, but like, I think like, just like my Moog Voyager, some of those bass sounds, if you put the Glide on and do it live, that for me feels like vintage D&B, like really some of the sounds you can get out, the Moog Voyager, I love to use on all our D&B tracks.

01:21:28.223 –> 01:21:34.083
John Kennedy: The last question we ask everybody is whether they have any advice that they would pass on to other people.

01:21:34.083 –> 01:21:42.123
John Kennedy: Now this could be a lesson that you’ve learned over the years, or it could be something that somebody else said to you once that you feel you’d want to pass on.

01:21:42.443 –> 01:21:47.763
Kesi: I would say always share your music, like what you’re working on.

01:21:47.763 –> 01:21:58.643
Kesi: Don’t wait for it to be the finished piece of music to share it, because someone might hear a gem in the raw demo stage, which you’re a bit uncomfortable about.

01:21:58.643 –> 01:22:01.543
Kesi: So I’ll just say share, always share it.

01:22:01.543 –> 01:22:04.803
Kesi: And it’s quite hard as a producer and as a musician.

01:22:04.803 –> 01:22:15.083
Kesi: Sometimes you’re like, it’s not quite where I want it to be, but just press play and let people hear it, because a lot of people are sitting on gems, you know.

01:22:15.083 –> 01:22:25.523
Kesi: And also you can go into a session with somebody, like say if we was in with a big artist, we might think we’ve got all these ideas we’ve worked on for a while that they might love.

01:22:25.523 –> 01:22:31.543
Kesi: And it could be one of the rawest little ideas that we have that they lose their mind to.

01:22:31.543 –> 01:22:34.223
Kesi: So yeah, always share your music.

01:22:34.223 –> 01:22:34.763
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:22:34.863 –> 01:22:35.763
John Kennedy: What about you, Piers?

01:22:35.763 –> 01:22:36.703
John Kennedy: Is there anything?

01:22:36.703 –> 01:22:45.283
Piers: I just feel like with producers and creators, especially like when you’re young and trying to make it, just have faith in it.

01:22:45.323 –> 01:22:52.323
Piers: If you really love it and that you enjoy it, have faith in yourself and it’s just not going to happen overnight.

01:22:52.323 –> 01:22:54.623
Piers: You know, it takes years and years sometimes.

01:22:54.883 –> 01:22:56.603
Piers: It might take you two years, it might take you seven.

01:22:56.603 –> 01:22:58.303
Piers: It took me ten, really.

01:22:58.303 –> 01:23:00.143
Piers: I started making music when I was 14.

01:23:00.303 –> 01:23:03.143
Piers: I’m not very 25 or something, I’m still 26.

01:23:03.143 –> 01:23:08.223
Piers: So, you know, it happens at different times for everyone, but just trust in it.

01:23:08.223 –> 01:23:14.963
Piers: If you really believe that this is your path, then it will be, but you just have to give it time.

01:23:14.963 –> 01:23:22.963
Kesi: Going back to what I said as my example, an example of what I was saying was with Feel the Love.

01:23:22.963 –> 01:23:26.583
Kesi: That was a song that I had written and I was initially singing on it.

01:23:26.583 –> 01:23:32.443
Kesi: I’m not a singer, so I didn’t really want to play it to anyone, but this was the days of CDs.

01:23:32.443 –> 01:23:39.403
Kesi: So I’d put it on the CD hidden in between other songs that people know and play it in the car.

01:23:39.403 –> 01:23:42.543
Kesi: My friends would be in the car and one of my friends is like, Oh, what’s this?

01:23:42.543 –> 01:23:43.663
Kesi: This is wicked.

01:23:43.663 –> 01:23:47.883
Kesi: Then I had a little grin to myself and I was like, Oh, this is Feel the Love.

01:23:47.903 –> 01:23:55.543
Kesi: Then I showed it to Piers and Lockie and everybody lost their mind to that initial demo and we worked on it from there.

01:23:55.543 –> 01:24:00.523
Kesi: Now is my way around not playing it to people but playing it to them.

01:24:00.523 –> 01:24:00.763
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:24:00.763 –> 01:24:05.363
Kesi: But now I’ve learned at whatever stage it is, just press play and let people hear it.

01:24:05.363 –> 01:24:06.003
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:24:06.003 –> 01:24:06.663
John Kennedy: Yeah.

01:24:06.663 –> 01:24:07.363
John Kennedy: That’s great though.

01:24:07.363 –> 01:24:13.043
John Kennedy: I love that subtle way of doing it to battle your own insecurities or whatever.

01:24:13.043 –> 01:24:13.863
Kesi: Yeah.

01:24:13.863 –> 01:24:15.043
John Kennedy: It’s great.

01:24:15.043 –> 01:24:16.283
John Kennedy: Thank you so much for being here.

01:24:16.283 –> 01:24:17.443
John Kennedy: It’s been absolutely fantastic.

01:24:18.563 –> 01:24:22.783
John Kennedy: And we need to go out with one more tune, another kind of piece of outro music.

01:24:22.783 –> 01:24:25.023
John Kennedy: It could be something else from the album.

01:24:26.043 –> 01:24:27.163
John Kennedy: What are you going to go with?

01:24:27.163 –> 01:24:29.283
Piers: Stamina with Vemby.

01:24:29.283 –> 01:24:31.403
Piers: The feature is Vemby.

01:24:31.403 –> 01:24:33.223
John Kennedy: So this is another new one.

01:24:33.223 –> 01:24:33.823
Piers: Another fresh one.

01:24:33.823 –> 01:24:34.483
John Kennedy: How exciting.

01:24:34.483 –> 01:24:36.803
John Kennedy: So this is Stamina, Rudimental, Piers.

01:24:36.803 –> 01:24:38.023
John Kennedy: Kesi, thank you so much.

01:24:38.023 –> 01:24:38.343
John Kennedy: Thank you.

01:24:48.280 –> 01:24:53.560
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01:24:53.560 –> 01:24:58.080
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01:25:09.860 –> 01:25:15.000
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01:25:15.000 –> 01:25:18.540
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01:25:18.540 –> 01:25:20.080
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01:25:20.080 –> 01:25:21.380
John Kennedy: Until next time, goodbye.