After we recently reviewed Kbit’s ethereal efforts on Un Boombox Symphonique, the Melbourne-based producer took some time to speak with us about the album, his musical roots, and the various other endeavors that’ll keep him busy this year.

You can get all the details from Kbit himself below, and be sure to keep your eyes and ears peeled for his new EP in the months to come.

Can you tell me a little about your history with music? When did you first start finding an interest in following this path and what initially influenced you to get involved?

A lot of people start at an early age with music, and for me it was kind of like that but in an exposure sense. My father is a pretty great guitarist with a broad taste in music, so even as kids (including my sister and brother) we were listening to stuff like Miles Davis, Weather Report, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Nina Simone, Ry Cooder, Herbie Hancock, Ella Fitzgerald, and much, much, more. And not always by choice too — I mean we were kids, so we tended to like the earlier Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown stuff more. Which surprisingly, my father also introduced us to.

But this early exposure to some truly amazing music made a huge impact not only on what sort of music I would gravitate towards as I got older but also in the approach to actually making music. Musically I dabbled a bit with guitar at an early age, and by that I mean my father taught me the basics whilst I got distracted by Nintendo games, but I was far more obsessed with listening to music. Music played a huge part of my youth and most of my teen years were spent listening to a lot of hip-hop. What grabbed me most about that style of music was the production, the beats, and the samples.

When did you first start getting into production and how did you evolve from where you started to the type of music you’re making today?

In the late ’90s as I started to get into electronic music pretty heavily, including techno and house, but mainly the more trip-hop and instrumental stuff coming out of Europe like Kruder & Dorfmeister, I wanted to play around with loops and beats to create music. I didn’t really know much if anything about music production or theory at that point, so it was a crash course in tempos, bars, sampling and arrangement. This was something that I worked at for a few years, teaching myself and learning new things all the time.

This was all done on a computer and overall it was very much that sort of cut-and-paste approach that certain hip-hop productions follow, but it was also a lot of fun, and extremely rewarding, even in such a primitive state. From there as time went on I added new toys and software to the arsenal and once I opened the door up to MIDI, drum programming, and synthesizers, I had to actually learn a lot more about music production including how to play a basic chord or melody. Which is kind of embarrassing to admit but I guess a better way to put it would be to say that I learnt the more technical stuff like sampling, arranging, mixing, and programming first, and long before I could actually do more than a few key stabs on a keyboard.

Your new album is very spacial with a lot of genre and style influences scattered throughout it. Has space always been a big interest of yours? How did you decide that you wanted to mesh that with music?

I think good music is a very universal thing, and can touch anyone regardless of where they’re from and as corny as it sounds can bring almost any group of disparate people together. You could say it’s a spiritual thing or simply intangible and I think that space has a similar appeal. I’ve always been interested in space and the universe and the sheer wonder that it can instill in a person even with the tiniest little detail. That sort of feeling, which is almost cinematic, grandiose, or even dreamy, is something that I’ve always had a soft spot for in music. When I started work on the album each new track kind of embodied some of that spirit even as I was consciously playing within different genres and styles.

You have some pretty killer samples on the album, like the space program conference excerpt and the b-boy news bit. Where did you find those and what made you want to use them on the album?

For the space program press conference that was something that I found on a sound archive site that had thousands of hours of NASA stuff including similar press things to recordings of their interactions with astronauts. When I found that particular sample I thought it would be perfect to use because here you have a government agency announcing that they are going to embark on a costly mission that has pretty much only scientific and exploration-driven benefits. Cold war reasoning aside, this was in the late ’50s and early ’60s, and it would be nice to see that sort of interest in space exploration today.

As for the b-boy bit, I found that a long time ago whilst on a YouTube binge watching old breakdancing videos. Captured from a very old video tape of a local news piece on breakdancing I was drawn to it immediately. I loved the focus of the piece, being about this new music and dance craze that many people saw as detrimental to society, but was actually bringing people together, as well as serving as a positive influence in some troubled communities. So with that sample, I was simply waiting for the right track to come along where it would work.

For the tech-heads out there, what DAW and equipment are you using primarily and how long have you been working with this setup?

I pretty much do everything in my home studio setup and with Ableton Live, which I adore. Having worked with other DAWs in the past, the way you can experiment with new sounds and ideas almost instantly in Ableton and just ‘keep the groove going,’ makes it absolutely essential to the production process. Another key piece of equipment is my Maschine, a software driven MPC of sorts perfect for beat creation. Other than that, there’s the Virus Ti synth, Akai MIDI controllers, and many Native Instruments software synthesizers. And way too many sample libraries. I’ve probably been working with this setup for about two or three years now and the only thing I’d change would be to include a few actual vintage synthesizers.

Chad Drake’s artwork that was used for the cover is great. Was that a piece he had already finished or did he do it specifically for the album?

Thanks, yeah Chad did amazing work with the art for the album, which he did specifically for the release. That’s all him too — I basically just gave him the words ‘sci-fi’ and ‘space’ and he did all the rest. Now I can’t imagine the album without it, and his artwork is where the whole idea of it being this thing that an astronaut would listen to whilst floating through space came from.

Have you been playing these tracks live or have any current tour plans in the works?

Based on my particular setup I haven’t tested out any of the tracks in a live setting yet but it is something that is on my list of things to do. Hopefully sooner rather than later.

I noticed on your Bandcamp that there’s an image of a vinyl version of the album. Is that available or is that just a mock-up?

Unfortunately it’s a mock-up. Chad threw that together as a way to show off his awesome art so I decided to use it. I’ve actually looked into creating a limited vinyl pressing of the album but there’s a few hurdles in the way of that, namely re-mastering, the right price, and so forth.

What current artists would you say are influential to you and the sounds you create? I saw Tycho on your page which is awesome. Anyone else?

Tycho is indeed awesome, and I’ve only just discovered him too, so I’m a little behind when it comes to his stuff. “Awake” is a stellar track of his, and it captures that sort of euphoric, dreamy, and positive feeling that I love in music perfectly. There are so many current artists that I love but the more influential ones would be artists like CFCF and Bonobo who use vintage synths, instrumentation, and percussion in a way that leaves me in awe most of the time. Another artist who never fails to inspire is Napoleon, a project from Simon Mills who was part of the UK down-tempo outfit Bent from the late ’90s and early ’00s. His album from last year, Magpies, is awash in the sort of sounds, melodies and feelings that continue to inspire me on a daily basis. The fact that he’s releasing a four or five track EP every month this year is also quite an impressive and staggering feat.

You just released “Cotton Cove” which is to be featured on an upcoming EP, right? What can you tell us about that? Will it be similar to Un Boombox Symphonique? And when do you expect to have it completed and released?

Indeed that’s the plan. “Cotton Cove” is the first track that I’ve somewhat finished and was happy with recently and the plan is to release it as part of an EP. So far the expectation is that the whole EP will sound similar to that track with a lot less genre and style hopping than what was seen on the album. But that could change. I hope to have it finished and released in the next few months, possibly sooner.

Beyond this project, are you currently working on anything else or is this your primary focus for now?

Yeah, I’m looking to offer up select tracks off the album up to other producers to remix, and would like to put together a small compilation of that in the near future. Other than the music stuff I’m also writing a lot as a freelancer for a few online gaming publications. Currently embarking on a year of playing old school adventure games like King’s Quest and so forth for IGN. That is a lot of fun. Listening to some of that old MIDI music from the late ’80s and early ’90s has actually been inspiring and will probably influence a track or two in the near future. Sometimes less is more, and that’s something that I tend to forget.

So other than what we’ve already discussed, overall, what can we expect to see from you for the remainder of the year?

Hopefully some collaborative projects can come together, as I do enjoy working with other artists. Also my brother is a game developer who’s releasing his own game on mobile platforms later in the year which I’m doing the music for. Soundtrack work is a different kind of challenge and that’s been a lot of fun and I’d love to explore that field a bit more.

 

Interview conducted by: Brian Lion — (Follow him on Twitter)

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Brian Leak

Editor-In-Chief. King of forgetting drinks in the freezer. Pop culture pack rat. X-Phile. LOST apologist.

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