I was absolutely honored to interview Kareful a few nights ago, one of my favourite names on the scene at the moment, an incredibly talented producer and also a really friendly and down-to-earth guy. He had some really interesting and insightful things to say about the movement, and about himself as a producer and DJ. Anybody who's interested in the sound should definitely check it out! Below is a transcript of the conversation.
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Before we start, I
just want to say that I’m a huge fan of yours, you’re one of my favourite
producers on the scene right now so thanks so much for doing this interview
with me!
Oh no worries man, it’s nice to have the chance to talk to
somebody about this! Because it’s been my full time occupation for so long I’ve
really researched the scene and know a lot about it so I’ve just been waiting
for someone to rack my brains! I feel like people don’t know enough about it.
Yeah, I definitely
agree with you on that! So I want to first find out a bit about you as a
producer, how long have you been producing music for, and how long have you
been involved with the scene?
Well, I’ve been involved in music pretty much as long as I
can remember, we had a piano in our house when I was growing up, and I started
making music on that without a clue what I was really doing. I play piano and
guitar and am completely self-taught. Actually when I was younger I was really
into metal music, and I know a lot of other producers on this scene were too
and I think that’s maybe where the more melodic side to the music comes from. I
got involved with electronic music at school when I took part in a producing
work shop, this was really the first time I realised that you could use a computer
to make music. Then when I was 18 and joined music college, I had friends who
were making music on computers. I started getting involved with them, going to
and promoting nights, mainly Dubstep and whatever else was about at the time. I
had a go at producing, and I guess because of my musical background I was able
to make a few things, firstly trap and hip-hop beats. I’ve been making music
since then really, but have only fully refined my style into what it is now
over the past 6-7 months.
Do you draw influence
or inspiration from other producers on the scene?
Well, the genre reminds me of Grime really, because it’s
difficult to define, not like Drum and Bass or Dubstep. With Grime, there’s so many different types,
it’s more like a sound than a genre, and that’s exactly how I feel about this
scene. I was making this music before I knew there was a scene, you know; I’d
never heard of drip-133, never heard of Yung Gud. To me it just felt like a
natural progression from the Dubstep and Grime sound and I just wanted to make
something wavy, and then I had people hitting me up like ‘this is sick, it
really reminds me of these Soundcloud producers’, which kind of surprised me. So
I guess not really, I’m just doing what feels natural to me.
So, is your fan base
mainly on Soundcloud? That seems to be where the majority of the scene exists
at the moment.
Yeah totally, my listeners are Soundclouders, and after that
strangely enough, Youtubers who are into cars. That’s actually because some big
Youtube car channel used one of my tracks, and then after that other car
channels started using my music on their videos, and from that I’ve got loads
of fans who are also huge car fans!
Haha that’s pretty
cool! Right, I’ve heard the genre defined as ‘Future Trap’ and ‘Trill’. Do you
agree with these labels?
Well this is an interesting question. I find that when you
really start to get involved with an electronic music genre it becomes more and
more difficult to define – you know, I know people producing Dubstep who don’t
even call it Dubstep anymore, they call it 140. I remember when I was first
making sort of chilled hip hop beats, stuff that felt Trap-influenced, someone
said to me ‘how long have you been making trill for?’ And I was like ‘what… I
thought I was making Trap’. So I guess to me ‘Trill’ is the more
American-influenced kind of hip-hop beats, stuff like ASAP Rocky or whatever.
And ‘Future Trap’ to me just sounds kind of cheesy, it doesn’t really make
sense because it won’t always be the ‘future’ sound, so no I don’t like that.
So, what would you
call the genre? Does it have a more appropriate name?
I personally refer to it as ‘wave’, but in the early stage
of a genre’s development there’s always going to be disagreement over what to
call it. Like i’ve heard producers who I consider to be making ‘wave’ refer to
their music as ‘witch house’ or even just as ‘Trap’. And I’ve also heard Grime
and Trap that I would say falls into the ‘wave’ category. I don’t know, I guess
for me I feel like ‘wave’ is an appropriate name for the sound I’m making, and
everyone at Wavemob, which is a collective I’m involved in, is totally happy
with that name too, so I guess that’s all I can say.
Okay so when you play
live sets, do you drop this kind of stuff? How do the crowd react?
I mean as a DJ I always play to the crowd, but try to stay
within my own library. I’ve played shows recently where I’ve dropped mainly
trap or mainly Grime, it’s weird because I have dropped my own stuff or the
more ‘wave’ kind of stuff, usually at the beginning or end, and I feel that
people usually do like it, but it’s hard to ever know. Like when you drop a Grime track, people will be dancing and it says to you as a DJ- people really
love this. But then because of how new and relatively unheard this stuff is,
people don’t really know how to dance to it, and so it doesn’t really signal to
the DJ that people love it. It’s interesting actually because I went to the
Boiler Room 5th birthday set recently with Jon Phonics, who has
actually been pushing this scene for ages now, and he played a tune called
‘Walker’ by SORRYSINES - which everybody needs to check out because it is
completely wavy - and because it was such a dramatic sound, people weren’t exactly
going mental, it was more like they were standing there in awe.
Plastician recently
said on his ‘Wave Pool’ mix that this music ‘wasn’t built with the club in
mind’, would you agree with that?
I think what Plastician said on that mix is very accurate. I
have often wondered what kind of environment would be best for this sound, is
it the club? Or would it be better suited to a concert hall? Or is it festival
music? It’s actually kind of strange because this music comes from all over the
world and a lot of the places it is produced in just don’t have the same
underground electronic scene as the UK. I remember when I first started talking
to producers from the States, I asked them where the big clubs in their areas
were, and what kind of clubs they’d played at. And they just didn’t know what I
meant. Obviously here we have clubs like Fabric which showcase electronic
music, but they just don’t have that. I mean, it might be different in the
bigger cities, but it’s still nothing like here. The majority of Middle America,
they just don’t have big clubs like we do. They have clubs, but they’re playing
like Rhianna and EDM stuff, electronic music doesn’t have the same opportunity
to grow there as it does here. Also, you have to be 21 to go to clubs in
America, and a lot of the producers on this scene are 17, 18, even younger than
that. I remember saying to some of those producers that they need to start
putting high hats in their intros and stuff so the DJs can actually mix the tracks.
In fact how I see this music and how the Americans see this music is very
different.
How do you mean?
Well a lot of those producers want to make hip-hop beats for
rappers to spit over, like their idea of a sound blowing up is if ASAP rocky or
someone starts spitting over it. But for me it is or I would want it to be music
that can be mixed and danced to, like a natural progression from Dubstep and
Grime.
So I guess the
non-location specific thing has kind of prevented it from growing into a
definitive genre?
Exactly. This is in my opinion, one of the only genres which
has spawned internationally and not have grown out of one specific place -
sounds are coming from everywhere; Sweden, the US, France, Poland, even
countries that you totally wouldn’t expect like Dubai. And that’s one of the
things that is most interesting about the sound.
Despite the location
difference, do you find it easy to network with other producers?
Oh absolutely. It’s such a social scene, everyone knows
everyone, because so much of it exists on social media. Everyone has a Twitter,
a Facebook, a Tumblr, so it’s very easy to network, and everyone’s sharing and
liking each other’s music and supporting each other. There’s a very strong
community.
That’s nice to hear!
Right, what set up do you use to produce?
I’ve actually got a terrible set up. I haven’t even got
studio monitors, I haven’t even got a soundcard. I’m using a very old version
of FLstudio, I think FL10. It’s weird cos I’ve got friends who have the latest
equipment and headphones and plug-ins and stuff and it feels like they work in
jobs saving up to buy the latest most up to date equipment, but for me really
you just have to go and do it. In my opinion it’s not necessarily always about
how good you are at the technical side of producing, and how good your
production equipment is, it’s more how good you are at creating a vibe. One of
my good friends, a guy called Myst, actually makes all his music on his little
sister’s laptop using iPhone 3 headphones, and his music is sick. So it’s
really not what you’ve got man.
Okay cool, so which
one of your tracks are you most proud of?
To be honest, I don’t actually listen back to my own music
that much really; I think it’s weird that people do, because you have to listen
to it so many times when you’re making it, that by the time it’s done you
almost kind of hate it because you’ve listened to it so many times, you know?
But if I had to pick a track it would probably be Darker Waters, because I
stayed up all night making it and my sleeping pattern was ruined at that time,
so in that way it has sentimental value. I actually recently took that track
down from my Soundcloud, because I’m releasing a remastered version on my album.
Yeah, I was going to
ask, when can we expect a new EP or album from you?
I’ve got an album dropping late in January.
Nice, I look forward
to that! Are there any names on the scene you’d like to recommend our readers
check out?
One guy that really stands out for me is CVRL, he is so, so
sick, everyone should check him out.
And is there anything
else you’d like to add?