To continue my
celebration of the release of wavemob’s excellent mix tape Wave 001 - which if
you haven’t heard yet (what have you been doing?!), you can listen to and
purchase here - I spoke to producer and wavemob member, Skit. A guy who
continually gives us quality tunes, Skit has been contributing to the wave
movement for a long while, and has one of my favourite sounds on the scene. If
you aren’t familiar with Skit, you certainly need to be; you can find a link to
his Soundcloud here. I wanted to know about Skit’s history as a producer and
his involvement with the mob, as well as his thoughts on the wave scene in
general, and I think our conversation was really interesting and has shed a lot
of light on the movement for me. The more I learn about the wave scene the more
excited I am about it, and the more I want to push it and ensure that there are
more opportunities to hear wave played live in the UK. There is actually a
night on Wednesday 24th February at Phonox in London which will be
showcasing some of the hottest talent on the scene right now, including Skit,
and I encourage any fellow fans of the movement to attend; a link to the
Facebook page for the event can be found here. Hopefully with enough support
for the scene, we will see more of these nights happen! A transcript of my
conversation with Skit can be found below, it was a pleasure talking to him,
and I hope you all enjoy reading!
***
Alright so first off,
tell me about yourself! Who are you, where are you from, what do you do apart
from make music?
Yo man, so I perform and make music under the name Skit, i'm
living in Ealing at the moment but grew up in Chesham which is close to Hemel,
Hempstead, Luton, Wycombe and places like that. Apart from making beats I run a
label called Yusoul Records and I also do sound design work for a company
called Samplephonics, and I DJ too.
Oh nice, so is Yusoul
Records pushing a similar sort of music to the stuff that wave mob makes?
Well it’s a bit of a mixed bunch of stuff to be honest, but
it’s all quite vibey bass music and hip hop. Mainly it’s just a place for music
that I really like but that doesn't really have a place yet, so I want to put
it out.
Sounds good! So how
long have you been producing music for?
Well I've been producing for about 6 years.
I see, and what about
wave music? I'm guessing you started out making other genres?
Yeah, well actually when I started out I was making dubstep,
like quite bouncy stuff, and as I started doing more gigs my sound ended up
getting a bit more aggressive and like, poppy, for lack of a better word;
because I was only really making tunes that I thought would go off when I
played them out. But that ended up just making me miserable really, because I
realised I wasn’t happy with how my music sounded and I didn’t really like the
style, and because of that, this was about 3 years ago, I was going through a
really difficult time where I didn’t know if I even wanted to be writing music
anymore. I was thinking ‘I don’t know if this whole producing thing is for me, I
can’t write anything I like’, and stuff like that.
So what happened?
Well basically I started looking around for new types of
music, stuff that was quite different to what I was used to listening to. That’s
when I started getting really into a lot of the chilled hip hop that was about
in like 2012 and 2013, like Flying Lotus, Shlohmo, Clams Casino, etc. And I
realised that a lot of that stuff is really kind of reminiscent of the emotive,
moody dubstep stuff I had liked, and from there my aim was kind of to try and
write tunes that were, like, a fusion of the UK bass music I liked and
experimental hip hop. I figured that’s a sound that wasn’t really being done at
that time. So I put together a little 2 track EP and the first track was one called
Ichima and the second track was the beat that ended up becoming
"sweat". From then on I just kind of kept going down that route and now
my goals still remains the same; I’m just trying to fuse UK bass music and hip
hop.
Yeah man, I
understand. So do you see your music as 'wave' music, or do you just see it as an
expression of what you personally like?
I don’t know really, some stuff I make and I’m like ‘yeah, this
is a wave track’ and other stuff I’m just like, ‘this is just something else, I
don’t really know what it is.’ I think it’s easier to just lump most of my
stuff under the ‘wave’ genre at the moment though, as people are starting to
search for ‘wave’ when they're searching for music similar to mine, or stuff
made by Klimeks, or Kareful, etc.
Okay so, how did you
become involved with wavemob? How long have you guys been a collective?
Um, I’ve been involved for a little while to be honest, I
think I was maybe the third person to be part of the crew, me and Klimeks made
a tune just over a year ago so we’ve been in contact since before that; he asked
me to do a mix for wavemob over summer and from then I’ve kind of been involved.
But the whole crew, I’m not really sure to be honest, I mean I think it’s
really only been about two or three months since Klimeks sort of formally put
together a roster of people for the collective. Before this compilation there
hasn’t been any wavemob releases, its just been purely mixes from the artists involved
in scene.
Okay I understand. So,
have you met any of the guys face to face? I know some of the guys live abroad.
Yeah i've met kareful a bunch of times, had him round to
make Luminoscity and we've hit up some boiler rooms together and stuff like that.
Apart from him I’ve not met anyone in real life just all through the internet.
I see, yeah CVRL was
telling me that when you guys play that Phonox event with Plastician in a
couple of weeks, it will be the first time you will be meeting properly? That must
be exciting?
Yeah it’s going to be cool because a lot of people are
coming down, so CVRL is staying at my house with his girlfriend, Klimeks and Spoze
are coming down also to the gig, NYQUILL is going to be about and I’m going to
be having Tailr.Mde.Lvn come through to perform a couple of tracks at the end
of my set too!
Sounds really
exciting man, I can’t wait for it! Okay so, do you play live sets a lot, and do
you play 'wave' music you do?
Yeah when I’m playing live I try and fit in as much wave music
as possible, and then will gradually bring the tempo up depending on what the
crowd’s feeling. So a typical set could go from like 110bpm all the way up to
like 160. I don’t play as much as I’d like to at the moment to be honest but I’ve
got a couple shows lined up for the first half of this year already which is
nice, and got some more potential bookings to sort out too. I love to DJ though,
like if I could DJ every weekend that would be sick!
Nice! It’s really
good to hear that you’re playing wave out live man, I’d love to hear more of it
in live sets! Do you generally get a good crowd response to it?
Yeah, some of it does get a good response, but to be honest
I still think at the moment a lot of people don’t really get it, there’s just a
lot of head nodding! But there are a lot of different styles inside of wave of
course, so tunes like Orca by Klimeks or Luminoscity by me and Kareful are
quite energetic, and always get a good reaction. Some of its quite slow, so I don’t
think people really know how to dance to it or how to react yet. But most electronic
music genres have gone through that, like speaking to Plastician he was saying
back in the beginnings of dubstep it was just people standing still in a room
nodding and smoking spliffs, but now people go ape shit at dubstep events.
Yeah I see that. So
because the movement’s so young right now it doesn't really set people off. But
you do see it growing into club music yeah? It’s been said that a lot of the
genre isn't made for a club environment, do you think that's true?
Yeah I do, and I think because a lot of it’s quite spacey
and slow, it’s not really built by someone thinking ‘yeah this is going to go
off in a club’, our mind set is more like ‘yeah this is a nice vibe, let’s just
go down this route.’ Also I think some of the problem is that there’s not
really any wave events, so if you were going to go out raving to a drum and
bass event or a dubstep event you would be going to hear that kind of music, so
if someone on one of those lineups starts playing wave tunes the crowd might
not be that into it. But hopefully as we start playing more and more shows
people are going to start reacting to it more. I also think what might be quite
interesting is to have events for this kind of music that are more like a
performance rather than just a standard rave. It could be at somewhere like Koko,
a more gig orientated space, where people have come to listen to the music
instead of going out
because they want to party.
Yeah I understand, it
would be interesting to see the genre go down an artier route, with events not
just being held in dark basement rave rooms. It is definitely music to chill
to, although to be honest a lot of the time when I’m listening to it, I do wish
I was hearing it on a proper sound system! Right, so do you go to music events
yourself, and if you do what sort of genres?
Yeah I go to quite a lot of events. Because I know a lot of
people in the scene in London I’m kind of spoilt for choice so I just kind of
decide when I want to go out and usually someone is playing a gig somewhere! I
am into a lot of different music so I will go to anything as long as I'm into who’s
playing; I might go to small rap events or album release parties or I might go
to little beat cyphers or I might go to huge concerts like flying lotus at the
roundhouse. I try and go out as much as I can so I can soak up as much
inspiration and get my face out there as much as possible.
So, what's coming up
for Wavemob other than this event and the mixtape which just dropped? You got
anything else in the pipeline?
Nothing set in stone at the moment, me and Klimeks have been toying with the idea of doing a collaborative EP but we'll have to see how it goes, also me and Kareful need to get on some more new music together as well. My plan for the first half of this year is to get an instrumental EP done and also I’m working with a rap duo from South London called Tailrmdelvn, so you can expect to hear some wavey productions from myself with vocals at some point in the near future.
That sounds really
exciting! Definitely be good to hear some more colabs between you and Kareful and
Klimeks too. Right so, what equipment do you use to produce?
I use Logic 9 and mainly just some software plug ins, and I
have a little monophonic synth by Critter and Guitari that I use for little
blips and arps. The majority of my sounds are chopped up audio samples though
to be honest. I will chop little bits of audio and load them into a sampler and
try and warp them so they sound like something completely different. A lot of
times when you're hearing something in my tracks that you think might be a
guitar, it’s really just a vocal run through a guitar amp, or it might sound
like one sound is a synth but it’s really a xylophone sample or something like
that.
Ah nice man, sounds
pretty technical! Can I just say that the effort definitely pays off, your
tracks are of a really noticeably high production quality in my opinion!
Ah thank you, yeah I spend quite a lot of time automating
and mixing down tracks so I’m glad people can tell I’m making the effort!
Okay so, lastly,
what's your favourite track on the Wave 001 mixtape that you didn't produce?
Thats a hard one! Probably the first and last tracks if I’m
allowed two – Ofdream – Indicate, and nvrmore and Spoze - Darkside. They’re
both completely different tunes so it’s hard to say which one I like best!
