This week sees the welcome return of Horsepower Productions with their new album Quest For The Sonic Bounty. Unanimously recognized as some of the key figures in creating the signature sound-styles of Dubstep, we decided to speak to Benny Ill about the new album and their production techniques.

BLEEP: Who is the entire Horsepower Productions crew and what does everyone do now? Who features on this album?

BENNY ILL: In alphabetical order:
Benny ill, Clive GT, Jay King, Joe “the culprit”, Mango 1, Matt HP, Merlin, Nassis, Sam W, Simon D

Everyone is actively doing various things including Music Production, DJ’ing, Art projects, Event promotion, and Label Management to name a few..

On the new album we have the combined talents of Benny ill, Jay King, Matt HP, Nassis plus collaborations with Loefah and Orson.

B: So what spurred on you guys to reform and start put out a full length album?
BI: We never split so we didn’t really reform as such. After our second LP was released in 2004 we found it hard to make a living doing that music so we all concentrated on different sides of the music industry, although we continued to write new material for eventual release. Tempa requested a new album back in 2007 and a lot of people, other producers and Dubstep afficionados had been encouraging us to make another LP for a while so we eventually obliged them..

B: How do you feel your music stands in todays dubstep era, as opposed to 10 years ago?
BI: Well it is much better received now, partly due to the popularity of Dubstep music as a whole and partly due to the much more widespread promotion possible now via the internet, which has become much more popular since 2004. From a musical point of view we have not really changed and it seems that our production methods give us a particular style which remains popular today and enables us to provide good variety between the different tracks without totally alienating our audiences.

B: What is your studio set-up and can we see a picture of it?
BI: We currently operate a total of 4 studio facilities, soon to be 5 and all studios are differently equipped. In general we use a combination of analogue and digital equipment, to the best standard we can acheive with the little we have to work with. Software used includes Cubase, ProTools and Live and hardware includes drum machines, samplers, tape units, FX units, various keyboards and synths, live instruments and percussion. Mostly all tracks are mixed on analogue consoles to some extent, although equipment limitations force us to use digital audio in some cases.

Horsepower Production’s new album Quest for the Sonic Bounty is out now. The lead photo is done by Shaun Bloodworth.

NYC, 1981 – Ike Yard, the vanguards of NYC’s ‘no-wave’ scene, released their debut EP and and an album followed shortly after. Their unique, ‘outsider’ approach to the primitive electronic style of post-punk elevated them to the cult status that they have today. We caught up with one of the band’s founder members, Stuart Argabright, who has recently reformed the band and released their second album, ‘Nord’.

BLEEP: Can you tell us about the genesis of Ike Yard? Alongside ESG, you were the only other American band to sign to Factory records. Can you tell us how this happened and what it was like to work with such a cult label?
STUART ARGABRIGHT: Ike Yard came together after The Futants fell apart. We were all looking to do something next, found each other and grew rapidly from pre-recording drums on cassette or reel to reel to drum machines and a central MIDI controller.
During that time , we would get comments from other group’s about us ‘doing electronic music’ but after being invited by Suicide to do our first show with them and 13:13 @ Chase Park, Lydia [Lunch] asked us if we would be her backing band.

Once we felt ready and the first and only demo we mailed got picked up by Michel Duval @ Crepescule, we set about doing the “Night After Night” 12″ for them. Soon we were ‘on Factory Records America’, playing with Section 25 and New Order @ The Ukrainian National Home and dealing with the sound man there and at the Studio where we recorded the Factory album .

Tony Wilson popped in while we were tracking, we needed to educate the engineer there about recording our music and utilized some toys to get certain drum machine and perc. processing you can hear on say, “Loss”, “M Kurtz” and “Kino”. It was always a lot of work to prepare for shows, so each one was an evolution.

Someone at Maxwell’s commented one night that we sounded like “dinosaurs making love” – of course that was exactly our plan!

B: You’ve been involved in quite a few bands since Ike Yard began. Can you tell us about them?
SA: Looking back – keeping on the move, literally sometimes without a home, while moving the music forward was a crazed challenge. But in the early ’80’s everything was exploding all around you and you wanted to dive into it all. So a pattern did emerge where Ike Yard, then Death Comet Crew formed and both recorded two records and then looked around to see any reaction, any label or energy that could entice us to continue. Sometimes no one asked for another release, sometimes things fell apart but when you are 24, you just move on.

Always a fan of pop music , after IY I left for W Berlin with the concept for doing the club track “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight”.
I had been involved with this dominatrix from some last days in Washington DC and once she moved up to NYC, the early morning hours spent in her Apt. set the scene for the Dom. project.

One night @ Dschungle with Christlo Haas and Blixa, Daniel Miller [Mute] came in and walked up to us with these young boys in tow – the soon to be leather and rubber-clad Depeche Mode! Very lucky to have such good friends who helped me survive in Berlin!

Once back in NYC fall of 1983, requests for productions started coming in and I found a new Studio partner to work with – Steve Breck who had worked with Kurtis Blow and The Fat Boys early records.

Together we worked on Dominatrix live tracks (we would do ‘track dates’ comprised of Iggy’s ‘Play It Safe’, ‘Mr. Dynamite’ and ‘Sleeps Tonight’ at clubs like The Copa, last days of Studio 54, Paradise Garage w/ Robert Gorl and Run DMC), programming new bits for DCC [Death Comet Crew] and eventually, the Voodooists project.

The club scene in NYC became diluted with yuppies, copycats and wankers, the feeling of it being a ‘hotbed’ ran down and out by ‘88 -’89.

I had began in punk rock, ‘little Iggy’ I was called in DC’s punk days when The Rudements were banned from The Atlantis Club and we recorded at the then – new Inner Ear Studios where Fugazi and all the DC hardcore went soon after .

So our reaction in ‘89 was to begin forming Black Rain and while finding the final members took a moment, we took things back to hardcore, post-punk combined with industrial. Gigged at Tompkins Sq. Park Anniversary of the riots there and fought the police with our metal perc. and oil drums through to opening for GG Allin’s final show on the LES.

So each of those groups and projects were different, pocket worlds and concepts we inhabited.

Parallel to all this was the development of large scale and tech intensive art projects as Robert Longo and Gretchen Bender’s de facto music director.

Between 1984 and 1989 we did so many things, and worked with artists like Sean Young from Blade Runner and Dune, Bill T Jones (’Fela’ on Broadway now ) and synth guitarist Chuck Hammer (’Ashes To Ashes’ by D Bowie). Thrilling to score and work with Robert and the Rotterdam Philharmonic alongside music by Arvo Part & P Glass in ‘88.

That’s how it ran in the 1980’s.

B: You’ve also worked and produced music for one of hip-hop’s more eccentric characters, the much-missed, Rammellzee. Can you tell us how you started working with him?
SA: We met way back in W Berlin 1983 and DCC made the call for him to join us on “At The Marble Bar” (Beggar’s Banquet 12″ ‘84 ). Rammell rocked it live and we never looked back, continuing to work together through thick and thin, on and off until 2007.
He recorded with DCC and Black Rain culminating with the ‘Bi – Conicals Of The Rammellzee’ LP on Gomma in ‘03 and tracks on the new DCC album after the re-release and shows in Europe & Japan. The Rammellzee stood out in the underground talents pool that brought many things to light during the ’80’s and his legacy in art & sound will roll on.

B: What are your thoughts on hip-hop as it is now?
SA: There was a moment where I found myself contacting Missy Elliot’s people because I just knew I had some bits for her, but quickly there after hip-hop as it was just paled. Got excited about K- Rob producing on an early Jay Z album , dug Timbaland like everyone but looking back, Aaliyah’s passing broke the period’s mood for me. These days I prefer to hear some Kuduro, Kuedo, Jamie Vex’d, Hud-Mo, Mike Slott or Tri Angle Records. Even DCC has moved on into other territories … Might be a little spoiled from working with Z !

B: You compiled the third, fantastic volume of Soul Jazz Records’ peerless ‘New York Noise’ series, which featured some of the most obscure and esoteric music of that period. Boris Policeband, Dark Day and Implog to name a but a few. Was the music that featured on this album part of your collection, or did you know the producers personally from the time?
SA: We all used to do shows together, or at least hung out and knew each other from those days. Boris, Robin and Donny all had unique and hybrid things going on and that made it attractive. If light doesn’t reach some of these artists in these decades of ‘re-release’ , then it may never reach down to really under known creators. I guess it was natural for me though, I was there when it happened .

Many of my own releases have been pretty obscure – and that led me to form REC partly in order to re-release Voodooists and Black rain and more .

B: Ike Yard’s second album, ‘Nord’ has just been released. Why did Ike Yard decide to reform?
SA: Gomma had started things rolling for us with their “Anti NY” comp. The dozens who knew of IY became hundreds and the tracks still sounded good. Once we reformed, toured and recorded new things with DCC, we (Michael Diekman and myself being in both groups) got together up in the New Hampshire mountains to jam. And once we found it did work, wet set about rejigging the Ike Yard machinery.

We had written close to another album after the Factory LP anyway, so there was some small feeling of, “hey, that stuff was great too”, and once that was released on the Acute comp – end of 2006 – the decks were clear to move forward again.

Kind of amazing to work with groups from 25 years ago, and find it can still spark. And for us, it’s been about the excitement of making the music, not about getting up to play your old songs and ‘looking back on the ’80’s’.

B: You’ve been working, recently, with a lot of new producers and there’s also a J.G. Ballard project that you are involved with. Can you tell us about these and what else you are doing musically at the moment?
SA: After working with so many labels, and seeing and hearing so many artists come and go, one begins to develop an Innis mode -
a world and information scanning process. Antennae up in the breeze, anticipating what will work, what is just a face or fad and you just never know when super artists emerge out of the crowds. Now that IY, Dominatrix and DCC have been re-released and done with new works, there is an ever wider horizon of possible musics. Things that just need to happen, have to get done in order to go beyond the same beats, the same thinking.

So hard & soft Sci Fi has always had that appeal …
‘Ike Yard’- a name Anthony Burgess came up with for “A Clockwork Orange”

Death Comet Crew- originally Death Star Crew until [George] Lucas sent us a letter.

Calling up William Gibson in 1984 and beginning a collaboration that influenced that early trilogy and resulted in him asking us to do the soundtrack for ‘Neuromancer’ audio book.

Then Longo’s “Johnny Mnemonic”.

Once I was lucky enough to meet JG Ballard at a book signing and slipped him a cassette. Ex-Live Skull guitarist and synthesist Mark C and I were longtime devotees of the master author and had set about pulling things together to do what is now the JG Ballard nights project when he passed. There are so many ‘children of Ballard’ now all grown up around the planet and I see it as essential that his works live on for the current and next, next generations. So we have been collaborating with Judy Nylon, David Silver and WFMU here, with Jonny Mugwup and Manny Zambrano in London to keep a light on the man’s work…

Nov.6 our new group Outpost 13 brings the night to Porto where we will present for the first time the full Chapter One of Atrocity Exhibition along with Time, Memory And Inner Space. Live soundtracks and video films created with a lot of help from our friends Robert Longo, Adrian Altenhaus, Walter Cotten, Jennifer Jaffe and Patrick Quick among multi-talented others.

Building towards doing it in London and beyond in 2011…

Along similar lines, O 13 releases the ‘Vandal Tribes – Audio Movie EP’ on REC Nov.16 featuring the works of the new British author Luca Davis with big help again from Judy Nylon’s narration. This time our music guest is Jamie Vex’d.

Luca’s words make images we render in sound, he’s like a young [William] Burroughs, but tougher, rough as the end of a stick.
But in the neighborhood of those UK dystopian writers like Russell Hoban’s ‘Riddley Walker’, and the last two Margaret Atwood novels cross cut with boy’s adventure stories and flesh of faded society.

B: What’s next for Stuart Argabright and Ike Yard?
SA: IY is into doing remixes these days – the new Metal Fire ‘Remake’ of the Sistol track on Cyan Halo is the first.
Somebody should also get us to remix the Factory Album. We transferred the tapes and they sit in my closet.

For my part, there are new clubby tracks underway for Nomi – former vocalist and focus for Hercules & Love P,
the Dystopians project EP with x Black rain master bassist Bones w/ guest guitarists Pete Jones & Norman Westberg on REC.

On this Europe tour in Nov. I will be writing and programming an album expanding on what we’ve seen in the last decade or so.
‘Solo’, new collaborations, soundscapes from the Phi Phi Islands before the tsunami and high Himalayas before the glacial lake behind Everest burst,
plus a return to club music because things have gotten a bit staid and stiffened.

I mean , our race had better get it’s *hit together, we have climbed out of the oceans and built a few times only to mess it all up again.
We’re not fucking around here.

Got to run, we mix Atrocity Exhibition downtown in 30m !
SA 10/20/10

BLEEP: How did Raster-Noton come about? And what is your involvement in the label?

OLAF BENDER: Together with Frank Bretschneider, I founded rastermusic in 1996 in Chemnitz, where the label is still based. It was the result of our experiences we had made as a band (AG Geige) being under contract to other labels. We wanted to take total control!
Later we met Carsten Nicolai and we distributed his activities on the sub-label called ‘not on’. We started to work closer together concerning ideas and concepts. In 1999, we merged to raster-noton. Since then, Frank Bretschneider was not a part of the label politics anymore.

During the last decade, I headed the network and I designed a lot, like covers, books, advertisement a.s.o. But nowadays I’m more focused on my own music.

B: What is the importance of the physical object to the Raster-Noton output?

OB: We love physical things. It’s a question about quality, because there is a difference between a real book and a file on your hard drive. If you are surrounded by physical objects, like books or records, you really feel like living with them. Haptic information is subtle and important, everybody agrees with it in matters of love. We also think it is important in food or any other aspects of life, even record packages. We are not crazy about design. For us, design needs a function. And, as a small independent label, we simply want to show our freedom from industrial-maximum profit-concepts with our products.

B: The overall aesthetic of Raster-Noton is of the highest fidelity of electronic music, how do you see this translating in to live context?

OB: Good question! We are an open platform with an evident visual focus. We often use visual concepts for our live performances, like Alva Noto, Ryoji Ikeda and I do. On the other hand, I totally respect if an artist doesn’t want this second aspect of his music performance. We try to transmit our concepts via label showcases, but generally, a performance represents more an individual personality than the concept of the whole label.

B: There seems to be overarching aesthetic and approach to your label, is there some sort of manifesto (Ton und Nichtton?) that informs the work or some larger idea that you are trying to communicate? What other art / music movements are you interested in or relate to?

OB: We like polarity, noise needs silence to be noise, shadow needs light to be shadow. Often, we find it more interesting to break things down to its basic elements. As we grew up in East Germany, it was normal to share books and music, from science fiction to philosophy, from punk rock to free jazz. There weren’t many possibilities to delve deeply into one direction. We probably looked more for parallels between the directions than for differences between them. If you have a sense for this, you are able to find it in many basic things, even beyond art.

B: The label has such a strong stable of artists, what do you be look for when you sign a new artist?

OB: For personality, for a personal language, for someone who is able to reflect upon personality.

Bleep: Congratulations on your new album, we here at Bleep love it!
Gold Panda: That is so weird, I don’t know how people can think it is so good, I don’t know what to say, it is like a big fluke.

B: How long have you been making music? And how did the Gold Panda project come about?
GP: I started making music when I was about 15 or 16, my uncle lent me a sampler and an Atari, and I was making these stupid little tracks, and sampling my Dad’s record collection, and at first I just sampled the most obvious things and tried do a Puff Daddy Hip Hop beat. Then a friend and I, we were making films at school, just as a hobby and showing it to the classmates and doing little comedy sketches and stuff, and we would make soundtracks for that, and then I just got more and more in to it. As friends kind of left and went to Uni and I stayed back- I didn’t go to Uni, I got a job, and just got more and more in to making tracks I guess, and shutting myself away in to my room.

It was always a bit of a joke. Then a friend of mine who was making techno who was in a group called Subhead who are on Tresor, he passed away suddenly, and he always telling me that I should do music, I was like ‘no it is just a hobby’ and I didn’t really have the confidence to do it, but when he passed away I though ‘shit, maybe I should give it a go’ and it turned out alright, so I think I have been doing Gold Panda for about two years now, maybe three and then two actually releasing stuff, and actually doing shows and trying to make it work.

B: How do you feel releasing this debut out in to the world? Are you happy with it?
GP: I think it is like a little snap shot of how I was feeling at the time when I made the album, I guess it is quite personal and there is stuff about people in there and relationships and family, I don’t know how I have managed that without lyrics. But I guess it was the way I was feeling at the time and that’s why the tracks have the title that they do, I guess I could name the tracks something completely different and maybe to a lot of people it would mean totally different things, I am not sure how far you can push things with just instrumental music.

B: You have had a really good reception to your work in Japan and you have been touring there, why do you think this is the case, and how has the country and the culture effected your aesthetic?
GP: I got really interested in Japan, when I was fifteen or something after seeing Akira, which I suppose lots of people were influenced by. Then I got more and more in to it and started watching loads of Japanese films and started buying the really expensive imported computer games, and decided that I should probably learn the language at some point.
I don’t know what it is, it is something that I feel there…

Tokyo is a really lonely place and I kind of thrive on that a bit when I am there, and the feeling of being totally out of place as well. I am influenced by the way Japan looks, by the way the roofs of the houses look in the rain, and how these big apartment buildings are really repetitive… I am quite visual when I make music, so I can see these all things as repetition, and then there will be one thing out of place. I like that to be in a song as well, where there is loads of repetition and then there is one bit that comes in that never happens again through out the whole track, and you have to go back to listen to that bit. As for being received in Japan, I am not sure how that has happened, maybe it’s that it is instrumental and there is an Asian influence to it, there is something people can have something in common with, I am not really sure…

B: With your work, there are quite a lot of organic elements, which is what you were talking about – these moments in which don’t occur again, are you doing field recording or live recording? How are you going about getting these sounds?
GP: I do some field recording….the problem the way I record is- the tracks that work well, are the ones that aren’t planned, when I sit down and I think ‘right I am going to make a track and it is going to sound like this’, they never work. But when I just come home late and switch the sampler on and make a cup of tea and just muck around, those are the tracks that work, and then they are finished, and I listen back to them and think ‘shit I could have recorded that so much better if I wasn’t mucking around’, but I don’t see any other way to do it, it is just kind of a thing that happens, like almost magic….

The recordings are a lot from vinyl, pretty much most of it is from old records chopped up and the sounds are pitched up and down and put in to a melody. Because I don’t know how to play any instruments, so it is just based on what note or what pitch I think that the sound should be next, I am playing through these sequences endlessly to make a melody. The tracks are not really arranged in a very professional way, I will make a load of sequences on a drum machine and when it comes to record the track as one piece, I will just press play and I’ll go through the sequences in an order that I think is right while it is playing. Sometimes you hit the wrong sequence next in line, but when you go back to it, it sounds quite good, so I think the organic thing comes from not bothering too much and just doing it for fun and it works and turns in to a track.

A lot of the time the track, actually most tracks, I think it doesn’t sound finished, but maybe it is, and maybe it is time to just let it go, I think you could just go on forever now with technology, endlessly changing stuff and you’ll never get a track done, and I think that maybe when something sounds slightly unfinished there is something nice about it.

B: Can we see a photo of your studio set-up?

B: How do you translate your recorded stuff in to doing it live?
GP: Well, I’ve got a laptop and a drum machine which has all the sequences in, and I can record loops on it while it is playing and then I skip to whatever loop I think should be next. I have got a loop pedal where I can grab tiny bits and build them up and take them apart, it is pretty simple and not very professional, but people seem to like it.

…But for laptops, personally, I think that people are using them so much now that and I wanted to get away from it…. I started not using a laptop but I was kind of restricting myself by doing so, and I would like to go back to not using a laptop, but it is going to take time to programme everything and put all the samples in to samplers or whatever, but where as a laptop is just there and just you just turn it on so.. it is really easy.

I think the main reason why I don’t want to use a laptop is that I don’t want to be bored, and I want more stuff to do. I think having gear where your not looking at a screen, you start to get in to the tracks a bit more. I am in two minds at the moment, like I would really love to do a really club friendly set where I can just make people dance for an hour, but I don’t know how to do that at the moment. Because I have never been a person that goes out much, so I don’t really go to clubs or see bands live…. it is not really my scene, so I don’t really get the live thing to go with music, I am more in to just sitting at home and listening to CDs on my own, so I am a bit confused when it comes to live.

B: You used to work at a record shop, how did that effect the music that you were listening to and creating at the time?
GP: It just made me hate music, and want to do music that wasn’t anything to do with music, it just made me want to do noise, it made me want to rebel against all music and read books.

B: Is there any music that you are interested in at the moment, that you get inspired by?
GP: I like all the Raster Noton stuff still and that 12k label… I am pretty pissed off with that stuff that is that out of time Hip Hop rubbish, a bunch of fake Flying Lotus stuff. It is just fucking annoying, I just don’t get it, I just think it sounds really forced and fake. I really like Rustie’s new EP, I think that he has got something really special about the way he puts tracks together and his melodies. I think a lot people who are doing that stuff are always worried about making the most heaviest most banging track, and that the bass has to be the most ridiculous bass you have ever heard and has got to have this ‘crazy’ beat. But I think that Rustie has got this really good chilled sound, and there is a lot of melody and a lot of thought that has gone it to it, rather than try to be like the heaviest thing you have heard ever. I think he has nailed the whole sound. I think it is what a lot of people are trying to do but he has summed it up in on EP.

People keep on asking me ‘are you influenced by the LA beats scene’ but I don’t even know what that is, I guess that is Nosaj Thing and Flying Lotus, but I don’t know, I have heard that Nosaj Thing album and it is quite good, and I like Flying Lotus 1983 – I have got LA, but I haven’t listened to it. I am getting more and more in to the stripped down techno stuff, I think it is more like rather than enjoying tunes or songs or whatever, it is more about the production and the quality of stuff and thinking about how did they do that, rather than enjoying the music, but I mean I enjoy it as well, but I mean it is technically inspiring.

B: What is next on the Gold Panda horizon?
GP: Well it is now endless touring till the end of November -Japan, America, Brazil, Europe then England… then I think I am free. Hopefully I can do another video and start another album, I don’t want to leave it too long. I have been quite aware of people who have disappeared for a while and then come back with album that has fizzled out. I want to strike while the iron is hot really, and not really wait around too much. I don’t want to dwell on stuff too much, and I don’t want to keep releasing at the same thing. My mind is a year ahead of everyone else, because your just hearing the album now and I am ready for the next one.

Gold Panda’s debut album Lucky Shiner is available now on Bleep.

This interview is part of of our special R&S feature which includes 2 label samplers for £1 each (including the likes of Aphex Twin, Model 500, Joey Beltram, Pariah and James Blake to name a few), and interviews and Top 5 charts as well as a sale on all R&S back-catalogue.

BLEEP: How did the label start?
Renaat Vandepapeliere: Out of passion of music, and simply – there were not many indie dance labels at the start of the 80’s

B: What do you feel has been some of the most memorable moments in the label’s history – both in the public eye and behind-the-scenes?
RV: It’s flattering that people think three have been a lot of memorable moments for the label, but we didn’t realise this, we were just having fun releasing what we wanted!

B: There was no releases from R and S between 2001 and 2006 – was there a reason for this?
RV: Yes, i wanted to take a sabatical and refresh myself a bit !

B: With new artists like James Blake and Pariah – how is the current A&R handled by R&S?
RV: Current A&R Policy is handed over to the young and talented Dan Foat a person, I see a lot of myself in! All supported by the wonderful label manager Andy Whittaker, they run the label from their London base. It’s up to the Young generation, to give them a chance to lead R&S in the future. Personally I am working on my new and first indie rock project, the Irish rock band The Plea.

This interview is part of of our special R&S feature which includes 2 label samplers for £1 each (including the likes of Aphex Twin, Model 500, Joey Beltram, Pariah and James Blake to name a few), and interviews and Top 5 charts as well as a sale on all R&S back-catalogue.

BLEEP: How did you get involved with R&S Records?
Andy Whittaker: Both Dan and I were approached by R&S to do A&R and label management respectively. We’ve both worked in music for a long time as buyers for record shops and at other labels. We know the history of the label very well, but also have
a strong idea of what the label should be doing in these modern times.

B: How does it feel to become part of a label with such a illustious legacy in electronic music? Do you feel that there is a lot of pressure on you to carry on “flying the flag” for the label?
AW: There is always people’s opinion of what they deem to be R&S sounding records, that may not always be in line with our view, but I wouldn’t say we feel any pressure. We just carry on having fun, releasing amazing music that excites us, just like Renaat has always done.

B: What is next for R&S Records?
AW: Firstly some great singles coming soon by Model 500, James Blake, Untold, Space Dimension Controller and The Chain
Then Pariah, Space Dimension Controller, Pepe Bradock and The Chain are working on albums. The In Order To Dance compilation series will be resurrected and we’ve just received superb remixes of Model 500 from Bullion and Space Dimension Controller. We are also starting to move into parties and events with our debut show at XoYo in London in Novemeber.

This interview is part of of our special R&S feature which includes 2 label samplers for £1 each (including the likes of Aphex Twin, Model 500, Joey Beltram, Pariah and James Blake to name a few), and interviews and Top 5 charts as well as a sale on all R&S back-catalogue.

BLEEP: Why did you choose that name Model 500?
Juan Atkins: I chose that as a kind of repudiation of ethnic designation. I wanted to get away from people trying to put a tag on who I am and where I’m from. It’s simply a model number.

B: Recently, you have decided to take Model 500 on the road as a live act. Can you tell us why you have only just decided to do that in the past couple of years when Model 500 has existed since the mid-80s?
JA: I thought that with technology changing and people downloading music, to me, the only way for an artist to exist nowadays is to be able to perform live. That’s where most of the income is going to come from for artists and a lot of new artists. I think that selling records is more of a promotional tool nowadays.

B: The first Model 500 record came out in 1985, but your first album, ‘Deep Space’ didn’t happen until ten years later. Can you tell us why this took so long?
JA: The mid-80s was a ’singles’ market at the time. Everyone was so into just releasing single after single. I wanted to do a proper album project at the time, but nobody was prepared to give me the budget to do it.

B: Has the way that you make music differed at all over the years?
JA: I like to try new things that adds to the creative process; this has always stimulated my creativity. With all the software and plug-ins that are available, I’m having a great time doing stuff on a laptop!

B: Why do you think that techno started in Detroit?
JA: Well, to make this a simple answer, I guess it’s because I’m from Detroit! The bleakness of the city was inspiring, as was the transforming industrial history of the city. The music that we made transformed right along with it.

B: If you could pick any musicians, alive or dead, to ’session’ on a Model 500 record, who would they be?
JA: I would love to work with any of the members of Kraftwerk; that has been talked about before. Bernie Worrell [Parliament]; George [Clinton], of course, but he’s more on the lyrical / song tip.

This week sees the legendary NEU! have their classic albums re-released, including never before released material. You can see all of the catalogue here. To mark this occasion, we decided to talk to NEU! co-founder, Michael Rother.

Bleep: The late 60’s was a turbulent time politically in Germany, but exciting musically, as this era marked the genesis of elektronische musik or krautrock. Can you give us an insight into this period?

Michael Rother: I think the best that I could do is tell you about my own situation. I was born in 1950 and when Paris 1968 [student riots] came around, I was 17 or 18. There were political upheavals and the students demonstrating at the universities. Me and some older friends had problems at school – I was a good pupil – but the conservative teachers were surprised by this this previously ‘nice guy Michael’ suddenly coming up with strange ideas in his mind and my relationship with them at school slowly worsened. We did have one or two ‘progressive thinking’ teachers, but they were a minority. I finished school in 1969 and I knew that, then, I could no longer cope with this very conservative situation at school.

Seeing all the changes around the time, like the Vietnam War, even the changes within the media of film and art; this compelled me to develop my own personality further. My friends and I thought that these changes were like some kind of ‘virus’ that was in the air, and looking back, this was the reason why it felt so natural to develop who I was and detach myself from the background that I grew up in; especially growing up within the clichés of American and British rock music at the time.

B: Was there a mutual decision amongst your peers to react against these clichés?

I think that there’s a misunderstanding here, and I think that this might be a bit of a myth! I hope I’m not going to be disappointing people, but I felt quite alone with the idea of “not continuing with this old style of music” and by the time that 1970 arrived, I wanted to do something new. It’s not like we were all connected then like we are today as people. Back then, I wasn’t aware of what people were doing in musically in Munich, Berlin or other cities. At the time, I didn’t even know that Kraftwerk were in the same city! I went into the studio for the first time without even hearing their music, or even knowing them, and after chance meeting in the studio with Ralf Hütter [Kraftwerk], which led me to start jamming with them, I realised that my thoughts were not unique. We thought about leaving those blues-rock structures behind and having this idea of a more European-based music. From then on, I drew inspiration from and exchanged ideas with the musicians that I worked closely with; firstly in Kraftwerk with Florian Schneider; then Klaus Dinger in Neu! and then with Moebius and Roedelius in Harmonia.

B: Before Neu!, you were involved with Florian and Ralf of Kraftwerk. How did this came about and can you tell us more about the work that you did with them?

I didn’t know Kraftwerk. At the time I was doing service in a hospital as a ‘conscientious objector’. I refused the military draft. The alternative after a court ruling was quite tough at the time – these days you can refuse via sending in a post card, or something like that! Anyway, at that time, I didn’t know the music of Kraftwerk, and, as mentioned earlier, my initial meeting with Ralf and Florian was purely chance after a friend invited me to the same studio. I picked up a bass and started jamming with Ralf Hütter, and from that moment, things started to develop. The melodies and the music that we created were really quite interesting. Everyone in the studio had the same idea; Florian and Klaus were sat on a sofa listening and then at the end of the session, we exchanged numbers and they called me a few weeks later when Ralf decided to go back to university, leaving Kraftwerk for a few months. So I actually met those guys after jamming with Ralf but started performing live with Florian and Klaus as Kraftwerk. A very exciting time!

B: Can you tell us how Neu! started?

Contradictory to myth, Klaus and I were not friends – as strange as it might sound – but I thought Klaus was a fascinating drummer and I had never known anyone with that power, energy and radical approach to drumming. I guess that he was attracted by my style of guitar playing; approach to music and where I was heading. We had this immediate similarity of where we both wanted to go creatively, and when we stopped collaborating with Kraftwerk, in the summer of 1971, we decided to go our own way together. As much as we were very productive together, Klaus was a very difficult guy to work with from the beginning. He wasn’t very pleasant and the way that he drums tells you the story of Klaus! Once when we played with Kraftwerk, he cut his hand badly on one of the broken cymbals that he preferred (he liked the sound) and blood was literally squirting all over the stage! He didn’t stop for a moment and I could see jaws dropping! This approach to drumming was how he would treat his own body and this would get worse in later years. But as an artist, this behaviour would be the extension of his creativity. This was the core that we needed in the studio. I had no idea what to expect in Autumn 1971 when we booked the studio with Conny Plank and took all of the little amount of money that we had to pay for production costs. It was a very stressful time. After recoding for four nights (the studio was a little cheaper at night) and mixing for a few more days as was at home with Hallogallo and other tracks. This was a great moment that I remember so clearly.

B: Neu! has a very unique sound, synonymous with the motorik rhythm structure of tracks such as Hallogallo and Negativland. This highly original sound has influenced the likes of Stereolab, Sonic Youth and countless others. What influenced you at the time?

This is another opportunity to contradict the a myth! A lot of people try to understand and analyse Neu! as the beat created by the drums. There’s no understanding of the music of Neu! if you only look at the drums. Try to imagine ten minutes of simple drumming – nobody would want to listen to that. The magic is the relationship between the drums and the harmonic and melodic instruments. If the drums are taken away from the guitar / piano parts that I played and vice-versa, you are left with something totally different. Neu! is about the relationship between the two. The time that I spent in Pakistan, I listened to a lot of music and I was fascinated by how hypnotic it was, and also the idea of music that went on forever fascinated me. Klaus and I never discussed theories. We were never talking about music, we were making music. The harmonic structures that I put together, I guess, were based around European folk and classical music, but without the song structures of that kind of music or the approach to classical music. It’s basically the ideas of which notes go together and which don’t. Combining these ideas with the hypnotic music that I listened to in Pakistan somehow lead to Hallogallo and what followed. I’m always surprised when people talk about the drums and think that this is the essence of Neu!. It doesn’t make sense if you just listen to the drums and think that’s Neu! If bands are inspired by us are only picking up on the drums, then, in my opinion, are quite far away from understanding what really made Neu! You can hear this effect if you listen to Oasis’ The Shock Of The Lightning – it works if you combine their ‘Beatles-style’ with Hallogallo.

For Part 2 of our interview, go here.

This interview is part of our Permanent Vacation Special Feature which includes an exclusive label sampler for £1 (only available for 2 weeks), interviews, DJ charts and back catalogue sale.

BLEEP: Tell us briefly how you started Permanent Vacation?
PV: The first time Tom and I were in contact was when Tom was working at Compost Records and i was compiling a compilation for them, which Tom was taking care of. After that Tom became a regular customer at my recordshop , i used to run back then. Soon we realized we have the complete same taste in music and since we both had individually the idea of running a label it felt natural to do it together. So, a classic love story!

B: How important do you feel being based in Munich has affected the running of your label – both in positive and negative aspects?
PV: Hhmmm… hard to say. Munich is our hometown and therefore it’s of course special to us. It is always hard to tell if we would be doing things differently if we would have grown up in another city. Munich is a city with a long Disco tradition , with Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder , Freddy Mercury and the Rolling stones used to party here , so it definitely had an impact on us either conscious or subconscious.

B: What has been one of your proudest moments since running the label?
PV: Well, as we heard the Antena “Camino del sol” Joakim remix first time on a big club soundsystem and the place went nuts. This was pretty special for us… or getting an email from Maurice Fulton after just two releases asking if we want to release the Kathy Diamond album was almost surreal. Just when you see that your work was not for nothing gives you a satisfying feeling.

B: List us your 5 favourite /classic/ disco tracks?
PV:

Punkin Machine – I Need You Tonight

Supermax – Ain’t Gonna Feel

Hot Chocolate – Don’t Turn It Off

Tamika Jones – Can’t Live Without Your Love

Charanga 76 – No Nos Pararan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQl_d6zWUC0

B: What do you have planned for Permanent Vacation in the future?
PV: Loooots of awesome music!

We got some great tunes and remixes coming up from Tevo Howard, Black Van , Bostro Peopeo , 40 Thieves , James Curd , DJ Sneak , Barck & Prommer , Dmx Krew , Tbd, Woolfy vs. Projections , Pollyester , Tensnake John Talabot, and many others. We also working on new material for our own project and I really want to make Permanent Vacation beach wear. Speedos and Bikinis and stuff .would be fun

This interview is part of our Permanent Vacation Special Feature which includes an exclusive label sampler for £1 (only available for 2 weeks), interviews, DJ charts and back catalogue sale.

Bleep: Coma Cat has been one of the most played tracks in 2010. When you wrote it did you immediately know that this was going to be a big tune? Has it helped you to reach a new audience?

Tensnake: No not at all. I had quite a good feeling when I produced it as the track is pretty catchy, but I was totally suprised by the success. I guess Coma Cat has some kind of crossover potential as I heard many different style DJs dropping it.

B: What is your studio set-up?

TS: I have a pretty basic studio setup, using mainly VSTs/ UAD plug-ins and a couple of analogue synths. I just bought new speakers as the ones I had before were pretty bad. I always had to go into the kitchen to check the bass or doublecheck with headphones. I didnt hear much bass below 70hz, so I spent more time on the higher frequencies I was able to hear.

B: You have become a sought after remixer with a very distinctive style. Can you describe the process you go through when remixing a track?

I don’t have a master plan when I start working on a remix. I am listening to the original song/ track quite a lot and hope there will be some inspiration soon. It can be a vocal, drum or guitarloop or just a mood while I am listening. Sometimes it is a real fight, you wake up the next day and think to yourself “why the hell did you do this?”. So yes, remixing can be a lot of fun, but also a big pain.

B: What releases are coming up for Tensnake?

I am working on a couple of things at the moment: The next thing out there will be a remix I did for Permanent Vacation: Azari & III “Reckless With Your Love”. I am also working on a live album which should represent the sets I am playing in clubs & on festivals and will come out later this year. I see it also as a possible summary of the work & releases I did so far.

There will also be a double mix CD I’ll do for Defected, full of old and new tracks & edits I love. I think it will come out in September or November.