LAWGIVERZ INTERVIEW

Lawgiverz is Paul R-Kidz and Nick Noize, a UK-based DJ/production duo with previous releases on Mechanoise, Botchit and the "Bass Instinct" mix CD. We got a hold of Nick for the info...

Links:
Lawgiverz info at Botchit website

April 2004

Can we get some background info on the Lawgiverz? How did you guys get into breaks?

Nick: Going back five or six years we - myself, R-Kidz, Mechanoise - all found ourselves working on the Portobello Road, particularly at Headroom Studio which was in the same building as Hard Hands, Wall of Sound, Kickin' and a young TCR. At the time there was only a few tunes and nights to be found and I suppose the first batch of Mechanoise twelves represents what we felt should be happening.

Initially, you released some great tracks on Mechanoise under the name R-Kidz vs Noize, but eventually emerged as the Lawgiverz on Botchit. Why the name change?

Nick: Well, the name change came because we wanted to create something other than ourselves. We've worked with plenty of other people under Lawgiverz and plan to expand the whole thing beyond just us two. The name Lawgiverz comes from part Aleister Crowley, part 2000 AD and if we get it right, will reveal itself to be much more than the name of two studio blokes! There wasn't any plan to shift from Mechanoise to Botchit, I had been working with Botchit from day one mainly as their mastering engineer and occasional studio jobs. At the time, Mechanoise were moving to the other side of London and were waiting until they got set up again before releasing more tunes. Botchit had always asked us for stuff so it was no problem to leave a few ideas with them and see how it all went.

It’s safe to say you guys really have forged a unique sound. Who are your biggest influences and how do they come out in your productions?

Nick: Many thanks. My own influences draw heavily from a lot of early electronics, there's the real early stuff like Raymond Scott, Jean-Jaques Perrey, then Kraftwerk and a lot of their legacy. The main theme here could be described as minimalism but once you've heard it on a 20k rig that word doesn't really fit! The main thing that Kraftwerk taught me was the way to use only the correctly fitting sounds, i.e. instead of building dozens of layers with sound use three deadly sounds that get the job done. These sort of productions get better the louder they are played because none of the sounds are fighting for space. Space, or silence is just as important as sound, leave space for things to happen, create holes for people to fall down!

Kids has got a lot of old skool electro and hip hop in him. It's a shame but as a Lawgiver he rarely gets the chance to let rip on the decks, there's plenty of turntablism on the go during our live sets but if you heard him do a full DJ set it's a different vibe again.

Your track “Reality” was featured on the “Holographic Bassforms” mix and has some ill production plus one of the sickest bass lines I’ve heard in a long time. What’s your studio setup like?

Nick: The studio is roughly half analogue, half digital. We love some of the stuff that you can get going with the software but it's still so easy to spot a track created entirely inside a computer. Back when I was doing a lot of mastering work, we noticed a whole wave of masters coming in with some kind of problem. We quickly found out these tracks were created internally with poor soundcards and over processing everywhere. They were almost un-masterable and sounded shit on PA rigs. That problem has improved but has not been completely eradicated. We use analogue synths and processing on the way in to the computer so at least we are starting with a fat analogue waveform. Then everything gets mixed on the Soundcraft Ghost desk. There's still a lot of action from the Akai samplers which are far tighter than most of the soft-samplers. We've got libraries copied onto both so we can load up the Akais for final mixdowns etc.

Having said that we absolutely love certain software - it's more a case of getting the balance right and having a serious listen to what is happening to your zeroes and ones. A cheap Lexicon outboard reverb will give you a better result than most of the VST type fx, same with compressors and certainly true for EQ. We have loads of old versions of programs we keep because there's maybe one or two features in them that never got carried through to later versions. Vintage software if you like. Same vibe with the Akais, we get sore fingers getting them to stretch and process bits and bobs that could be done much faster in the computer but the Akais put their 80's electronic spell over it which can do truly strange things given the chance.

We use a load of programs that are six or seven years old because it's taken this long to really get inside them. If you think back just ten years to the days of Atari/Akai/Roland setups it was possible to know all of your software inside out and make a good guess at how to create a certain sound. Now that is impossible because there's new shit to check out every weekend. People are getting upgrade paranoia which can result in never really getting to know your kit from the inside.

The track "Reality" illustrates what we were saying about minimal production - everything has been stripped back to its most basic operating form. Once you get that going you are exposing the sounds in a much greater detail than usual so any small changes in frequency or timing can seem immense from this close up. Productions like this do need serious rigs to work properly, they can sound really very poorly mixed in on under powered rigs.

What’s your take on the sound of breaks at the moment? Do you see room for improvement?

Nick: There's tons of room for improvement. On one level it's great to see massive breaks parties,nights and rooms starting to happen internationally, but with that, we hope that DJs start to push the envelope a bit harder soon because it's starting to shape up into a disco-party-breaks scene. If we compare what's happening now to where it's all come from, i.e. think of the energy flowing round a free party and how devastating some of the seminal breakbeat classics were to the crowds back at the time. You have to conclude that we are still a long way off capturing that sort of intensity.

More worrying is that a lot of people turning up to huge international parties maybe never had a free party scene in their cultural background. For them, there's no reason to think that there might be another level beyond what's currently on offer. It's not that we want to recreate old times, rather we want to tweak the present situation so that it hits the same high water mark, the same level of chaos.

Collectively breaks is putting on a rather cheesy front that has stepped down a level to the point where a lot of big nights leave you feeling like it was a trance or house night. We've always saluted the hip-hop aspect of breakbeat and when you go six hours hearing slow crossfades every five minutes with each new track just theme and variations on the last one it gets a bit soulless. It's not nice to think that a template has been set for the tunes and the whole scene, especially when it hardly does justice to what we are all capable of.

We would go out and get nutted and have to sit down or have a minute because some of the tunes were so heavy. Going back four or five years, most of the well known DJs would have some Begg and Tipper in the box and the whole thing felt like it would just get crazier, but it seems to have got safer. For us, the background we come from and our vision for this music, it means we still have to tweak the program to get everyone aware of the possibilities. The hit, for us, can be described as getting behind the decks 3am in a field. It's a free party on its second night and everyone is fully tuned in...

Suddenly all the tunes that were previously clearing dancefloors reveal themselves to be the purest form of human joy and expression. Then you look around and everyone is feeling it, surfing basslines and you're thinking "What the fuck is going on?" This is what the nightclub will never show you. It's this aspect that a lot of people missed first time around. They think that this music happens in clubs and thats that. There are levels of connection between humans and sound which are not on the menu for a lot of DJs and promoters. It's not their fault but we feel obliged to bring this up at every opportunity.

Having said that there's tons of heads who know exactly whats going on but the press simply don't like it because it doesn't fit their template. We've had interviews and downloads pulled on us because we ripped the breaks scene to pieces. We weren't having a go at anyone, just trying to explain that the labels and DJ pals reviewing each others records are only supporting one aspect of this thing, almost trying to keep it under control so it unfolds in a way pleasing to their bank accounts and ego.

“Passion/Luv”, your first 12” on Botchit, featured a disk with both originals and an extra track of DJ tools. Why add a special section of samples and scratches?

Nick: Probably just for the buzz! We both love scratching and turntablism so if there's a spare 90 seconds on your wax then why not have some fun with it ? We had already done a short run of one sided scratch vinyl to use in our set, it also featured heavily on the "Bass Instinct" album. You have to allow Botchit a little artistic licence, it was either a special DJ Tools section or a load of samples sneaked on for fun!

There was also a doublepack set featuring remixes of “Passion” by Ils and Chris Carter. What’s it like for you hearing someone else re-work one of your tracks?

Nick: Always interesting. It's a shame there's a commercial/financial angle to getting remixes. The distributors often have labels by the balls and can dictate the way these things go. It would be fun to have mixes that were not breaks, maybe not even dancefoor either.

People have been describing the Trigger sound as “electrobreaks”. Do you think this is a fair assessment? How would you describe your sound?

Nick: Well, humans generally have problems when they can't name things. Anyone familiar with DMT ? Our sound is technically known as "23rd Century Reptilian Hydro-Rokk".

Everyone’s been talking about your live set at Trigger last year. For those who haven’t seen the CD-Rom yet, can you tell us what your dex ‘n’ fx shows are like?

Nick: We've done a lot of sets at Trigger with a few different setups but we settled on using the laptop with a couple of decks and a bit of vocoder action. The shows are just us jamming tunes and ideas from the computer with some bits we always play and some that get born on the night.

It really seems like adding extras to set like live effects and PA just takes things up a level. Can you see a difference in doing a dex ‘n’ fx show versus just DJing in terms of crowd reaction?

Nick: The difference is getting less and less. Crowds dont respond to the electronic artist vibe as well as they do to the DJ vibe. The trick seems to be in keeping it bouncy, keep it more hip hop than electro noodle if that makes sense. For anyone using studios or software it is obvious that your laptop should be sat next to the decks, same as Jeff Mills and his 909, once you see what happens it couldn't happen any other way.

Last year Lawgiverz compiled the “Bass Instinct” mix for Botchit, which features an amazing number of tracks - 46! How did you put the mix together and where did you get the idea for splitting the mix into themes based on the seven deadly sins?

Nick: We mixed "Bass Instinct" in a heavy cut up style which captured all the best bits of each tune without including any of the fodder or repeats. Some of the tracks were linked by themes, e.g. George Bush into "American Psycho" into "Move Back", and some were just vibes, mixing whatever felt good, sometimes three tracks plus fx, sometimes tracks at half speed, etc.

The idea for seven deadly sins was born the very second we finished the mix as we noticed a crow tapping at the window which had a note attached to its leg saying "You will split this mix into..." or maybe it was one day at Botchit when I said "Right! We've cut it into six ten minute sections with an intro"?

There were quite a few Lawgiverz tracks on the “Bass Instinct” mix that have yet to be released. Can you give us a rundown on what tracks you have coming out in the near future?

Nick: A lot of those tracks may never get released because they are three minute jams from the computer which changed every time we did them. There's a lot of times when you get somebody clambering up to the booth asking what track is playing when we've been mixing up a load of rough ideas that don't really exist as a finished track.

It's more fun shaping tracks for our own use than for release because there's no need to worry about intros or tempos and we've got some that turn into other tracks half way through, etc. The point is that people are still heavily conditioned into thinking it's always one finished track into the next.

We've got a new double twelve out soon on Botchit, also we remixed the "Don't I Feel" single from Jason Sparks. There's going to be more tunes and mixes cropping up on other labels as well.

Anything else left to plug?

Nick: We have been making plans with Trigger to get a European Tour underway with the Martin Rig on board. We've just got the proposals done and will have to wait to see if anyone goes for it. Anyone interested in folding space should get in touch, Europe or world-wide if you want to feel everything we've been ranting about drop us a line.