BASS ALIVE: ELEMENTAL

North London based producer Elemental started dabbling with production in 1994 with a Roland D5 and Atari ST at school. He later invested in an Akai S2000 sampler and a PC, the rest as they say, is history. In the nineties he Predominantly focused on DnB and experimental Electronic music. At 18 he put out his first DnB release off his own back. A few years later, he became one half of breakbeat garage duo ‘Elemental + 3D’, releasing on their own label ‘Runtime Recordings’ in 2002. A couple of years later after some time abroad, he caught the likes of Search & Destroy on Rinse FM and found the sound he had been looking for - dark, heavy syncopated beats and bass.

Since around 2004 Elemental has been focused on bringing his unique sound to the masses, undeniably hard yet dubbed out, dirty bass and hypnotising rhythms. He has had many releases from Destructive, Hotflush, Pitch Black and Halo Beats, and his own label Runtime. His seminal track ‘Soulfire’ featured on Tayo’s Fabric mix cd. Elemental was officially the first person to perform a dubstep ‘Live’ performance, using Ableton Live and midi controllers, mixing up and dubbing components of his productions to rapturous audiences across the world.

We caught up with him to chat about his influences and future plans…

Hyponik.com: Who is Elemental?
Elemental: The musical alter-ego of a guy called Adam Wilson from North London.

H: Tell us more about your approach to music…
E: I’ve been into quite a range of styles over the years, from early rave and hip-hop, to jungle, hardcore, drum and bass, to techno/house in its many forms, as well as experimental and ambient music. My production has spanned a range of styles over the years also, spending a fair bit of time in the late nineties writing drum and bass, and in the last few years focusing on 140bpm bass music that people are now calling “dubstep”.

So I like to bring in various influences in my productions, whatever I’m feeling at the time really. In terms of how I approach the music making itself, that seems to change; recently I have been using more and more analog hardware to make my sounds and sequences (I have a growing modular synth now), and I’ve discovered that, unlike purely sample-based music, modular analog sounds tend to need to be tamed or beaten into submission, or sampled and chopped up later, in order to behave. Its cool if you’re making totally out-there avant garde stuff but for most people they like to have things a bit more predictable. Sometimes its like caging an animal, its trying to get out but you have to contain the chaos to keep some order.

H: What inspired you to start the live show?
E: My inspiration for this happened quite a while ago, towards the end of 2003 I think it was. It was partly wanting to do something different, other than just DJing. It was also a realisation that the performance is becoming more and more important in the age of the internet. It was also a good challenge (I am the kind of guy that likes a challenge). I think the real inspiration came from times when I was working on music with friends, and just jamming out with simple things such as muting and unmuting a hi-hat, or filtering a bass for example. Just feeling the vibe in the room from tweaking a track live, I wanted to bring that to the dancefloor.
I started researching how best to do a “live” show of my music. Initially I was determined to lug around a sampler and hardware sequencer… but soon I realised the logistics were a bit much. Especially since I dont drive! Then I discovered the amazing Ableton Live. Since then I’ve been a total Ableton fanboy. I use for it everything, production, live sets, making tea etc.

H: Without getting too geeky, can you break down how your live set works?
E: Well you know I love to geek out but I’ll try to hold it down! As mentioned I use Ableton Live. The way it works is like this: each track that ends up in my set starts out either as a finished tune or an idea, loop or whatever. It gets split into its constituent parts - e.g. kick, hats, snare, break, bass, pads, melody etc. The audio for these parts is then imported into the live set, where they are arranged on a grid. Each row on the grid is called a ’scene’. A scene can be like a section of a tune, each I’ll have a scene for the intro, the drop, breakdown etc, the main sections basically. So the easy way for me to play my set is just scene by scene. But that gets old pretty quickly. The fun starts when I mix and match parts from different tunes, e.g. drums from one track, bass of another, and chords from a third. I use 3 midi controllers to have control over each channel - I can send each sound to a choice of 3 delays or reverb, I can also apply high or low pass filters to each sound. So I can twist things up nicely, dub things out… My initial ideas for this set up came from the old dub techniques really - its not quite King Tubby but thats def one of my big inspirations.

H: You run your own Runtime label. When did you establish this and what is the ethos behind the label?
E: This label was established by me and an old schoolmate (3D), who is now going into sound for film. We were offered a Pressing and Distribution deal back in 2002 for a couple of leftfield breakbeat garage tunes. Unfortunately the second release we had planned never made it out on vinyl. Our distributor went into liquidation and real life took over… Five years later I decided to bring it back to release some older material, and as an outlet for my music.

H: Who else have you released music for?
E: Just myself and 3D, aswell as a collaboration with my good friend Lohan from Search and Destroy. I plan to release stuff from some upcoming producers in the near future.. so keep ‘em peeled.

H: Do you do much collaboration work?
E: Yes, a little, but its hard to get people together to actually finish the tunes! London life is too hectic!

H: Who would you like to work with in the future?
E: Good question. I don’t know at the moment. I’d like to experiment with expanding what I do live to be honest, work with some musicians and other people doing live electronic stuff.

H: What are your thoughts on the electronic ‘bass music’ scene that you’re a part of?
E: My thoughts.. well, its been interesting, and a good learning experience to watch a scene grow so quickly from just a handful of heads, and an honour to be part of it. However, as time goes on I feel less and less attached to any scene; I”m just into doing my thing right now, picking up odd influences here and there.

H: What can we expect from Elemental in the future?
E: Well… there is an album in the pipeline. It will be out by the end of year, hopefully sooner! I’m hoping to develop my live show into something more “live”, but that will happen when the time is right.

Check out Elemental live at Heads High Live on June 5th, and download a live mix of his perfomance at Tranquera in Portugal here.