Production Q&A No.2 - The Dying Punks aka Raiden & Rodell

[Raiden]

Production Q&A No.2 - The Dying Punks aka Raiden & Rodell


For our second installment of the Q&A We have the Dying Punks aka Raiden & Rodell.  For those of your that are not familiar with the Dying Punks, this is a collaboration between OffKey's head honcho Raiden and Subdivsion's man wonder Dean Rodell. This has resulted in the first real crossover compositions between Techno and DnB merging techniques creating a unique style that is the Dying Punks.

They are both in the studio this week working on forthcoming releases and on the much anticipated live set containing only original materail associated with the Dying Punks.

Try and get your questions in before 22nd Feb while they are still in the same studio

DEAN RODELL
Dean Rodell started learning the basics in his home studio on an Atari before he got the chance to learn a few  tricks at gat decores studio in south London 10 years ago. He has since had a studio history that includes working with many prolific techno producers such as Mark Williams, Glenn Wilson, Stephan Ehrlin, Jim Fish & Jeff Amadeus. Along side learning his techno  techniques from Glenn Wilson, the likes of Thor House and John Gardner from morpohonic productions that  worked for eat static, The Strong rooms and Westpoint had a huge influence in his skills how to control  and use many studio conditions. Working back lines and sound for the  Marquee club & The Fridge Brixton among many other systems in Europe for bands such as Pantera & Divine Comedy helped for an overall incite into sound performance and craft.

RAIDEN
Raiden's studio experience started in a local studio making the tea, then progressing to recording demos for bands. When Mr Jarman left school he went to college to study jazz on the bass guitar and trumpet. He joined a band recording many demos with the then young band mates that went on to become Nick Sentience of Nucleus, breaks producer Rouge Element, house DJ Tom Neville and electro producer King Roc, alot of talent for one band. After his BTEC diploma he went on to study music technology the IMT in London which lead to a work experience placement with his production partner Lynx at Airtight studios. He worked alongside DJ Friction, Skinny and got to wittiness the likes of Stakka and Skynet, Kemal, Rob Data, and Keaton work their magic in the studio. This led on to Raiden's break recording for Renegade Hardware.

[gfdfd]

nice one 
big up Raiden & Rodell and good luck in studio 

[j4ck]

Punk is not dead   

[natura43]

First of all, i'm really glad you started this, as i have literaly HUNDREDS OF QUESTIONS, and i'm sure i'm no the only one in here.

Raiden:

 1.) When did you decided, or what leaded you to start doing your live set? And when particular setup are you using now?
 2.) When i look at your nowadays production (like "Bite it you scum" and "Chernobyl" and compare it to your first big tune "Fallin", it is almost like it's made by two copletly diffrent people. How do you feel about this track these days, when you are something like technoid icon for many producers?
 3.) I find you really looking back in music not just in techno and dnb, but also in other genres. Atari teenage riot, Vangelis... what do you listen when you have head full of dnb and you have to take a break from it?
 4.) you often talk about yourself as "failed techno producer". What went wrong ?

Rodell:

1.) How does it feel to be part of new fast growing fusion of techno and dnb?
2.) How did you find Raiden and what was the moment when you two decided to collaborate in studio?
3.) I know that in techno as genre, people are more used to live-sets P.A.s then in drum and bass, i think it's because lot of djs are vinyl junkies, they grew up on it, they don't want to let it go, and even disagree with using notebooks on stage and this Ableton live set concept. What makes you feel like this live set thing is right for you?

Thanks

[Lethal]

Dean are you a dirty marmite lover like Chris?

[spermon]

Hey men, big respect to both of you and specialy to your great EP 
I've read on grid that the original version of Vietnam never happend will be coming out as vinyl release.. Any more info about it ?
And is the voice "vietnam never happend" sampled from Zeitgeist movie ? 

[blacklisted]

cool...

the way i see it you both  have a realy constant creative output and it seems like your working on alot of projects at the same time.

assuming youve been there before.
do you still get moments of frustration or boredom at the studio where the only option is to walk away from it.
do you get to ditch alot of projects/sketches and finish only a few or is it flowing nicely usually.


do you usually start off an idea  from the main rhythm section or it can be something you build around the intro for example.

if you have a synth playing a main "noise"   in your project, do you export it to audio in the minuet  your happy with it or do you leave it untill you finish the project.i know there are no rules here but just to understand your work flow a bit might help getting the right attitude

thanks.

daniel

[teddyhardcor]

hi chris i love your tunes,  lol
how you create your basslines ? using samples? or vst+modulation+distorsion?
thanks for another interesant q&a bro, big up offkey producer forum 

[The Dying Punks]

First of all, i'm really glad you started this, as i have literaly HUNDREDS OF QUESTIONS, and i'm sure i'm no the only one in here.

Raiden:

 1.) When did you decided, or what leaded you to start doing your live set? And when particular setup are you using now?
 2.) When i look at your nowadays production (like "Bite it you scum" and "Chernobyl" and compare it to your first big tune "Fallin", it is almost like it's made by two copletly diffrent people. How do you feel about this track these days, when you are something like technoid icon for many producers?
 3.) I find you really looking back in music not just in techno and dnb, but also in other genres. Atari teenage riot, Vangelis... what do you listen when you have head full of dnb and you have to take a break from it?
 4.) you often talk about yourself as "failed techno producer". What went wrong ?

1) I was really getting bored with conventail DJing, I moved on to playing sets with 3 desks using lock grooves so when Dean introduced me to the world of lives sets I was totally captivated. The idea of being able to completely twist the music and play whatever I wanted regardless of genre really appealled to me as well as being able to spend me time with the Manly Dean. I spent all of last summer learning a technique and started playing small shows in Estonia. The live sets are like any thing else and you get better with experience. I'm using a laptop with a Bitstream 3x and M-audio trigger finger, but I hate the bitstream now so don't buy one! Anyone want to buy me a Lemur?

2) Fallin' was a one off track that just seemed to snapshot my life at that moment. I think all the music in between Fallin' to my recent output shows a sort of natural progression. Back then I was still find myself musically. To be honest Fallin' is a cool track that I'm very proud of, but its annoying some people only see me for that track.

3) I'm avid music collector and I love a huge amount of music, its my hobby to discover as much as possible (r.i.p John Peel). I listen to whatever follows my mood, to listen to one style of music is like eating the same food everyday.

4) hehe I honestly think DnB is ten years behind Techno, and I've always dreamed of being a techno artist hence I started morphing the genres to turn DnB into something that I enjoy. When I started producing I was making electro, I kind of fell into dnb as ppl seemed to like my DnB stuff more.

Rodell:

1.) How does it feel to be part of new fast growing fusion of techno and dnb?
2.) How did you find Raiden and what was the moment when you two decided to collaborate in studio?
3.) I know that in techno as genre, people are more used to live-sets P.A.s then in drum and bass, i think it's because lot of djs are vinyl junkies, they grew up on it, they don't want to let it go, and even disagree with using notebooks on stage and this Ableton live set concept. What makes you feel like this live set thing is right for you?

Thanks

1) Good Question and not one that ive really thought about to be honest . Not being that into one scene or another its hard  to understand the genre and were it is in time, all I do know is that its fresh and brings back a blank canvers to enjoy writing music that can go anywere especially within a live environment.. Happy to be a part of its groth for sure.

2) We met in Austria at me mates flat, after a party chris was playing at  :   After ten mins raiden had fallen in love with me and wanted to  create some sort bastard love child. After a deep discussion over marmite and t (yes dan I love the filth  ) we decided that my hand in marriage was a no go :  but the best compromise would be a couple of nights in the studio together with live and a pot of luxury grease : Spawning  the birth of The Dying Punks.

3) Its funny really cos I see more techno djs playing vinyl than in  dnb : I just think techno has a history of the live pa .. Evan though many back in the day were part of  dat machine  rachime.
Every party that I enjoyed would have a good mix on live pas and djs made for a more eclected party in my eyes ..
I was hooked onto doing the live stuff as soon as I got Abelton when it  came out . For the first time I could really manipulate my sounds live and change the flow of a set .. It is truly a beast … Im not a purist but vinyl still would be my choice to dj just sounds better   

[The Dying Punks]

Hey men, big respect to both of you and specialy to your great EP 
I've read on grid that the original version of Vietnam never happend will be coming out as vinyl release.. Any more info about it ?
And is the voice "vietnam never happend" sampled from Zeitgeist movie ? 

Yep, its will be on the Firm LP and the Vocal is from Jello Biafra spoken word about how the US government behaved like Vietnam never happened.

[contra]

great insights on the punk's private life, but nothing we dont already know from heat magazine...

but no, really, lets talk making music here.!
most advice given around by dnb producers, focus on making individual drums big. huge snare, huge kick, and a few breaks thrown in.
thing is that many technoid dnb tunes actually has fairly thin individual sounds, and relies on more layers and different rhythms between the parts.
is this something that you agree with ? or do you usually emphasize individual drum sounds ?

i mean, i mostly noticed this practice with older kemal tunes, and a more recent example that pops to mind is proket's "locomotive", where whilst the snare is faint, the overall feel is busy.

thanks for taking time for this QA btw.

[The Dying Punks]

cool...

the way i see it you both  have a relay constant creative output and it seems like your working on alot of projects at the same time.

assuming youve been there before.
do you still get moments of frustration or boredom at the studio where the only option is to walk away from it.
do you get to ditch alot of projects/sketches and finish only a few or is it flowing nicely usually.


do you usually start off an idea  from the main rhythm section or it can be something you build around the intro for example.

if you have a synth playing a main "noise"   in your project, do you export it to audio in the minuet  your happy with it or do you leave it untill you finish the project.i know there are no rules here but just to understand your work flow a bit might help getting the right attitude

thanks.

daniel

I think doing lots of different projects helps to keep your creativeness flowing doesn’t let ya get stale in one sound.. Frustration and boredom goes with the job but a bottle of wine or vodka seems to change that .. When things ain't flowing  spending the time creating sounds and fooking up beats to use at a later date normally spurs on ideas..  A starting point to a track can be anything from beats to a sound to a vocal but on a whole its from a groove …

Recording sounds in and out of mix’s is dependent on what we want to do to them. If the CPU is holding out and the sound is already perfect then we would leave it . But sometimes a sound needs to be processed hard to make it really come to life …

As far as synths go I don't generally don't like bounce things as I like to able to control everything in real time and as a tune evolves you always want to change small details or create variations on the fly

[The Dying Punks]

hi chris i love your tunes,  lol
how you create your basslines ? using samples? or vst+modulation+distorsion?
thanks for another interesant q&a bro, big up offkey producer forum 

Thanks!

I will always start off with a VST synth to create the source of the sound, usaul something with a very strong timbre and rich frequnecy distribution then add it to a sampler for twisting. From there I will overdrive and filter the sound till I consider it be crazy. Im a big fan of LFOs so I created very intricate routing of these to things like filter freq, loop start point and loop length. I also break the sound  into frequnecy layers and add I different process to each one, then meld it all back together with eq and compression.

I very rarely use samples for bass now, as I like the best quaility source materail and have something unique. I must admit I've been bit slack creating the crazier basses over the last few years, but my new output has some very wierd basslines, you should hear these tracks over the coming year.

[The Dying Punks]

great insights on the punk's private life, but nothing we dont already know from heat magazine...

but no, really, lets talk making music here.!
most advice given around by dnb producers, focus on making individual drums big. huge snare, huge kick, and a few breaks thrown in.
thing is that many technoid dnb tunes actually has fairly thin individual sounds, and relies on more layers and different rhythms between the parts.
is this something that you agree with ? or do you usually emphasize individual drum sounds ?

i mean, i mostly noticed this practice with older kemal tunes, and a more recent example that pops to mind is proket's "locomotive", where whilst the snare is faint, the overall feel is busy.

thanks for taking time for this QA btw.

Depends on the track, big drums tend to hit really hard and make things sound attacking. Tappier drums make tracks roll more, it depends on what feel you are going for................Personally I don't layer that much because of masking and phasing, Im very precise with drums so you'll never find a single hit on top of an other. alot of our latest tunes have very large beats opposed to the tappy ones. Recently I'm definitely into emphasizing the drums sounds to make a big fat groove.
I like making the percussion very syncopated if the drum pattern is straight and vise versa to really get the shuffle for more intersting rhythms, I feel thats the key to my style of rhythm programing.

[blacklisted]

great stuff....thanks