Bass Ache Podcast 010: Nathan Spooner
It’s with great pleasure we bring you the milestone tenth Bass Ache Podcast, this month with a finely constructed mix from the promising up and coming artist Nathan Spooner.
We first bought Londoner Nathan to your attention back in January when we tipped him as one to watch for 2011, on the back on some tunes he mailed over. Since then we’ve watched him grow boundlessly in both his productions and mixes. So it was only fair he got his own chance to wow the listeners of the hallowed podcast.
The mix is an acutely carved combination of deep bass grooves; from up-tempo ghetto influenced stylings of Addison Groove, broken beat washed dubstep Forgive from Mala, dark soundscapes of Deadboy’s Creep remix before shifting back up a gear into Koreless and the floor shredding French Fries mix of Amerie before subtly warming down again.
More than worth checking. Hold tight for the interview straight after the tracklist…
01) Nathan Spooner – Bad Tooth
02) Addison Groove – Work It
03) Addison Groove – Footcrab VIP
04) Lung & Maxx Roach – Booty Call
05) Mala – Forgive
06) Ramadanman – Don’t Change For Me
07) Mount Kimbie – Maybes (James Blake Remix)
08) Harmonimix – Bills
09) Velour – Booty Slammer
10) Creep – Days (Deadboy Remix)
11) Pariah – Crossed Out
12) Koreless – MTI
13) Amerie – One Thing (French Fries Mix)
14) Hardrive – Deep Inside (Pearson Sound Remix)
15) Jamie Woon – Night Air (Marco Del Horno Remix)
16) James Blake – Footnotes
17) Circular Star – Fina Air / The Weeknd – What You Need
We also managed to get hold of Nathan for a few questions on what keeps him ticking in the studio;
Firstly tell us a bit about yourself, where are you from and what’s your music background?
I’m originally from Birmingham, moved down to London about 2 years ago now to finish my degree. I started playing in bands at around 16, getting into music production when i was around 18. After that I went onto Birmingham Conservatoir to learn about music theory, composition and production and finished my degree at Westminster University. Since then i’ve just been focusing on electronic music and just writing as much as I can.
Do you see yourself foremost as a DJ or a producer?
Well i see myself more as a producer. I guess without sounding too pretentious though, I see myself as a composer first, then a producer, then a DJ. Although I do enjoy DJ’ing a lot more than I used to.
For the geeks out there, give us a run down of your studio set up, favourite pieces of kit and work process on tunes and mixes. Do you have a routine or does it just flow?
My set up is really quite basic. Most of the time I just run Reason 3 on my old PC laptop through a pair of nice KRK 5′s. I have tried updating to Reason 5, but the laptop can’t handle it! Its no big deal though, I know Reason really well, and have tonnes of my own synths, samples and sounds that I’ve come up with. I usually mixdown on Reason as well, but im looking into getting Pro Tools. I use a Novation Remote49 keyboard, and whenever I want to record vocals, drum hits etc, i go through my Alesis Multimix.
I guess my favourite piece if my KRK’s. I used to mix on a pair of Sennheiser HD 485′s, and the speakers are just so much better.
Tracks usually start with either a particular sound I wanna use, like a drum hit I like, or a new synth. I’ll come up with a melody or cord progression I like and just piece it all together. I’ll usually get a track finished in a day, but then spend a week completely changing it around.
Listening through to the mix and your tunes it’s clear you have a diverse style, what are your influences and do you ever aim to have a specific style or just flow with whatever you feel at that moment?
I just go with whatever I’m feeling at that moment. I definitely feel like you should always have that individual sound, but at the same time you should be able to experiment in whatever you want. I think music starts to get boring when you set yourself boundaries.
My influences come from everywhere, London is a huge influence, all the different sounds going on, the different paces. When it comes to music, people like J Dilla, Flying Lotus, Kanye, they can do anything but have that sound where instantly you know its a FlyLo track. Then people like James Blake, Burial, Mount Kimbie, they all have the same thing. That’s something that i think just comes one day, you can’t work at that.
Currently it feels like underground electronic music in the UK is evolving at an extremely rapid rate in different directions with the term ‘bass music’ seeming to incorporate ten different genres that don’t really sound much like each other at all, how do you feel about this?
I used to get really wound up by this. I remember the big one was when all that ‘filth’ dubstep came about and you couldn’t just listen to the music any more, you were always caught up in arguments about which was better, more original etc and it just distracted from the actual music. I guess this is one of the reasons people go under bass music, they don’t wanna call themselves dubstep because they know they’ll either get caught up in a big argument or they may be associated with artists they aren’t really fond of. I think its hard with the term ‘bass music’ though, because that would be the only way i could describe the mix I’ve done for you guys, but that’s only because its a collection of tracks and genre’s.
I think there will always be a need to label music by certain people though, I just try to distance myself from that now.
How do you keep up with these constant changes in genres, if at all?
I don’t do it very well. I do try because I know how fussy some crowds are. But to be honest though, I’m not hugely bothered about ONLY listening to new tracks, ONLY playing out music people haven’t heard. The only way I really keep up is by listening to other peoples mixes. Oneman, Ben Ufo, they are always playing new music and people like that are my only source.
Tell me about Dialectics, are there plans for a label?
Well at the moment the plans for the label are on hold while I try and build myself up as an artist. I don’t want the label to look like its only there to put out my music you know? When it does start, it is going to be a label and monthly event. I’ve got a venue sorted in the Portobello area (West London), and I’ll be putting on whoever and whatever I like. It will also be used to showcase artists, photographers etc. I want the label to be more of a collection.
What other plans do you have for the next year or so?
One of the reasons the label is on hold is because I have a release coming out sometime in June through Seinan Music. Really great guys over there, and they have done a lot for me in the past year or so. Apart from that, I’m just concentrating on writing as much as possible and hopefully getting some more gigs around London and the rest of the UK.
Finally, where can we catch you playing out in the near future?
I don’t have any upcoming shows at the moment because I’ve just been concentrating on writing. There will be a release party when the track comes out, but apart from that, just keep checking in on the Facebook page or SoundCloud for information about shows. Hopefully there will be a few soon, and you guys will be the first to know.
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