Session Transcript:
Alex Smoke
Red Bull Music Academy, Melbourne 2006

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

Alex Smoke's got it runnin'. The Glasgow producer and DJ is one of those dudes you always thought would do something good, then suddenly he seemed to write two classic techno albums overnight. Seriously, the Detroit-based, European-looking 4/4 stuff he makes is as assured and impressive as you're ever likely to hear. With the backing of Soma Records, as tight a ship as ever sailed out of Glasgow's yards, he rarely gets to see his home town anymore, which is tough 'cause it's a friendly place and lots of people there like him. Hey ho, that's life when you're a hot new talent. He chats to the Red Bull Music Academy's Emma Warren.

RBMA: »On the couch we've got techno whiz kid Alex Menzies, better known as Alex Smoke straight out of Glasgow. So, hip hop kind of grabbed you and took you up to date with music?«

Alex Smoke: »Definitely, techno around about the same time but probably hip hop. The first Nas album was the first album I bought, full album. It was great to discover something that you could really claim.«

RBMA: »So what was it that you really got into after that?«

Alex Smoke: »'Round about the same time from Radio 1 there was a thing called the Essential Mix, which is just a two hour DJ mix in the middle of the night on a Saturday night and I used to record all them. And Laurent Garnier was someone who I just picked up on in about 1995 playing Detroit techno and I really, really got into that from there, buying Carl Craig and UR and all the Detroit stuff. The second major influence.«

RBMA: »So techno is your second major influence, you have something you want to play us to sonically illustrate what you're talking about?«

Alex Smoke: »What was I going to play you? 2001?«

RBMA: »So what is it you're going to play us and tell us where you first heard it or what the record did for you.«

(music: 2001 - unknown)

Alex Smoke: »There's actually quit a lot more to that track but, you know, there's a lot more acid and stuff like that. It's not even from Detroit, I'm not even sure where he's from, I think he's from Germany, 2001. It's emotional but it's still very machine music, it's incredibly quantized but it's still got emotion.«

RBMA: »So is that the thing about Detroit for you, the emotion?«

Alex Smoke: »Definitely. I can't even put my finger on it necessarily. I love rhythm and I love percussion but it's more about the melody.«

RBMA: »So who do you think is the master of melody and emotion in terms of the techno massive?«

Alex Smoke: »I have to say Mad Mike probably of Underground Resistance. When you think of how much he's engineered even, when you engineer for someone you're really putting in half of yourself, things like The Martian and everyone he's worked with in Underground Resistance, he's the master.«

RBMA: »Are you an Underground Resistance completist?«

Alex Smoke: »I'm not a completist, no. I used to live with a girl who was a completist so I just nicked all hers. That's not true.«

RBMA: »One of those, on your way out the door, "Mm, I think that’s mine?"«

Alex Smoke: »I'm deadly honest. I'd never do that to someone's Underground Resistance collection. She would have killed us.«

RBMA: »We're going to talk a bit about the connection between Glasgow and Detroit and the fact that Underground Resistance had quite a big influence in the whole Glasgow scene in Scotland. But before that, there's another record that you told us about that you said was quite important and influential in terms of your own musical journey, and that's an Autechre track. I'm not going to try and pronounce it because in typical Autechre style…«

Alex Smoke: »Autechre I didn't get into until later. Autechre, I remember when I first heard Autechre I was just buying records and I was 18 or something and they'd just started and I didn't get it at all, but it's a grower, Autechre. It's kind of like getting into something, it's more about the texture, it's not even about sonics anymore, you can almost hold it. It's called P.:ntil.«

(music: Autechre - P.:ntil)

RBMA: »So you said it's music you can almost hold, what kind of crazy shape is that tune?«

Alex Smoke: »Dodecahedron. It's just satisfying. But it takes a bit more work to get into.«

RBMA: »I guess that sometimes it's not about instant gratification, it's about finding something in music that's a little bit under the surface. I remember some of my favourite music when I first heard it, I hadn't liked it but I'd been intrigued buy it, it has that alien quality in it that pulls you in and makes you want to like it or understand it.«

Alex Smoke: »I think most people, quite often the things you like the most are the things you're a bit indifferent about at first, you grow to get them.«

RBMA: »So persistence, persistence, persistence. OK, Glasgow, Detroit. What's this connection between the two cities?«

Alex Smoke: »It's just the classic thing of a big industrial city with a big industrial background that's kind of collapsed. In Detroit, Motor City, it was about the car industry and heavy industry and coal and steel and it collapsed, and in Glasgow it's coal and ship building and there's just a lot of parallels and it's about, it's the music of a certain amount of struggle, totally with Detroit. You see the UR guys, they have nothing. They're really from very tough backgrounds.«

RBMA: »So in what ways would this relationship, this understanding between Detroit and Glasgow, how would that manifest itself?«

Alex Smoke: »Even to this day I think it's this very close tie. UR people will play in Glasgow, there's a club called Club 69, which is underneath a curry house in Paisley, the middle of nowhere, and it's just the guy from the curry house who works upstairs as a chef, who's behind the bar with cans and it's really super low-key, but if the UR guys are anywhere in Europe, they'd come over and play for nothing. It was more of a classic case of doing it because of mutual understanding.«

RBMA: »So what were these gigs like, these Underground Resistance gigs underneath the curry house?«

Alex Smoke: »I've only ever been to two where Underground Resistance played. The first one was Drexciya, obviously. I'm delighted to have had a chance to see Drexciya, that was really special, and the second one was Stingray, which wasn't as good but Mad Mike was there and that's pretty cool.«

RBMA: »I thought it was interesting that you said then about you used to hate computers until you realized that you could do whatever you wanted and I read an interesting thing that Bill Drummond said, who was in KLF, and he said the only art these days is knowing how to use your computer and knowing how to make your computer do what it is you want it to do, so I guess that's a liberation almost?«

Alex Smoke: »When I realised, I got my hands on as much software as I possibly could.«

RBMA: »OK, so eleven months later Paradolia came out, again on Soma. We were going to talk a bit about as an artist using your voice, it's one thing to sit there and make beats or samples or whatever, but what's it like when you make the decision to start recording your yourself and using your voice as an instrument?«

Alex Smoke: »On the first album when I first started using my voice it was the most hidden thing ever. There's a track called No Consequence where I just hid my voice as much as possible and at the time I didn't have a microphone. Most people will know this but if you use your headphones, you [can] just use them as a transducer but in the opposite direction and you sing into your headphones and plug your headphones into the input. So on the first album I just used my headphones to sing into so it's really muffled anyway and I just put so many effects on it that you couldn't really hear a thing, it's more like an instrument.«

RBMA: »So what made you come out of the closet?«

Alex Smoke: »Come out of the vocal closet? What are you saying here?«

RBMA: »What made you step into the vocal booth then?«

Alex Smoke: »I've got a singing background and it's also the most natural instrument, it's an extension of yourself. So if you want to convey emotion or a personal thing, then the vocal is the way to do it and that's why people connect with vocals the way they don't connect with another instrument, it's a very personal one to one thing. If you want to add emotion it's the best way and words, again, it's another dimension.«

RBMA: »What kind of things do you like to write about?«

Alex Smoke: »Any old pish that comes into my head to be honest. It could be anything from politics and things which are going on around you, anything that influences you, relationships, obviously. Everything like that leads into it, anything with an emotional response.«

RBMA: »So you're writing about anything emotional? Politics, relationships?«

Alex Smoke: »And quite a lot of the time the things I'm singing, I'm not even singing coherent sentences. There's a track Make My Day and I'm just mumbling, there's a few sentences in there.«

RBMA: »The Cocteau Twins approach?«

Alex Smoke: »Yeah, it's like (mimes vocals), a lot of that. And it's enough.«

RBMA: »I think this is the perfect moment to hear Make My Day. Can you give us a blast of it?«

Alex Smoke: »No bother.«

(music: Alex Smoke - Make My Day)

»Don't make me blush (to participants). To the geeks amongst you, for the vocals, obviously it's pitched up, but the stringy sound underneath is also the vocal but slowed down and put into a sampling synth that slows it down and you can re-pitch it. And the drums are Machine Drum, I think.«

RBMA: »Any other little technical secrets or tips you can tell us about that record?«

Alex Smoke: »There's a thing called a convolver, which is the same principle as a vocoder where it takes the signal from one piece of audio and imposes it onto another and the bassline is just from that.«

RBMA: »For you, is one of the things that you like to do with your production is to find way of turning up the weird on it?«

Alex Smoke: »Just trying to not think too much about trying to follow a style or whatever comes and the way it should work if your producing is just to start off with one concept, one idea. So say, I’m thinking, 'OK, I want a bassline which is quite fast and goes like this', then you do that and one thing should lead to another. So whatever it is, if you shut your eyes and you listen to whatever loop you're working on and what suggests itself next? And if it suggests a bit of singing, then you know [you should sing]. And that was like that.«

RBMA: »So you've got a bit of an intuitive approach to the way you make your music, it's kind of like you'll sit there and have an idea and wait for it to unfold almost. It's interesting, rather than having an idea for where A is and where B is and how you're going to get from A to B?«

Alex Smoke: »Sometimes you have to work that way. Say, for example, I have a deadline on a remix and it has to be a certain style, then you have to think a certain way but if I'm writing stuff for myself then it's [more intuitively].«

RBMA: »You just mentioned remixes there and I know you've said you're leaving remixes for the moment but can you just tell us a couple of artists that you have done a remix for?«

Alex Smoke: »Sure, lots of different types of things, really. The last ones were Depeche Mode, which I kind of made a mess of and Steve Reich. Sometimes it just doesn't happen and you sit down and you're like: "Depeche Mode, I'm getting the chance to remix Depeche Mode," and then you just totally fuck it up. And Steve Reich, which for me is a really great personal thing because Steve Reich is an incredible minimalist composer, and yeah, lot’s of minimal guys, and loads of friends. Remixes are something that all the people you meet and you’re pally with are like: "Can you do us a remix?" I find it very, very hard to say: "No, no chance."«

RBMA: »So the bulk of your remixing has been the minimal guys, the mass of the minimal guys and your pals. And you DJ as well, right?«

Alex Smoke: »I started DJing when I was 18 when I first went to university, which I never finished. I was doing biology in Glasgow, aquatic bioscience, but I hate water so I don't know what I was thinking. I knew I wasn't going to finish, basically. So I was doing that and you get a grant system. For going to university the government gives you a certain amount of money and you can get a loan so I got the loans and I got a decent grant and I spent it all on hi-fi, decks, and lived on toast, literally. Lived on toast for two years.«

RBMA: »So aquatic biology's loss is techno's gain?«

Alex Smoke: »Some loss, I can tell you.«

RBMA: »You were saying before that you DJ quite a lot in Germany and Spain. If we were to rock up today Berlin or wherever to see you DJing what are we going to get from a set from you?«

Alex Smoke: »I like to keep it kind of open. I'm not like super-open, I don't play hip hop or drum 'n' bass, although I like them and have records, I wouldn't feel comfortable mixing really disparate styles, but certainly electro, techno and Detroit, old Chicago. I tend to stay pretty 4/4 apart from electro, just trying to make it interesting, some vocals.«

RBMA: »And with your live stuff, you play live as well?«

Alex Smoke: »Mainly live, it's probably about 80/20 live.«

RBMA: »And why do you do that?«

Alex Smoke: »Because I don’t really have any hardware in my studio, I’ve just bought my first synth, really.«

RBMA: »And what was that?«

Alex Smoke: »An Electron Monomachine, for anyone that's interested. It's just a good weird synth.«

RBMA: »There's a recurring theme of weird?«

Alex Smoke: »Weird. Yeah, weird's good. Fact. For live it's just Ableton Live on a laptop, midi controller, just having as many things mapped to the midi controller as possible, then just triggering loops individually with the mouse, keep it simple.«

RBMA: »Now, you've got a new compilation coming out? Who's putting this one out, Soma?«

Alex Smoke: »This isn't a plug.«

RBMA: »This isn't a plug, but if you want to buy it, it looks like this (holds up CD cover).«

Alex Smoke: »No, don't do that. If Soma see you doing that.«

RBMA: »It happens to not be out yet but it's a compilation, isn't it? What kind of compilation is it?«

Alex Smoke: »It just gives you an opportunity to play things you are into, some dubstep on there, some Basic Channel, who are definitely a massive influence, and some Detroit and some electro, just what I like, a mixture.«



RBMA: »At the other end of the spectrum you've also got something you're going to play us that you're working on at the moment. Tell us something about what it is.«

Alex Smoke: »This is just something that I was doing when I was in America a coupe of weeks ago and I was doing this in my hotel and I'd forgotten it was here until I looked at my laptop. I don't use my laptop in the house, I've got a desktop. So this is just, literally, a loop so don't get too excited.«

(music: Alex Smoke - untitled)

»And that's back to the beginning of the loop.«

RBMA: »So in order to get an idea of your work in progress process, what are you going to do with that?«

Alex Smoke: »It's one of those tracks that's rolling along and it would probably come in, I probably wouldn't do too much with it in terms of arrangement, just ease along. It's not a kind of 'ta-da' track so I don't know, I really don't know. As I say, it's an organic process so I just have to sit down with it and I probably wouldn't do any more actual parts for it. Maybe it could take a weird vocal or something.«

RBMA: »Where do you tend to like to work? Are there certain places that are good for you to work?«

Alex Smoke: »Normally, I never work on the road but because I was in America for two weeks, I couldn't not work for two weeks.«

RBMA: »These were DJ dates?«

Alex Smoke: »No, live, generally speaking. So normally, when I'm on the road, I don't work because it's not ideal and when you're in the house, in the studio, you've got the DSP cards and the actual things that I use every day. And what I found as well is, if you work on things, if you're away from your environment where you can actually finish, then you end up starting things and wasting ideas and not ever really finishing up. So it's better for me to be in a position where I can finish it.«

RBMA: »Another interesting project you've got coming up is something very interesting and quite different to the other music you're doing. It's music to accompany the human genome project?«

Alex Smoke: »It's an Arts Council sponsored thing so there's artists doing their thing and they've got an orchestra called the Scottish Ensemble, which is a 12-piece ensemble. So they want me to compose a classical piece of music. They gave me a free reign and said: "If you want to use electronics, feel free." But to be honest, I'd rather just keep it…«

RBMA: »Is this meant to be the sound of human DNA unfolding?«

Alex Smoke: »That's actually the way I'd approach it and that's a different way of working. It's quite conceptual. You're thinking, 'How do I create that kind of texture?' And then you can also have lots of contrivances. So, "Ok, there’s four base pairs in DNA, maybe I'll have four instruments doing three different things?" Stuff like that so you can really play with it. And classical music there's more rules than you think. Obviously, it's not classical as such but it's repetition and shifting things up.«

RBMA: »How do you think it's gong to be, instead of sitting in front of your computer pressing buttons, you're going to be speaking to people? "Play faster, play harder, play slower, play weirder."«

Alex Smoke: »That's definitely the scary bit. Dealing with people as musicians, particularly musicians who are used to dealing with professional composers as opposed to producers who are giving it a shot. It's quite daunting, actually.«

RBMA: »Are you going to write the music first and take it to the orchestra or are you going top work with them?«

Alex Smoke: »There's no way I could actually work with an orchestra, that's just not the way it works. I just have to compose with samples at home and then write out the score. The computer does a certain amount, I can write with the keyboard and Piano Roll and compose like that and do the final thing by hand, I think, because it's the only way. But I know how to read music.«

RBMA: »It's quite a thing, isn't it? Squarepusher did his thing with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.«

Alex Smoke: »He's one of those guys who's actually a really gifted musician. A real multi-instrumentalist, a phenomenal bass player, a real musician. I don't know how Aphex did it, I really don't know.«

RBMA: »So what exactly did Aphex Twin do? He did a similar thing, didn't he?«

Alex Smoke: »He did it with the London Sinfonietta, I think. I'm not exactly sure how they worked it, I don't know if he had an orchestrator who orchestrated it for him, which is what I'd expect. Jeff Mills recently did a thing with an orchestra called the Blue Potential, which is like Montpellier Philharmonic or something, playing classic techno tracks with an orchestra.«

RBMA: »That sounds a little better than Acid Brass, which was a brass band from a Northern mining village playing acid house classics.«

Alex Smoke: »Jeff Mills had an orchestrator who basically did all that orchestration.«

RBMA: »He's the equivalent of a photographer who just presses the button?«

Alex Smoke: »To be fair to him, I think someone else came up to him and approached him with the idea.«

RBMA: »Now, in this kind of vein you were telling me about a Phillip Glass remix of an Aphex Twin record that sums up the beautiful and wonderful and fantastic things that can be created when electronic music and mentality comes together with a classical vibe?«

Alex Smoke: »For me, whatever your background is, all of you have got really different backgrounds, whatever your background is, is to try and bring in your influences and to make it something interesting. So for me anything that's combining genres, classical with Aphex Twin, it's just great. Great to have that interface.«

RBMA: »So this is a Phillip Glass mix of what?«

Alex Smoke: »Icct Hedral, another catchy name from Aphex Twin there.«

(music: Aphex Twin - Icct Hedral / Phillip Glass orchestration)

RBMA: »I mean, obviously I know this is a Phillip Glass mix, but Aphex Twin is pretty much the don.«

Alex Smoke: »Absolutely. Just a real actual genius, a guy doing his own thing and he has to do it, he has to let it out of his system.«

RBMA: »Please give it up for Alex Smoke.«

(applause)