Session Transcript:
Tadd Mullinix
Red Bull Music Academy, Toronto 2007

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

If one man embodies the spirit, versatility and endeavor of Ann Arbor’s Ghostly International and Spectral Sound labels – both under the stewardship of Sam Valenti – it’s Tadd Mullinix. Tadd has more aliases than a great train robber and is able to jump around styles with ease, never looking anything less than assured in whatever sonic cloak he’s wearing. We get the chance to see what makes this man of many genres tick as he jumps up on the couch to face off with the Academy own Andrew Mason.

RBMA: »Does everybody know, just wondering where we are at musically, does everybody know what we are listening to or who made this music? No? OK. Good to know. Eh, yeah, Jay Dee, Jay Dilla made these beats. We’re here with another product of that Detroit metro area, Tadd Mullinix. Welcome to the couch (applause). OK, definitely. So I know being outside of Detroit you are considered as being from Detroit, is that actually where you were born and raised, Ann Arbor? Where did you grow up, actually?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I was born in Rochester, Michigan, but spent most of my childhood in Florida and then we moved to the metro Detroit area but we never lived in Detroit, people just identify me as a Detroit artist.«

RBMA: »Is that something you have embraced, is there some validity to the concept of a Detroit sound?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I mean, if you’re around the suburbs or whatever, you’re still being influenced by the sound that’s coming from the city and identify with a lot of Detroit sounds and all that, but generally that’s other people labeling me a Detroit artist. If someone asks me personally, like: “Where are you from?” I say: “Ann Arbor.” Even though, actually, I live in Ypsilanti, but…«

RBMA: »For those of us that aren’t clear on it, how far away are those places from downtown, gritty Detroit?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Ann Arbor’s about 40 minutes by car, it’s the University of Michigan, a nice college town, pretty mellow.«

RBMA: »How old were you when you first started making your own music?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, when I was making my own music, I was in bands in middle school and high school.«

RBMA: »So, your traditional band line-up? Guitar, bass, drums, that kind of thing?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, pretty much, we were playing punk and indie rock and Shoegazing stuff and from that like Can and metal...«

RBMA: »Every band when they start out it seems play cover versions. What were your specialties?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I was doing a lot of the writing and….«

RBMA: »So you didn’t like the cover versions?«

Tadd Mullinix: »No, no, no, I wasn’t trying to do that. Actually, we did do that for Battle Of The Bands or something like that in high school, it was terrible. We did Confusion Is Sex by Sonic Youth.«

RBMA: »Deep.«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, I like that song and everything like that, but I didn’t want to be playing other people’s music, so...«

RBMA: »Do you remember first being aware of some of the other stuff coming out of Detroit? Looking back on what might be considered the typical Detroit stuff, when did you first start hearing that?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, I mean what happened was I was skateboarding a lot, a lot of my friends were skaters, and it turned me on to a lot of different kinds of music. I don’t know about all over the area, but in the metro Detroit area skaters were listening to anything from like metal to hip hop and that was in the mid-‘90s. A lot of people were going to Packard plant parties and raves and stuff like that and that experience turned me on to stuff like Richie Hawtin from Windsor and Jeff Mills and Robert Hood, and I was really influenced by that sound and the sound I heard at raves.«

RBMA: »So there was a decent rave culture in the Detroit area? When you say the Packard plant, is that the actual auto plant where the cars were made?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, it’s one of the old auto plants.«

RBMA: »For anyone who doesn’t know, Detroit is also known as the 'Motor City'. Motown, was once the car capital of the world and now, I guess, there’s a lot of remnants of that industry and so that’s pretty ill that they had raves in the old car factory. So what kind of stuff was getting played at those parties? Who was DJing, or was it not about the DJ?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I don’t know what other people thought, really. Like I said, Jeff Mills and Robert Hood were DJing there a lot and Claude Young and Daniel Bell, all kinds of people. The sound at that time, what was getting big at that time was called minimal techno and it’s very different from what people call minimal techno nowadays. A lot of the popular minimal techno now tends to be European or German stuff producing small sounds, and it’s not necessarily any more minimal in its concept than most techno. But what was being called minimal back then was artists like Robert Hood and DBX, and that was at that time very different. I think we were coming out of a sound, a pretty hardcore rave sound and hand-raising tracks and stuff like this, and at that time, I think, people got burned out on it and so we were hearing a lot of minimal stuff.«

RBMA: »What would characterise that sound?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry, I didn’t explain that. Well, pretty much not a whole lot of layered sounds, you know what I mean? Not a lot of very big changes in the music. Like, for example, Robert Hood was doing a lot of this thing, this interesting sequencing, with a synthesizer where a synth line would phase in time and be seven steps instead of the typical eight steps and stuff like that and just weird arpeggiations and stuff.«

RBMA: »So you’d have a seven beat rhythm...«

Tadd Mullinix: »…over a 4/4 kick, basically. And just like one synewave making a sound, if you think of songs like Freak and one of DBX’s big tracks, like Losing Control and stuff like that. Those are pretty typical.«

RBMA: »What kind of stuff were people using to make that? What kind of gear were they using?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I think the analogue stuff was pretty normal, you can tell DBX was using things like Casio RZ1, drummachines and 909’s and stuff like that.«

RBMA: »Were you still playing in bands at that point when you were going to raves?«

Tadd Mullinix: »No, when I started going to raves and stuff and was hanging out with these skaters, one of them introduced me to Aphex Twin and I was like: “OK, this is something I can do on my own and there are all these sounds involved and I can explore more and experiment more with this kind of music.” So then I started working alone and actually started DJing around that time, around ’95.«

RBMA: »What did you start making your music on?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Me and my friend Josh, we were just using toy keyboards and running toy keyboards through guitar pedals and then into an amplifier and micing the amp. We really didn’t know what we were doing, we weren’t using any midi or stuff like that. Then, eventually in high school, I met this guy named Roger and we became really big friends. He was using Ultra Tracker and Fast Tracker at that time and then he discovered AST and we started using that, he pretty much taught me how to use Tracker software.«

RBMA: »Did you set out to try and emulate and copy the things you were hearing or did you try, with the punk ethos or whatever, to break away and make something experimental and new?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, a little bit of both, to be honest with you. There was a lot I liked in the music I was buying and hunting, but I would go to sleep at night and have a dream that I found a record or something like that and in the dream I’d be like: “Oh man, this is the best thing ever.” And then I’d wake up and be all pissed off, like: “Damn, I thought I’d found some really great records and now I don’t have them anymore.” So then I was basically wanting to make music like that because I was really inspired and I wanted to fill that gap, the sounds that I was dreaming about. I liked people like Squarepusher and DJ Dextrous and Aphex Twin and stuff like that, but I wanted to sound like stuff they were doing but a little bit different.«

RBMA: »And were there other people you could bounce ideas of off or was this a ‘retreat to my studio and be by myself’, a kind of mad scientist type of thing going over?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I didn’t know. A whole lot of people who were into what I was into until a little bit later when I met Todd Osborn in Ann Arbor, he and Roger were the only two people that I really cared about what they thought. Basically, I was just doing it to make me happy. I didn’t care about what anybody else thought or what they knew about or anything. When I started going out to Ann Arbor I was making trips out there to go record shopping and Todd had this record shop out there called Dubplate Pressure and he had a whole bunch of ragga jungle there and hip hop and the quality control was pretty great, so I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to ask him questions the whole time and bug him’, and I think (to Todd sitting in the audience) I gave you a cassette tape or something like that? Yeah.«

RBMA: »Todd told me he first noticed you because you used to come into the store and ask about the most obscure one-off record that no one had ever heard of and eventually you told him that you were making your own music, etc., and it was basically on after that.«

Tadd Mullinix: »I remember going to parties in Detroit and there was this DJ called Rotator who was basically the dopest jungle DJ I had ever seen. He was mixing jungle like a ghetto tech or booty DJ would mix in Detroit. Really fast, lots of cuts in and out of tracks in a minute and he was just playing this stuff that was so obscure. And sometimes, he was playing a track like a Squarepusher track, and I’d recognise it but then he’d go into something like a crazy mashed up darkstep track or ragga jungle track that I could tell was from the early ‘90s, but I wasn’t sure what it was. So he was really inspiring and let me know there was more stuff out there to look for.«

RBMA: »So at this point, are you thinking of yourself as, ‘I’m a DJ and I want to collect these records to go out and play and maybe recreate these parties and raves’ that you liked, or are you thinking like, ‘I want to make this music and become a recording artist’, or something like that? Where’s your head at at that point?«

Tadd Mullinix: »At that point I knew I was making music, I was pretty confident, or happy with the stuff I was getting done. I had been DJing at that point already. I was DJing in coffee houses around the area and some parties and gallery spaces and stuff so at that point I didn’t have a name or anything like that but I was getting a lot of experience doing it.«

RBMA: »So how did you make that transition from bedroom production to someone is going to put my music out?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, I didn’t really have to do much. I was working at that time. At that time I got hired by Todd to work at Dubplate Pressure and this guy named Sam Valenti comes into the store and says: “Hey, I hear you make house music.” And I was like: “Yeah, I mean I got a couple of house tracks but I’ve been making all kinds of stuff.” I mean, as soon as I got AST I was making anything I really wanted because I was really into Pete Rock and Premier and there was this DJ Presyce from The Molemen in Chicago, who had some Fresh Produce mix tapes, one was called. Well, they were all called Fresh Produce, I think this was volume #4, it was an instrumental cassette and the sound was super dusted. And there was wow and flutter in the cassette and it was super hissy but it was just really simple, really mellow hip hop beats and I was just looking for this kind of stuff all the time. So I was making hip hop and jungle and techno and house and what people call IDM or braindance and electro and, anyway, I had all this music in my car just to reflect and see if I wanted to make any changes. And when Sam came into the store and asked if I had anything, I just went to my car and gave him the cassette and said: “There’s other stuff on there but I think the house tracks are the first two or the first three or something.” I guess, he listened to the whole thing and he came back with some big ideas.«

RBMA: »The first releases contained a little bit of everything? He comes into you thinking house music, what ended up as the final product?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, actually he didn’t sign me to do house music, that was the funny thing. You mean, what was the final release?«

RBMA: »You didn’t end up releasing the house stuff?«

Tadd Mullinix: »No. Well, I want to add right now that already Todd and I had released a couple of Rewind! Records, we had our own jungle label we started. Todd was doing most of the work so I don’t want to take most of the credit for it. We would both work on one track or he would do one and I would do the other, so the creative input was equal there and we already had this kind of weird cult following. Like, there was people in Toronto who knew what we were doing. Some people there knew what we were doing, but most people didn’t know about it, it was super underground, very limited and low budget. But back to what you were saying. Yeah, he was really interested in the three kinds of music that I did and I had to have to think about what I wanted to do about that, how I wanted to package everything or categorise it for people. So I created a few aliases, Dabrye, which is the hip hop, James T. Cotton and also JTC now for all the techno and house music and the music under my own name is just IDM or braindance. I also had another project, which I was keeping secret for a while, which is Charles Manier which is EBM sort of influenced by Severed Heads, Liasons Dangereuses and stuff like this.«

RBMA: »Why do you think it’s important to keep this different aliases and categorise things like that?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I want to know what I’m buying, basically. In the end, it’s my music and I like it, but when it comes to other people I like to respect the diversity in what people like to specialize in and what they are collecting. It’s also good for presentation, I think. Creating aliases is a good way for me to categorise it myself and create, like, Dabrye has his own world, and I would fetishize when I was going through bands and records in my mom’s record collection. I remember just listening to a Talking Heads record and just staring at the artwork and getting absorbed in that world. And that’s what it sort of is as an artist: you are creating a space for you and other people to retreat to and escape to. So by creating all these different aliases, and not making one album a hodgepodge of all these sounds, I can really, really dig deep and specialize in something and I like to do it with some sort of, I don’t know how to say this, I didn’t really want people to think that all of these aliases were coming from the same person. I wanted to be competent, basically. I didn’t want to be one of those people who were doing drum ‘n’ bass but then they had a side project that was trip hop and it wasn’t fully good. I don’t know how to describe that.«

RBMA: »The danger, you don’t want to be dabbling in a little bit of this, a little bit of that, coming off as a full-fledged artist in each style that you approach, but I guess the danger, you feel like, 'Oh, I’ve put all this work into getting Dabrye known or James T Cotton known and now I have to go out and let people know who Tadd Mullinix is'.«

Tadd Mullinix: »That’s OK though because I feel like people… it’s going to be a small percentage of people that really, really dig deep and give a crap, that’s going to be sort of affected by knowing that all the aliases come from one person and I think that can be a good and bad thing but I think the people are really into niches. I don’t know too many junglists that are really into EBM and I respect that and I don’t necessarily think it’s bad for someone to be not into another kind of music. I don’t want to sound all kind of political, but presentation is very important in the art world and that’s all I’m trying to do.«

RBMA: »And I guess you must run into people at gigs and stuff, who know Dabrye but have no idea about the rest of your stuff, or who know your work in one particular field. Do you encourage people, will you let people know that that’s you? You do all this other stuff or do they have to figure it out for themselves if they’re really interested?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, if they’re really interested. I’m not like a salesman, I don’t want to be like: “Yeah, if you like this, you should also check out blah, blah, blah,” and usually people don’t care. I can imagine if I were like: “I also do this hip hop stuff,” and people being: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” we’re at a loud club or something like that, I’m not trying to have a length conversation with them and pretty much they just want to tell me they liked what they saw. But sometimes someone will come up to me and be like: “Yeah, really like what you do,” and I have to be like: “What thing are you talking about?”«

RBMA: »So just backtrack a little bit, has your gear from when you started making these cassette tapes, has it changed? Of course, you’ll have added stuff, but can you take us through what you were working on at that time after the toy keyboard stage up until presently?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Again, the toy keyboard stage was very experimental and none of that stuff has been released. I like some of it but I don’t think other people will get it. I’m attached in a nostalgia way. Like I said, Roger introduced me to AST and Todd and I and him were all using that stuff. I’m sorry, AST is sort of like Fast Track and Ultra Track, a shareware program that runs in DOS and it’s very, very graphically primitive and a lot of people, if you don’t have any experience with a tracker, it’s not going to make a lot of sense because of things like the shortcuts you’re using. It’s sort of like a player piano, it scrolls and there’s like a step ladder image going like this and you’re basically placing the note. You’re giving an effect to it symbolized by a letter and then you’re giving it parameters with two digits but hex numerations so the values go from 1 to 9 and then after 9, A-B-C-D-E-F so you have like values like 1A, 1B and on and on. I don’t know if that makes any sense to anybody, but instead of values of ten you’re dealing with values of 16 so you have to do some extra maths, but they just do it that way so you can have more value in one digit space. So you can actually do a little bit more that way. They should have just went to Z instead of F, I don’t know why they stopped at F. But anyway, once you get the hang of it, it’s not the best sounding program but it did the trick and we used a lot of mono samples and stuff like that and you just have to be a kind of ninja and make do with what you’re using. That’s pretty much key, I’m not a gear head and I learned from using AST that it doesn’t matter what you’re using, it really doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with what you’ve got.«

RBMA: »That’s sort of an interesting point you’re making because particularly with Detroit, I think maybe more than any other places, the sound is identified with particular pieces of gear.«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, but that goes with everything though, I think. You think it’s particular to Detroit?«

RBMA: »Yeah, I mean I don’t know what everybody else thinks but I hear “Detroit”, I think ‘909’, and stuff like that. And Chicago as well. You think of like acid squelchy stuff that is, whether it’s made on those machines or not, it’s made to emulate that sound. I wonder how much of what you’ve done is a result partially of the programs you started using? Did you fall into that mindset of: “These are the limitations of this program that I’m using just by chance when I started out, now I want to go back with something new but I want to make something. I’m used to making stuff that sounds like that.”? Is that valid?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I mean, yeah. It’s your opinion, dude.«

RBMA: »I don’t know, I’m not....«

Tadd Mullinix: »I know what you’re saying, I think what it is is when you’re talking about Chicago house or Detroit techno, you’re talking about the beginnings of a certain style of music and with that everybody will fetishize about what was the year that was out back then and what were they using and you have that context of the music. And those are the people that, you know, like Larry Heard or something like that and Marshall Jefferson and these guys and Derrick May, they were using other pieces of gear but the big tracks and the most influential tracks are things that people get really obsessed about and want to emulate. I do a little bit of that but I like presets, I like stuff like that. I’m not a purist and like: “Every time I make something there’s got to be some new crazy sound.” Sometimes you’re looking for that cheap, pre-made, naïve sound.«

RBMA: »So when you’re using that program you are sampling stuff as well as generating, does it have like a tone generator?«

Tadd Mullinix: »No, it’s just a full on sampler/sequencer, sorry.«

RBMA: »So it was all sampled stuff?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, you’re sequencing waves with AST, basically.«

RBMA: »So how did you progress from that? Did you feel happy with that, that was handling everything you wanted to do or did you reach a point where you were like: “You know what? I want to go beyond what this program is letting me do”?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, basically when you’re sequencing waves there’s not much tweaking going on. There are some envelopes and you can change the resonance on things and stuff like that but I’ve found myself sampling a 303 from another track, just like: “Oh man, this sucks. I just want a 303, man.” And so, eventually I started buying gear and drummachines. And also for me personally, I get really worn out making music in the computer after a while. I really want to actually be engaged with a piece of equipment that’s interactive. Even midi controllers kind of bother me because they don’t have character or what this button does can change for every program you’re using and stuff like that. And I like the the old machines because they have a kind of character and they are difficult to use, which is a good thing, and also those challenges sort of keep you restricted too. A lot of things, especially nowadays where software is very widely available and it’s a global culture and all of this stuff, it’s sort of like New York, man. You go to New York and it’s like I’m never super impressed because I go there and I’m like: “They have everything here. They could do whatever they want, they could be inspired by anything.” But, not to diss New York, but all I’m saying is that I’m not impressed by the things that come out of there. Considering what’s at their fingertips, that’s how it is with a lot of artists, you can get a laptop and make whatever you want and use whatever you want and people are using pirated software all the time and it’s kind of like you don’t have enough limitations and they’re not really focused enough.«

RBMA: »It’s definitely true that limitations can force you to be creative and no limitations almost can have the opposite effect on things. So where did you go gearwise from there?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, I can’t....«

RBMA: »What’s your, is your current set up vintage stuff?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I do have a lot of vintage stuff. Basically Todd and I put a studio together of a 909, 707, 505, 303, 101, all the Roland stuff, a lot of the early Roland stuff and vintage drummachines. RZ-1 and stuff like that.«

RBMA: »So I want to know how did Dabrye became Dabrye?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Oh yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. Well, basically it was when I worked with Jay Dee for the first time.«

RBMA: »When did you become aware of Jay Dee and his music?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I think it was basically Slum Village was kind of pretty hot at that time.«

RBMA: »How popular were they in Detroit because thy were an underground thing that people in the know knew about but they definitely didn’t have the kind of exposure that they’ve gotten subsequently?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I think if you were a head in Detroit, you knew about them, basically. No matter what kind of music you were into if you were sort of around. Like I said, I was hanging around with a lot of skaters and stuff and I guess at that time skaters were pretty hip when it came to music and stuff and I was hanging out with Todd. Todd might actually have introduced me to Slum Village. They had a lot of records for us, basically. I was a DJ, I don’t know how many people really knew about them but I knew they had a really big underground following in Detroit. What was I talking about again? Jay Dee? Oh, Dabrye. I think basically we talked to him and I was saying Dabrye and Sam was saying Dabrye about it, he was like: “Yeah, I’m hip.” I actually bought his records, House Shoes sold Jay my records at Record Time, I believe In Roseville. I don’t think anybody knows how to pronounce the name just because of the way it’s written out and I didn’t care about how it was pronounced. I like the way the letters are when they are together, from its sort of graffiti standpoint. So I was just calling it Dabrye and then when I put out a record on Eastern Developments, Scott Herren’s record label, they wrote out a bio and they were the first people that tried to phonetically describe the word and they got it wrong. They wrote Dabrye and it’s still on the page like Dabrye or whatever, not wrong but just not how I said it, which I guess, is technically wrong. So I think even though I talked to Jay I can still imagine him going like: “How did he pronounce the name?” So then I imagined when he rapped on Game Over and said “Dabrye” and rhymed it with “Hobby”, and this is Jay, I’m not going to correct him. It’s like in a way he defined what I was into, so I didn’t mind him changing my name, and the way he used it and the rhyme was really good, so it was sort of an honour.«

RBMA: »Did you choose that track to go to him or was that something that he listened to and chose?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, the way it worked, Sam and I had a friend who was working for a car magazine basically and the car magazine said: “Hey, Riley will you go and interview Dilla while he’s driving?” Like, I think it was a Mercedes SUV or something like that, and when Riley was interviewing Jay, Jay said something like: “I’m working on a new album and other people are doing the beats,” and stuff like that and Riley told us about that and I was like: “Oh, OK.” So we got a hold of him and I was like: “If you need some beats for your album, I’ve got some.” And so we gave him a CD with four beats on it and we met up at his studio and he was saying: “Well, you know, I don’t know where the album’s going to be at,” because it was this album for a big label, “...and I think I’m all set for now,” and he didn’t want to hold anything up and he said: “Well, why don’t I do something for your album?” And I said: “OK,” and he really liked the beat for Game Over and he also liked this one with the Lou Rawls sample and it’s called It’s Strange. And later on he used this beat for a little interlude on Donuts. It wasn’t my beat but I think he re-sampled it and did something a little bit different with it, but I thought that was pretty fresh, took it as a compliment that he used it and I never used anything with it because I was afraid about sample clearing. I wasn’t but the label was pretty much, so yeah, he picked Game Over and Phat Kat and Dank from Frank ‘N’ Dank was in there and Young RJ from B.R. Gunna was in there, House Shoes, we were all in the studio and Jay was like: “I like this beat,” and they were playing it and Phat Kat started freestyling about guns and stuff and I was like: “Yeah, man. This is pretty fresh!” Because at that time I was getting pretty sick of conscious rap and just the aesthetic that came from this 'super bohemian syllable hog style' and this was a while back. Things have changed now but back then it was kind of like: “Alright, I don’t want to be identified as a backpacking indie hip hop kid,” plus I was living in Ann Arbor and Atmosphere was coming into town like every other month and all the people inspired by that sound was just getting on my nerves and I didn’t want to be associated with that. And especially, at that time people were calling my sound glitch hop and stuff, and this was not my invention and, generally. When I think about glitch hop, a lot of other groups come to mind that I really don’t like and I always thought I was making hip hop just with my own flair or just this very synthetic sound. But then, when this corny term called glitch hop came out, I was just like: “Man, this is just like sucking the sex out of the music completely.” It sounds so academic and didn’t have the sort of feeling that I wanted in my music. So anyway, I was really excited to work with MCs that had the street delivery, the kind of hip hop I liked.«

RBMA: »Did you work with MCs before? That was the first track, right? Did you ever have any producer type of input into their lyrics or the way that the song lyrics were arranged in some song?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Nothing like that. I just chose MCs that I really, really liked. Everybody on my album I already liked a whole lot and I was a big fan of what they did. I didn’t settle and I chose them because I liked what they do.«

RBMA: »And they had the tracks and you let them go. So what did you use to make Game Over?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I used Fruity Loops to make Game Over. I’ve only made four tracks on Fruity Loops and they were all Dabrye tracks and that’s the only time I’ve used another program.«

RBMA: »Let’s check this out for a minute. See if we can get this going.«

(music: Dabrye feat. Jay Dee - Game Over / applause)

Tadd Mullinix: »Thank you. This is like, when we went into the studio, this is like well after Welcome 2 Detroit came out, and then when we went into the studio, he gave me a CD of Ruff Draft well before that was out and I thought it was really good. I felt like we were on the same page basically, because when I went into the studio and I didn’t like backpacking stuff and I really liked street delivery, he was like definitely feeling that. He was like: “Alright, yeah,” and you can hear a lot of that in Ruff Draft, too, and I think that we were on the same page in terms of doing something a little different at that time. It turned out good that way.«

RBMA: »That was obviously a big record in our world. Did you have pressure from the label to come with more stuff like that?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Stuff like what?«

RBMA: »Like Game Over. «

Tadd Mullinix: »In terms of “like it” in what way?«

RBMA: »Street MCs on beats that were off the tempo and vibe that could be played on hip hop mix shows.«

Tadd Mullinix: »Not at all. That was something I’ve been wanting to do and, like I said before, that was just the kind of hip hop that I was into and the label didn’t give me any pressure for going in any direction or stuff like that.«

RBMA: »But beyond the hip hop stuff, at this time you’re still making and releasing stuff under completely different genres. When you’re out there DJing, do you DJ as Dabrye or do you DJ as James T Cotton or…?«

Tadd Mullinix: »If I DJ, it’s either as SK-1 doing the jungle or JTC, James T. Cotton doing techno and dance music in general.«

RBMA: »Do we have any of your techno stuff? Can we hear that?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, sure. So this is actually a remix of a group called Orgue Electronique, an EP called The Garden. It’s very influenced by The Music Box and Ron Hardy.«

(music: Orgue Electronique - The Garden (James T. Cotton remix) / applause)

»That was a long one, that’s the idea, though. It’s a beat track and that’s the tradition, I think with beat tracks, is the kind of groove and there’s a disco element to that long sort of track and that was released on Remix!.«

RBMA: »Definitely, so you mentioned being inspired by The Music Box, Ron Hardy. Can you let the people know what The Music Box was or what that means to you or the city?«

Tadd Mullinix: »OK, so I’m maybe fourth generation so I don’t know if I’m getting all the stories right but the deal is that basically the disco and house scene in Chicago was warehouse party environments and there was Frankie Knuckles doing some DJing and there was Ron Hardy. And a lot of people thought Ron Hardy was more experimental and a little more aggressive with his stuff and he was doing a lot of edits and drummachine workouts and stuff like this. Ron Hardy would play demos that friends would bring into the club and he would actually play the tape there on the spot. He’d preview it first and if he liked it, you couldn’t really do this at a Frankie Knuckles party and basically I collected tapes, not tapes but recordings of tapes, and stuff like that and got way into what Ron Hardy was doing. What he did was very experimental in terms of the kind of stuff he would spin and how he would spin it. It’s a lot more my style and it’s a lot dirtier and more experimental basically.«

RBMA: »So that was a remix you said? How much of the original track is in there?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, I guess I can play it really quick and snip it and this is the original element, it’s sort of there melodically in that bassline.«

(music: Orgue Electronique - The Garden)

»This is a lot more a purist Chicago House sound, I think.«

RBMA: »There’s no doubt your track is a lot harder. That was just a whole reimagining of that whole concept, I guess. You didn’t use any sounds or anything like that from the original track, did you? «

Tadd Mullinix: »No. They didn’t give me any source material so I basically tried to just reflect on the melodies in the string and the bassline and really that beat in my track. In my remix was sort of a remake of something I heard Ron Hardy play in one of his remixes, just this very long drummachine sequence going on. There’s little bits of soul buried in the sound, very quiet, and a little disco guitar, he did cool stuff like that.«

RBMA: »I noticed the other night when you were playing it seemed like you were playing all vinyl. Is that the case?«

Tadd Mullinix: »No, I played a few CDs. I brought some unreleased stuff and I spun some of that, but yeah, I do collect vinyl and I’m still a vinyl DJ.«

RBMA: »Even overseas you bring your box with you? It’s becoming sort of an anachronism for a lot of DJs, you don’t see them out there with vinyl anymore. Is that something important to you? Keeping the vinyl culture, that vinyl has a sound or anything like that, or is it just something you are more comfortable with?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I have all this vinyl and I’ve been collecting for a long time so I might as well use it. I do run the risk of losing some of it or something getting ruined or lost or lost in the transit but I like vinyl. I think it’s a very fun format, I like having large artwork and all those kind of things but I’m not a purist, I don’t frown on Serato or stuff like that.«

RBMA: »Is there a lot of improvisation when you’re DJing as far as when you blend songs together, what you’re going to play in what order?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, I improvise everything.«

RBMA: »And it changes based on the mood of the room or where you’re at, that kind of stuff? Do you feel when you’re out with that limited selection of stuff, what you’ve brought in your bag, are you able to tailor it successfully to the situation you’re in or do you encounter situations where it’s not flying with the people in the room?«

Tadd Mullinix: »I do get that but I try to convince people to just hear me out. But generally I bring a variety of things, I like a lot of different kinds of dance music.«

RBMA: »What kind of stuff by other artists are you feeling right now, that are out there people might know or want to check out?«

Tadd Mullinix: »All kinds of music? Any style? Jeez, what have I been listening to lately? Oh man. The thing is, I work at a used record store in Ann Arbor and I’ll buy a record and it’ll be whatever and that’s what I’m into at the time. Lately, I got into disco and, of course, like a lot of the things that Ron Hardy was spinning and boogie, D-Train, and I’m sorry I’m blanking out here. I like a lot of different kind of stuff.«

RBMA: »So it’s not like you’re hysterically listening to the particular music that you make?«

Tadd Mullinix: »No, no. Like the last CD I bought was Armenian Duduk music, it just depends.«

RBMA: »Are there people you want to work with a la the Jay Dee stuff or other collaborators? You’ve been doing stuff with Todd?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, but I don’t want to work with him anymore. Yeah, I want to work with Guilty Simpson and we did a special and that was really fun. I’ve always been a fan of Guilty Simpson, he’s got a very powerful voice. A lot of the guys are really talented. Phat Kat and I are talking about working together, we did a little something extra for BBC and also Black Milk and I collaborated and we’re talking about collaborating some more. Ta’Raach and Wajeed. I’m really happy with the people I collaborated with on Two/Three, the MCs were ridiculous and I’d work with any of them again, they were all super-good.«

RBMA: »What’s the process, aside form working with MCs where it’s pretty cut and dried, you make the beats, they rhyme, what’s the process with working with another beat maker or producer? How do you collaborate in that situation?«

Tadd Mullinix: »It’s funny because every time I say I want to collaborate with someone, they say exactly what I’m thinking about with the collaboration. I know what you are saying, like there are a lot of different ways you could do that in the studio, but usually we’re like a few orphans or incomplete tracks I have, some things I’ve been working on or here’s some basic sounds and a beat that I had in mind, really basic, and they give it to me and I flip it, or vice versa.«

RBMA: »It can be difficult when you want to work with somebody and they are not familiar with the gear you’re using, so you’re not starting from scratch usually, it’s something you’ve got a kernel of and then they come in and add on to it. So what’s in the pipe right now? What projects are forthcoming?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Well, I’ve got an album coming out on Spectral under the name JTC, James T. Cotton, called Like No One and it’s like, I don’t know, I’ve got that. It’s a lot of acid and techno and house and there’s a Dabrye remix EP coming out soon featuring Flying Lotus remix, Black Milk remix, Kode 9 remix, and an exclusive track that I did with AG called Get Dirty and that’s what’s in the pipeline right now.«

RBMA: »How was that, working with a New York guy? Was that any different for you, you’ve been pretty Detroit-centric?«

Tadd Mullinix: »It’s no different. I mean, this guy probably has a bigger reputation than some of the Detroit people I work with because it’s his history and the respect that New York rap gets but no different at all. So easy and fun.«

Participant: »Do you have a process for when you’re setting up all your different aliases? Or is it just like: “OK, I’m feeling EBM right now, let’s do a track," and then come up with the name later?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Yeah, basically the latter. I just do whatever I feel in the studio, whatever I’m in the mood for, and automatically I already have an alias for whatever it’s going to be. What kind of music and even what to call something, track names and album names, all those really come later in my mind, I’m not very concerned. In fact, I really don’t even like to think up things like song names and alias names and stuff like that.«

Participant: »Can we hear one of the jungle tracks?«

Tadd Mullinix: »Definitely. Which one do we have on here? This should be Call Da Police. Yeah.«

(music: Soundmurderer & SK-1 - Call Da Police)