We first touched on production duo, Downliners Sekt, hailing from Barcelona briefly in my top tracks of the year post. With their deep running emotive tune “White Dawn” lifted from their most recent EP We Make Hits, Not The Public, being a high point of the end of my musical year in 2010. I first heard about Downliners Sekt a while back when they had a set on the legendary Mary Anne Hobbs experimental show on BBC Radio 1, instantly dumbfounded by their careful percussive and sparse soundscape elements which somehow yet contained an emotional soulfulness. I set out trying to find as many of their works as possible; discovering 2010′s “ Hello Lonely, Hold The Nation“ and then onto their older, more live instrumentation based “The Saltire Wave.” None the less, these vast backlogs of previous work just proved how musically talented Downliners Sekt were. Not concerned about public image or; in fact, letting the public know anything about them at all, Downliners Sekt let the music do most the talking; an ethic that many musicians these days are embracing more often (much to my joy, as music is becoming progressively more fake and about image than substance).
Shortly after my previous post, one of the duo contacted me and thanked me for the kind words, in turn he kindly agreed to take part in an interview for me, for you wearerebels readers, touching on the musical journey of Downliners Sekt and some of what to expect in the future.
White Dawn, taken from 2010′s “We Make Hit’s, Not The Public”
A lot of your recent productions contain what people are calling “the new vocabulary” (this being chopped up bits of vocals filtered to sound different/make different sentances), do you feel this to be a crucial part of your production process, or something you love to include in your productions?
Well, it’s not really that new… This has been around almost since the invention of the sampler itself. Cassius, Daft Punk, Machine Drum on his releases for Merc records, Brothomstates, Prefuse 73… It’s really and old trick in the book. We’ve used vocal samples on many different ways since the beginning but it’s not a crucial part at all, just a kind of sound that in some situations fit well with what we do. It brings a warm touch to our sometimes frozen beats and basses. We like the contrast but when it feels like we are starting to repeat ourselves we usually start over and try to do different stuff. It’s not just samples what we use actually, we also sing a little bit ourselves, recording, improvising and working with this material with cut and paste techniques to deconstruct and construct again.
A lot of people and bloggers have been comparing you to Burial, on account of your care of atmospherics and abnormal beat programming. Is this something you are proud of, or is it annoying?
It is a little bit annoying to be fair… Not that we don’t like what he does, actually we think his first album is one of the best things ever (the first one, not the second which is the one everybody seems to like better). We understand that sometimes, people need to quickly define what they hear with very few words in order to give a hint about a track, an album or a band they’re talking about. In that case it’s easy to say “they do some kind of Burial sound” because yes, we’re closer to Burial than let’s say Justin Bieber. What’s annoying is that a reference like that, intended to be a compliment, sounds to us a little bit unfair and reductive. We are really pleased and proud when other journalist go a bit further and they have the capacity to describe our sound using another wide range of references. It means that they really took the time to check out our whole discography and they understand the artistic progression.
Do you see the current pantheon of leftfield bass producers such as Burial, James Blake, Mount Kimbie and Ramadanman as an influence? What else influences you?
One of the most contradictory feelings you can get when producing music is that you can’t really concentrate on what’s being released and you naturally alienate yourself from the music live scene. You simply don’t have time to check out or you are too tired to realize what’s going on. To give you an example, the first time we heard about Blake and Mount Kimbie was after the release of ‘Hello lonely, hold the nation’ when our friend Kid Kameleon cited them as a reference on an e-mail he sent to Mary Anne Hobbs talking about our work.
There’s something we’d like to clarify here: Because our path has been totally unorthodox (one of the main reason being that we’ve never been on any hyped UK or West Coast label) it took us more time to start getting worldwide media attention. Actually, if you look into our history, it’s almost a miracle to have achieved alone this recognition we are having now. Let’s make it clear, before Mary Anne Hobbs started playing our tracks on BBC we already had produced several records and had a long story on our backs. We understand when people compare our sound to those names but if you look at the chronology of the releases it could be the opposite way. We’ve been doing this kind of production for almost a decade and it’s ironically funny when they tag us as a “new emerging band”.
Downliners Sekt – Negative Green
Negative Green, taken from 2010′s “Hello Lonely, Hold The Nation”
In 2010 you released “Hello Lonely, Hold The Nation” and “We Make Hits, Not The Public”, both phenomenal records. I understand there is a 3rd record coming out in 2011, both of the previous records have a similar vibe and sound, will the 3rd be a continuation of this, and were the 3 intended to be almost sequels of eachother?
When we started this project of 3 different EPs we were thinking it like it was an album divided on three parts so yes, the third EP will be a continuation on this particular sound. We are now finishing it and we can already tell you that what has come out are 4 new songs with maybe slower tempos and filled with more emotional inputs.
And finally, what can you tell us about the future of Downliners Sekt as far as future releases, touring etc….?
We’re putting together a live act that we will try to bring to as many places we can so we’re going to concentrate on looking for booking agencies, promoters and try to travel a little bit. We are in a moment of our career where we can’t keep doing everything for ourselves as we’ve been doing since day one (composing, arranging, mixing, mastering, promoting, booking, playing… all that while doing shitty side jobs to pay the rent). We really need external help to keep moving, things are getting more and more complicated and we’re always in the edge. Disboot is a real cool structure, with the kind of ethics that completely fits with our philosophy but it’s also a very, very small non-profitable label. We’d love to keep releasing new stuff in the following years with them but to keep that rhythm of production we really need to be on a bigger label. The kind of label that can free us of some of those heinous occupations for a little while in order to us to be able to concentrate on what really love to do which is music.
I would just like to say again, a massive thanks to Downliners Sekt for finding time to do this for me. You can download or buy the CD/12″ versions of their works from their official website as well as keep up to date with what is going on in their world.
