Founder of legendary label Ninja Tune and one-half of sampling pioneers Coldcut, Matt is a production veteran. Find out how he declutters tracks, why the Ninja Tune Zen Delay isn't "off the wall" and hear the story of how he came to own one of the rarest synths on the planet.
Chris Barker:
I'm Chris Barker.
Will Betts:
And I'm Will Betts, and you're listening to the MusicTech My Forever Studio Podcast.
Chris Barker:
In this podcast we talk to artists, DJs, engineers, producers and industry figureheads about their dream studio.
Will Betts:
A studio built with a few rules, but that they will have to live with forever.
Chris Barker:
Yep, there are rules. Our guests can choose a computer, a DAW and an audio interface, then only six other bits of studio kit, plus one other luxury item.
Will Betts:
But Chris, what if people want to pick multiple items that come packaged for sale as a single item?
Chris Barker:
No bundles. No bundles. Joining us today is the legendary Matt Black. Matt is better known as one half of this creative sampling pioneers, Coldcut, and also the co-founder of the amazing Ninja Tune label.
Will Betts:
But Matt's influence on music doesn't stop there. Matt is also involved in developing forward thinking software such as the audio visual instrument VJamm, the intriguing new Jamm Pro performance software and hardware effects like the Ninja Tune Zen delay.
Chris Barker:
So, we're expecting some strong opinions from Matt on his six chosen items.
Will Betts:
Let's begin. This is My Forever Studio with Matt Black.
Chris Barker:
Welcome, Matt.
Matt Black:
Hey, good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Chris Barker:
You have got a little insight there into what we're all about here on the My Forever Studio Podcast, so well, let's start off with the three items which is the DAW of choice, your audio interface of choice and I guess a computer. So, the only computer decision is Mac or PC, I guess? Where are you on that debate? Or unless you want to go for an Atari?
Matt Black:
Well, life started off with an Atari 1040, and that was what we composed a lot of the old Coldcut tracks on actually, C-Lab Creator, but I think I would have to modernise. I'm not into being retro just for the sake of it, and today's tech and toys are pretty superb in a lot of ways. So, I guess for my door, it's got to be Ableton. Over the years I've used most of them actually. I never got on with Logic and Ableton has got that thing that you've got the arrangement, but you've got the Session View as well, so I like that.
Matt Black:
For a computer, I don't get into what hackers used to call holy wars, about I'm going to die for what I believe is best, Mac or PC or whatever. But what've I found over more than 30 years working with computers is that Apple is a slightly easier life. And to actually give them credit, Apple have put considerable effort over the years into making audio good on their devices, first with their computers, and secondly, with their iPhones and iPads. It's been a clever move that because it's gained them a huge hipster following amongst musicians, and I think that's a big part of the allure of Apple, that they've built their now quite mainstream success on that thing of being the chosen platform for creative people, and starting off with making audio actually work. That was a smart move, and so I plumped for my ... I did actually write to Tim ... What's his name, Tim ...?
Chris Barker:
Cook.
Matt Black:
Tim-
Chris Barker:
Not Tim Apple as he's sometimes referred. Tim Cook.
Matt Black:
I wrote to him a couple years actually where my laptop packed up saying there's a fault with these machines. And I must say, if you've got a problem with a company, right to the managing director, someone will at least look at it. And within 48 hours, I got an email from a VIP customer support person. They did actually give me $1,000 repair on my laptop, after which they admitted there was a problem with those, that error.
Matt Black:
But I think now I'd go for one of the new 16 inch MacBook Pros. I like that nice, big screen. I was gutted when they got rid of the 17 inch range because with VJing and programmes like VDMX you need all that screen really to stay. So one of the new 16 inch ones, and you can get it maxed out now with a terabyte SSD, which is again, a slightly easier life.
Chris Barker:
And such a world away from what we all started on.
Matt Black:
I think that's right. That's right. Things have moved on.
Chris Barker:
What about the audio interface then?
Matt Black:
See, in the Noughties, Apple went through a bad period when they were updating or coming up with OSX, and shit didn't work for years. I remember talking to Brian Eno, actually at that time. He had a full time audio engineer helping him and they still couldn't get it to work. And he got so frustrated he said one day, "Let's just make some," and he'd forgotten the word for music because he's probably been kludged so much by the frustration of not getting the hardware to work that he was just about to give up. He bought some to two high eight multi track recorders after that and went back to hardware for a few years.
Chris Barker:
Wow.
Matt Black:
And at that period I jumped onto the PC and we were developing our own software at that time, which was DJamm and VJamm. It was a bit easier to find coders who could do stuff on the PC. That was one of the reasons we jumped onto that. I was trying to find a quality audio interface and it took me about three years, and I wept literally on more than one occasion when I'd send one back, get another device, plug it in, that horrible glitching sound, send it back and try the next one. It was really-
Chris Barker:
So I suppose that's a real test of the audio interface? If you're using it live, that's when you're really putting these things to the test?
Matt Black:
Well, actually, this was in fact in just my home studio, so that was when I wanted professional multi track recording, and I couldn't get it on the PC, until I found the RME Hammerfall. And that was the only one that actually worked. And so I was grateful to them for providing something that didn't cause me to bleed from the ears and tear all my hair out. And so I've used them ever since.
Matt Black:
The last device I had, in fact, when I got my recent MacBook Pro, of course Apple did that thing, burned all the useful slots which we all used over the years.
Chris Barker:
Oh, yeah.
Will Betts:
Well, that was the thing with the 17 as well, wasn't it?
Matt Black:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
It had all the ports.
Matt Black:
Yeah, it had all the slots, exactly. It had your FireWire, your Ethernet, audio in and out. I didn't have any option, I had to eventually move on from there. So I got this 300 quid dock, which has got everything on it, including even FireWire, so that particularly I could run my Fireface off it. And now that Fireface, I must have had it 10 years now, and it's still a really good box. So, there might be better things. I think a USBC version of that would be my interface, so I think RME are a good company.
Chris Barker:
You hear that a lot about their driver support, and they just–
Matt Black:
They just got it right. It's solid. And it's that thing, I'm sure there are some bots listening and you can relate to this, this stuff is supposed to be fun. We're here to have a good time, right?
Chris Barker:
Yeah.
Matt Black:
Who's here to have a good day, and not to just be endlessly frittering your time and energy away solving shit that should really just work? I'm sure we've all been there with that, and so to get something that actually just work out the box is a real blessing.
Chris Barker:
It just makes you really sad right before you're about to make music, and that's not good unless you're making sad music, of course.
Matt Black:
Sad music is cool, but you get to the point where actually, I think instead of I've got this idea for a track, can't get things to work, I think I'll just throw myself out of the window.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Black:
I have been there with hardware frustration, so I'm sure we all have.
Chris Barker:
Well, the next thing I guess we can talk about is the location of this dream studio, flight fancy here. Where would you put the studio? What does it look like? What's the vibe? This is this sort of ...
Matt Black:
I think I'll-
Chris Barker:
You must have worked in lots of studios over the years and seen a lot.
Matt Black:
Not as many as I'd like, actually. I've been just feeling sort of I'm trying to swim to the surface and never quite getting there. Eventually when I get to the surface I'll be able to breathe, but there's always something in the way. But that's why I hope with releasing Jamm Pro that I've finally got my instrument that I can freak out and have a good time rather than clawing up towards the surface.
Matt Black:
But one of my favourite recording vibes has been on the beach in Goa in India. Before I got together with my wife actually, I was sitting on the beach in a beach bar with her working on some sounds for a little multimedia thing for a film she was working on called Little Zizou, which is a hilarious film, and I thought this could be my studio. You're looking out, you're literally right there and there's the sunset and the sea, and it's a nice vibe. Actually, I'm a fan of the idea that a studio can just be a computer, a pair of headphones, maybe a couple of monitors and some kind of MIDI controller.
Chris Barker:
Well, don't speak too soon because–.
Will Betts:
Yeah, you've still got six items to fill your studio.
Chris Barker:
On a beach in Goa, that's the setting. And are we talking nice wooden vibes?
Matt Black:
It can be quite ramshackle Goa, the psychedelic shack vibe suits me well. I'm not into designer furniture. It can be very nice, but I'm quite happy with functionality a lot of the time if it's a good chair, very important. Am I allowed to have a decent Herman Miller chair as part of my setup?
Will Betts:
We've decided that furniture is included.
Matt Black:
Included?
Will Betts:
Yeah.
Matt Black:
So my Herman Miller chair, best 300 quid ever spent. Got it secondhand many years ago now. There's a little story there. I was having quite a lot of problems with my back, and this was about 25 years ago. There was this healer guy called Phil, and he was giving me some help with it. And he said to me, "You know, Matt, the most valuable piece of equipment in your studio is you. Do you take sufficient care of yourself?" I thought about it and I saw that there was some truth in what he was saying. And he said, "Get yourself a decent chair."
Matt Black:
I was getting my back pains, I was getting RSI. It was just starting to become a problem because I had been pretty relentless on the machines. I'm sure you can relate and I was starting to pay the price. This was like 25 years ago. So he said, "Get yourself a decent chair, set up your machine so that the screen are eye level. If it's a laptop, get an external mouse and keyboard and raise it up so that your eye is eye level with the middle of the screen, and get an external mouse and get a wrist support."
Matt Black:
And I followed all this advice, and I've touchwood pretty much managed to keep myself going without suffering from a lot of the problems that people have from spending just too much time in an uncomfortable position. Not giving their body the love and respect it needs if we want to keep on using it and having a good time. So, that Herman Miller chair is second hand. I think they're a grand, new. 300 quid for that, it has done me really well.
Chris Barker:
Well, as it's The Forever Studio you want to be comfortable if you're going to be in there forever.
Matt Black:
Exactly, yes.
Chris Barker:
Completely true.
Matt Black:
I'm not going to be sitting down forever though. You have to get up every 20 minutes. I have an app for that.
Chris Barker:
Well, have a swim. You're on the beach.
Matt Black:
Exactly.
Chris Barker:
It's all good. We've got the vibe sorted, we've got your three items, so we can move on to the first of your actual gear choices.
Matt Black:
I think I'll have a decent pair of speakers.
Chris Barker:
Tell us about some of the speakers you've gone through over the years.
Matt Black:
Well, I can be a bit of a git sometimes, and I thought, well, why should speakers cost 2000 or 3000 quid when I can get a decent pair for 200 or 300 quid? And as all speakers are different anyway, and you never know where your music is going to be played. It doesn't really make sense to get something where everything sounds great. It'd be better to have something where they're pretty average, and then you could work towards that. So I never really had any decent speakers. And then about four years ago, a mate of mine called, Darren Sangita, he's a really good friend of mine and a good artist as well, he said, "No, mate, you really should have some decent speakers."
Will Betts:
I can't believe it took that long.
Matt Black:
No, and he's a fan of Genelec. Now John, my partner, he had lavished some decent speakers on himself for a while before he went for this Syndyne audio. I used to go down to his studio and he's like, "Yeah, man, it really does sound good, doesn't it?" So Darren recommended I get the Genelecs. And I don't always feel my ears are that great, to be honest, so if someone I trust says these are good, and if he'd put me side by side with a lot of different speakers in AB, I'm not sure I could tell the difference a lot of times.
Chris Barker:
I think once you get to that real high end as well, it does become really hard to tell the difference because it's really small, the differences. Because once you get expensive-
Will Betts:
Unless you're immediately ABing them.
Matt Black:
But everything sounds so different that sometimes I play tracks on my laptop and I think actually, this sounds great. They're so up front. I'm sure Apple fakely optimise it somehow a bit, but it does sound like having the loudness button on.
Chris Barker:
Yes. Well, it's the car test as well, where it's just like everything is-
Matt Black:
A car test, exactly. We were mastering our new album a couple of days ago, which I'm pleased to tell you, exclusively. It's now finished and mastered.
Chris Barker:
All right.
Matt Black:
With Matt Colton at Metropolis, and we both admitted to each other that we were always fans of the loudness button on the amp, a guilty pleasure if you like. But what-
Will Betts:
So did you punch that in on the mastering? Was that like–.
Matt Black:
I'm not telling, mate. I'm not telling, no. No. What was interesting too, I recorded a little segment with Matt walking us through one of the tracks, explaining what he'd done, which is I think we'll do a part on our Insta, he's got his chain set up and then you've got an AB button. So yeah, this is what it sounds like with the mastering chain on and this is what it sounds like with it off. So you can just sit there punching backwards and forwards on the track, and it's interesting to hear how consistently he would take each track up one click in quality. And I mean a click out of zero to 10. A click is increasingly difficult to get as you hopefully approach the quality–.
Will Betts:
It's diminishing returns,
Matt Black:
Diminishing returns, so Matt did a great job on that.
Matt Black:
But going back to speakers, obviously he had some speakers there. I insisted, in fact that we listened to every track on a phone because let's face it, a lot of the kids on the bus they've got their phone out.
Chris Barker:
Headphones too, man. Headphones is the one.
Matt Black:
Yeah, but even the headphones is a luxury. At least you've got stereo there.
Chris Barker:
That's true.
Matt Black:
A tiny, little, but phones can be quite loud nowadays. Definitely a selling point for the youth is how loud your phone is, but you need it to sound good on the phone as well, and that means no sub. So you have to imply the sub somehow with some hair, they call it. Do you know about that? Putting hairs is a technique where you put some little bit of distortion on the subs so that it brings it into the audible range.
Chris Barker:
You get the little harmonics on the-
Matt Black:
Exactly, some extra harmonics to make it more noticeable. What I realised was that the great thing about some quality speakers where stuff sounds really good, is that it can help you put less into your track, right?
Chris Barker:
Yeah.
Will Betts:
Exactly.
Matt Black:
I've always been a kitchen sink merchant, and I hate it. I hate my own tendency to do that, to pile in more and more. Yes, great idea, this is a good idea. That's quite good, therefore it sounds great with this one as well. And then suddenly, you've souped the whole fucking track out and there's no space. In a club it doesn't sound good. And so many times when I used to work in big studios, it's like you just listen with a couple of things playing, and it's like wow, this sounds great. This sounds like one of those tracks that I really like. And you bring everything in, and suddenly there's no space anymore.
Matt Black:
What I found was that having the Genelecs enabled me to make more intelligent choices about how much there needs to be in a track, because when something sounds really good, you don't feel so forced to add more and more to it. Why have 10 layers of stuff which is quite good when you could have two layers of stuff which is mint? So I think that's one of the reasons.
Chris Barker:
Well, I suppose that's the thing with high end studio monitors. Going back to what you said before, it makes it more fun.
Matt Black:
It makes it more fun. Exactly. It's that joy of sound which can be quite easy. In one's joy, one over kills it, so that's a constant razor edge to traverse I find as a producer.
Chris Barker:
So to go back to the exact speakers you're thinking the Genelecs then?
Matt Black:
Yeah, I think I'll have my Genelecs. I'll have ...
Chris Barker:
The SAMs, the big ones?
Matt Black:
Why not? I won't stint myself here.
Will Betts:
You needn't.
Matt Black:
I don't think I'd need a sub with those as well. Can I have a sub as well?
Chris Barker:
No.
Matt Black:
No? No sub, okay. So it's got to be something that-
Will Betts:
Really?
Matt Black:
They've got to be some fat ones.
Will Betts:
Is that the first time we've done that?
Chris Barker:
A sub is a separate item. Would we not all agree?
Will Betts:
No. Is it?
Matt Black:
He's very strict, your mate Chris.
Chris Barker:
It's a bundle. No bundles! No. No bundles, no bundles. Come on.
Matt Black:
I would go for some fat ones then. You'll have to tell me the models, but I know they do some fat ones.
Chris Barker:
The big SAMs. They've got the-
Matt Black:
And I can have a nice party on the beach as well which is always popular in Goa.
Chris Barker:
You can have sub woofers, but it will be an extra item, so we'll have to see-
Matt Black:
No, I'll go for a pair of nice, fat Genelecs for my aran ball beach studio. Nice, nice.
Chris Barker:
So moving onto item number two, what would be next in the studio?
Matt Black:
I think I do need a good microphone. It's funny. This is a Røde, is it?
Chris Barker:
Yeah.
Will Betts:
Yeah.
Matt Black:
It's all right, isn't it?
Chris Barker:
Nice.
Matt Black:
This is better than my ... what have I got? The Audio-Technica USB one I've got. It's all right. I think my voice sounds all right on this actually. I think I might get one of those.
Chris Barker:
Don't be shy on Will's exceptional production skills as well obviously.
Matt Black:
He's doing some–.
Chris Barker:
The ears of the youth.
Matt Black:
... secret magic that must've got a bit of boost there.
Will Betts:
I have actually got a bit of Aphex Big Bottom on you.
Matt Black:
Aphex Big Bottom? Has he got a big bottom, no? It's been a while since I've seen Richard.
Chris Barker:
Feel free to email us, Aphex if you do have a big bottom. We'd love to have you on the show.
Matt Black:
You know that they used to call Lexicon the sound of money?
Chris Barker:
Oh, because of the little reverb unit?
Matt Black:
Yeah, those, because you'd see them only in the decent studios that cost a grand a day, because that sheen, you could get it.
Chris Barker:
Bricasti should bring that back.
Will Betts:
They really should, yeah.
Chris Barker:
You know the Bricasti reverb units.
Will Betts:
The M7?
Chris Barker:
Yeah, the M7. That's the new-
Matt Black:
The sound of money.
Chris Barker:
I like that.
Matt Black:
But now we can get it on the plugin, so decent. Micron, I don't know. My problem is, I was thinking this. People somehow may have an image of me as a wise old codger who knows everything, but I don't. I'm very ignorant about too much and I don't know anything about microphones. Except I know that Neumann U ... was at 87 or something?
Chris Barker:
87, 47, 67?
Matt Black:
That's the one, isn't it?
Chris Barker:
Yeah.
Matt Black:
That's the sound of money. It basically is so.
Chris Barker:
I feel a theme coming on now with the rest of the gear.
Matt Black:
But I think a decent microphone would be nice. That's a name that I've heard of. We have used them in the past and they are as good as it gets. So, I think budget is no option, is it? Let's have a U87 Neumann in there.
Chris Barker:
Let's move onto item number three.
Will Betts:
Do you want any instruments at all?
Matt Black:
Yeah, I think we'll get to some instruments now. I think I'm going to big up me chest and say that I'm going to have my EMS VCS4 there, which is my own pride and joy. It's a prototype. It is basically a VCS3 in a mustard coloured wooden box. There's only one of them. Well, there's two actually. I bought this for 300 quid off a guy in a tower block in Southeast London.
Chris Barker:
So it's not got the whole Battleship design as that people might know from the VCS3? It's a-
Matt Black:
The matrix, you mean?
Chris Barker:
Yeah, but the one we're looking at has an image here–.
Matt Black:
Oh sorry, I thought you meant Battleships like the game.
Chris Barker:
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Will Betts:
Yeah, yeah.
Matt Black:
Oh, it's got the matrix. It's got the patch matrix.
Chris Barker:
But is it that way round, like laptop shaped?
Matt Black:
No.
Chris Barker:
No? Because doesn't the VCS3?
Will Betts:
Yeah, traditionally, there's the matrix on the bottom section and then the little joystick next to it.
Chris Barker:
I guess it's just how it's wrapped up.
Matt Black:
Or it's just a layout, but then basically the electronics are quite similar. So basically, when I got this, it was a bit fried. So I phoned up EMS, who were still going.
Chris Barker:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Black:
And I think-
Will Betts:
Was it Peter Zinovieff doing it all still?
Matt Black:
No, it was Robin, wasn't it? I think it was Robin and I said I've got a VCS4. He said, "Oh, is it the cream coloured one or the mustard coloured one?" I said, "It's the mustard coloured one." He said, "Okay, yeah. You've got it, have you?" The cream coloured one is two VCS3's in one box, apparently.
Chris Barker:
Who's got that, do we know?
Matt Black:
I don't know.
Chris Barker:
Big call out. Just call out. Please do email the show if you've got.
Matt Black:
I've met a guy in Berlin the past year. I don't if I should tell this story because people would just be too ill, but I'll tell you anyways because it's quite funny. His mate was at a school in Germany, and they were throwing out a load of stuff. He got three VCS3s and an ARP 2600 for 50 euros. Yeah, that's a collective sigh from the mass of hatred and jealousy there.
Chris Barker:
I'm so jealous.
Matt Black:
But then again, imagine how pleased the guy must have been.
Chris Barker:
Well, and we've got looked at the positive, he saved it from the skip because there are so many stories of stuff like that. I know stories of people going to schools and say, "Hey, where's that thing?" And they go, "Oh, it went out last summer when we did the refit." And that's worse, isn't it?
Matt Black:
Well, especially it's worse when it's the BBC.
Chris Barker:
Yes.
Matt Black:
Who notoriously, along with chucking out a load of Doctor Who original tapes, got rid of quite a lot of the Radiophonic Workshop because some fucking middle manager decided that they needed the space and that this could go in the skip. It's always like that, isn't it? They do this in cities as well. They tear down all the nice buildings and when there's only 5% left, they're like, "Oh, my God, heritage." It's too late.
Chris Barker:
Yes.
Matt Black:
That is exactly what humankind are doing with the environment, sliding a wafer thin eco points there.
Chris Barker:
Yes.
Will Betts:
True.
Chris Barker:
Correct. But it's essentially VCS3?
Matt Black:
Yes.
Chris Barker:
It's not like the other one so it's just this-
Matt Black:
Yes.
Chris Barker:
Okay, it's just–.
Matt Black:
My first ever go on this proper synth was on a VCS3. Well, it was the Synthi 100, and that was in Leicester Polytechnic Electronic Music Department. And I believe that Brian Eno donated that to them, possibly.
Chris Barker:
Wow.
Matt Black:
My dad taught sculpture there for many years and I was getting interested in this stuff, so he arranged for me to have a day in the studio there. I can't imagine that I got many great noises out of it, but it was a real buzz, and that started the interest. Then I had my mate, Aiden Sutcliffe. He might conceivably be listening to this. I had a little posse of geeky friends at school, and there were four of us and we ran a radio station. We were Maudlin College School Broadcasting. It wasn't as posh as it sounds. It was comprehensive, but we were Matt Cohn, Sutcliffe and Blundell, so that was us. And that we used to run a radio station over the school intercom. So at lunchtime, people will come and get a speaker, plug it in and we'd record the top 40 of the week and then play it off tapes.
Chris Barker:
Nice.
Matt Black:
And then we started the disco, and then we found a set of decks, crummy old decks and an amp and speakers that were being thrown out one day. We bought the lot off the youth club for five quid, so that became the basis of our school disco. We had to rewire everything and that was ... Our house master as well, Mr. Palmer, who's a great guy, RIP, but one day he came ... It was a boarding school, it was a comprehensive. I've never been one thing or the other, always mixed up, but he came up and said that, "I've got a radio set that doesn't need any batteries."
Matt Black:
So we were like, "What do you mean?" So he showed us this crystal set that he'd made, which was just a little high impedance headphone, a diode and a wire. And that really started our interest in the electronics, me and my mates. And it wound up with Hayden and me building a synthesiser out of Practical Electronics kit, the MiniSonic II.
Chris Barker:
Was that the magazine that you would get so many parts each?
Matt Black:
Yeah, there was a couple of them. There was Electronics Today International, which was a bit more grown up, Practical Electronics was mid range and Everyday Electronics was the easy one.
Chris Barker:
And there was one, wasn't there, a bit of a DIY kit, Tandy or something?
Will Betts:
There was Tandy synth.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, Tandy synth as well.
Matt Black:
Ah, okay. This was the MiniSonic and the MiniSonic II. I think this was the original MiniSonic actually. If anyone's got one, I'm in the market because there's a nice picture of it. If you do a search for it, you'll see it came in this cute, little pink and yellow box.
Chris Barker:
What happened to it?
Matt Black:
My one got skipped. I never finished it.
Chris Barker:
Those damn schools, throwing everything out all the time.
Matt Black:
Well, I did track it. I did take it to college with me and used to mess about on it. I was too useless to build a case for it, so the patch by lifting the black magic box.
Will Betts:
The chocolate, the dark chocolate just to be clear.
Matt Black:
The chocolate box, yeah.
Chris Barker:
Not one of the high end video.
Matt Black:
No, no. That was when Black Magic–.
Chris Barker:
It was chocolate.
Matt Black:
Yeah, that's right. But no, the key point about this is that, Sooty, my mate, he worked something out, which was that you could take this design and modify it. So it was provided as a little synth with fixed connections between the units, but he worked it out. I don't know, he was pretty advanced for a 14 year-old basically, in 1975, that he could attach ... A synthesiser was about things controlling other things, and that anything could really control anything else. So he designed this patch matrix, which he did using switches. He found these really cheap toggle switches and he built on his one a big matrix. I think it was a 12 by 12 matrix of switches, so that he could route anything to anything else.
Chris Barker:
Not so dissimilar to the VCS3.
Matt Black:
Not so dissimilar to the VCS3, exactly. And what I got from that was, I only realised this recently, but that was the first time I saw that you could get a design and then you could take it further. You could modify it yourself. So, that was my first experience of synthesisers. That was in the mid '70s. Effectively, that was a modular, right?
Chris Barker:
Yeah.
Will Betts:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Matt Black:
Because modulars, it's not necessary about modules. It's about being able to change the order of things that are routed–.
Chris Barker:
At least semi-modular, if it made a sound without any patches.
Matt Black:
Yeah, I think it probably did default. So that, a modular synth 1975. Respect to Aiden Sutcliffe if he's out there. He did go on to a career in the electronics actually, so it makes it sound as if I'm a synth expert, but I'm not. We've done the synth then.
Chris Barker:
What do we have so far? We've got the Genelecs and we've got an instrument, and then we've got a microphone.
Will Betts:
Correct.
Chris Barker:
If you're into music production, you should also check out MusicTech Magazine. In this month's issue, we round up the latest generation of exciting new gear that we're expecting this year. We talked to Coldcut and Ninja Tune founder Matt Black, electronic producer, space dimension controller and Norwegian DJ Ørjan Nielsen. Plus, we give you our verdict on Waldorf's Kyra Synth, the Softube Console 1 Fader, the AMS Neve RMX16 500 Series Reverb, and Novation's new Launchpad X and Launchpad Mini Mk3.
Chris Barker:
On top of that, we have a stack of tutorials for Cubase, Logic, Live, Studio One, Pro Tools and FL Studio. You'll find all that and more in this month's issue. Subscribe now at musictech.net.
Chris Barker:
So three more items for the studio.
Will Betts:
Three more to go.
Matt Black:
I'll tell you what I'll have. I'll be hardcore here. I'll have an acoustic piano because I can't play note one, so that'd be something to keep me busy into my old age there.
Chris Barker:
That's actually a very popular choice on the podcast.
Matt Black:
Is that so? I'm glad to hear it. Now my mates being Mixmaster Morris, my favourite chill out teacher in the whole world and a huge international connector of people, and without which Ninja Tune probably wouldn't be in its present form, is being evicted from his flat in Camberwell after living there for 35 years. And no one can afford to live in London anymore. They're going to triple the rent. Anyway, he's out and he's got a piano in his house, which was a gift from the mother of my son, Key, actually my ex, Julia.
Matt Black:
And so Morris has had this piano and now he's getting evicted and he can't take it with him. It's been enough of a game to get his 12,000 records safely housed somewhere, which we've now achieved. Thanks to Sean for that. But we were up at my mates brewery in Wood Green on Friday, The Goodness Brewery, highly recommended. He makes really good beer, and I don't even like beer, but I drank two pints the other day, that's not bad.
Will Betts:
Impressive.
Matt Black:
And we did a little jam there and Morris played some records. We thought, why don't we bring Mike's piano up here? It's a big warehouse space, they've got space for it.
Chris Barker:
Is it upright?
Matt Black:
It's an upright. It's an upright, it's a nice, old. It's got two dodgy keys. We'll get them hopefully fixed. Do you know who Joe Armon-Jones is? Joe Armon-Jones is a name to watch. Joe Armon-Jones is one of the bright stars of the New London jazz scene. Let's be fair, South London jazz scene. So we've got him on the four tracks on our new album. I speak to him on the phone and I say, "What keyboard do you want Joe?" He says, "Just give me a Nord," a Nord Stage I think it was, those red ones that everyone uses.
Matt Black:
So I say, "Okay, sure." We ordered that in. Now, our old Riley who's been engineering recordings in London recently, said he's got the piano in this little studio in the back garden. He said, "Do you want me to get the piano tuned, Matt, and sorted out and mic'ed up because Joe might want to use that?" I'm like, "No, no, he just wants to use the Nord." He said, "Okay, then we won't bother."
Matt Black:
So Joe comes through the door, the first thing he says, "Oh, you've got a real piano." So we're like, "Yes, but we haven't mic'ed it up because you said you wanted to use it." That was the Nord. The Nord is all right, but you can instantly tell, you know immediately that it's not the real thing. And he's pointed out all those great records that have piano on, none of them were recorded on a concert grand or shit like that. They were just some old, rickety piano, and they're great and we know that sound. That is character, right?
Matt Black:
So long story short, we got the piano sorted, he sat down on it and played some really, quite outstanding real piano licks on four of our tracks. And then at the end, I said, "Do you want to do a quick jam?" So I dialled up my app, Jamm Pro, dialled up a sort of ambience of loops and stuff, and just jammed with Joe, and that's become what will be the last track on our album called Swift Gathering, sort of an ambient track.
Chris Barker:
Amazing. So that's acoustic piano and the Jamm Pro?
Matt Black:
That's right.
Chris Barker:
That's nice.
Matt Black:
So, this is my ambition that I can use my instrument now, and I can play with someone who's a real musician. I can keep my end up with some good loops at my fingertips.
Chris Barker:
So in terms of the actual piano you're choosing for your Forever Studio, are you going for an upright? Have you got any preference, or do you want that exact piano there?
Matt Black:
Well, as I was just talking about it yesterday with Morris and he sent me a picture of it, I think I'll have Morris' old piano, because it's redolent with the vibes of the Mixmaster. He's a very good friend of mine. He deserves to be more celebrated. So that'll do me nicely on the beach, and then I can finally learn to play piano. I always thought I'd use technology to save me time and not have to do the work of learning. It didn't save any time.
Chris Barker:
You end up just doing all of that tech support stuff.
Matt Black:
But on the other hand, I've made a career out of music one way or another. I'm some kind of musician, whatever, so it's worked out. But I remember we used to have this piano and I used to just like going and getting the bottom note and just playing it again and again, and just loving that sound so much. So like I say, we like to mix things up. Yeah, I love electronics. I love analogue synths, I love digital. I often say you could make a number one record on a stylophone if you could break out from all the walls and rules that limit us in what way we express ourselves. But acoustic sound is a wonderful thing.
Matt Black:
One time we were playing with Steve Reich and we were doing Music for 18 Musicians, the electronic version with visuals. It was actually the low point of my career because the computer crashed, and it didn't quite work properly. Most people didn't realise, but I did. And my parents were there as well.
Chris Barker:
Oh no.
Matt Black:
So I was so ... but actually I've got a recording of a bit of it. It was quite a good show because it was really audiovisual, trying to match ... Do you know Music for 18 musicians? It's my favourite piece of music.
Chris Barker:
The Reich?
Matt Black:
Yeah.
Chris Barker:
Not well enough.
Matt Black:
Well, it's a masterpiece of 20th century, sort of post. When people talk about post classical, that's what they mean. Not just some guy noodling away with ambient or wherever. It's a funny term, post classical. It's Steve Reich and Phil glass I'd say are post classical because they are proper, trained composers who then decided to do something rather than more avant garde, but have the same starting point and totally went somewhere else.
Matt Black:
And my point was listening to Music for 18 Musicians in the audience is something I've taken in quite a few performances. My engineer, Enick Pharper, who helps me a lot with all kinds of stuff, especially with the app, we used to go every year. There'd be a performance in London every year and we'd always try and go. I rather naughtily made a recording of one of them actually at the Royal Festival Hall. I erased it. Sorry, officer. It was one of those tiny little Edirol ones.
Chris Barker:
Yes!
Matt Black:
I was on the balcony. Stick up here, it sounds as good as the record. It's astonishing. But the point I'm making is that acoustic sound is just so real and brilliant, and everything reverberates in a real way. I sometimes think of electronic sound, as soon as people get locked into this, I don't like mp3s or I don't like digital, I only like vinyl, well, John Cage used to say, "Well, they don't use records at all because they make you think you're having a musical experience when actually you're not." So ever a hipster you are with your format. Remember that as well, there's always another thing.
Matt Black:
Actually, the whole of recorded music, arguably is a waste of time. Live music, acoustic music is the only real experience worth having. I don't say I believe that, but it's a point of view that you could defend if you want to put it out there. And a piano when you play that and it vibrates and you vibrate, and everything in the room vibrates, it's a thing. It really is wonderful.
Chris Barker:
So maybe to counter that, there's a question I've got to ask. Is Jamm Pro going to be one of the items?
Matt Black:
I've got to paddle my own canoe, so I'm not going to blow my own trumpet.
Chris Barker:
But surely it was developed to satisfy a need you had?
Matt Black:
Just by instrument, that's why I've developed it. And so it's going to be there on an iPad Pro. I don't know if that counts.
Chris Barker:
There's a little bit of a bundle there really.
Matt Black:
Well, put it this way. It's no use without a device, is it? You might have to give me that one.
Will Betts:
You can have it.
Matt Black:
And so-
Chris Barker:
I think we've just been bullied into breaking our no bundles rule.
Will Betts:
I think we have.
Matt Black:
I let you have it on the sub. Come on now. I'm already digging my heels in all of this.
Chris Barker:
Okay, fair enough.
Matt Black:
The app is the result of a 25-year project to develop a type of electronic music instrument which suits me and I think it's definitely one of the best things I've made in the 33 years I've been doing this.
Chris Barker:
You said it was a 25-year journey. Was there a moment when the iPad came out, for example, and that was like I can finally do that, connect those dots?
Matt Black:
We had a version called DJamm even in the late 90s, which we used for Coldcut live. Just give you a bit of background. John and I started making music in 1987, and we were in the first wave of people taking samples, people who got lucky with samples and sequences who perhaps weren't musicians, but were more coming from the DJ I think. It was great. We surfed the wave of that and it became a real thing. House music was taking off, ecstasy was taking off, the Atari was taking off. There was a number of ingredients there which kick started that electronic music revolution, which is still rolling today, and is the dominant youth music culture. Let's face it.
Matt Black:
Now, I was in a lot of other bands. I'm thinking particularly of Massive Attack for instance, who are contemporaries with us, and I knew Nellee when they were still The Wild Bunch in the dugout in Bristol. And so the thing is, what made these records, and then it's like, "Well, guys, we need you to go on the road and you need to play live if you want to promote this. People would really want to hear this." So, well, we can just go and DJ and play our records. "No, a live show would be really good," and it was a great challenge. Well, how do you take something which started off as a bunch of samples and turntables in the studio and make a live experience out of it?
Matt Black:
Now what I've seen is there's numbers of people, us, Massive Attack, Uncle Tom Cobley, who've started out from that point and have taken a bunch of different solutions to it. Solution one, take your whole studio with you.
Chris Barker:
Orbital, Chemical Brothers, originally–.
Matt Black:
It's a real ball ache. Obviously, the engineer is very important in the studio. It's not really suited to a live vibe. They're sort of-
Chris Barker:
It covers you up from the audience as well once you go enough.
Matt Black:
Yeah, it covers you up. You're hiding behind this stuff. All your nice gear is going to get trashed by being on the road, so it's only really suitable for bands with seriously deep pockets. Well, you're going to take the whole SSL desk with you really because really they all asked if it was all recorded on SSL with the fader automation and stuff. You're not going to take a whole SSL with you, so it isn't going to be the same, so that approach never appealed to me.
Matt Black:
Approach two, hire a bunch of session musicians. Get them to learn all your tunes and get them to play live. Now that's what Massive Attack did, and that worked really well for them. Partly, it worked because people like the rock band format and so they can interface with it. It was something that people were happy and familiar with in a live gig rock environment, and when whoever is playing the sax does their solo, everyone applauds and so on. I found it quite cliched, and not really ... It wasn't for us. I don't think our stuff would have translated so well.
Matt Black:
Massive Attack stuff was more song based. Let me put it on record that I consider Unfinished Sympathy probably the single greatest track that our era has produced in all its oddness and mystery. But I didn't want to really get a band and hire a band either. It didn't feel right. And then what were John and me going to do? We weren't musicians, we'd just be like-
Chris Barker:
That's the other thing as well with technology. You can alienate yourself from the gig.
Matt Black:
Yeah, we could have been in the audience.
Will Betts:
That actually would be quite an interesting scene though.
Matt Black:
Now that would have been a bit more avant garde. I remember hearing a story about AFEX when he was asked to DJ that actually, he just lay down on the stage and got his girlfriend to DJ. And so he has this great ... I don't know if he did the ... Actually, I was at a gig. In fact, he didn't play and that's right, he did lie down. That's right. They said it was a benefit for parties for purposes. Another approach is, well, we're just going to DJ and mix our records together.
Chris Barker:
It was a hybridised thing initially, I guess. Did you have some gear and some DJing?
Matt Black:
Yeah, we did. But DJing implies records.
Chris Barker:
Yep.
Matt Black:
I did at one point. So actually, this was the safety play if the audiovisual show using DJamm and VJamm didn't work out, we cut our tracks onto two sets of 12 inches. One was the backing tracks, and one was the samples and stuff on top, so that we could do some kind of DJ mix. I think I've still got some copies of those because they're pretty rare, but we didn't use them because our approach worked using the software that we developed. So because I used to be a computer programmer I have a certain facile fluency in designing stuff. I know what I wanted to do. I was messing around with Amigas and stuff from time and then I thought, actually, we can make some tools that will run on computers, and we can use those. And so that was the start of what became Jamm Pro and we started that in about 1995.
Matt Black:
I was working with Rob Pepperell, we had a company called Hex, and we were a multimedia pop group and it was a caucus multimedia R&D arm. And Rob was very central to developing that. Then there was VJamm, which was the audiovisual software, and we used to run those on PC laptops. It wouldn't work on normal Windows, too unstable, so we had to run Windows NT on a laptop. So there's always a workaround, you can find it, but it can be quite hardcore sometimes. And as we started off saying, you spend all of your time trying to solve technical problems, which is the kind of computer game buzz for a nerdy type to solve. See, I solved it. That was success, but it's better if it just works sometimes.
Matt Black:
So that, we went out using DJamm, which was basically a four track loop engine, which is the same as what Jamm Pro is now. So that was for-
Chris Barker:
So the initial idea really hasn't ... the core of it is the same?
Matt Black:
In a way.
Chris Barker:
It's the same process.
Matt Black:
I messed around a lot with Ableton over the years as well, like building stuff in Ableton and getting Berenger controllers and so on. I had an eight track mixer at one point and I found eight tracks was too much. In the heat of the live gig, I could get confused, if I did want to improvise. It's not just an eight track mix where you're just pushing the faders up and muting stuff. I wanted to individually deal with those different channels.
Chris Barker:
It's like multiple decks. As a DJ four is about your limit.
Matt Black:
Four is about your limit, do you know what I mean? So I thought four. Actually in Jamm Pro Effects we have five because we have the stabs channel, which is an extra one. So I find with that, that's sufficient. Very, very quickly, we've got a deal. Ableton wasn't in existence. This was the late 90s. I knew Ron was onto something and I got to deal with Steinberg to develop this as a product. We never got there. I actually gave them their money back because we couldn't complete it. It was too ambitious.
Matt Black:
Getting from having a working bit of software that you can use to having something that's a product is a longer leap than you might think, so I abandoned it and I was quite depressed actually. I failed to deliver my baby and I gave up. And then Ableton came out and it's like, well, you guys have done it. I went to Native Instruments as well. They had one product at the time, it was called Generator, that became Reactor. I said, "Look, we've got this." And they're like, "Well, a bunch of our guys have just left and they've started this thing called Ableton and it's really a lot of work. Are you sure you want to get into this? We don't think we can fund it." So I left it and Ableton came out, and the rise of Ableton has been quite a phenomenon over the last 20 years or so. And I love those guys and work with them.
Chris Barker:
But do you think ultimately that was the direction that you wanted to go?
Matt Black:
Well, it was basically. It was a powerful loop engine, that's what I was getting at, and those guys nailed it. By then, Apple came out with the iPhone, and I looked at it and I thought, well, there's two things here. Firstly, there's a new platform that's touch controlled. I like that. And secondly, they established this app store business model, whereby you could come up with something and put it out, and people could buy it all over the world. Now previously, we'd been hampered by-
Chris Barker:
By distribution.
Matt Black:
... distribution. My boys at Ninja Tune would say, "Look, Matt, we don't know anything about selling software. We haven't got a distributor. You want us to get all these boxes and get them into these stores. We haven't got any leg to stand on here." We did put out VJamm for a while, we pressed and made a couple of 1000 copies. I think we ended up chucking a goodly proportion of them because we couldn't get rid of them. The mechanism just wasn't there. The app store enabled that mechanism, so I was like, let's do this. But it took quite a while to get going as things do.
Matt Black:
But in 2013, long story short, we came out with Ninja Jamm, and that was in collaboration with SIPA who are a cool East London techno don creative startup. And we put it out, and so we were getting there. Then when the iPad came out, that's a bigger interface. It's nice to have more space really. And so it worked really well on the iPad. And then I thought, well, actually, I want to take this a lot further.
Chris Barker:
So this newly released app is really the peak of all of these, this journey?
Matt Black:
It's been leading up to this, but I've been using Ninja Jamm for live shows because we'd make our own packs for it. We'd get our own Coldcut tracks, cut them into loops. Before that, we used DJamm and the DVJs and various other approaches. But this is the best so far and I'm really happy to have got to that point.
Chris Barker:
Awesome, awesome. So where are we at? We've got five.
Will Betts:
That's five.
Chris Barker:
That's five?
Will Betts:
We've got one more. I just want to jump back real quick because you were talking about the distribution channels. So, can you explain the story behind the Delay that Ninja has worked on? Well, is a story there?
Chris Barker:
Is that going to be a sixth item?
Matt Black:
Thanks for reminding me. I think I've got my Delay. The Zen Delay was delayed for quite a while, I mean that most sincerely. So, Ninja, have made our first hardware unit and it's called the Zen Delay, and it's a collaboration with EricaSynths who are a leading modular and boutique audio electronic company. I was just looking at a nice review on YouTube yesterday, a guy who is really into it, and he was describing, "There Zen Delay is this weird kind of ..." How did he describe it? "It's this weird collaboration, really off the wall, between Ninja Tune and EricaSynths." I was like, well, I thought it totally makes sense to me. Why not? Do you know what I mean?
Chris Barker:
Exactly.
Matt Black:
But I've faced of some resistance at Ninja Tune about doing this because Ninja Tune are doing better than ever, largely due to new strategies, evolving and not much to do with me and Jonathan. Peter Quicke and his staff, Adrian Kemp, they run the business and they've made a big success out of it. So why mess with something? What if people hate it? When people go like, "Oh, this Delay is crap. What did Ninja Tune think they're doing doing this?" It could impact us. I was like, "Well, no, it won't be like that because it's going to be wicked."
Matt Black:
And if people say that they can just sod off, because haters are going to hate, and we know what we're doing. But it was quite a bit of work to get it to the standard to where we thought we're pretty bulletproof on this because this is really quality. And that was basically having EricaSynths as a partner.
Chris Barker:
So when did the project start?
Matt Black:
I think it was about three years ago.
Chris Barker:
Wow. So it was quite-
Matt Black:
Yeah, because that was when the first SuperBooth was and we went along.
Chris Barker:
Yes.
Matt Black:
And there was suddenly 300 companies making modulars and boutique audio gear. I was like, woo-hoo. People have been busy. This has been growing like mushrooms underneath and now it's suddenly shot up.
Chris Barker:
Surfaced.
Matt Black:
Big respect to Schneider from SchneidersLaden.
Chris Barker:
Andreas, yeah. We want him on the podcast. Andreas contact us.
Matt Black:
We did a good jam with him in my studio a couple of years ago. That was a good one. He didn't invent Eurorack but he popularised it and Doepfer, he popularised it. And that, like MIDI, has been a technical achievement, a technical decision which has facilitated the whole thing to flourish enormously. So big respect to Andreas for that and respect to all the bots that have got into developing all this weird ass gear that is providing an alternative to we're all sitting here with our bloody laptops. You know what I mean?
Chris Barker:
Don't tell. This is all going to tape, guys.
Matt Black:
Yeah, there's a tape whirring around there in the corner if you can-
Chris Barker:
There's a Studer A800 in the corner.
Matt Black:
Tape machines, honestly, the one technology I don't miss.
Chris Barker:
I think a lot of people won't.
Matt Black:
What's hard to-
Will Betts:
What is that?
Matt Black:
What is that?
Will Betts:
Yeah.
Matt Black:
Okay, okay. We're in John's brother-in-law's studio. It's 1988, we're working on Doctorin' the House, all right? He's got a two inch there and we've got our master tape on it, but it's a bit weird because it hasn't got any braking facilities on the tape control mechanism. When you're rewinding it, you have to go toggle between fast forward and rewind, fast forward and rewind to manually break it down. So, I'm operating the thing and I forget, and I just hit stop. The thing jams and this whole tape gets chewed. We're lucky to be able to salvage it, and it was really a bad moment.
Matt Black:
And so I never liked tape, reel to reels, after that even though we used to have one at school with the disco in there. They're great, they're great, but I like things that work and when digital recording works, it's pretty decent. And all these bots that say, "You never get the sound," I'll tell you, more time, well, you put me in the studio and AB it, I couldn't even tell the difference. Most people couldn't tell the difference between a 320 mp3 and a WAV. They might say they can. Can they really if they're blindfolded? I doubt if they could tell the difference. I doubt if-
Chris Barker:
We can do a test now if you want. This is 320, this is WAV.
Matt Black:
Very naughty, but I can tell. I can tell you're lying.
Will Betts:
I get it now, I get it.
Chris Barker:
Will, do you want to do as a rundown of the items? And before we get to the final luxury item, which is non gear related.
Will Betts:
Non gear related.
Matt Black:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Chris Barker:
But obviously, you've got your furniture and that kind of stuff. So, Will, run us down what we got. Where are we and what do we have?
Will Betts:
We're in Goa, India, on a beach in ramshackle shack with a Herman Miller chair in it, running Ableton on a 16 inch MacBook Pro with an RME Fireface UC, I believe. A pair of Genelec SAM monitors, Neumann U87 for your microphone. The EMS VCS4 mustard coloured synthesiser, your very own from your own collection, an acoustic piano and an upright with the two dodgy keys fixed, a WG Eve stuff, Jamm Pro on an iPad Pro, and the Ninja Tune Zen delay.
Chris Barker:
That sounds pretty good.
Matt Black:
It's decent, isn't it? Yes, you've just fixed up my retirement plans, guys. Nice one.
Will Betts:
Just one more.
Chris Barker:
To finish the podcast, what would your luxury item be? And don't worry about people. You've got your loved ones, all that kind of stuff.
Matt Black:
This is a reveal, how in fact how mono dimensional I am.
Will Betts:
Do you want more gears other than this?
Matt Black:
Yeah, I might want my Canon 5D Mark IV camera because the reason I'm saying that and being a bit boring and selecting another bit of gear, is because I believe that visuals and music go together. I'm as equally interested in visuals, image assignment in sound, and that has been also quite a decade's long struggle to work with that and get it accepted. It was not very long ago that my brethren, the VJs, we would rock up. If we could get into a club, we wouldn't get paid. We'd have to bring our own projectors. They were really heavy. Probably most people wouldn't even look at the screens.
Matt Black:
And now, if you go to big electronic music shows, you'll see that visuals are part of the show and that's become accepted, almost without people noticing, which I'm a bit cheesed off about actually. I think it's an art form.
Chris Barker:
It totally is. Well, a lot of the big VJs as well have come from that same background, that of you, of being DJs or musicians that haven't-
Matt Black:
Yes. There are no silent VJ shows normally.
Chris Barker:
No.
Matt Black:
It's always audiovisual. I'd like to see more recognition of the fact that this is an art. I call it audiovisual art, and a nice camera like that with a decent lens. I got this macro lens very recently. I don't know anything about lenses at all, but-
Chris Barker:
So we know nothing about cameras, but we often try to upsell dreams (singing). So, is that the-
Matt Black:
That's neat.
Chris Barker:
Is that the best camera though? Because you could have anything.
Matt Black:
No, I could have anything, but first, I want something that I can easily carry. I know this one. Like a lot of people in fact, I have an expensive camera that I don't really fucking know how to use, but I can operate it. It shoots 4K, it shoots slow mo. I've got some nice lenses for it. I think I'll take my bag of lenses that can scoop in with it. That's fair enough. What, are you going to say I can't? Oh no, mate. You're going to say-
Chris Barker:
No bundles.
Matt Black:
You're going to say I can't have a power supply in them, yeah?
Chris Barker:
A power supply? That's fine, that's fine.
Will Betts:
But that comes with the camera, doesn't it?
Matt Black:
The lens comes with the camera as well.
Chris Barker:
Yeah, only one.
Matt Black:
But it's my camera.
Chris Barker:
No bundles. As it's a luxury item, I'm going to let it slide.
Matt Black:
Okay, all right. I'm saved.
Will Betts:
In terms of the audiovisual then, what are some of those shows that have just blown you away in terms of what the AV has achieved? Because I remember seeing the ISAM Show, the Amon Tobin one, which was just ... I had to see it twice because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. It's insane.
Matt Black:
That Amon Tobin show was decent, wasn't it? That was a step forward for Ninja Tune to do a show like that. Recently, I saw a floating point at Printworks and it can be a bit bittersweet there actually, because I got to know Sam a bit recently and I do regard him as an absolute don. He's a really nice guy. He also has a science background, which is similar to me as well. He's a tweaker, but actually he's a really good musician as well, and he played this immense show to a packed place. They had these giant three projectors gunning out these immense images which matched his show really well. Quite simple, but audiovisual reactive stuff.
Matt Black:
At Together Festival last summer I saw a guy next to the video screens clearly doing stuff, but he had what looked like a modular. So I thought that must be one of those LZX modulars, and I went over and it was. I introduced myself to Stephan Goodchild and he was doing these quite amazing visuals using this modular. It's interesting. So I asked Stephan about it, and he said, "Yeah, that's the best thing I've come up with all evening." So it's like yeah, you're actually experimenting live here on your video modular, and you don't know what you're going to come up with. A new patch around and you mess around, and then suddenly you've got something like yeah, that is-
Chris Barker:
But that's exciting for the crowd.
Matt Black:
It was exciting. This was exciting for the-
Chris Barker:
DJing used to ... well, not used to. I don't be too old a man, but that's what DJing sometimes isn't.
Matt Black:
Well, exactly and that's why I'd like to bring it back to what you were saying before. What jam is about for me is the ability to improvise, and to improvise on my own tracks, on Coldcut tracks. So we John and me can be doing Coldcut tracks and actually we can take it off, take a track off somewhere else. And then because we've got these patch recall systems, we can structure out the tracks, we can freak out and then it's like all right, I've gone a bit far, we've had enough of that. Bosh, back into a section where we know what we're doing. So it's that balance. You want to be able to freak out, but just chaos all the time is boring, and order is boring as well. Music, life, consciousness, I believe there's a balancing on that razor edge between order and chaos. And it's getting that balance right.
Matt Black:
What is music? It's groove, right? It's melody. If you have complete chaos, it's white noise. There's nothing to latch on to. If you have complete order, it's a sine wave. It's boring very quickly, so it's about exploring that balance in between, and I think that's actually what life is. It defines life and I think it defines music as well. And perhaps that's why part of the attraction of music is it's a metaphor for that balance in life.
Chris Barker:
I think that's an amazing way to end the podcast. Thank you so much Matt for coming in. It's been a real honour and a privilege for both of us alike.
Matt Black:
Thank you. It was a blast actually, and you've helped me define my retirement plan, or perhaps in fact, I can get to the beach in Goa sometime soon. I'll see you there.
Chris Barker:
Amazing.
Will Betts:
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