BARRIENTOS
Who: Ivan Hall Barrientos
Sounds: Deep House, Tech & Progressive flowing with continental flavour
Glasgow has a great heritage in the more sophisticated avenues of dance. Nights and events like Pressure, Sensu & Sunday Circus which promote the deep & driving are perhaps what the city is still most widely recognised for, emblazoned by local heroes such as Slam & Optimo. While Glasgow has now flourished into a scene which supports every conceivable strand of modern dance, the 4/4 will always be a key component in the city's development & notoriety. That is why it's reassuring to find this young producer sculpting a sound which will not only carry on that great tradition, but perhaps reinvigorate it as well.
Member of the ever expanding Heartbeats collective and regular guest at some of Glasgow's freshest club nights, Ivan Hall Barrientos is undoubtedly one of the city's finest up and coming talents. Having spent many years of his childhood being classically trained before discovering his love of dance at the now legendary Daft Punk performance at Rockness in 2007, his influences have come from far and wide. Born to Chilean & English parents his sound sears with an irresistible Latin flavour which captures the imagination from the very first note.
After spending three months in China last summer and drawing on his many musical influences he released perhaps his most accomplished collection of music to date - The Nightlife EP. An enveloping listen from start to finish, it's clear to see how his colourful past has manifested itself in his music, with deep, involving grooves and synths bathed in splintered sunlight. As a whole the EP is of a quality to rival that of even the most accomplished artist and will quite possibly be recognised as a pivotal moment for the producer in year's to come. As we know, it can take a long time to really get anywhere with production and truly create that name for yourself, but if we were placing bets, it would be sooner rather than later for Barrientos...
Check out the lead tracks from the Nightlife EP below as well as two of his Progressive remixes (all free downloads):
Nightlife (Original Mix) by Barrientos
Santiago (Original Mix) by Barrientos
Sleeper (Barrientos Progressive Remix) - Peace by Barrientos
Teenage Dream (Barrientos Club Remix) - Katy Perry by Barrientos
We of course wanted to delve further into the aspiring producer's story, so here come the questions:
S: Ok, so let’s firstly talk about how you got into production and where your influences lie. You obviously have roots in classical music, so how did your love for dance come about and do you think your classical training helped?
B: In terms of getting heavily interested in dance music, I think it first happened when I went to Rockness back in 2007 – I was just out of school and a bunch of us were going purely to see Daft Punk. It was there that I saw DJs like Erol Alkan, Tim Deluxe and 2Manydjs (these were guys that I had never heard of before) and right then I remember thinking how incredible it was what they were doing. The idea of building the crowd up then dropping a bassline just completely blew me away and I’ve been in love with dance music ever since… I definitely wanted to try it for myself!
With the classical training I did, I really do think it has helped for producing music. The combination of musical theory, composition and performing can obviously do no harm but I think after nearly 10 years of training on the flute, the idea of trying something like electronic music, which is a big contrast, definitely motivated me into venturing into the dance music scene.
S: Last year you spent a whole summer in China & Asia, did this experience have any effect on how you approach your music with regards to the sound & style? Did it open your eyes to any other musical avenues?
B: The summer I spent in China was insane – it was an opportunity to take me outside of my comfort zone and experience something entirely different. I basically spent 4 months without any of the gear I use back home, the only thing I had with me was my laptop, Logic Pro, hard drive of samples and a pair of headphones. Aside from the fact I was working full time, I made sure I found time to produce some new music. I ended up writing a fair amount when I was in China (a lot of it just unreleased) and I felt I had this opportunity to just experiment with any sounds/styles that I wanted. Naturally with the limited setup, I had to work a lot harder to get a good sound, and it really helped with my mixing and awareness of the sounds I was using. The Chinese dance music scene isn’t exactly world renowned, but from what I saw and heard, there is a really decent minimal house scene. I wouldn’t particularly say the club scene opened my eyes to anything new, but I did have some more time to listen to a lot of new artists (that I hadn’t heard before) over the summer – artists like Ricardo Tobar, Mendo, Carlo Lio, Danny Serano, Robert Babicz etc.
S: Last year you released the exceptional ‘Nightlife EP’, which has a Deep House & Minimal flavour while also dabbling with progressive for some of your remixes. How do you see your sound developing over time? Can you see yourself choosing one particular path?
That’s a difficult one to answer, because I have too much fun working on different styles! It’s taken me a bit of time to get where I am at the moment in terms of production quality, and trying out lots of genres helps with this. Ever since I started production, I reckon my sound has now started to incorporate a lot of percussion and rhythm to it, and now I’d like to begin to start working on the melodic side of things. I’m not sure if I can see myself choosing one particular path of dance music, because I think music shouldn't be about setting yourself a boundary but should definitely be about being open to new styles and challenges. Although having said that, I’ve been doing a lot more electronica-based music the past 2 months or so, so I’ll maybe see how that pans out.
S: With regards to your set up at home can you tell us a little about the processes you go through to create your productions? What software you use, sample banks, plug ins, synths etc?
My main DAW is Logic Pro 8 – don’t think I could ever see myself moving to another piece of software. The built-in plug-ins are perfect, the compressors/reverb/delays/distortion all do the job for me so I don’t need to spend money on expensive external plug-ins. The initial investment is very pricey, but definitely worth it. I’ve used Ableton Live before, and I think it’s a great program, but it’s not for me unfortunately. I only ever use Ableton for warping any samples for remixes, and I’m happy with using that alongside Logic. I also occasionally use Audacity to chop anything up because it’s simple and easy to use.
Samples: one of my favourite things in the world! Over the last few years I’ve bought/downloaded/recorded/collected thousands of samples, which has just resulted in me having to buy yet another hard drive to accommodate it all. I enjoy using some of the samples that Loopmasters provide, but in particular I love using raw, live recordings that people give out for free. I spend a lot of time editing and using these samples in the majority of my productions.
I still love owning hardware, and I’m currently using a Roland SH-201, Waldorf Blofeld and Korg MicroKorg. They are all reliable synths, and no matter what sound I’m looking for, I can always rely on them to create that particular sound I’m after. I also use a variety of software synths, such as the Arturia vintage mocks, NI’s Kore player and a lot of the TAL synths, which are available for free. Logic’s built in plug-ins such as the EXS-24 are always open on Logic for me because they can virtually be moulded into anything I like. Finally, I do a lot of processing to samples/sounds and plug-ins like the GSi WatKat, Togu Filters, Jasuto Pro and Brainworx are definitely among my favourites.
S: You’re also in a production duo called That Dirty Latino which is more electro orientated, have you any plans to develop that further or are you just concentrating more on solo work at the moment?
B: That Dirty Latino was the first thing I ever did in dance music, with my best mate Divers. We’ve played a shit load of parties, and they’ve been the best fun I’ve ever had but we haven’t done anything in so long due to other commitments. The last production we did was probably about a year ago, and I personally can’t see any more productions happening in the near future. We’ll obviously DJ at any party we’re asked to do, but that’s probably as far as That Dirty Latino will go unfortunately! I’ll definitely be concentrating on my solo work, but I’ve got a few collaborations on the go, which could yield some interesting results.
S: Finally, following on from the last question, what have you got planned for 2011? Any DJ dates we should be looking out for or production work in the pipeline?
B: I’ve got a long list of remixes that I’m working on and some that just need polishing. Expect a lot of remixes! I’m putting together a few EPs of different styles, with the first one of the year a tech house number called ‘Los Sonidos’, which should hopefully be done and dusted in the coming weeks with some remixes provided by local producers. After that I’ll gradually keep putting out more original pieces of work – try and keep a consistent flow of work in 2011. Also keep an eye for some collaboration work, which I’m pretty excited about but I won’t say anymore than that…
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