DIRTY BASEMENT
Who: Chris Williams & Hamish Louttit
Sounds: Grinding Electro, Wonking Techno & Liquid Dubstep
With little over two years production experience behind them, Chris Williams & Hamish Louttit aka Dirty Basement have wasted no time in getting things together. With releases on R&S, Crux & Atomic Zoo, regular DJ slots, plus two exceptional singles forthcoming in 2011, the duo are making confident strides to becoming one of Glasgow's finest electronic exports.
With the humble beginnings of a high school band and perhaps too many hours spent in the music department it was that most legendary of Glasgow institution's, Optimo, which digitised their hungry souls. Inspired by the pounding bass of the Sub Club & that special atmosphere only Twitch & Wilkes could generate, the inaugural Technic 1210's followed, later leading to numerous DJ gigs and a live set up which included Hamish on drums. Dirty Basement was born.
Two & a half years later and the duo are regular fixtures on the Glasgow scene, admired for not only their exceptional skills behind the decks but also in the studio. With a sound which is as filthy as their name suggests, they craft everything from razor sharp Electro to pulsating Techno, jump up Disco House to heart-aching Dubstep, choosing to explore new sounds as apposed to staying within their comfort zone.
Dirty Basement - Oh What! by dirtybasement
MC Freeflow - Shoes On (Dirty Basement Remix) by dirtybasement
With gigs at both the Sub Club & a debut for Subcity Radio at Stereo this week alone, plus their first live set of 2011 at the launch of Dirt Box next week, we caught up with the boys to get the story so far and what the New Year holds for them:
S: So it appears Dirty Basement is really taking off at the moment, with numerous bookings and some incredible productions stealing our airtime. What initially inspired you to get into production and how did Dirty Basement as a production duo come about?
DB: When we left high school we were both already very into music, we had both spent a lot of time in the music department and covered some songs as a band with Chris on guitar, Hamish on drums & other friends singing, playing bass & 2nd guitar. We both were very into band music rather than electronic music. It wasn’t till we turned 18 and started going to Optimo regularly that we really got into dance music and purchased a set of Technics 1210’s. We started off as a DJing/Drumming duo, Hamish would set up his drum kit and play live drums over some records then take a break from drumming every now & then and put on some records. We were dubbed “Dirty Basement” by Stevie West when he gave us our 1st gig at The Brunswick Hotel. We needed a name & as our tunes were dirty but there were also some classic records in there you’d probably find in your parent’s basement he suggested “Dirty Basement” & we went with it. We didn’t move into production till about 2 & a half years ago, it just seemed to be a natural progression given our musical background, I guess it was inevitable as we had talked about doing so since we learnt to mix.
S: With so many people involved in production now it’s obviously quite important to develop your own sound and stand out from the crowd. What do you think defines a Dirty Basement production? You obviously dabble with different styles; do you think it’s important to branch out in numerous directions?
DB: As a duo our DJ sets have always been eclectic & electro (Eclectro) so we like to be the same in our productions. We like all sorts of music, and have found we enjoy making all sorts of music also. What defines a Dirty Basement track is a hard one seen as we do make various genres but we like good melodies, big bass, swinging hihats & a bit of fun.
S: One of your most recent tracks ‘So Cruel’ features Baby Taylor on vocals and is getting a lot of attention on Soundcloud. There is also a dubstep version of the track, can you talk us through some of the processes you went through to arrive at the finished article? What software you used etc?
Dirty Basement & Baby Taylor - So Cruel E.P by dirtybasement
So Cruel was an exciting track to work on. We had a few rough drafts worked out that we thought would be good to try a female vocalist on, as we had never tried working with one before. As it turns out Chris’ little sister had a friend who is an up and coming acoustic singer/songwriter. Chris suggested to his sister about writing a song together and Baby Taylor got in contact. A few draft songs were sent to her to write to and she got to work. A while later she came round and let us hear what she had got so far, we recorded some parts and discussed some ideas. After this session we let her hear our most recent draft and she instantly got excited about it and took it away with her. The next time we met up to do some recording she had switched to working on the new track and written the whole thing. Soon as we heard what she had written we instantly thought this would also make a cracking ‘pop-step’ tune, so we set to work on creating a dubstep version also. Dubstep was something we’d play around with in breakdowns in some of our tracks/remixes but we thought we'd go for it and give making a full dupstep track a try. We finished off the dubstep mix before coming back to finish off the original version and re-recorded some small sections of the vocal parts.
For the bulk of our production we use Logic Pro & its library of plug-ins/FXs but Ableton also gets used to warp samples and has even been used to make entire tunes on occasions. We are proud owners of a few synths now too; Virus TI Snow (‘Frosty The Snow Bitch’), Korg R3 (‘Ronnie Korgbit’) & a Roland Juno 106 (‘Juno’). For recording vocals we have found the cupboard in Chris’ hallway makes a cracking vocal room.
S: Over the next month you will be appearing at IAM, Subcity’s 'Who Da Best?’ and the Dirt Box launch party with a live set. How does the live session differ from your DJ set’s and what should we expect from Dirty Basement live?
DB: The live set is a selection of our originals & remixes performed live as an electronic band. Hamish bangs out beats on his V-drums while Chris makes the rest of the noise in Ableton and mixes it down on a 4 channel mixer & midi-controller. The live set is quite interesting as we have all our tunes broken down into their key elements, this means we can mix parts from different tracks in different ways; vocals & drums from one tune with perhaps the synth and bass from another etc. It takes a lot of work to prepare for a live set, we have regular rehearsals in the lead up to doing one. The live sets are pretty energetic so you can expect a lot of energy, a lot of bass & a pretty sweaty Hamish by the end of it.
S: You recently joined Subcity Radio with a new show called ‘Roll & Square’, how have you found adjusting to the airwaves and for people that are yet to hear the show, what should they expect?
DB: We do the show with our friend Peter Collins, we DJ regularly with Peter at a certain underground after party, our show is a similar music ethos to that. A good mix of House, Electro, Techno, Breaks, Rave, Italo, pretty much anything. Don’t expect much chat though, you don’t wanna hear us talk rubbish anyway. We try to keep the music constant as we only have an hour but we will still try to bring you updates on upcoming gigs and competitions. We also are lucky enough to be on some promo lists so we bring you some exclusive tracks & of course new Dirty Basement material.
S: Finally, as we’re only one month into 2011 what have you got planned for the rest of the year? Any exclusive news you can share with us?
You can expect more originals this year & probably less remixes, we also have a few tracks & remixes we wrote last year that should be due for release on various labels, 'Talent By Association' and 'So Cruel' being the main two to keep an eye out for (release dates still TBC). We have already started on more tracks with Baby Taylor, a track for the next Heartbeats Compilation and a remix for a German label. We’re also considering a side project, we’d like to form an Italo/Electro band with some friends but we’re still in the process of figuring out how we’re gonna go about it, but it’ll probably included Hamish on drums/vocals, a heap of synths & someone on bass!
Dirty Basement - Talent by Association ft. MC Freeflow(HD Version) from Joe Crogan on Vimeo.
Dirty Basement Website
Dirty Basement on Soundcloud
Dirty Basement on Facebook
Dirty Basement on Twitter
Dirty Basement on Mixcloud
No comments:
Post a Comment