Indidjinous Interview (The What)

It would be fair to say that Indidjinous is one of the modern producers pushing the boundaries of drum and bass as a style. In his work, this guy drives in piles of incredibly heavy beats, while razor-sharp percussion and drum breaks complement them perfectly. He is considered the creator of his own inimitable style, “post-apocalyptic swamp funk.” His tracks have been released on the recognised and respected labels Subtle Audio, Omni Music and Pinecone Moonshine, which consistently work with high-quality drum and bass material. We met with Indidjinous to talk about “how it all began,” “what inspires him” and “what he is preparing for listeners in the future.” The musician gladly answered our questions and also told us a little about his current projects.

Who is Indidjinous?

My name is Mike Morel. I grew up in a rural community not far beyond the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. At university, I studied “evolutionary theory” and “political communication.” I spent a couple of years working in media-reform advocacy, trying to defend its rights; during that time I lived in Washington, D.C., and New York, and then moved to San Francisco. I teach children the basics of writing electronic music, develop political campaigns, and also work in bars and restaurants. At present, I am working on creating my own website with political content (a long story), which I plan to launch by the end of 2013. I have been involved in drum and bass music for 10 years, and I have played the didgeridoo for 15 years. Over those years, I have experienced real happiness discovering different local drum and bass communities throughout my life, in the places where I have had to stop and stay.

Your music combines completely different drum and bass substyles: you can hear drumfunk rhythms, deep techy basses and atmospheric soundscapes. Tell us a little about what influences you and how you would characterise your sound.

I call my style “post-apocalyptic swamp funk.” When you listen to my tracks, your imagination may paint a picture of a battlefield where alien tribes clash, with the organic and inorganic on equal footing. Stylistically, I am influenced by the lifeless, black-and-white nuclear-waste cemeteries from science-fiction films; I draw inspiration from films such as Terminator 2 and Aliens. That is why I name Dom & Roland and Tech Itch as the key musicians who influenced me creatively. Their cinematic, industrial, extraterrestrial sound helped me become who I am now. It is a little difficult to explain, but my music sounds exactly like these films look. I have forgotten what this is called, but I am the kind of person who sees music through certain colours and images. To me, every track has its own image, so before I play the next track, I picture it in my mind rather than simply listening to it.

You played the didgeridoo right at the beginning, and the instrument can be heard in your tracks, adding a unique quality to them. How did you move into drum and bass after that?

At university, I spent time with several DJs who mainly played house and breaks. We hung out in the dorms; they played records, and I played along on my instrument. Very soon I began performing with it at major raves. In our area, very large-scale events were held in 2000, and we went to them quite often. That was where I heard drum and bass and literally went crazy for the music. Soon I began collecting CDs with Dieselboy mixes, playing them often and accompanying them myself. I quickly realised that my heart vibrated in time with tracks at 170–180. Later, many of my DJ friends retrained as musicians, and I gradually began learning too. Of course, I wanted to write drum and bass tracks. At first I had a microphone and effects pedals, which is why you hear the didgeridoo in my tracks—it happened naturally. I would turn on the recording, and that sound would become part of my work.

The latest EP in your “Relics” series came out quite recently on Omni Music, and it includes some tracks from 2004. How much has your sound progressed since then?

My style and sound have not undergone any radical changes. I still feel that post-apocalyptic spirit in my tracks. But over the past few years, I have used fewer dark vocal samples from science fiction and have started adding more melody instead. Perhaps over the years my style has become more tribal and less industrial. But I have always tried to mix primitive and futuristic sounds, so perhaps any sharp changes are not that noticeable. The techno-driven, warlike sound of drums and the didgeridoo together is rough and animalistic, but at the same time it creates a kind of robotic hybrid; stylistically, I have always moved towards that. In addition, my rhythms have changed somewhat over this time: I now lean more towards half tempo, while always placing a serious emphasis on rhythmic variety. I do not know what could be worse than listening to a drum and bass set where every track is a typical “dancefloor banger,” a roller with two snares, one on the two or one on the four. BORING!!! I like rollers, but listening to them all night means betraying and devaluing the genre. Drum and bass is music of contrasts and variations. That is exactly it: the drum and the bass!

What tools and equipment do you use when working in the studio, and why?

I still use the same sequencer I used 10 years ago. It was given to me by my friends who played house and breaks. It is called Digital Performer (I am currently using version 8). As far as I know, no drum and bass producers use this program. This makes me feel that it gives me some advantage, making my tracks sound somewhat different from the others, because my plug-ins are different and the interface is different too. I use ReCycle to make break choppage. Wiretap serves me for recording samples. Peak helps me manipulate waveforms. All of this runs on a Core Duo Mac platform, but I am preparing to upgrade it to Quad-Core. Of course, Ableton and Reason are very cool sequencers in many respects, and I would not rule out switching to them in the future. But I know my programs very well, and they are familiar to me.

Tell us how you write a new track. Do you have any special method?

I try to start with a collection of suitable samples, gathering them before I begin work. For me, it is better to find a multitude of samples needed for the project than to start with two or three and gradually add new ones. First I take the drums, construct and synthesise a pattern from samples, and then arrange it in the form of a more traditional breakbeat. Then I take the bass, and only after that the other effects. I am usually very careful with loops; I do not expand on them until I am wildly enthusiastic about them. The “well, it’s okay, it’ll do” attitude is the greatest enemy of a truly high-quality track, in my view. If I create something that is merely “okay,” I may doubt and hesitate if the thought occurs to me to “kill” the project and start it again, but if I am not satisfied with the sequence and am not excited by it, I gradually “dissect” everything and reconstruct the track until I like it.

Have you ever experimented with other tempos?

I once created strange ambient music at different speeds using the didgeridoo, but I got stuck at 175–180. However, if you listen to my tracks, many of them run at halftime, meaning 85–90. Last year I decided to put together a beatless ambient mix with distorted didgeridoo sounds—a kind of science-fiction CD for meditation. So I also work at 0 BPM. I called this mix “Alienesque,” and you can find it on my website Indidjinous.com or on my SoundCloud page.

Was there any particular project that you especially enjoyed working on?

I recently really enjoyed working with the musician Centaspike from Australia. We wrote six tracks together; half of them have already been released, while the other half have yet to come out. He is a very precise and knowledgeable professional producer, and I am always thrilled by what he writes and by what we create together. Working with him is simply a pleasure. I am waiting for next year so that we can work together again, this time on a full-length LP. We will reach a new level.

Tell us about the collaborative “Indidjinous & Asymmetric – Limit EP”, which was released for free on Anchorage Sound.

This EP has literally just been released on this Australian label. It features a re-release of my track “Grindah,” a wild remix of the track by Asymmetric/Limit and me, and a remix of BM9000’s “The Roundabout.” There are also three great tracks by Asymmetric. Since “Grindah” came out a couple of years ago, making a remix of “Roundabout” was a great pleasure for me. This track turned out more melodic than most of my work. It sounds very clean now, and I am pleased with the result. It also has some cool dubstep-style moments that sound great when you mix the track with another one. I hope you like it.

Your EP “Into the Primitive” recently came out on Dubkraft Records. It sounds very cool and genuinely heavy. Tell us what you are preparing for listeners in the future.

In the near future I will have a couple of releases for Jungletrain Recordings, a new label that will release tracks by DJs from this internet radio station—I am one of them. I will soon have a remix on Pinecone Moonshine; I just need to finish it first. At the end of the year, Omni Music will release a vinyl record with a couple of my collaborative works. Subtle Audio will release three collaborations with Centaspike on the Subtle Audio Volume III compilation; this will happen at the end of, or more likely the beginning of, 2014. I am really looking forward to that release. I think the track “Spliced” is the best work we have done together.

On your radio show “The Other Side,” broadcast every two weeks on jungletrain.net, you can always hear dirty drum and bass rhythms. Do you perform as a DJ often in general?

Since moving to the West Coast, I have not played as a DJ as often as I did in New York or Washington. But I still play once every couple of months in Oakland or San Francisco. Though I am not complaining. I only moved back to San Francisco in February last year, so to speak, I am starting my life here again. And although I grew up in the Bay Area, I was always on the outskirts of the drum and bass scene. I did not really worry about a name until I moved to the East Coast, so here I am only just becoming part of the local movement. And it is simply an “explosion.” I really enjoy going to parties and meeting people, even more than simply playing as a DJ. I manage to do everything: DJ, write tracks, talk to people, and dance in a club like a person “bitten by a swarm of bees.”

CDJs or turntables?

Both. I learned to play on them simultaneously, so it makes no difference to me. I am not a fan of “Serato” or anything that requires laptops, but only when there is no other way to play. When I watch a DJ clicking a mouse, it just kills me, seriously. They look as if they are at work.

Do you prefer drum and bass from before the 2000s or after?

My favourite period is 1997–2001, but I really like the whole revival of the music that happened after 2009; I really like that sound. Over the past five years, the music has become very free, and I am more than satisfied with the quality of what is being released now.

Which producers appeal to you most right now?

Hmm, quite a lot of people. Centaspike, of course; Parallapse (Parallel & Relapse); Hybris; Anodyne Industries are pushing an interesting sound; SPKTRM, Acid Lab, Fade, and Escher & Blocks, among others.

Do you have any advice for beginning producers?

My advice may not appeal to everyone, but in drum and bass you must not compromise. For God’s sake, do what you want to do. Do not worry about “dancefloor appeal”; create a sound that you like, not something that everyone else will like. Make remixes and collaborate—it is a wonderful opportunity to grow creatively. Your horizons will expand noticeably, and you will build up your strength. And as I already said, good is the enemy of great. Do not continue working on a track until you completely like the sound. And even if you have spent five days on it and still do not like how your track sounds, do not continue simply because you think that doing so is perseverance. Yes, it is much harder, but unquestionably better to let it all go and rebuild everything from scratch. In the end, the result will be much better. And the time you spend on another track will not be wasted either. You simply need to go through this and experience it for yourself, so that ultimately you get a new, BETTER track.

What are you interested in besides drum and bass?

As I said earlier, politics—it is my profession and another major passion in my life. It is a very long story and probably better suited to another interview, so I will not bore you with it. I am crazy about Burning Man; it is a love that has not faded over the years. If you do not know already, for me it is the best thing there is.

If the world were overrun by zombies, what three things would you take out of the house first before starting to look for shelter?

My computer, my didgeridoo, and as much music as I can carry.

Many thanks to Indidjinous for the in-depth and interesting interview!

Originally published in English by The What (8 September 2013). Translated from the Russian translation by Rustee, published on the Special Request blog in 2013.