Headphone Highlights: Old Apparatus
With two releases on dubstep pioneer Mala’s Deep Medi label and a contrasting tape of improvised electro-acoustic music for Berlin-based imprint The Tapeworm since the start of 2011, the enigmatic East London collective of three musicians and a visual artist have wasted little time. Taking soundsystem music as its jump off point, their abstract bass delves into unknown territories, and this year saw the group form their own label Sullen Tone to and expand on that vision. In the midst of the musicians’ three solo EPs for the new label, two of the anonymous group reveal the diversity of audio esoterica helping to inform their sound. You can listen to the audio version of this over at RBMA Radio.
OLD: We’re Old Apparatus and we’re from East London.
APPARATUS: The tracks we’ve chosen for you guys today are a selection of tracks that we feel have influenced the way we make music.
OLD: The first artist is Jacaszek, this track is called “Lament” on the album Treny. He’s quite an influential Polish electro-acoustic musician, and we’ve been lucky enough to play with him, and I think he deserves a wider audience, so see what you think.
Shirley Collins/Davy Graham “Hares On The Mountain” (Decca)
APPARUTS: I heard this track a few years ago and it was one of the first tracks that influenced me. The track has Davy Graham on the guitar and Shirley Collins on the vocals. This really creates a nice mix of traditional English folk vocals with a more contemporary, almost jazz-like guitar style. Yeah, and this track has influenced us to use folk samples in our music.
Dance Conspiracy “Dub War (Chapter 1)” (Metamorphosis)
OLD: I first heard back in ’92 when I was little. My uncle gave me a rave ’92 mixtape, which was full of a lot of chart rubbish, but on the very last tape, there was this track and it starts with a deep saxophone intro, and that kind of sonic aesthetic has stuck with me throughout the years of making music. It’s something that we are always trying to produce ourselves.
Palehorse “Rides In (On A Cash Cow)” (DryRun)
OLD: Palehorse are a UK band that have no guitars, it’s just two distorted basses. They, for me, bring a new meaning to the phrase ‘bass weight’, but in a very physical and band-orientated form.
Random Trio “Prophecy” (Tectonic)
OLD: “Prophecy” by Random Trio on the Cyrus EP – when this track came out, it absolutely captured the feeling of the time in the dances that were going on. We’re talking just about pre-Burial days, and there wasn’t a lot like it at the time, and for me, this really stood out. It has a lot in common with feeling of the “Dub War” track that you heard earlier.
Old Apparatus “Zebulon” (Deep Medi Musik)
OLD: This is “Zebulon” by us. It uses a sample from a group called Festival. We approached with the intention of not completely changing the sound, but just showing what they’d done in a different light. And I think we’ve done a good job.
Jens Lekman “Pocketful Of Money” (Service)
APPARATUS: Our next track is “Pocketful Of Money” by Jens Lekman. I really like the way he uses sampling in this track and his style of songwriting.
VIVEK “Grandfather Clock” (Deep Medi Musik)
OLD: VIVEK is one of the best producers to come out of the dubstep scene in recent, and as far as I’m concerned, there’s no one that can touch him production-wise from the new school or the old school of producers. He creates tracks that just hit heavier on a system than anyone else.
Do Make Say Think “Minmin” (Constellation)
APPARATUS: Do Make Say Think on the Canadian Constellation Records label. This is from one of their earlier albums called Goodbye Enemy Airship The Landlord Is Dead, and the track’s called “Minmin”. I just like how it develops, really kind of gradually, and there’s this really lovely bassline that I particularly like. Then it turns into a load of noise by the end of it. Hope you enjoy it.
Chris Clark “The Gavel” (Warp)
APPARATUS: Quite a big influence on our sound is the stuff coming out of Warp Records. Used to listen to quite a lot of that sort of stuff, obviously Aphex Twin, Chris Clark [was a] particular one that was quite inspirational for me. This is a track from one of his older releases “The Gavel”. I like the way you can’t really tell where he’s got his sounds from some of the time, and the way he processes things: it’s a very unique way that you can instantly tell it’s him.
