Kid Smpl & Kloke: An Alumni Conversation

Kloke and Kid Smpl have made some of our favorite music over the past few years, but they sound hardly alike. While Kloke – an Australian producer – has made murky house and techno that sounds wonderfully smudged and blurry, Kid Smpl’s desolate landscapes are dystopic nightmares that tend to fall off genre grids completely. Kid Smpl is currently working on a new release to follow up on last year’s Response/Ascend EP for Symbols, while Kloke recently travelled into psychedelic sci-fi territories with his side project band Travancore. Prior to that he dropped the P.H.O.N.E. 12” on Styles Upon Styles, including a Hieroglyhic Being remix on the flipside. We brought Kloke an Kid Smpl together for our latest Alumni Conversation.

Kloke

It sounds like you put a lot of thought into very wide, big sounds that you can really get lost in. Where do you get that? Normally I can pick obvious reference points, but with your stuff I couldn’t quite work out where it’s all coming from.

Kid Smpl

Sound design plays an important role. I think the reason the reference points are hard to pick up is I like thinking of a general vibe or, for lack of a better word, aesthetic. I spend a lot of time experimenting with sound design and running things through various effects. I know when I hit something that sounds like that general feeling I’m trying to go for. It’s a lot of experimenting and knowing the general idea of what I want, knowing what is and what isn’t that, and seeing what happens.

That’s the general approach, just experimenting until I hit something that has the right feeling.

Kloke

I don’t spend too much time on sound design because I’m always geared for a structural come-up straightaway or a melody. Having said that, I use a lot of samples, so it’s kind of just about sound selection. I will completely play around with the samples though – I suppose I do sound design without really thinking about it.

Kid Smpl

It’s more like curation.

Kloke

Yeah, it just turns out that way. I’ll pick an interesting sounding sample so it won’t take too much. When I think of sound designers, I think of someone meticulously working in Reaktor or something, some really technical thing, which isn’t really me.  I don’t do that at all. How I manipulate sounds is quite simple. It’s about trying to get the best results from doing very little.

Kid Smpl

Is it almost like choosing the right things to create a palette that you want?

Kloke

Yeah, I’ll just be experimenting with sounds. I’ll get bored of it pretty quickly and the idea for a tune might hit me straight away.

Kid Smpl

I totally get that. I have moments where I sit down thinking that I’m going to just make some sounds, then I start on the first sound and that turns into the idea of a track, and then I just focus on that instead.

You just mentioned Goldie. Is there anybody who you really admire in terms of sound design?

Kloke

I grew up with mid-’90s or early ’90s drum-n-bass, jungle stuff. All those kind of producers around that period. I still think no one has really been able to touch that just in terms of the sounds. It’s about the attitude of the sounds and the vibe that they bring to mind. Everything about it – the timbre, the texture – it evokes a certain vibe.

Kid Smpl

A sound could be a totally impressive technical feat, but if it’s not presented in the right context, it can’t say a whole lot. It isn’t very interesting for very long.

Kloke

Exactly. Who would be your influences when it comes to that kind of thing?

Kid Smpl

The first person that comes to mind is Burial, which I think is interesting because I’m 90% sure that almost everything he uses is samples that aren’t processed too much. It seems like it’s more about sound selection, like you were saying about what you do earlier. I think he’s one of those producers that created his own world. He’s probably the top influence in that sense.

Arca comes to mind. I think he’s created a very distinct world just through the sounds that he chooses. Anybody that does that I always think is really interesting.

Kloke

Burial’s a good one. I think you’re right. I think it’s 100% samples. I remember when I first heard that first Burial album. I just thought, “Wow. This is someone that really knows how to produce.” Then to find out it’s this guy that’s just putting stuff together in his bedroom.

Kid Smpl

That shows that maybe it’s good to just focus on what sounds good to your ear and not worry about all the technicals. He’s not following all the typical sound engineering rules but is still creating stuff that sounds really cool.

Do you think you take more of a cathartic approach to making music? Is it more about that freedom of creating and seeing what happens, or is it more like examining different styles?

Kloke

When I first started making music I was just trying to work within certain styles. I was trying to make drum-n-bass a certain way. I’d be making techno very much in the vein of Derrick May. You’re kind of mimicking – you don’t have your own voice.

Kid Smpl

That’s how you learn, is through approaching other people’s ways.

Kloke

It took me a long time. Rather than trying to make a drum-n-bass track and a techno track and keep it all separate, after a while it’s like, “Well, let’s just start mixing everything up,” taking the good bits. Eventually that ends up being a sound of your own. I think mine is still a bit cluttered, all over the place.

I suppose it depends on how long you’re doing it. I generally have a certain sound that I’m going for and I’ll be working on that for maybe six months or a year. Then it will move on to something else. It’s this gradual evolution. The releases I’ve had are just picking little bits here and there. I don’t know if it necessarily makes much sense. I’ve been working on a couple of different album projects recently which are much more focused on a certain style.

How long have you been making music, actually?

Kid Smpl

I’ve been making music since high school. This particular project has been around for maybe four years now. It slowly developed into a particular sound. It started during college, just making Burial tracks, basically. Like how you were saying you used to try to make a Detroit techno track or a jungle track and then that taught you to do those things, I think I did that through trying to make Burial-type tracks, and then it evolved from me both wanting to do different stuff and also doing Burial stuff wrong. Having happy accidents. It slowly turned into, hopefully, a fairly unique thing. It’s something that I’m conscious of now, but I wasn’t really before.

It’s also something I wanted to keep evolving. I would get bored if I was just doing the same sort of tracks over and over.

Kloke

It gets to be a conscious thing and you’re deliberately trying to make it different. If you’re used to turning on whatever software you might be using and loading up the same drum sounds and starting the track like that, it’s just a matter of taking a completely different approach to starting a track.

Kid Smpl

That always helps, intentionally getting rid of whatever production crutches you have and just seeing what happens if you use something different. For me, maintaining a sound has more to do with what’s in your head, and knowing what is or isn’t the sound you’re going for. Hopefully whenever you switch to using different gear or whatever, as long as you know what is or isn’t what you’re going for, it should be all right.

Kloke

That’s a good point, actually. A lot of the time it’s what you don’t want, isn’t it? You know what you don’t want something to sound like. So often you might be working within a certain style and a certain tempo, and you’re like, “Okay, this could very easily become something I don’t want it to be because I don’t want to reference that or that’s been done to death.” You’re deliberately not going down that path. That comes from how wide your musical knowledge is and how many reference points you’ve got, can you join the dots between this and that. That was one of the questions I had. As a producer, as a music maker, I’ve always thought the wider your musical knowledge is, the better. What do you think about that?

Kid Smpl

That’s pretty important for my music because I think there are a lot of influences in there that maybe seem a bit disparate. You could say I grew up with more American music, listening to hip hop, which I think is not super-overt in my music, but it is apparent, along with hardcore and punk and stuff like that.

It wasn’t until college that I really got into actual electronic music, and also UK music, which also has an apparent influence on my music. We’ve talked about Burial, but also a lot of early dubstep and grime influenced my music. Even jungle. I wish I had way deeper knowledge of jungle. I love the earlier UK dance music stuff. Jungle has definitely influenced my music, but my knowledge of it isn’t super deep.

Kloke

You don’t necessarily have to be a real trainspotter about a certain style of music to appreciate it or incorporate it into your music. It’s not like you have to know everything there is to know about it. Jungle, or more drum-n-bass, was the style that was responsible for broadening my horizons. It took influences from so many different areas, sampling stuff from all over the place. It was from there that I then really discovered Detroit techno or hip hop or funk and soul or everything, really.

I personally think it can only enrich your listening experience the more wide your musical knowledge is. You can pick up on all these subtle things and it makes it more interesting.

Kid Smpl

It makes it interesting and it will probably help you understand where the actual creator of the music is coming from. I think it’s interesting that even if you’re not necessarily familiar with what they’re referencing, you still get something out of the music. It’s interesting how that will affect your interpretation.

Kloke

So a thing that I’ve always had is hearing music in my sleep. If I’ve been out to a club or I’ve been working on music all day, that night it’s kind of like my brain scrambles all the music I’ve been taking in and creates what seems like an original track while I’m asleep. Then I’ll realize I’m dreaming, wake up and try to recreate what I’ve just heard. I’ve only ever successfully managed it once though, and even then it was more just capturing the general vibe that it had. Am I just going insane, or is that something that other people have too?

Kid Smpl

No, that’s definitely happened to me. It sounds like it’s happened to you pretty often though. Is that right?

Kloke

It’s mainly if I’d been listening at loud volume. Certainly after being in a club it will happen.

Kid Smpl

That’s definitely happened to me. Not a whole lot. I don’t know if I’ve ever tried to recreate something from that, though. I’ve definitely had plenty of things pop in my head all the time. Most of the time it’s weird. It almost seems like some of them can’t translate to actual sound, if that makes sense. Anytime I have something pop in my head and I really like it and want to get it down, I would say 90% of the time it ends up as something completely different, which isn’t necessarily bad.

Kloke

Exactly. It’s not important. During the day a melody might pop up and you’ll whistle it into your phone or something, and then by the time you listen back to it a few days later it’s like, “What is this?” While you’ve been whistling it into your phone, in your head you’ve got the background noises, you’ve got the bass line in your head. You’re just listening to the melody. It’s a tricky one. That was actually one of the questions I had. If you could invent a fantasy bit of studio equipment, or some kind of music-making aid, what would it be?

Kid Smpl

I don’t use a whole lot of gear. I’m pretty much just on my laptop and studio monitors. I use a MIDI controller for my live set, but I don’t use anything like that for producing. I think I’d want to create the most intuitive MIDI controller ever that could be used in a really – I don’t know if visceral is the right word, but in a cathartic way. A really expressive MIDI controller. That’s kind of an abstract idea when I think about it.

Kloke

Like a suit or something where you could just use your body. Who knows, they might be invented in the distant future. Something that can record your dreams or can interpret the music that you hear in your head while you’re asleep and interpret that. It would turn it into some sort of data and then that would be made into music.

The other one would be some kind of thing that wipes your memory. The problem I’ve always had is working on a track and you start listening to it, maybe you’re listening to a loop again and again and again and after a while, you just can’t tell if it’s any good. You just want to be able to hear it for the first time like it’s someone else’s bit of music that you have absolutely no knowledge of, and then go, “Oh, okay.” Like a Men In Black style memory eraser.

Kid Smpl

Erasing your short term memory.

Kloke

Specifically that music, the latest bit of music you’d been working on, or something like that.

Kid Smpl

That would be amazing, actually. You never get to hear your music, a completed track, with completely fresh ears.

Kloke

Exactly. You know how it’s been put together. You see all the wires behind it, but you don’t actually know what it’s about, really. You’re almost the worst person to judge your own music sometimes, I feel.

Do you scrap it, do you continue working? I always played in bands as well as producing. At some point it dawned on me that if you’re a musician, if you’re playing something, just messing around, it’s very hard to hear a good idea.

Someone will just be messing around. They won’t hear it, but you’ll hear an idea in that, or vice-versa. You’ll be playing and they’re like, “Woah, what did you just do?” You’re like, “I don’t know.” That comes from actually working and collaborating with other people. When you’re making music on your own, obviously you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to bounce ideas off of someone else. I think it’s always harder to come up with stuff on your own. It can be for different people. Outside of the stuff you produce on your own, do you have other things on the go?

Kid Smpl

Not in a long time, but throughout high school I played in bands. Then it turned into me doing music on my own in college because that was just easier. It’s how I got more into making electronic music. It’s a completely different creative process, which is interesting, much more like a free train of thought versus something very planned out and strategic.

Kloke

We were talking earlier about referencing stuff – it’s hard not to do that, but at the same time, if you stumble across something and an idea takes you to a different place in unexplored terrain, you can start second-guessing, going, “Oh, are people going to get this? What is this?” Like you say you need to embrace those situations and just go with them.

Kid Smpl

Yeah, trust your ear in the end. If it sounds cool to you, and it sounds like something you want to express, then don’t be afraid if it’s something unfamiliar.

Kloke

Do you feel that you are constrained with certain parameters? “I can’t use this kind of sound or I can’t do this tempo?”How do you approach that?

Kid Smpl

That’s a good question. I was talking earlier about how I want things to continuously evolve within a certain sort of sound. I think as long as that’s exciting and fun for me, and I’m making stuff that feels genuinely like the music that I want to make, then I’d never really feel like I’m compromising. A lot of this started with me trying to make Burial tracks and that started as “I want to hear more music like this.” As long as I’m creating stuff that I want to hear, and it’s new and exciting to me, I feel pretty good about it. Of course, there are always moments where I need to be mindful. I don’t want to play it safe.

Kloke

You don’t want to get in that position where you’re trying to second-guess or you’re referencing yourself. There’s always great producers that I love that do just kind of expand on one or two ideas.

Kid Smpl

You like to change things up pretty often.

Kloke

I don’t know. I ask people how they view music I make. It seems to me like it’s completely all over the place. Maybe there is some kind of thread that ties it together. It’s hard to know. Hence the stupid invention of something that could wipe your memory.