-A LOCAL KID-

BOOT

For this post I caught up with one of Sydney's fastest growing Dubstep talents. This guy has been floating around the scene for a while, and if you've been following the Sydney dubstep scene you would have definitely seen him around.

Boot has recently released an EP which has been climbing up the beatport charts and is now in the top 100. Check it out here

I was also lucky enough to get some questions answered by the man himself.

Firstly, congrats on the new EP! 2 songs in the top 100 on Beatport, tell us a bit about the process behind the EP and how your sound is evolving…

Cheers man! Yeah I didn't really expect it to chart so well (or at all!), so stoked about that. Well basically both of these tunes are older tracks I wrote around the start of 09, when Israel were running Operation Cast Lead against Gaza, it really affected me in a big way that a country could use such unnecessary force against almost defenceless people, and I decided to write a few tunes to express that. Controlling Your Environment was named such as is it one of Hunter S Thompson's rules of politics as defined in his book Kingdom of Fear, which I thought was apt due to Israel's incessant media blackout around the time, and Intifada is an Arabic word which translates to 'shaking off', the Intifadas were campaigns of resistance and civil disobedience by the Palestinians throughout the 90s in Gaza and the West Bank and I thought it fit the theme of the tune well. As these are older tunes, my sound has definitely been refined and I think I've split into several different directions. I get bored writing the same style so I might do a couple of heavier tunes, then a couple of deeper ones, some 4x4 stuff, and recently I've been getting back into writing drum and bass, which is where I learnt most of my production techniques. But yeah, the one thing I usually try and go for in my tunes is a theme or draw on something that is affecting me in some way at the time, which may be emotional, political, philosophical and so on. I find that this helps me focus on the core components of the tune and gives me a framework to develop my ideas on.

2. Are you and Sook still collaborating a lot or are you taking more time to work on your solo careers?

We definitely have plans to continue collaborating, it's just difficult finding the time. However alot of the stuff we've written together hasn't been in the same studio, as Sook's been overseas for 5 months plus I live in Gosford with my girlfriend and son, and work full time which makes it hard. But yeah, you will be hearing some new Abyss collabs in the future for sure as I think when we get together it brings out the best of both of us.

3. Favourite club to play in Sydney?

That's a hard one. I quite enjoy playing at Phoenix Bar, but I guess it really comes down to the party, so my favourite parties to play are warehouse parties, Low Society and Void.

4. If you could see any artist or act, alive or dead, who would it be?

Alive - King Crimson

Dead - Nirvana

5.Talk to us about your software and plug ins…

I use Cubase 5 for my DAW, I've been using Cubase for about 10 years now so it's really an extension of myself. I've tried alot of other DAWs like Logic, Ableton and that, and while they are all incredible programs, Cubase is what I know, so I don't real feel the need to use anything else.

As for synths and plugins, I have a Virus TI Snow which I absolutely love and highly recommend, it's been used on everything I've written since about August last year. I'm also a huge fan of anything Native Instruments, especially Reaktor (which I have alot of frankenstein custom instruments I've found and made, but Sook really is the man you should talk to about this, he's a Reaktor machine!), Absynth and Kontakt. I use the Sonnox plugs as my workhorses for dynamics and eq, and Voxengo Elephant as my limiter for getting tunes up to a playable level and for sending to labels and DJs.

6.How long have you been djing and producing for? How did you get started?

I've been producing electronic music for about 10 years, but really only became a life altering obsession about 5 years ago (after I heard Noisia for the first time lol). However, I've been writing and playing music most of my life, I started violin when I was about 6, and have also played guitar for about 15 years in bands and stuff. Even studied classical composition briefly before I dropped out to concentrate full time on production.

It started I guess because I kind of got sick of being in bands and having to compromise, with production I can put exactly what's in my head into the DAW. That's not to say I'm stubborn because critical feedback from peers has helped so much, and you can't take that sort of stuff personally. The first type of dance music I got into was drum and bass, around 2000 or so, and it was guys like Teebee, Konflict, Stakka and Skynet, Bad Company, Ed Rush and Optical, Photek and so on that I really got into. Then I think I first heard dubstep in about 2005, at Inhale at the Abercrombie, when Southern Steppa and Garage Pressure used to play once a month. I did like it at first, but it never really grabbed me until I heard tunes like Distance - Traffic, Vex'd - Angels and Loefah - The Goat Stare. And then the real clincher was at the start of 08 when I heard SPL's first Hollow Point podcast, it was game over for me after that lol.

I've been lucky to have alot of help from artists I respect and look up to, we've had studio sessions with Noisia, Phace, Misanthrop, Evol Intent, Antiserum and more, so they've been a huge boost to the knowledge bank, and also a great morale boost when you realise that you're working in a similar way to bigger name producers.

I've only been DJing for about 3 or 4 years, mainly out of necessity because that's the only way I can play my stuff out. I've had alot of support from the local drum and bass and dubstep scenes with sets which I'm eternally grateful for, so massive shout outs to everyone that has helped me along the way. I still consider myself first and foremost a musician and producer, but yeah, DJing is mad fun too.

7. The Sydney dubstep scene has really stepped it up a few gears over the past year. What are your predictions for the future? Any new genres you care to put your money on?

Yeah it definitely has, and it's good to see that it's not just one take on the sound that's being represented, you've got Void with the more serious bass heavy stuff, Index with the experimental and techier side of things, Low Society for the heavier dancefloor vibes, Grounded for full spectrum grimey warehouse action and Dubrave representing the more commercial side of the sound. As for the future, I'd like to see more local producers not trying to copy and rehash the same old sound, but actually developing their own sound and style, which to me is what dubstep is all about, being versatile and creative. It's definitely what drew me to the sound in the first place and I think it's important to a scene to have a strong base of producers with their own individual styles. That's what will make the world take notice.

Not really sure about new genres, guess we'll have to wait and see! But the thing I love about alot of what's going on now is the cross pollination of sounds, which is something that the Index nights have been pushing for a while now, prime example of that was Instra:mental there a few months back, they played an hour of what you could loosely label as techno/house/juke/dubstep and more, but doesn't really fit into any of those categories either. So I guess for me that's where it's at at the moment, just doing whatever!

8. Top five bangers?

Haha well, if it's bangers you're talking about:

1. SPL & Triage - Valhalla (Forthcoming Hollow Point)

2. Sook - Wargasm (Forthcoming Requiem Audio)

3. Droid Sector, Boot & Dubtek - The Trancening (Forthcoming Paradise Lost)

4. Boot - Sengoku Sound System (Forthcoming Requiem Audio)

5. The Bassist & Triage - Jonestown (Forthcoming Requiem Audio)

9. Favourite gig you’ve ever played and the one you’re dying to play in the future…

It's really hard to pick a favourite gig cos we've played so many amazing parties. Ones that stick out for me are Sydtek (I think there ended up being about 15 rigs or something?), Channel 90210 (Under the M4 out near Granville, party was off the chain), Channel 808 (probably the most intense 5 partygoing hours of my life, complete with Warehouse grade Drum and Bass, riot squad mayhem, Polair, and Parramatta Rd being shutdown for 2 hours))

Not really sure what gig I'd like to play, maybe one of those 20000 person megaraves in Russia? They look pretty mental!

10. What’s next for Boot?

I've got a few interstate shows coming up in September, one over in Perth for the launch of J Nitrous' label Hypnosis Recordings, which Sook, Droid Sector and myself are heading over for. Then I'm playing a 3 day festival called Manifest up in QLD the week after that. Next year I ideally would like to tour the US, at least the West Coast, as I've got some homies in a few cities over there they I want to hook up on some tunes and generally get up to mischief with.

I've also got a stack of releases both vinyl and digi coming out on labels like Terminal Dusk, Requiem Audio, Paradise Lost, Gradient Audio, Shift Recordings, Hypnosis Recordings and Onset Audio

Plus working hard on Requiem Audio, the label I co run with Droid Sector. We've just put out our first vinyl release, Babylon System - Our Moment and Matt U - Victim, and there's more vinyl to come. We also have several digital EPs in the works, the first one is titled The Jonestown EP, containing tracks from The Bassist & Triage, Sook, Droid Sector and myself and should be out end of September/start of October.

Here's a mixtape from Boot

Emotional Outburst Mix by Boot

And also a little booty

Awkward Prose [2008 - FREE DL!] by Boot