Habituate

Forthcoming on Jay Shepheard’s label Retrofit. Also Shepheard and the man behind Retrofit #6 answer a few questions about the release and the label.
Q: Who is Rudy’s Midnight Machine?
Jay Shepheard: “Rudy’s Midnight Machine is the side project from Robin Lee – one half of the Faze Action duo.”

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Q: Who is Ee Ef Ex?
Jay Shepheard: “Ee Ef Ex is a debut side project of mine.”

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Q: Robin, what has influenced your recent work?
Robin Lee: “I suppose it changes all the time. I grew up listening to sounds in the 80’s so it’s easy for me to come from that angle. Coupled with the current trend of stripped down house music which is a joy to play out. I try and keep my influences subliminal. By that I mean, I don’t go out to recreate a track from the past that I might like but I let those influences naturally come out. I think it allows you to make more original stuff. Of course one of my big influences recently has been the Retrofit series, Jay Shep and OOFT amongst others.”

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Q: Can you shed some light on the production of these tracks, what hardware, software, synthesizers, live recording (if any) is used?
Robin Lee: “I’m using Logic 9 on a Mac G5 with Adam A8X monitors. We have a small 16 channel desk that we track things through. For a lot of the synth parts I use an old Sequential Circuits 6trak analogue synth. It’s actually one of the first analogue synths to have midi so it can end up being very hands on when you’re tracking parts down. It seems to cut mixes like a knife through butter as well. For the live bass I either use a Fender Jazz bass (Vintage Japanese Edition) or a Lakland 5 string beast (it’s actually extra long scale to properly accommodate that low bottom end). The guitar is a hand made Heartfield through an old Sound City amp that I mic up with an SM57 and then gate to give it that slightly clipped sound. I have a large sample library that I use with the built in sampler in Logic (EXS24), and I get my samples from loopmasters or sounds to sample.”

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Q: From what I understand Jay, you used to be based in Germany and moved back to the UK, has this change in location influenced your production and the spawning of the retrofit label?
Jay Shepheard: “Yes that’s right. I was living in Berlin for a year or so from 2009… Its a great city and I love it there, I will almost certainly go back for a while at some point. However I grew up in London and had been away for 2 and a half years (I was living in Poland with my fiance before Berlin) so thought it was time to come back home for a while. At that time Juno was just starting their distribution project so I asked if they’d be interested in doing a label with me and its just gone on from there – I have a pretty tight relationship with Juno as before I moved away I was working there for about 7 years. As far as influencing my production I think both cities have pretty broad scenes these days so I don’t think the moving about really changed my styles so much…Especially with how much listening you can do + promo etc all online these days I guess geographic boundaries between musical tastes in different cities have broken down a lot.”

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Look out for the release very soon. To be updated on its release keep in touch with the label on their Facebook Page or on their wordpress blog.

Tags: Jay Shepheard, Retrofit, Robin Lee, Rudy's Midnight Machine