Baobinga has been a fixture on the dance music scene for almost a decade now, releasing some of the most distinctive beats around under a whole range of names and side-projects. Over the years he's released dozens of singles and three albums, including one released as a 'pay what you want' venture last year, and another (as The Body Snatchers) which brought a host of US rappers together with UK breakbeat sounds. We caught up with him on the eve of his fourth album release 'Joint Ventures' on his own label 'Build', which sees him shifting the goalposts once again, with a selection of collaborations featuring the great and the good of the UK dubstep and bass music scenes.So, your new album is almost entirely collaborations - was that your intention from the outset? To write a collaborative album?
Well, it goes back to the original idea of the label really. First it was going to be releasing tunes by me, as well as tunes by other people, but it just naturally became more focused on the stuff I was doing. And releasing collaborations as singles just seemed like a good way to open it up to other artists, while still keeping it focused. But it wasn't really planned like that, it just kind of happened that way - so then when I thought about building up a bigger project, an album on the same theme seemed to be a good way of going about it. So it just grew up naturally from the way the label had developed, I guess.
How did you go about setting up the collaborations?
Well, that's one of the great things about Bristol, there are so many producers around here that it's really easy to get things started. The label got off to a good start with the first couple of releases, they had remixes from Untold and Roska, and then I did a couple of collaborations with Ginz and Cosmin TRG, so I think that put the message out that I was up for collaborating and being serious with it. Then it was just a case of asking people! I had a list of people that I wanted to work with, and managed to hook up with pretty much all of them.
So, on the logistics side, I guess with the Bristol producers you could do the work at your studio?
Yeah, a lot of those were done at my studio, although not all of them - a couple were done up at Ginz's studio, some of the Hyetal bits were started at his and then finished at mine, the same with one of the Guido tracks. But people like Jack Sparrow - who I've still never met! - I sent him a beat, he stripped it back, added some stuff of his own. Then he had some kind of hard disk crash and sent me part of what he had, I worked on that - we basically swapped files back and forth over the internet. That was made easier by the fact that we both work in Logic though, so it was all compatible.
So how did it work when people had different DAWs to you?
Well, for the Randomer track, he was on Ableton, so we were bouncing stems as audio and sending those, which is quite a fun way to work; there's only so much you can edit and change. It imposes certain limitations which is quite an interesting challenge. It's a bit like that release on Svetlana Industries last year, Teebs and Jackhigh I think it was, where they just sent a two track WAV file back and forth, and just layered stuff onto it.
What did you bounce? Full tracks, or individual drums and stuff?
With the Randomer one, I sent the drums separately; kicks, snares, bass, and the synths on separate layers, to try and keep it as flexible as possible.
So how did you start tracks? Was it generally one person coming up with an idea and then taking it from there?
It changed from track to track really. With the Hyetal stuff, we'd generally start it together, both be in the studio with a blank page, and just start jamming out ideas. With the a few tracks, I already had a rough beat going already, which I could send off, sometimes we'd build on it, although Jack Sparrow pulled the beat completely apart. One of the Guido tracks was one of his ideas that he had got stuck with. With the XXXY tune, I already had a fair bit of it done and I thought it'd be really good to get him involved and see where it went - and it ended up quite different to what I expected.
Do you see your work as being sample-heavy? Do you use samples a lot?
Well, I don't know about "sample heavy" - to me that suggests someone like DJ Premier or whoever, taking a hookline out of an old funk or soul tune, and using that as a basis to hang the rest of the track around or something. And I don't really do that. But I do use a lot of samples in my work, drums, single hits, little vocal chops, stuff like that.
Your tracks generally tend towards being very percussive - is that usually a starting point for your stuff? The drum track?
Yeah it is - I do normally start with the drums, but it's good to try and get away from that sometimes too. If you're not careful you can end up with such an interesting and busy drum track that there's no room for anything else! So I do try to avoid it sometimes, like with Make Me Feel, I just threw some placeholder drums down and then spent a long time working on that big synth riff. I think that once you know what you're doing, production-wise, it can be easy to slip into a routine, so it's good to try new things to jolt yourself creatively. So that's another good argument for doing collaborations, working with vocalists, and so on. But yeah, I still do start with the drums most of the time.Ok then, so you sit down and start writing a drum beat - how do you go about it?
Well, I usually work in audio and I've built up a load of samples over the years, just from all the tracks I've done, so generally I'll have a sift through some samples, find something that sounds decent and go from there. But sometimes I'll take a percussive loop off an old album or something like that. I do like working in audio though, you can drop stuff straight into the arrangement, move it around, pull it off the grid, see clearly where all the transients are, it feels quite immediate. But some people can get just as good results out of software samplers - it's more about what you're aiming at, rather than how you go about it!
Do you use sample packs at all?
Yeah, I've got a few. I generally go for the more basic stuff though - acoustic drums, drum machine stuff, useful tools. I think they can be really useful if, say, you've sampled a break and want to toughen it up with a bigger kick, or some brighter hihats, that you can just layer in and engineer them so they complement it. But I try to avoid using them for the main hooks in my tracks - I wouldn't want people to recognise them!
How important do you think it is to have good engineering on your tracks, and technically good production?
I think it's getting less important. To go back to sample packs for a second, there are so many out there now that sound so good - they're full of interesting, well produced sounds, and if you just put them all together they'll sound bright and tough and they'll bang in the club. Ten years ago it was pretty hard to make something bang in the club, now you just have to buy a decent sample pack - so it's cool that production standards have come on, but you need something else if you're going to stand out and be distinctive. So I think it's starting to be more important that you create some kind of aesthetic identity, even if that's not as well produced. It's something that I think Hyetal has done really well - his tunes are covered in hiss and distortion and have the treble rolled off things, but it's a coherent world of 1980s references, retro visions of the future and whatnot. And it's very distinctive. You hear it too in tracks by '40', who produces for Drake - his stuff sounds quite lo-fi, dreamy, a bit woozy, but it's really interesting.
So, just to come back around to the label and the album to finish, it seems like lots of producers are now starting their own labels, often to release their own tunes. Presumably it helps them make a bit more cash out of the industry these days - do you think that's something we'll be seeing more of?
Yeah I think so. I think there will still be a few flagship labels who release stuff by everyone and do well, but these days sales are still declining, so if you're going to try and make money from something, it makes sense to try and keep a bit more of it if possible. I know some people think recorded music should be free, but we all still have to eat and pay for our software and sample packs! There will always be labels that release anyone, and a release on them would be a big thing, like R&S, or Hessle, but I think the amount of those is shrinking. Also, doing a label is a lot of work for very little reward, it's tough. And no-one cares about your stuff like you do yourself.
Has it worked out like you expected?
Well, as I mentioned, I had originally thought I would release all kinds of artists, but as it turned out I'm not sure I've got the best ear for A&R! I tend to pass over tunes that are good and badly produced, and if I find a really good tune I'm just annoyed that I didn't write it myself. So I think it's best if I leave that stuff to others...
Is it as much work as you thought it would be?
Well, on the logistics side, it's a bit less - I'm lucky in that I have a management company handling the actual label management side of it, so they speak to the distributors and arrange the manufacturing and so on. But the marketing side of things, that's been a lot more work than I expected. I've always held this slightly romantic view that if you just put good music out there, it will do well and people will appreciate it. But these days there's just so much music around that you really have to work hard to bring it to people's attention. So that's been much more work than I expected. But the rest of it, I've really enjoyed - it was a lot of fun deciding on the album artwork for instance, and seeing the album take shape was really exciting too.
