Tell me about DJ Kenneth A. How did you get into electronic music and remixing?

I've always been into music, but waaaaaaay back in high school I took a class focused on "music technology," and I got to work with midi for the first time. That really got me into the idea of making electronic music. From there it sort of ballooned. I bugged my parents for a few midi keyboards (Yamaha DJX and a Casio Wk1200 were my first two). I saved and bought some turntables, and then eventually moved into the world of DAWs, loops and VSTs with Acid Music 2.0 (currently using Ableton Live). That also introduced me to Acidplanet, and the whole crew over there (shout out to The KBRT and Manoptic)! For a while I was producing music and DJing a decent amount. I took a break from the DJing portion and have been focusing on the production side of things. (Which hilariously has started this whole inner monologue of "should I still call myself DJ Kenneth A?")

What is your process for putting together a track?

It's messy! Generally I'll take two different approaches depending on if it's a remix or an original. For a remix I'll go through the track and pull out the elements that grab me the most. From there I'll work through arranging them, cutting them up, putting effects on them, etc., and ultimately build something new around them.
For an original it really varies. Sometimes the whole track will build itself from start to finish really easily. Other times I'll end up starting in the middle of the track and then build around that. But generally it starts with an idea, a concept or a sound, and then will evolve as it goes. Oftentimes I'll set out to make something in one specific style or genre, and then as it goes on it becomes something completely different. They all tend to take on a life of their own as they are being created.

What kind of gear and/or plugins do you use? What are your favorites?

My setup is a laptop, an Axiom 25, and then a bunch of plugins. I use a lot of stuff from Native Instruments and Heavyocity along with other libraries mixed in. My favorites are probably Massive, Massive X, Absynth, Ascend ( it's legit the best piano library I have ever heard), Novo Essentials, Forzo Essentials, Aeon and Reaktor. (There is so much cool stuff people build for Reaktor).

How did you approach remixing "Phantom Thread Phantom Menace" specifically? And what drew you to that one?

For my remix the first thing I did was listen through all of the stems, and the original track a few times. This always gives me a good baseline of what parts I feel are key to the track, and what parts stick out to me that would be fun to use in a remix (the chiptune and vocal parts for example). Once I get most of that nailed down, I'll start figuring out how the rest of the remix will come together by adding new elements, and changing the feel of the track. I do think it's important to keep some of the feel of the original but also change it up into something new. It's always a fun challenge with remixing.

What drew me to this track is there's so many options in there for potential remixes. It's got a lot of really cool elements going on and has a sort of NIN vibe. (KBRT also was like "Hey check out this track, this should totally be the one you remix.” So he helped me decide while I was listening through the album)

What projects do you have in the works, or coming out soon?

I've got a few that I just completed. One of the most recent is the Damage Control Redux ft Jason McGovern, Remix EP. That's available on my bandcamp page and also spotify, itunes, napster etc etc. It's 5 remixes of the song from my 2020 album "The Enemy Within Redux.” It's pretty awesome as all the remixes came out to be equally awesome, but also wildly different. (Remixes are by Manoptic, The Killer Bee Relay Team, Jeff Appleton, A.Eye Project and myself)

The next one releases June 1st. It's a drum and bass EP from A.Eye Project. This one is out on bandcamp now, and then will be out everywhere else on June 1st. A.Eye Project is a project formed by myself and Manoptic. We like to try and write "visual music" or music for imaginary films. There is a whole series of albums we've done about a group called "The Explorers" which will conclude in 2022.

 
Finally, I just started getting into making Kontakt libraries. My first one was just trying something out. I sampled the invasion of the 17 year Cicadas and made a 4 patch Kontakt library called SynthCada ( bass, pad/arp, lead, and pluck). It was fun trying to design patches out of the bugs and to keep the sound they make intact while making them into usable things. It can be downloaded here (requires the full version of Kontakt 6).  I'm planning to make another one at some point. It will be based on a lot of field and found sound recordings I've collected over the years.

Who is the Killer Bee Relay Team?

Such a big question right off the starting block! I'm just a cool young brother who looks kind of old? I've been making electronic music in some capacity since the 90s. I'm a drummer in bands. I drink too much coffee.

What was your process for making these remixes? How did you start?

I was already pretty familiar with the original versions, so I took the stems you sent my way and listened to them individually - it's amazing the layers you can peel out this way. Once I did that I started getting pulled in completely opposite directions for each mix. Crevasse really leaned in a dark direction - especially once i slowed it down a bit. Evaporate was the exact opposite.

Once I did that, I started replaying parts and changing the instrumentation and that kind of snowballed each time I "performed" it.

Did you keep it all in software or bounce it out to hardware?

All of the sound is 100% hardware! I only use software for mixing/mastering.
That is a key part of my process. No softsynths, no drum programming in midi. It's all actual physical gear I can touch with my human hands!

What gear did you use on these tracks?

Drums are all from my TR8s. That's the brain of my system. Almost everything I do starts there. I also use an SH01a, TD3, and a SammishSID on these, along with some effects I modified.

When you make your own music, do you compose it first, or mostly improvise with your hardware?

It's a little bit of both. It all comes from a place of improv/jams at its root, but when something works I will save either the patch or the pattern or whatever, then come back to it.

I then take all of the individual parts and "perform" (for lack of a better term) the song over and over until I get a take that goes where I want it to go. Once this starts to come together I make myself a notecard with all of the gear and presets and such, and then use that to jam on the track (most recently during my weekly Twitch streams) and start working on getting "THE" take.

Sometimes that means 2 takes in a day and we're done (like my song "The Carp") sometimes that means 100 takes over months (like a Dave Brubeck cover I've been working on for...too long).

I really want to capture a live feel because electronic music is oft so sterile and refined. I try to hack at it from the other angle with more of a "let's see what happens" ethos, just flying at the whim of my midi signals, running multiple synths and drum machines in tandem.

How are you enjoying streaming your working process on Twitch?

It's pretty crazy - I didn't really know how much of an live electronic music scene there is on Twitch, but it is massive (shoutout to LoopFam and The Golden Shrimp Guild), and the community is beyond welcoming. I was expecting a bunch of preteens playing Call of Duty while screaming racial slurs at each other and this couldn't be further from my expectations.

On top of the social aspect it has done wonders for me, creatively. Having a regular time and schedule - and audience - when working through musical roadblocks (and occasional triumphs). It stops me from just "calling it a night" when something doesn't work, and it forces me to figure out why, and to work through it.

Just last week I was finishing up a remix for DJ Kenneth A, and wasn't quite sure which direction it should go. I worked it out on stream and took feedback from the chat about what did and did not work on each run through. Normally it is just me talking to myself!

That’s helpful!

On top of all of this it helps me work on my chops so that I can get out there and play shows once getting out there and playing shows is a thing again. I have access to so many more people playing online than I would in some room somewhere. It's very low commitment for the viewer, and I can make a sandwich mid-set if I want to.

Delicious.

It's also allowed for some weird collaborations that I wouldn't have put together otherwise. I've been live improvising background music while another streamer plays Roguelikes - which has been wild. Being able to play with the tension of and resample the audio the person playing the game has been a really fun exercise and has forced me to approach improvisation and composition from yet another angle. Something about looping someone's genuine lament - "I DIIIIIIED" and turning it into a grinding industrial groove...I can't think of a more fun way to spend a Thursday evening.

The whole thing is like spinning plates (managing my full "rig,” plus watching someone play a video game, and watching the chat, and messing with camera changes and effects and such) but that is sort of my natural emotional state.

Any new projects in the works?

Aside from the streaming madness I am working on an EP of multiple versions of the same modular synth patch/performance...I want to see if that is interesting for anyone but me. DJ Kenneth A (who also did a great remix for your cassette) has a remix EP of his own coming out at the end of May, and I'm on that as well. I have half a dozen or so singles that are in some state of "almost there.” They should all start trickling out before the end of the year as well!