Enigmatically named Brighton electro/breaks duo Product.01 (comprised of Austrian-Australian vocalist / lyricist Rochelle Vincente and English-Italian electronic breaksmith Marc Adamo) have made a big ripple in the breaks scene of late, with a string of storming live shows and remixes for the likes of Dave Clarke and Free.Land under their belts. Adding a lyrical edge often missing in the breaks genre, previous releases from the duo such as the ‘Zero-One’ EP released earlier this year (which included an unexpected breaks reworking of Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass’) received a huge amount of support from the likes of Si Begg, Tiga and Erol Alkan, a reputation further cemented by the release of their ‘Cloned’ EP, released in October.

With remixes for Si Begg and Larry Tee & Princess Superstar emerging fresh out of the studio and their debut artist album looming on the horizon, ITM’s evilchris caught up with Product.01’s Rochelle and Marc to find out more about performing vocal breaks live, running from bushfires to Blondie – and finds out that ‘ardcore UK breaks boys just like a good singalong, really…

R: Marc and I met through a mutual friend in Brighton. At the time I was working on other projects and dissatisfied with things. As soon as I heard Marc’s music I knew it was exactly the style of production I was after my whole life! (I traveled far and wide to find it…Oz to begin with, then America, all over Europe, lots of bad dates with producers/labels who didn’t get it…and ended up in London). We were both quite busy, so managed to get together a couple of times in 6 months, nothing much.. Though, those times were quite memorable; for our very first recording we did ‘Sheepskinz’ (which will most likely wind up on our debut album), where we bought helium balloons so that I could sing with a non processed squeak! Then my brother died and I was ready to pack everything in and quit music altogether, and suddenly Marc was putting all these loops under my nose and we began /Product.01 properly. Everything came together quite fast and the response kinda surprised us.

M: Our mutual friend Scott introduced us, he’s crazy about music and was keen to see what kind of stuff we’d produce together. Scott also helps me with some design aspects of /Product.01, he’s mega-talented with all things visual and he actually came up with the ’.01’ tag by accident when we were messing around with ideas and it stuck.

R: I’m big on singers and people in general who find their individual ‘thing’, that’s when it works for me. That’s what inspires me in all people – I have always looked to people like that in any area of life – people who try to find what they are and express that – that individuality, and aren’t afraid of it and doing whatever it takes to be as honest as possible about it and not succumb to the pressure of what others expect. These people have inspired me to investigate myself, sometimes at a high cost, but it’s worth it to me; David Bowie in his youth years! Mouse on Mars, Stockhausen, Gorecki, Tom Waits, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jeff Mills, Murcof, Prince in his youth years! Jeff Buckley, Aphex Twin, Astrid Gilberto. These people and a whole lot more, have helped me in totally different ways.

M: There’s no more cheesy karaoke on the schedule in the near future.

R: Not in a hurry no, we’re focusing on the original stuff, which is what we’re about. ‘Heart Ov Glass’ was something we did as a bit of fun, to shake up the usual routine of writing our own stuff. It can be such a breath of fresh air to get out of yourself into someone else’s song. When we were in Oz driving to Sydney from Melbourne, entering bushfire areas, I was just like ‘you know, we really should do That track if we get out of here alive!!!’ Though, come to think of it, there is something we might play with for our album which will be a total surprise if it does happen, a nice ol’ homegrown track, that’s all I can say..!

M: I don’t have a favourite remix, being a temperamental young man, it depends what mood I’m in – that usually decides it for me. I really liked the sleaziness and drive of the Lexi remix, also the sheer full-on-ness of the ‘Too Much Booty’ remix, and the craziness of the ‘We Want Your Soul’ remix. They are all my special children and I look forward to having lots more babies with lots of artists – its good to be a slag sometimes!!! I do think I have a bias towards doing vocal based remixes and being surprised by offers from strange places.

R: Personally they were all great in different ways. Each one has a different story as to part of our evolution as Product.01, and it’s been such an exciting time in that sense. When you build something from the ground up, it means a lot. There are quite a few people I would love to work with, but I’m too superstitious to put the names out there – let’s hope they feel the same and stuff will come about!

M. I’m really excited about getting the album finished, there’s a fair few tracks that are out and out rockers, and thankfully also a few more sensual and intimate moments. We’ve got about 16 tracks to chose from so it’s going to have a range of dynamics. As for the release date, I can’t see it happening before September 2005 but between now and then anything can happen.

R: It will have stuff from the EPs already out, and then more crazy and chilled stuff, and actually, it’s quite varied. It won’t be pure to one thing that’s for sure. But of course it will all still sound like us as I sound the way I sound, write the way I write, and ditto with Marc.

M: I’d say the Loud EP is pretty fierce, and contains the most out and out breakbeat tracks we’ve done so far, it’s quite a rush to perform ‘I Like It Loud’ live and it seems to tear the roof off the joint – people really get down to it. Si Begg has also managed to give it a gnarly remix, very cut-up and angular with his trademark big-ass bass-ness.

R: It’s more breaks electro, and harder. This one has brought down the house at live gigs so it had to be released! But this whole genre thing is a bit odd for me, because we write the way we write. I don’t sit down and go ‘I must now write an electro tune’. Whatever happens in the studio, it just has to get the hairs on the back of my neck standing upright. You just know when it’s working. Speaking of genres, we did this gig a few nights ago, and when we got there I got a bit scared, as it was a real boys club, and I was thinking ‘we are too soft for these guys, they are going to hate us’ – full on drum and bass/breaks crowd…but as it turns out these ‘ard’ guys like a bit of cheese. I managed to get them to do a SING-A-LONG in Heart Ov Glass. Man, I was seeing tonsils, they were going for it! As it turned out, they wanted us to play all night!

R: The images you are talking about are from when we did a collaboration with clothes designer Noki. You may recognise his designs from the cover of the 2004 Kylie Minogue Calendar! But has to be said, I still tend to make my own creations for gigs as I want what I wear to be one-offs. I’m not into that whole ‘I have a stylist’ look! We jam out the album tracks and have a lot of fun with it. Go with the flow, expect the unexpected, all sorts of bizarre things happen at gigs, it never ceases to amaze me frankly. As for coming to Oz, we are just waiting for the invitation and will be there in a flash.

R: The Cloned EP has just come out and we still have the Loud EP coming out on Bow Wow Records, which also has a very cool Si Begg remix on it. A lot from here ties into 2005. There’s working on album tracks, and preparing our next 2 scheduled releases for early spring (UK), one which will be with Compost Records. I have just done a collaboration with Jean Paul Bondy aka Vollum/Volsoc on Compost Records that’s still in the process, we have the remix for Larry Tee/Princess Superstar’s ‘Licky’ coming out at some stage and another remix for Lexi/Superstonic in the process. We’re also reworking the live set for the new year, so that we start out nice and fresh! Mid December to mid January I will be in Melbourne, so anyone who wants to make the most of it and hook up, contact us thru the website.

Product.01’s ‘Loud EP’ was released December 2004. For more information, check out: http://www.product01.co.uk.