Since his early downbeat digi-dub explorations at the beginning of the noughties, Sydney-based electro-dub producer Rick Bull (aka Deepchild) has certainly emerged as one of Australia’s most consistently critically acclaimed and respected artists currently operating in the sphere of ‘leftfield’ electronic music, his previous 2003 album ‘What’s Going Wrong?’ receiving plaudits from the likes of Germany’s ‘De:bug’ magazine and UK ‘serious music’ bible The Wire. With the considerable strength of his international following growing throughout the last few years, it makes perfect sense that in recent times Bull’s heeded the call overseas, spending increasing amounts of time in Europe and the UK, a process that’s enabled him to make contact with many of the producers who inspired him to make electronic music in the first place witness the recent instance of Finnish producer Vadislav Delay reworking Deepchild’s ‘Blackness Of The Sea’ under his Luomo guise.
With Bull now counting several of his former musical reference points as collaborators and peers, it’s certainly no surprise that this extended period in Europe has certainly exerted a developmental influence on his own productions a process that reveals itself in full on the brand new fourth Deepchild album ‘Lifetime’; a record that to this writer certainly comes across as his most ‘complete’ collection of tracks to date. With tour dates looming around Australia over the coming weeks, ITM’s evilchris caught up with Rick Bull / Deepchild to chat about the increasing role of vocal collaborators in his productions, the irresistible pull of Europe and just what audiences can expect from the upcoming live shows
ITM: Was there any particular significance behind you choosing the title ‘Lifetime’ for this latest album?
DC: Lifetime, in general, could sort of be framed as a personal response to the previous album, ‘Whats Going Wrong?’ Inasmuch as WGW was written from an autobiographical position of a great deal of personal darkness, Lifetime, hopefully, reflects the other side of the coin. WGW was an attempt to catalogue a lot of political and personal frustrations, but was essentially a series of questions without clear answers. It stimulated a lot of questions from listeners, and also from press (which came to a head with the censoring of the video clip from the title track). Lifetime, I guess, is more of a digression into a different psychic space. At the end of the day, it’s Life which provides the energy to deal with the unanswerable questions. Theres still a great deal thats Going Wrong, but I think that, in the long run, the motivation to bring change and healing doesn’t actually come from getting the answers right to the questions raised by experience. It comes from someplace deeper. Ultimately, Ive started to frame the world as less of a dark and hopeless place and in more of a hopeful light paradoxically, as things on a political scale have spiraled into further decline. At the end of the day, finding the motivation to get up in the morning and embrace life is a worthy starting point to begin dealing with the more complex issues of society. I’m taking things back to basics. Asking a little less, and trying to listen a little more. The new album is, perhaps, something that can be listened to a little more on face value a little more reflective of my electro roots. A little more spare, more up-front and positive than anything previous.
ITM: Listening to ‘Lifetime’, I found that I noticed a perceptible shimmering Vadislav Delay-style European electro-dub sound coming to the fore on many of the tracks; after spending increasing amounts of time in Europe, have you found that those sounds of sorts have trickled into your productions?
DC: Without a doubt! Vladislav Delay (in the Luomo guise) remixed one of my previous 12s, and Im such a big fan of the territory that lies between German electronica and roots reggae and dub. Rhythm and Sound, Basic Channel, Jan Jelinek, Pole, Mille Platueax, Scape these are all labels and producers who have continued to fascinate me. Im seduced by the humanity and real viscerality of these sounds the embrace of the human side of technology its rattles and hums, its atonal and arrhythmic elements, its cracks and pops and internal spaces. Travelling to Berlin last year really served to further cement this love affair, and working with Luomo made me feel some sort of license to celebrate this fascination! Its strange the way immersion in a certain physical environment opens your heart and ears to the signature sounds of its community. Albums like Luomos Vocalcity and Akufens My Way were jaw-dropping for me when I first heard them these are my peers and fellow remixers nowIm interested in taking what they have offered to me, and contributing to the evolution and artistic discourse of this sound. And, more than ever, Im interested in drawing outsiders in to this musical conversation. Sex, sweat, dancing, and the grinding ache of analogue technology. Theres something ultimately divine about it.
ITM: How did the shift to Future Classic for this latest album initially come about?
DC: This is, in fact, the first full-length release on the Future Classic label. The label picked up a couple of 12s from me, and several tracks for various compilations. Traditionally, Ive been more of an album artist, and from an early stage the Future Classic posse expressed an interest in scheduling this in. Its actually the first ever label I’ve been formally signed to, and the first ever international album foray for the Future Classic label. Were very much a cottage industry and family of producers and DJs in this sense, the album is an extension of what we are trying to achieve in a wholistic sense with label showcase nights, 12s, remix work and co-productions. Its a wholistic and very co-operative effort in a sense springing from what we are trying to offer as a label presence as much as myself as an individual artist.
ITM: Both ‘Lifetime’ and the album that preceded it (‘What’s Going Wrong?’) showed you increasingly working with guest vocal performances; is incorporating these sorts of elements into your tracks more a conscious goal of yours? What attracts you towards using a certain vocal?
DC: Vocals are a pretty effective tool for drawing immediate and popular engagement to a work and crafting good vocal tracks is something Im pretty committed to developing as a producer. In terms of growth of my own productions, its always a challenge that I want to embrace. Coming from a largely instrumental background, Im as interested in the texture and grain of a particular voice as I am by intonation and lyrical ability. In general, Im drawn toward vocalists that reflect my own musical history, listening to a great deal of soul, hiphop and reggae. Im also interested in using the voice as another instrument, rather than merely creating backing tracks for vocal songs! This probably comes across in the way I tend to process vocals fairly heavily compressed, often cut up in percussive or glitched-out ways. I want to create a muscular synergy between the voice and the electronic components of a song. To blur the distinctions between the two. Ultimately, vocal choice comes down to sex appeal and the vocal integrity of a performer. I would like to bring out the best in a given performer, rather than trying to mold them too heavily to my pre-conceived expectations or aesthetic preferences.
ITM: One of my personal favourite tracks off the album is the collaboration with Ras Roni of The Resurrectors ‘No Disgrace’; what events led to you first hooking up with Ras?
DC: Roni is amazing! He reminds me a great deal of vocalist Paul St Hilaire or Sugar Minot honey tones and a gorgeous warmth and sensuality. He lends this so well to the album, and really summarises the sentiment of the album as a wholeI first really heard him sing at my label manager’s wedding, and immediately approached him to see if he would be interested in contributing something to the album. Ronis experience is primarily in roots music, rather than electronica, and I wanted to capture what he does best lovers rock style reggae rather than any cliched cultural hijacking of Rasta cred. My aim with ‘No Disgrace’ was to write something that would work on the dancefloor, but to maintain a timeless quality which is what makes Ronis voice and intention so gorgeous. He offered me such a gift, and Im grateful for being there, at the right time in the studio, to hear it come together.
ITM: Compared to some of your early records such as “Hymns From Babylon” and ‘Chocolate Dubs’, which were predominantly downbeat digi-dub excursions, your newer tracks are noticeably infused with more of an upbeat dancefloor vibe that takes in broken-beat house and tech sounds was gearing your tracks more towards danceable tempos something that you were keen to focus on?
DC: Funnily enough, the older I become, the more in love with the harder side of electro and disco I become, whilst travelling a similar path toward extremely ambient experimental music! It seems to be reflective of the typically inversed path a lot of my artistic travels take! I’m fascinated by minimalism and the challenges it poses, and I want to make records that maintain a personal and seductive sense whilst being immediate and physically engaging. A huge difference from the two albums you mentioned, is the context in which I wrote them. Im now a full-time DJ/producer, which means that a lot of my time is spent on the dancefloor! When you spend a lot of time in a particular physical context, I think that you develop a natural appreciation for what it offers. I guess Im less head and more body orientated these days. It would be easy to release another downbeat album, but it wouldnt necessarily stretch or challenge me as a producer.
ITM: Is there a particular moment off ‘Lifetimes’ that you’re especially proud of?
DC: Id say that both Always and Forever and Griefswalder Strauss are instrumentals Im particularly proud of the former is very much a love song/ode to a few of my prevailing inspirations from Berlin and Detroit over the last year, and the latter is my attempt to synthesise my love to RnB and G-funk with some seemingly disparate elements of found-sound experimentalism. I love hiphop, especially of the West-Coast G-funk/gangster variety, and its an increasingly clear reference in my work.
ITM: You’re touring around Australia in support of the release of ‘Lifetime’ over the next couple of months; what sorts of things can audiences expect from your upcoming live shows? Will you be bringing vocalists along to the shows?
DC: The shows Ive got scheduled fall roughly into 3 different piles solo DJ sets, where Ill be dropping a heap of minimal techno and electro-funk, solo live sets (myself and laptop, SH-101 analogue synth, TR-707 drum machine and outboard effects) where Ill be jackin up originals and dropping a few unexpected tech-heavy joints, and a duo live set with Campbell McGuiness from Entropic. The 2-man incarnation is particularly dynamic Campbell plays a modified Fender Rhodes, an additional synth and engages in drum machine and vocoder trickery. We play live versions of the album tracks, but also generate a lot of live material, jammed out on stage, which can be fairly entertaining to watch tending to inhabit the territory somewhere between minimal tech-dub and electro-heavy vocoder and synth workouts. In other words, very, VERY live! There tends to be a lot of dancing filter-tweaking and occasional nudity.
ITM: You’ve certainly received a warm critical reception in terms of Europe; will you be touring overseas behind this album as well? Are there any places that you’re particularly looking forward to playing?
DC: Yes I’m heading to Berlin again during mid July for a month, where Im hooking up with the usual suspects from Compost, Moon Harbour and !K7, as well as the Booka Shade guys from Get Physical, and hopefully Luomo and cohorts. I had a ball there last time and a great time with some of the !K7 and Kitty-Yo peeps. I arrive on the first day of Love Parade, which should be fairly mad tooLooking forward to playing Panorama as well as the Compost monthly, with a diversion to the 3rd room at Fabric in London shaping up. The joy of Berlin is that there are so many wonderful and varied opportunities to perform from the high-brow to the gorgeously D.I.Y (check out Dr Pong in Prenzlauer Berg!) Ive been fortunate enough to hook up with the wonderful peeps at Playground Music, who have been booking wonderful shows for me, and have an affiliate booker in London. I feel so blessed I have so many new friends and wonderful community in Europe its really just a joy to have the opportunity to spend some time in their world.
Deepchild’s brand new album ‘Lifetime’ is out now on Future Classic/Inertia. You can catch him continuing the launch tour around the country in June and July:
Jun 29, Marble Bar Sydney (live)
Jun 30, Flying Scotsman Perth (live)
Jul 3, Opera Bar Sydney (DJ set)
Jul 7, Glasshouse Wollongong (live)
