Since the beginning, LAB4 have lived at the forefront of dance music, creating sounds that are occasionally impossible to categorise, even for those who know electronic music at its’ best the amalgamation of Hard House, Techno and Trance produced can only be described as the unique sound of LAB4.
During their busy biannual tour of Australia ITM managed to chat to LAB4 about industrial metal bands, Eminem and Chinese whispers.
Your set at Laboratory- Experiment 1 @ Camden Place was compromised of the most popular Lab 4 songs taken from a poll you conducted through your website. You also post messages on your website frequently to your fans. How important is this kind of interactivity with your fans been in the production and success of LAB4?
Adam – Interactivity with our fans is what it is all about, we write our music mainly to be played out live and the more communication between us and our fans off stage, the more communication happens then when we are on stage.
Lez- We have so many people come up to us at gigs and say how useful and informative
they find the website not just for planning thier weekend activities but all manner of things, eg questions regarding equipment and production all sorts of stuff. It all goes towards building a solid friendly fanbase.
After huge demands for Reformation to be repressed it has become a collector’s item and part of the Lab 4 legend. How do you feel about the track becoming so huge and sought for? Do you plan on repressing the track at all?
Adam – It’s a very cool thing for any artist to have any part of thier work become collectable. After lots of thinking and discussions we have decided not to repress it for various reasons, partly because it would be realy bad for those fans who have paid up to £150 for it and although there may be loads of people who want the tune, it is available on at least a couple of our live CD’s. Also reformation is a great tune and always will be but it is also part of what we were doing then and we are doing something else now – for us it is far more inspiring to move on and leave a wake of good tunes rather than trying to live off what we have done in the past.
Lez- Personnally I would’nt want it repressed, I don’t think its right to keep rehashing and
repressing the track, Just leave it as a piece of lab4 history so those people who have
paid a fortune for it won’t be pissed at us.
You were both members of industrial metal band ‘M.A.D’. How has your past involvement with ‘M.A.D’ influenced the style and sound of music produced by LAB4?
Adam – In hind sight, M.A.D was really just the first developemental stage of LAB4. The energy and dynamics as well as a lot of the sounds have all developed from what we were doing then.
Lez- The attitude and influencies are still very apperant and obvious when you listen to the old M.A.D tracks, quite intense and dynamic. Even though now the sounds and production techniques are a million times better you can still hear its us.
What influences LAB4 in the production of your music, eg politics, society, love?
Adam – Everything in some way or another. Writing music is (or should be) an expression of emotion, it doesn’t really matter whether those emotions are passed on to the listener so much but more that as an artist you have encapsulated that point in time within your music. Often a piece of music can end up meaning something different than it did when you wrote it. Visual stuff like films are always a big inspiration to us.
Lez- Pretty much as mentioned above. Sometimes hearing just snippets of tunes on the
radio on the way back from gigs is very inspirational, there’s one tune I heard about 6
months ago and I still cannot track it down but the way I remembered it really inspired me.
When I listen to a Lab 4 live or studio set it often sounds as though a story is being told. Is there a story behind each LAB4 set and what do these stories represent?
Adam – We always try to keep a real movement to our live sets and our albums. We try to leed the listener or the audience through a real roller coaster ride in a way that everyone will have some kind of story to the experience.
Lez- Sometimes tunes can take a long time to develope a character of their own, it can be a percussion fill or a particular sound or whatever and within that timeframe you get
many ideas and influencies flying in and out of your head that kind of stear you in one direction then the other, so each tune is a kind journey within itself and I think thats what comes across to the listener.
Before LAB4 was established did either of you have any interests in techno music, what kind of artists influenced you?
Adam – I had no real interest in Techno or club music at the time. I grew up with a lot influences like Craftwerk, Gary Numan and early Breakbeat / Breakdance and electro but mainly rock and metal stuff.
Lez- I started programing and playing around with keyboards and gear in the mid eighties as I used to have and still have loads of guitar Fx etc, so technology based music was always of interest, but Techno as people percieve it now then no not really
I find it abit pointless.
Lab 4 has a very distinct sound compared to other producers/musicians in the techno scene. What and how do you make your sound unique to LAB4?
Adam – If there is a luck element to the LAB4 story it’s the fact that the music just kind of comes out the way it does. It probably has a lot to do with us coming from a Rock/ Metal / live background and being inspired by really nasty horror films and bands like kiss as aposed to 12”s, djing and disco music!
Lez- Same as Adam’s answer really, I think we’re from somewhere else, ( maybe the same planet a Yoji Biomehanika )
You have remixed Eminem’s “Without Me”, called “Round the outside.” Whose idea was it to remix this particular track and why did you choose this track?
LAB4 – Originally we wrote it for our Gatecrasher set last year. We only had a half hour set and wanted a new track that would stand out a mile and really rev the crowd up. It’s almost a really unlikely combination – Lab4 + Eminem until you hear the tune and then it is almost an obvious combination.
Was there any collaboration with Eminem at all in producing the track?
LAB4 – No. We are still awaiting his aproval of the mix but he is a busy man so it may take a while before it gets released.
Can we expect LAB4 to remix any other well-known mainstream tracks in the future?
Adam – There are a few artists that we are planning to work with on the next album but there is still a lot of developement to be done on the whole project yet and we have learnt our lessons about talking to much about such things before they come to fruition! – one of the bad effects of chat rooms is that we are wary of talking to much about ideas that are just “in the pipe line” because the next thing you know is that there are al kinds of chinese whispers going on and we end up recieving hundreds of emails saying “I read this….. is it true?” or “you said you were going to do…...... why haven’t you done it?” etc.
Lez- We have plans to write with some pretty serious artists with alot of cred, but there’s no way we’re going to let on at the moment who these artists are.
“This was amusing as we had thought that although we loved this track, maybe we hadn’t fully understood the “ins and outs” of writing techno and had dropped it from our live set about six months earlier.”
(As quoted from your website)
Do you now understand the “ins and outs” of writing techno? What methods do you apply and think are vital in perfecting your live and recorded sets?
Adam – Better than we did! I think as soon as you think you are a true master of what ever you are doing then you are in danger of closing the doors to any new inspirations and learning. The only method to trust is whether what we are doing excites us or not and from there we then hope that it is going to excite the rest of the world.
Lez- I think your judgment of what you write becomes more fine tuned and you become more self analitical but in a more experienced way.
The LAB4 Live debate has been ongoing with a handful of critics claiming that a LAB4 Live set is not in fact live. Briefly, explain and set the record straight for those in doubt.
Adam – for those in doubt – get a F***ing life! just because you don’t understand something, it doesn’t mean it is not happening. What we do on stage is about sharing music, having a party and enjoying a bit of escapism and entertainment, not about disecting life to the point that it is no longer any fun .
Lez- Boring,boring,boring. There is so much equipment and software available these days for reproducing whatever you want to do it just takes a bit of time and research into whats out there. What we do now is so simple compared to our M.A.D setup when we had sampled and sequenced stuff going and live guitar,bass and drums . Just because your ignorant of whats out there does’nt mean its impossible and can’t be done. Read some fucking manuals.
( We appologise for this aggressive response and should point out that it is a tiny percentage of people who can’t seem to get over this mental block. We do actually recieve an overwhelming amount of positive support regarding this subjuct.)
Your main piece of equipment is an Alesis Data Disk, how did you go about in finding the perfect set up for a LAB4 live set?
Adam – Our live set up has been developed over about 12 years. At the heart of it now is £3000.00 worth of custom built PC running Logic 5. This set up allows us to program the set in many different ways depending on whether we are trying out new tracks or playing different sets over any given weekend.
Lez- The Carillion PC is our baby. Even though this is our main weapon we still obviously have a couple of backup systems running as well… just incase.
Your live performances demonstrate LAB4’s ability to not only produce music but to entertain. Do you think that your ability to entertain and up the crowds is an important aspect that all DJs/producers should incorporate in their sets and why?
Adam – Each to thier own. To us the interaction between the DJ / act and the audience is 100% important . We are there to share what we are doing, not to get on stage and show off for an hour. Without the energy we get back from the crowd the gigs would be uninspiring and boring. There are a lot of DJ’s who don’t get to envolved with the crowd but are still excellent DJ’s however it does seem that alot of the worlds biggest and most loved DJ’s (Carl Cox for example) have always got a smile for the crowd.
Lez- I think for a P.A its very important to interact with the crowd. At the end of the day we are seen as a band.
What is the most important responsibility of LAB4?
Adam – mainly that we are still enjoying what we are doing and also that we remain true to what we feel and believe in musically.
Lez- I recon if we can keep the tunes happening and keep the people partying then that’s all good.
Be sure to catch Lab 4 on their national tour, dates are:
Sat 12/04, Sydney – Frantic @ Gas
Fri 18/04, Melbourne – Hard Kandy @ Billboards
Sat 19/04, Brisbane – Advent*jah @ RNA Showgrounds
Sun 20/04, Adelaide – Utopia @ Adelaide University
