NEWS
EVENTS
Alex Arnout
House | Wednesday 16th November 2011 | Osh
We had a chat with the East London based house music producer about new releases, his record label Dogmatik and his musical past.
How are you doing Alex?
Yeah, good mate and you?
I’m great! What you been doing recently?
Just working in the studio really, just getting on with remixes, releases, running the label, producing for other people, engineering for other people, loads mate! (Laughs)
Okay! I didn’t really know that you engineered a lot for other people, is that something you’ve always done?
Yes that’s something I’ve always done but I don’t really have the times these days with like my stuff needs to be finished and in for deadlines, I’m not really finding the time at the minute but I’m building a new studio so once that’s built I’ll be taking them on again.
You’ve been producing for sometime now.
A little while. Yeah.
How many years? 10?
Since about ‘98 so yeah about 12 years or 13 years or something.
What made you want to produce music?
I had a school friend who got into production at a very early age like 15 or 16 and I used to sit in the studio and have a look at all the samplers and look at his computer on the big desk, lights flashing off and he was sampling bits of records that I love and then sticking them in his tracks. I was blown away by the whole thing, and I thought, you know, what this is what I want to do.
At 15, 16, okay so my route is that I went to a DMC competition, I saw a DJ and thought that’s what I want to do, so I went down the DJ route but you saw someone making it and you went right that’s what I want to do.
Yeah that was part of it but I started DJing first because I didn’t have the knowledge of how to go about getting studio, how to write the stuff and everything. I went off to Spain and dJ’ed for five years and at the end of that five years came to the conclusion that the music I was playing towards the end of the nineties wasn’t very good at all.
What were you playing?
It was like early nineties when Tenerife’s really cool acid house movement came through but by ‘94/‘95 it was taken over by all the commercial type like Manifesto and everything. So in the end I had to play stuff I didn’t really want to play but I had to work so playing all this rubbish made me realise that I could actually make better records. I decided to just give all that up come home do a bit of learning and get into it that way. I’m glad I did it that way round, it’s better to come from the dance floor as a DJ and enter production as opposed to just picking up production not really knowing much about the dJing or the club scene and then being thrown in at the deep end. So in my eyes I think I did it the right way really.
Okay that’s awesome. You’ve been around for a while but you’ve actually had a string of hits, one of my favourites is ‘Vanishing Point.’ I think, Alex Arnout, this is your time right now, do you feel that yourself? I mean you’ve worked hard for years. Right about now loads of people are like ‘oh you heard about Alex Arnout? He’s been around for ages’.
I wouldn’t say it’s my time now, it’s just like something clicked in the studio about three or four years ago, different ways of working. I swapped from Logic, it’s a great sequencer but it’s very difficult, I was on it for four years but what I found it wasn’t pressing my buttons, I wasn’t getting excited. It was making me sit in front of the computer using mouse and as a beginner it’s quite difficult to get into. With Ableton I found that I could have controllers and I didn’t have to sit in front of the computer and I could press buttons and record and actually do all the tracks live rather than sitting in front of the computer and move the mouse and everything. That’s the change I think, I’m having more fun in the studio and just having a jam really.
I recently just done the same thing and swapped over, literally you could have loads of things running even before you arrange anything and then you could think that sounds good and then record it, then start arranging it. With logic you have to be more structured.
I mean in all fairness Logic has come on over the last few years, the last version of Logic I was on was 7 and that was dull as anything but when it came to 8 and 9 they started copying what Ableton was doing. In my eyes I thought why get Logic that’s trying to be like Ableton why not just get Ableton. So Ableton is fun (laughs).
What were you listening to as a kid growing up?
All sorts really, we moved around, a lot of as a kid like 4 or 5 years old a lot of Motown, Jackson 5 stuff because that’s what my mum was into.
Is that when you used to wear the afro?
That’s when I eventually got the afro yeah but loads of Motown stuff. Anything I could get my hands on that kind of moved me at the time and because I was living in Belgium at the time, there was a lot of French music like Jean Michel Jarre stuff flying around, Serge Gainsbourg and things like that. So I got quite a nice mix of music coming through.
So were you ever a b-boy when you were younger?
Yeah when I got to England I started getting into it because it kind of triggered me to get into house because the sounds that Grandmaster Flash was using were quite electro which is the foundation of house. So that was my first contact with drum machines and things and it just blew me away. I started going on to the Chicago scene, I was liking Luther Vandross, Alexandra O’Neil which kind of lead me into more like vocal house and lead me into like DJ Pierre, Risque III, just like all these Detroit heads or Chicago heads putting loads and loads of wicked music out and that just got me.
And of course people like Robert Owens as well. So bringing us back up right now what’s happening with you and your label Dogmatic? What’s happening in the future in the next few months? Can you tell us any secrets?
No secrets really as such, I’m the only one running the label so I don’t get any help so it’s a bit time consuming along with everything else. I’ve licensed an old track called Black Night Sleeves and I’m getting new remixes of that and I’m doing a remix of that. I’ve got a few new artists on the label and I’m going to do a various artist EP with them, kind of pushing them through, obviously they haven’t been heard of so I just want to do it again get a new bunch of producers out there which I know are really good and would easily fit into what’s going on now. My next stage is launching about two or three new artists in the near future.
What about you and an album because I know you’ve got loads of tracks there that you haven’t even put out, what’s going on with that?
Well I’m waiting because my studio is at home so I can’t make a lot of noise, I’m waiting until I get this new studio space and then I’m going to link all my drum machines to my synths and get everything talking and just set everything up. I got so much gear but there are all in boxes at the minute, so the space I’ve just got is big enough is just big enough to set everything up and have everything working. So once all that’s set up then...
So we might see a album at the end of next year then? Maybe?!
In spring.
He knows!
I’m gonna start putting it together in the spring time, I’m gonna travel around a little bit and stay in a few different cities, you know Amsterdam and Barcelona. There was a guy I met years ago and all he used to do he used to go to various cities and sit in bars and jazz cafes and sit there with a cigarette and a mini-disk and just record the atmosphere and the ambiance and then go home and cut it up and add his own beats and make a whole radio show out of it. He used to do this radio show before me and he used to come in, plug in his mini-disk and listen to the whole show and thought that was wicked. You know just taking ambiances from real life and then David Holmes did it on his album when he went round New York.
Yeah Goldie did it with his first album Timeless.
Loads of people have. Yeah so I’d like to do that, just capture some essences of cities. Rather than just, you know, do a house album with ten songs on it I want to have some of my influences and use places that have influenced me as well. You know I lived in Barcelona for a year and had a great time DJing there.
So you’re talking about an album with substance.
Yeah not just dance floor tracks. And tyring to go through all my influences so it’s not necessarily gonna be a total house number, it’s gonna come from... I just to go to a lot of Miami bass and Detroit electro stuff so I wanna touch on that as well. I’ve been into deep house, I’ve done broken beat.
I used to love that, Domove?. I love that producer.
Yeah I used to work with Daz IQ from Punks in the Attic and he kinda taught me a lot. So yeah I wanna touch on aspects on who make me who I am.
If you had to take three famous people on to a desert island with you, who are they and why would you take them?
Famous people? I’m not into the celebrity thing!
I’m not either, but if you had to! It’s a hard one.
It’s hard to think of them off the top of my head. I’d take Larry Levan.
You still need two more!
Ok, Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross. And Larry Levan.
You’re not gonna take a chick with you!? That’s caught out quite a few people! You can change one if you want!
Haha! No I’ll stick with them!
You can keep up with the updates on the man himself at myspace.com/alexarnout
How are you doing Alex?
Yeah, good mate and you?
I’m great! What you been doing recently?
Just working in the studio really, just getting on with remixes, releases, running the label, producing for other people, engineering for other people, loads mate! (Laughs)
Okay! I didn’t really know that you engineered a lot for other people, is that something you’ve always done?
Yes that’s something I’ve always done but I don’t really have the times these days with like my stuff needs to be finished and in for deadlines, I’m not really finding the time at the minute but I’m building a new studio so once that’s built I’ll be taking them on again.
You’ve been producing for sometime now.
A little while. Yeah.
How many years? 10?
Since about ‘98 so yeah about 12 years or 13 years or something.
What made you want to produce music?
I had a school friend who got into production at a very early age like 15 or 16 and I used to sit in the studio and have a look at all the samplers and look at his computer on the big desk, lights flashing off and he was sampling bits of records that I love and then sticking them in his tracks. I was blown away by the whole thing, and I thought, you know, what this is what I want to do.
At 15, 16, okay so my route is that I went to a DMC competition, I saw a DJ and thought that’s what I want to do, so I went down the DJ route but you saw someone making it and you went right that’s what I want to do.
Yeah that was part of it but I started DJing first because I didn’t have the knowledge of how to go about getting studio, how to write the stuff and everything. I went off to Spain and dJ’ed for five years and at the end of that five years came to the conclusion that the music I was playing towards the end of the nineties wasn’t very good at all.
What were you playing?
It was like early nineties when Tenerife’s really cool acid house movement came through but by ‘94/‘95 it was taken over by all the commercial type like Manifesto and everything. So in the end I had to play stuff I didn’t really want to play but I had to work so playing all this rubbish made me realise that I could actually make better records. I decided to just give all that up come home do a bit of learning and get into it that way. I’m glad I did it that way round, it’s better to come from the dance floor as a DJ and enter production as opposed to just picking up production not really knowing much about the dJing or the club scene and then being thrown in at the deep end. So in my eyes I think I did it the right way really.
Okay that’s awesome. You’ve been around for a while but you’ve actually had a string of hits, one of my favourites is ‘Vanishing Point.’ I think, Alex Arnout, this is your time right now, do you feel that yourself? I mean you’ve worked hard for years. Right about now loads of people are like ‘oh you heard about Alex Arnout? He’s been around for ages’.
I wouldn’t say it’s my time now, it’s just like something clicked in the studio about three or four years ago, different ways of working. I swapped from Logic, it’s a great sequencer but it’s very difficult, I was on it for four years but what I found it wasn’t pressing my buttons, I wasn’t getting excited. It was making me sit in front of the computer using mouse and as a beginner it’s quite difficult to get into. With Ableton I found that I could have controllers and I didn’t have to sit in front of the computer and I could press buttons and record and actually do all the tracks live rather than sitting in front of the computer and move the mouse and everything. That’s the change I think, I’m having more fun in the studio and just having a jam really.
I recently just done the same thing and swapped over, literally you could have loads of things running even before you arrange anything and then you could think that sounds good and then record it, then start arranging it. With logic you have to be more structured.
I mean in all fairness Logic has come on over the last few years, the last version of Logic I was on was 7 and that was dull as anything but when it came to 8 and 9 they started copying what Ableton was doing. In my eyes I thought why get Logic that’s trying to be like Ableton why not just get Ableton. So Ableton is fun (laughs).
What were you listening to as a kid growing up?
All sorts really, we moved around, a lot of as a kid like 4 or 5 years old a lot of Motown, Jackson 5 stuff because that’s what my mum was into.
Is that when you used to wear the afro?
That’s when I eventually got the afro yeah but loads of Motown stuff. Anything I could get my hands on that kind of moved me at the time and because I was living in Belgium at the time, there was a lot of French music like Jean Michel Jarre stuff flying around, Serge Gainsbourg and things like that. So I got quite a nice mix of music coming through.
So were you ever a b-boy when you were younger?
Yeah when I got to England I started getting into it because it kind of triggered me to get into house because the sounds that Grandmaster Flash was using were quite electro which is the foundation of house. So that was my first contact with drum machines and things and it just blew me away. I started going on to the Chicago scene, I was liking Luther Vandross, Alexandra O’Neil which kind of lead me into more like vocal house and lead me into like DJ Pierre, Risque III, just like all these Detroit heads or Chicago heads putting loads and loads of wicked music out and that just got me.
And of course people like Robert Owens as well. So bringing us back up right now what’s happening with you and your label Dogmatic? What’s happening in the future in the next few months? Can you tell us any secrets?
No secrets really as such, I’m the only one running the label so I don’t get any help so it’s a bit time consuming along with everything else. I’ve licensed an old track called Black Night Sleeves and I’m getting new remixes of that and I’m doing a remix of that. I’ve got a few new artists on the label and I’m going to do a various artist EP with them, kind of pushing them through, obviously they haven’t been heard of so I just want to do it again get a new bunch of producers out there which I know are really good and would easily fit into what’s going on now. My next stage is launching about two or three new artists in the near future.
What about you and an album because I know you’ve got loads of tracks there that you haven’t even put out, what’s going on with that?
Well I’m waiting because my studio is at home so I can’t make a lot of noise, I’m waiting until I get this new studio space and then I’m going to link all my drum machines to my synths and get everything talking and just set everything up. I got so much gear but there are all in boxes at the minute, so the space I’ve just got is big enough is just big enough to set everything up and have everything working. So once all that’s set up then...
So we might see a album at the end of next year then? Maybe?!
In spring.
He knows!
I’m gonna start putting it together in the spring time, I’m gonna travel around a little bit and stay in a few different cities, you know Amsterdam and Barcelona. There was a guy I met years ago and all he used to do he used to go to various cities and sit in bars and jazz cafes and sit there with a cigarette and a mini-disk and just record the atmosphere and the ambiance and then go home and cut it up and add his own beats and make a whole radio show out of it. He used to do this radio show before me and he used to come in, plug in his mini-disk and listen to the whole show and thought that was wicked. You know just taking ambiances from real life and then David Holmes did it on his album when he went round New York.
Yeah Goldie did it with his first album Timeless.
Loads of people have. Yeah so I’d like to do that, just capture some essences of cities. Rather than just, you know, do a house album with ten songs on it I want to have some of my influences and use places that have influenced me as well. You know I lived in Barcelona for a year and had a great time DJing there.
So you’re talking about an album with substance.
Yeah not just dance floor tracks. And tyring to go through all my influences so it’s not necessarily gonna be a total house number, it’s gonna come from... I just to go to a lot of Miami bass and Detroit electro stuff so I wanna touch on that as well. I’ve been into deep house, I’ve done broken beat.
I used to love that, Domove?. I love that producer.
Yeah I used to work with Daz IQ from Punks in the Attic and he kinda taught me a lot. So yeah I wanna touch on aspects on who make me who I am.
If you had to take three famous people on to a desert island with you, who are they and why would you take them?
Famous people? I’m not into the celebrity thing!
I’m not either, but if you had to! It’s a hard one.
It’s hard to think of them off the top of my head. I’d take Larry Levan.
You still need two more!
Ok, Michael Jackson and Luther Vandross. And Larry Levan.
You’re not gonna take a chick with you!? That’s caught out quite a few people! You can change one if you want!
Haha! No I’ll stick with them!
You can keep up with the updates on the man himself at myspace.com/alexarnout
