Label: Shades of Grey / Raised By Records
Genre: Future-Beats
Based: London, UK
Sounds Like: Armeria, Booddha, Doc Daneeka
Links: fybeone.co.uk, Soundcloud, Facebook, Twitter
We first came across Fybe:one thanks to the brilliant Irenidae (listen below), a mellow number but with a throbbing bassline and lots of interesting instrumentation and layers to it. Aside from his music production (the rest of which is equally as good), he’s also a DJ, graphic designer and illustrator, with work available on his website. A man of many talents, we had to ask him to do a mix for us. Listen to and download it above (tracklist on Soundcloud), and read our interview with him below.
How would you describe your music?
I always have to have some kind of melody in my music and I love experimenting with chords, then using them as a base and making arpeggiated elements from those notes. I use a lot of natural, organic textures and try to use strange drum sounds rather than usual kick, snare and hi-hat. I love cutting up and pitching vocals, making them sound as weird as possible. Silence is also important. Small cuts of silence can sometimes grab attention more than a loud, jarring noise.
What’s your musical background? How did you get exposed to producing? Any major influences?
I used to play Bass in a band for a few years. Then I got into making beats and some of my bandmates got into DJing and I made a lot of Hip-Hop tracks for MCs and singers and cuts and scratches. One of the guys from the band was Dexter Kane, who produces Deep-House/Disco stuff now and he taught me a bit in Logic at the time. I actually remember, before this, wanting to make beats on my PC but having any way to do it so I used Sound Recorder (that crappy free program on Windows!) to mix sounds and drum loops. It was awful and luckily none of it will see the light of day! So while i was producing Hip-Hop beats my production got more and more experimental. I was pretty big into Trip-Hop – Portishead were and still are a huge influence on me. Also Aim and Four Tet fall loosely into that sort of era for me. Mount Kimbie, James Blake, Thom Yorke, Trentemoller, Jono McCleery. I also like to look to the past for inspiration (especially for song structures) at old Motown artists like Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Curtis Mayfield.
Do you have a process when you make music?
I suppose I sort of answered that in the first question, but its different every time. I also find I work differently with remixes and my own tracks. Probably because I always start a remix by throwing all the parts into a file, whereas with my own tracks its more of a building process. Switching between drums and melodies, it sometimes gets hard to leave a track alone and each time you play it, you think “right, from the top, im gonna listen to the whole thing!”, and then two seconds in you think of something to tweak or add.
Tell us a bit about the mix you made for us. Did you have a theme in mind?
Well the mix has a bit of light and shade but has veered slightly towards a mellow sound. I love the intro and outro pieces. The intro is by a guy called Swod who I heard on a City Centre Offices compilation ages ago. Its a great mood setting tune. The second track comes from one half of the Part Time Heroes (who I have a remix coming out for soon), who’s been working with the extremely talented Katherine De Boer from Belleruche and this remix works so well. The mix also features an exclusive track from my label-mate Duct, which takes the mix into a deeper, darker sound and mixed perfectly with an exclusive track from myself (due to be released for free on Get Some blog soon). I also put the Maribou State remix of Submotion Orchestra’s Blindspot, which has been a favourite since I heard it; Maribou State are releasing some great stuff. The last track is by Muramic, who recently got in touch on Soundcloud and sent me some tracks. Magnolia is a beautiful wind-down for the mix.
Do you have any releases coming up we should know about?
Yep. Coming out in November I have the remix version of my debut Harp EP. It became a bit of a monster and has 12 tracks on it. I asked a lot of people to contribute who I’ve been communication with on Soundcloud for a while, not expecting them all to actually come through. But now I’ve ended up with 12 incredible remixes. It features Troy Gunner, Deft, Capes, Mute Speaker, Blacksmif, Jamie Wilder, Aether, Duct, 10 David, Warsnare, Chesslo Junior and Soosh. I’ve got a few remixes coming out myself too. As i mentioned, I’m remixing Part Time Heroes, and also Monokle from Russia, Tonik, Warsnare, and one in the pipeline for Skip & Die. I’ve also started my second EP but havent got as far as I planned at this stage.
Top 3 new artists at the moment? Deft, Kwala, Duct
