According to his bio, “Hovatron is a young producer and recording artist from Montreal. Coming up alongside like-minded teammates of the now infamous Turbo Crunk parties, Hovatron has crafted a sound that has been described as a ‘cross between warehouse techno and new-school laptop crunk’. He enjoys long walks around his neighbourhood, Olympic coffee and modular synthesizers.”
He also runs the Many Brain blog and has been remixed by Lando Kal (Lazer Sword) and Lunice. “Young Blood/Bad Blood” will be out shortly on the Low Riders label. His awesome website is the Sistine Chapel of hideous Web 1.0 retro-ness.
1. How’d you come up with the name of the track?
Nothing too serious and deep, I just thought those two expressions are really funny as they mean quite different things, are very close to one another and are different interpretations on blood as a concept. And I guess I felt the track had two different « gears » throughout it so something like that made sense.
2. How long did it take to create?
As with all things I do, usually the general idea has been sticking around my head for a while, I record extremely quickly and then go back to it a couple of times throughout a week, bounce out a version labelled « draft » which truly ends up being the final.
3. Were you sober?
Yep.
4. Was there a separate recording/mixing?
Nope. Writing, performing, recording, mixing and all that kind of all happens at the same time.
5. Did you master it?
For now yes, however it should be seeing a release sometime this year on LowRiders’ new label, so send off an uncompressed version and they will re-do that final polishing.
6. What sequencer did you use?
I use Ableton Live for sending MIDI to my synths, and then record back into it. It’s an extremely powerful tool to play around with some ideas, and easy to start sequences on it and quickly forget about the computer and move on to the instruments and play around, until it’s all ready to be recorded.
7. How’d you make the bass?
This company called Analogue Solutions made a very accurate Roland TB-303 clone, called the TBX-303. So that little silver box is responsible for the basslines on this track. I’ve since gotten a Roland MC-202, which is an old analog Roland box that takes the best of the SH-101 synth architecture and the infamous TB-303 sequencer, so I guess I’ll be using that to perform this track live now.
8. Any essential plug-ins or FX?
Compression. Sometimes super light, sometimes overdone to get a specific effect or sound, but always there… probably not a great thing. Maybe one day I’ll produce Eno-style and keep all the dynamics in there.
9. Did you use hardware? If so, what bits?
As I said above, the 303 clone provides that lead bassline. The de-tuned chord stabs were made with a Yamaha DX-7 I owned for about a month, before selling in order to get a Juno. I never quite understood FM synthesis and all that hyper-complex algorhythm patching, so when programming the DX-7 I always just changed different things somewhat randomly… and so at some point I stumbled upon this patch where the chords were falling out of tune. It was infuriating at first but then it grew on me. The white noise washes and a few of the other bits of synth are from the Korg MS-20. I usually play around with ideas and jam with the Roland TR-707 but those drum tracks never end up in the finals.
10. Did you play in your parts or draw them in?
The DX-7 chords were played, but then kind of chopped and sequenced. The 303 was sequenced, as it should be !
11. Did you record any acoustic instruments? If so, which ones, and what was your setup?
Nope !
12. What are you most proud of?
The DX-7 chords. I was really into that progression and that awful frustrating mistake of the de-tuning ended up adding a particular feel to the whole thing that I’m really happy about.
13. If there are things you dislike (you’re not obligated to mention them) do people notice?
I’m not sure if it’s something peple would ‘notice’ per se. I wish it kind of degenerated into a warehouse acid jam… which it kind of does everytime I play around with it in the club. Maybe I’ll do a 9 minute reprise with the 707 , a ‘Warehouse dub’ or something.
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