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- The Awesomeness that is Ott -

How does one introduce a legend like Ott? One of the true musical pioneers of our generation, he embraced the digital age at its inception and like a fine wine, his productions just keep getting better with age. From the symphonious psychotropic undulations of Hallucinogen in Dub to the eclectic sonic symmetry of Ott & The All-Seeing I to the heavenly blend of acoustic and electronica that is 2013’s Baby Robot, to say he is one of British music’s living treasures seems somewhat trite. Unlike a majority of musical geniuses however, Ott’s words are as eloquent as his sounds, so it was indeed an honour to track down the man himself ahead of his forthcoming set at Tribal Gathering 2014 in Panama…

And being the incredible guy he is, he’s also answered questions from his fans Adam Phytophile, LoafJaw Jellylips, Nova Noww, Rachel Paradise, Alex Timmer and Jeremy Squazoid, who will receive a signed copy of the CD 'Mir' for their efforts…







>>> Read on. >>>



1) Your musical career spans over 20 years and during that time you’ve played all over the world, headlined some of the most interesting international festivals and released several awesome albums. What do you reckon have been the highlights of your musical career so far and what goals do you still have for the future?



My first ever DJ set at Samothraki music festival 2003 was pretty intense. I hadn’t left my house much during the previous five years and suddenly I found myself overwhelmed by amazingness on a beautiful Greek island with a couple of thousand party people and no idea what to expect.



I’d been booked to play a live set and the promoters asked me to play a DJ set as well, at 8:30am on the Monday morning. I’d never DJ’d before but I assumed at that time of day I’d be playing to nobody and a dog. So I nonchalantly packed a handful of CDs – mainly my own – and thought no more of it.



At 8:00am I bumbled across the festival site and arrived at the stage to discover hundreds of people all sitting around in the morning sun, drinking chai and enjoying Nick Interchill’s set. I immediately panicked at the realisation that five CDs wasn’t going to cut it so, in a fit of amazing generosity, Nick offered me his entire CD collection to play from. He handed me four huge wallets of music, all neatly categorised with notes and sleeves and every disc was perfect for the time and place.



I stood there for two hours playing all of my favourite tunes on a perfect sunny beach, while the crowd grooved and smiled and brought me cups of tea, and there was a particular moment, as I was gazing out over the Aegean Sea, when I realised that this was now my job.



I didn’t know it at the time but I later discovered my future wife was in the crowd. <3



Other highlights include:



Recording a bass line as a duet with Brian Eno, him playing the notes on a Yamaha DX7 and me beside him operating the pitch bender.



Suddenly realising the scruffy but personable man sitting opposite me at dinner that I’d been chatting to for 15 minutes was Peter Gabriel.



30 seconds into the first ever ‘Ott & The All-Seeing I’ show at The Soundstage in Baltimore, September 2012, when I realised we weren’t terrible and might just pull it off.



Wakarusa 2010 – I arrived at the stage 15 minutes before my set with half my gear either broken or missing after a long, arduous journey. Keith and the production crew pulled it all together like a crack military operation and I went on to play for perhaps the most incredible 90 minutes of my life surrounded by dancers, aerialists, jugglers and fire performers.



My first performance at Glastonbury Festival in 2003. I went to my first Glastonbury in 1992 and promised myself then, and every subsequent year, that one day I’d play there. I can remember every second of my set.



Playing with Bassnectar in Lawrence, Kansas, in 2011 or 2012. For some reason I mentioned on the mic it was my daughter’s birthday the next day and I was flying home to be with her after the show. The whole place cheered and I nearly cried.

Nearly.



Crawling out of my tent at Shambhala in BC, Canada, at 9:30 on the first day to discover most of the generators had broken down and the only band who could still play were March Fourth Marching Band. I took a seat at the Skate Pit to watch them play a spontaneous show to a few hundred people while naked people skateboarded around me.



I could go on all day. It’s been a lot of fun.







2) Over the years you’ve inspired many people. Who or what has influenced and inspired your music the most?



In no particular order and by no means complete:



Conny Plank

Rheinhold Mack

Tim Smith

Ikutaro Kakehashi

Hopeton Brown

Daniel Miller

Bob Moog

Dennis Bovell

Greg Hunter and Kris Weston





3) Since you started out, the digital revolution has completely changed the way music is played, made, distributed and promoted. How has this affected what you do and how you do it and overall do you see it as a good thing?



It’s been massive. I became interested in music production at pretty much the same time as the digital revolution kicked off and I’ve very happily kept pace with it along the way. With regard to music production, the digital revolution has been astonishingly complete. It has democratised the process of making electronic music to an enormous degree so that now the tools are available to anybody who wants them, not just a handful of super-rich boffins and spoiled teenagers.



For me, personally, assimilating the new technology into my setup has been amazingly exciting and has enabled me to do things, musically and sonically, that I wouldn’t have been able to imagine only ten years ago. My new studio is an almost perfect marriage of analogue and digital. The two mesh seamlessly.



Digital audio has brought with it the cheapest, most faithful, reliable, accurate and repeatable means of recording sound ever devised. I can record virtually unlimited numbers of tracks and then manipulate what I record in ways which, on paper, seem impossible.



It can be a bit characterless, though, so I have brought with me the best of the analogue domain too: this provides quirkiness, unpredictable distortions and arcane working methods which throw up unexpected results.



The two approaches together create a very complete whole.



In terms of music distribution it has been nothing short of miraculous. When I first started out, the idea was to scrape together enough gig money to pay for a studio, to record a demo, to hopefully attract the attention of a label, who could secure you more recording time, plus manufacturing, distribution and publicity in return for most of the profits. It was virtually impossible to earn a living as a small independent artist making niche music from the heart. Most could never hope to recoup the debts they ran up paying for studios, boxes of vinyl records and CDs, distribution, pluggers, bribes to radio stations and press advertising.



These days the studio, manufacturing, distribution and marketing are inside your laptop along with instant and direct contact with the people who enjoy and buy your music.



Aside from a few 10% cuts to some very efficient middlemen, the overwhelming majority of the profit returns to the artist. With live shows [thanks to global awareness created by social networking platforms] it is now possible to earn a modest living making music without one eye on the crass commercial requirements of the rotten old ‘music industry’.



The vestiges of the old bloated, corporate ‘music industry’ are dead and dying – the future is artistic freedom, direct informal communication between artist and listener and personally stuffing CDs into Jiffy bags on our kitchen table and mailing them out. Which is how we do it.







4) What software and hardware are you currently using? Do you have a favourite piece of kit?



Software-wise, my main platform is Cubase 6.5. It’s beautiful: capable, elegant, mature and ergonomically brilliant. I also use Reason for sketching ideas and Ableton Live for playing live shows and remixing. I have a few soft synths which I use a lot, as well as a pile of old wooden machines which I’ve amassed over the years.



VSTi:

Korg Legacy MS20 with the MS20 Legacy controller.

NI Kontakt

NI Battery

GMedia ImpOscar



Hardware:

My main instrument is my [heavily modified] Korg MonoPoly connected to a large Doepfer A-100 modular system, a Roland SH-101 and a Powertran Transcendent 2000.



I also have a [heavily modified] Roland TB-303 and TR-606, Roland MKS70, Kurzweil K2000, Roland SH01 Gaia, a 1960s Phillips Phillicorda transistor organ, an upright piano, loads of drums and percussion instruments and a collection of microphones.



This I feed through a motley collection of old outboard gear, spring reverbs, analogue flangers, phasers, delay units and compressors.



My favourite thing of all is my EMS System 2000 vocoder which I use on just about everything.







5)Despite being UK-based you seem to spend more time gigging in the States these days. Why do you think this is and how is the scene there different to the UK’s?



There isn’t really ‘a scene’ as such in the UK – there are hundreds of micro-scenes all based around functionally identical sub-genres of sub-genres.



People don’t go out to see ‘electronic music’ in the UK, they go out to listen to 24 hours of tightly focused “Neo-Post-Sub-Forest-Prog-Psy-Tech-Step-Breaks” which, to the casual listener sounds a lot like “Post-Post-Sub-Full-on-Prog-Psy-Dub-Garage-Breaks” but which provides endless variety to those in the know.



The US audience tends to be a lot broader in taste and much less focused on minute categorisations. Also, the place is physically so much larger that even a tiny niche artist like me can attract sufficient people in enough places to carve out a place to exist. Bear in mind my whole country is about 1/3 the size of Texas.



6) Given that you’re usually either on tour or in the studio, you mustn’t get much down time. What do you like to do to relax?



I get more downtime than most people and my tastes are pretty simple. I’m fortunate in that the only part of my life I consider to be work is the travel to and from gigs. The rest is all relaxation. So time in the studio, on stage, at parties is all downtime and I only get paid for all the sitting in airports or in shitty hotels on interstate junctions.



When I’m not tinkering with sound and music I like to walk my dogs, potter about in the garden [I’m not allowed to touch any plants because I kill them but I’m useful for digging, moving heavy things and putting up fences...] ride my bike, hang out with my family, etc etc.





7) You’ve played at some of the world’s top festivals and are currently booked for Australia’s Rainbow Serpent Festival in January then at Panama’s GeoParadise Tribal Gathering in February. What are your three festival essentials?



1. Wet wipes.

2. Chewing gum.

3. Ploom Pax.





8) Set on a beautiful beach in the Caribbean, GeoParadise is billed as “a truly psychedelic transformational festival for tribes of the world” and all money raised goes towards sponsoring projects with the tribes that attend: from Guna, Embera, Maya, Ngobe, Boruca and more. Do you get a chance to get involved in this side of the festival at all or to relax on the beach? It really does sound like paradise!



Relaxing on a beach would be a much poorer experience without my family there too and, because it is way too expensive to fly them out with me, I tend to jet in and out of these beautiful places pretty quickly.



It’s hard, too, to completely relax and let go when I’m performing at a party because I have to keep my mind on being as professional as I can for the festival staff and as diligent as I can for the people who have come to see me.



I’m there first and foremost to do a job and to try to make the couple of hours when I’m on the stage as inspiring and as enveloping as possible. Getting that right beats any tropical beach experience.







9) Finally, what’s the one piece of advice you wish you’d been given when you started making music?



'Don’t be afraid to sound unlike everyone else.'





* Words and Interview by Tara Hawes







- ** ASK Ott ! ** Fan Questions Winners - * all winners will receive a signed copy of Ott - Mir *





Jeremy Squazoid ::

Ott, what would you do if Justin Bieber offered you 10 million pounds to produce his next album?



I’d bite his bloody hand off.



He’s probably pretty efficient at making records by now, and he must have a reasonable voice, technically speaking, to have got as far as he has. If not, he obviously won’t mind me fixing his shit up.



The songs would all be written, I could call in any musicians I wanted and the studio budget would be enormous!



I could block-book Air Lyndhurst for three months and spend my evenings perusing the equipment hire catalogues for whacky, esoteric machines to rent.



I’d spend a million of the fee up front on buying every classic synthesiser I’ve ever wanted to own and set them up in a big pile at the back of the studio so they’d fill the room with the smell of 1970s electronics.



Then I’d spend the time being as subversive as I could, seeing if I could sneak a mind-bending album in under the record company’s nose.



It would be Justin Bieber’s equivalent of The Beatles’ ‘Rubber Soul’ – the album where he transforms from piss-weak bubblegum pop for hormonal 13 year-olds, into a world-changing psychedelic pioneer.



And then I’d probably retire on the royalties, buy a farm and an SSL 4072G+ to put in the studio I’d have built in the barn, pop out an ‘Ott’ album every few years and build a set of robots to perform gigs for me, like Kraftwerk did.



*Bump!*



Fuck. Back to earth. :0|







Alex Timmer ::

Ott, you’re from England. How come you find such tropical, chilling inspiration in a country that’s always gloomy, wet and raining?



I don’t know where you live or if you have ever visited England but that is a bit of a myth.



We get our share of rain and wind but our climate is surprisingly mild considering we are on the same latitude as Russia, Poland, and the colder parts of Canada.



England in spring and summer is glorious. There is no place I would rather be.



A few years back my family and I moved to Spain and lived on the Mediterranean coast, just north of Alicante, for a couple of years. The winters were wild and windy but the summers were long, hot and sunny.



We realised during the second summer that we really missed the weather back home, which ended up being one of the reasons we decided to move back. Endless blue skies and hot sun got boring after a while and we found ourselves missing the morning mist and the smell of rain on grass.



This morning I walked my dogs on Dartmoor in a rainstorm, through mud a foot deep. At points I had to wade through a swollen river that threatened to pull me in, and scrabble up a muddy bank with only handfuls of wet grass to pull me up. It was wonderful.



And as winter gives way to spring in a couple of months the countryside here will turn into a teeming mass of new life and the sun will reappear.



It’s that change and dynamic that makes our weather quite compelling and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else on Earth.







Rachel Paradise ::

If you didn’t have to earn/ think about money, what would your life be like?



Much the same as it is now, I think, only with much less Economy Class travel.











Nova Noww ::

What inspired you to do your set from the middle of the dance floor without being up on a stage (like at Beloved Festival)? Was there an intention behind this?



It wasn’t my idea – I think credit for that one goes to Elliot Rasenick, founder and head honcho of Beloved.



Whoever’s idea it was, it was an inspired one and I enjoyed every minute of it. I can remember it like it was yesterday and there are only a handful out of hundreds of sets which have made that kind of impression on me.



In all honesty I’m not hugely into this whole "dude on stage with laptop" thing: I can think of few things less interesting to look at than a guy in a t-shirt sweating and pressing buttons.



In the past I have suggested to my agent and various promoters that I play my set from the dance floor but they just look at me like I’m insane.



The reasons I’m usually given are to do with fire regulations and the fact that me setting up in the middle of the room takes up space – meaning fewer tickets can be sold – and meaning cables have to be run where people could trip over them.



This all makes sense at an indoor venue, but it has also been suggested that an audience might feel somehow lost without somebody on a stage to look up to, which sounds a bit like bullshit to me.



At Beloved, playing from the dance floor felt completely right, and turned a great event into a memorable one. I love the feeling of playing while people dance around me, it really connects me to the party.



On a few occasions the audience has spontaneously rushed the stage [Kamps Lounge in Oklahoma City being one memorable show] and as long as nobody falls drunkenly into my equipment it invariably adds to the atmosphere.



The beauty of Beloved Festival, obviously, is that you’re most unlikely to encounter somebody so drunk they can’t stand or dance.



They’re freaks but their manners are impeccable.







LoafJaw Jellylips::

If you stumbled upon a wormhole and found yourself face to face with Ott the younger, what advice would you give him?



1. If you ask a girl out and she says no, you won’t immediately be incinerated by a giant laser from space.



2. If people are mocking your ideas, it’s probably because your ideas are better than their ideas.



3. School only serves to prepare you for the boredom of work.



4. You’re an arsehole when you’re drunk.







Adam Phytophile ::

Production question for Ott:



How do you get such soaking, dubby reverb to play so nicely with compression, and take up so much sonic space without causing mud? Your music has this laser-like clarity to it which is more or less unprecedented, and that same touch really shows on your remixes (e.g. Hallucinogen In-Dub) and the works of others you’ve mastered.



Mastering remains somewhat of a dark art for me, so I’d love if you could share a couple tips for making such intricate soundscapes retain immaculate clarity and detail. In particular, is phase-rotation something I should be paying more attention to?



Cheers You remain one of my biggest inspirations in my own musical evolution, and I’ve benefited immeasurably from just listening to your music and trying to figure out how the hell you did it.



I think you mean ‘mixing’ not ‘mastering’. Don’t worry – common mistake.



First and foremost, I’m a sound engineer and my core skill is mixing. I enjoy all aspects of making records, writing, playing, arranging etc, and I’m fantastically fortunate that people like what I compose, but the part of the process I’m super-obsessive about is the mixing.



I love it because it is an almost perfect blend of cold, hard technique and intangible, intuitive magic. It is totally immersive and a challenging mix can make me feel like I’ve done fifteen rounds with Darth Vader.



Mixing is a process of managing interactions. Subtle differences in the relationship between two sounds which barely seem to interact can have profound effects on the sound of the mix and the emotions of the listener.



Small adjustments to the hi-hat can make the kick drum sound weak. EQ on the guitar can make the vocal sound muffled and the percussion too loud. With a reasonably complex recording, the permutations are multiplicitous.



In terms of getting stuff to fit, it’s a simple case of deciding which space you’d like a sound to occupy and learning your tools well enough to be able to shape it to fit.



Then the game is to give everything else its own space and allow things to overlap in sonically pleasing ways whilst always keeping one ‘eye’ on the overall picture.



A good mix should quicken the pulse, no matter how bored you are with hearing the song. If it doesn’t do that, it’s not finished.



I’ve been learning this process for 30 years now and I’m still barely scratching the surface.



P.s. Reverb, in particular, should be used sparingly. Digital reverb has a nasty way of homogenising things and taking over, like cheap wallpaper or too much soy sauce. I use spring reverb or natural ambience whenever possible. Don’t be afraid to leave things dry.



P.p.s. – Re: ‘phase-rotation’ – no, probably not. Concentrate on 'making shit sound great by any means necessary.’





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