The slow road

I've been listening to and playing Delano Smith's 'Sunrise' EP on Third Ear for the past month. The four tracks alternate between clubby arrangements and deeper, more reflective pieces, but the common bond is that Smith has put a lot of time, thought and effort into every element on every track. You can hear it in his raw yet rich production style, the way the beats have an extra fuzziness or in the flowing melodies and the warm, layered chords. Even the track with the vocal sample intoning 'Detroit' sounds fresh. It's one of my favourite records of the past few months, but I don't expect to hear another one from Smith for a while  - and that's fine by me. Smith, like many of my favourite producers, follows the slow production road, releasing maybe a record or two (at the most) every year. Portable and Donnacha Costello are two other examples of great producers putting out small volumes of music with high strike rates. However, in Smith's case, the slow road has been particularly slow. It seems he only started producing music when he was in his mid-30s, having spent the best part of two decades as a DJ. I think that there's a lesson in there and it's perhaps one that doesn't fit with the current trend of labels churning out music at an ever-accelerating pace. Smith's approach suggests that you need to have a thorough knowledge of your chosen music before you can go near studio equipment (or software) and that in turn, you need to perfect your music making skills before you can even consider releasing a record. Of course, if everyone followed this school of thought, only a tiny fraction of the music being released now would exist - but would this really be a problem if all the releases were on a par with 'Sunrise'?

Comments

[tom/pipecock]

this is also a point theo parrish made in a couple interviews years later. and really, this is related to something that came up in a discussion i had with some morons on the I Love Music forum: deep house music does not care about youth, it cares about knowledge and experience. i think this is part of what makes it so interesting to me, the idea of getting better at something as you go on instead of the typical trendy idea of people coming from nowhere to suddenly be "the next big thing". this usually dies out and then there's another next big thing to replace the fact that the first big thing was not good enough at what they did. if a young cat can make the tunes and learn about the music and deejay it well, he will be accepted. but it is not going to default to him just because he is the new guy.

[dillinjaxx]

I can say I aggree with this point of view, but think of how many AMAZING records and even music genres came from the spontaneous and exerimentation of young people who didnt know sh*t but had an attitude and created something new.

[kuri]

mad props on this EP by Delano Smith. this is just a classy release with all tracks hitting the mark.

to dillinjaxx:
yeah, that's fine and well for an opener that breaks the mold but when they're just pumping out track after track using the same template that's just redundant bullsh!t.

[tom/pipecock]

hiphop was created by deejays with great knowledge and background in music like Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa. House music was made by people who listened to extremely knowledgeable deejays like Larry Levan, Ronnie Hardy, Tony Humphries, Hot Mix 5, etc. even if the original house tracks were just kids, they were highly educated kids.

in fact, i want you to name these great records and genres made by people who didn't know what was going on. i can't think of hardly any.

[dillinjaxx]

I should be more precise. When I say kids who dont know sh*t, I mean young people who havent been in the scene for years. Obviously no one can create new music without hearing any kind of music first. As an example think of Burial. When he wrote his first lp he wasnt thinking "Im gonna write the dubstep record of the year". He just did what he liked and it was dubstep in the end. Also correct me if Im wrong but I think jungle/Dnb and reggea could fit the case.

[kuri]

if you look at where Burial came from you can see that he had been listening to jungle/hardcore tunes since he was a kid. he was coming at it from a listener's perspective so maybe he wasn't approaching production from a dj's bent but it was a thorough knowledge that informed his technique when he finally did try his hand and stumbled upon his sound. check an interview in the wire here: http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/347/

[dillinjaxx]

Interesting interview. What I meant in the first place was to answer to this :
"deep house music does not care about youth, it cares about knowledge and experience."

My example of Burial is that, of course he was listening to jungle and other stuff as a kid but he came out of nowhere,he wasnt in the dubstep scene, he didnt have any music production experience and made a great dubstep record.

[b0b]

You really should get the Insomnia EP from Delano Smith on Mixmode recordings, even if AFAIK it's available only digitally. It's of the same vein of the Sunrise EP and I would'nt discount it just because it's not on vinyl. It's even one of my fav EP of 2008.

[Brophy]

Hi everyone, thanks for the comments. I think there may be a little bit of crossed wires going on though. I didn't say that producers/acts/artists need to have deep technical expertise to innovate.I'd actually say it's the opposite - punk came about due to young bands who could barely play three chords getting pissed off with prog rock musos and all the early house records sound raw, underproduced and basic. one of phuture said last year that they were just messing about and it all came together pretty much by accident. I would hope that this 'happy accident' approach is still possible to kickstart the next seismic shift - although I'd agree that Burial was responsible for a mini seismic shift recently. Having said all that, the producers I made reference to in the original post have all developed their own little niche within the broader parameters of house/techno/electronic dance music and I'd much rather that other producers follow that lead, prioritise quality over quantity and develop a distinctive style. Despite this, I'm all up for some new talent who has more passion than proficiency to come in and kick over the statues...

[peder]

yep, this is a great record, props to third ear for bringing mister smith to a wider audience. also worth tracking down if you can is the brilliant "feel this" on delano's own mixmode recordings. recommended further reading is the wax poetics article on the origins of "beatdown"...