Hudson Mohawke

(music: Kanye West – Blood On The Leaves “(Instrumental)” / applause)

Benji B

Please welcome Mr Hudson Mohawke.

Hudson Mohawke

Hello.

Benji B

How are you doing?

Hudson Mohawke

Tired, good.

Benji B

What did we just open with?

Hudson Mohawke

That is a Kanye West song called “Blood On The Leaves,” which is one of the first productions I did with him, and basically, we were going to have a discussion today about how we went from the very early days of playing to 50 people to working on this type of material.

Benji B

That basically… tell us about those early days. Tell us about where you’re from and what your first club culture experiences were that went on to inform the music that you’ve been making up to now because I know that’s a really important part of who you are.

Hudson Mohawke

I’m from Glasgow and Scotland and it was somewhere where there’s not really a huge amount of hip-hop culture. It’s mainly electronic music, mainly house and techno. We were running these little nights, myself and Calum who… we were running these small nights which were essentially open mic night with where I would be DJing instrumentals for local rappers, whatever. From playing a bunch of instrumentals, that got me into production. That sparked my interest in the whole idea of being a producer in general because before I was just purely focusing on DJ and turntablist-type shit.

Benji B

Tells us about your background as a turntablist. It was a bedroom hobby, wasn’t it, but it went to be much more than that, when you were 15 years old or something.

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s really valuable to learn a skill at an age where you’re between 10 and 15, or something like. You absorb so much… you have the time that you don’t have to worry about your fucking bills and all this other shit. You can actually just focus on something purely. I’d be coming home from school and just hunched over turntables, working the entire time. I went from that to deciding I wanted to … Basically A-Trak was a huge inspiration for me because he’d won the world championships at a very young age. I think I’d seen the video of that and he’s a couple of years older than me. I was like, “Right, that’s what I want to do.” From there went on to competing and onto the battle DJ circuit.

Benji B

Did you used to run the Scottish hip-hop forum?

Hudson Mohawke

[Laughs] No.

Benji B

No? Allegedly. I think it’s interesting to touch on that because for hip hop fans in the room, that era that you’re talking about of turntablism is often associated with digging records, get an MPC, make a beat. Your better known for…

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s still relevant, but…

Benji B

Yeah, of course, but to think, it’s interesting, it’s more common now for people to use a computer to make music in any way, but at that time, making the kind of music that you were into with Fruity Loops, people were a bit snobby about that…

Hudson Mohawke

I think there’s that stigma against Fruity Loops still exists. I’ve always said … Just as an example, the top ten billboard songs, I guarantee eight of them are made on it, yet there are people who will still not acknowledge it as professional piece of software. I does everything I need it to do

Benji B

Let’s talk about the genesis, the foundation of you making music on Fruity Loops – am I right in saying you started on a PlayStation?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah. I guess it’s the way quite a few people started it because … for me anyway it was before the era where we even had a computer in the house. I guess this was late, but It was just maybe ’98, ’99 or something. I was like, “I don’t have any other means of making music, then here’s this PlayStation, here’s this game. I may as well throw myself into that, learn how to …”

Benji B

Can you explain it? What was it like, sequencing on a PlayStation for people that haven’t seen it?

Hudson Mohawke

I guess they call it a game, but it’s… what I’ve heard is that it’s very similar to how a lot of the old drum & bass stuff was made, as far as working on the early Atari computers and that sort of thing. I think it was actually a similar process to that, but I had no idea of that at the time. I was just learning the process of how to use that particular piece of software.

Benji B

You were being influenced by computer games at the same time then, sonically speaking I mean, like in terms of sound?

Hudson Mohawke

Absolutely, absolutely, Metal Gear.

Benji B

What was the first piece of music you made – the first tune you made?

Hudson Mohawke

The first piece of music I made I think was… it must have been a piece in school for some sort of college submission thing, something like that, some drum & bass bullshit. That must have been when I was, like, 14, 15 …

Benji B

… At 14?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah, let me switch the mini-jack. Now, this is the type of stuff that was inspiring to me at the time… Let me see…

Benji B

And you’re too young to go to a club at that point…

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah, I was too young to go to clubs. This was the kind of music I was listening to. htt (music: Unknown – unknown)

Benji B

[Laughter] I think it’s important to bring it back to Glasgow at this point.

Hudson Mohawke

That stuff was huge in Glasgow. We actually make a point of doing the one-off events with playing this type of stuff every so often because again, there’s a stigma against it, but if you play that in a club in Glasgow people will go insane for that.

Benji B

For people that aren’t familiar with Glasgow, obviously we’ve got pretty much every country represented here. Glasgow really is one of the clubbing capitals of the UK. People talk about London and Manchester, and Glasgow is definitely in the same sentence, but it really is unique. There’s nowhere else like Glasgow in terms of the intensity of the city and how that is reflected in the unique energy in clubs. Can you talk to us about what that feeling is?

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s maybe because of the size of the city and because it’s a post-industrial place where traditionally there’s over the last couple of decades been a lot of unemployment and a lot of hardship for people. The size of the city means that when there’s an event under a lot of people come together to just unite and have a good party. I think that’s one of the main things. Also, I always say part of it is… because traditionally it has such bad weather, that can cause people to actually make happy music.

Benji B

Talk to me about some Glasgow legends, people that you looked up to, DJs or producers or musical people that led the way?

Hudson Mohawke

As far as who I looked up to at that point, I really looked up to two guys called the Freakmenoovers, who were like a turntablist crew. They were the main hip-hop scratch DJs in Glasgow. They put me on student radio for the first time in my life, when I was whatever, early teens. Them and, I guess, the Optimo guys. There’s an incredible club night in Glasgow called Optimo, where the… it really just opened my mind to so much new music because it was primarily a techno night, but with a little punk ethos, but also, they’d be playing soundtracks at the start of the nights.

While people were coming into the club they’re playing soundtrack records. They’re also playing ’50s seven inches, stuff like that. It was just like, “How are they getting away with this in a club environment and people are still…” That was such an inspiration to me, to see that happening. I was working at the club at the time. I was working behind the bar at the club. to see that happen in front of me, people losing their mind to some… literally some 1940s song, I was like, “What the fuck is going on here? It’s crazy.” That was a huge inspiration to me as well.

Benji B

Tell us about the club that you ended up doing because there was a very important place where you met some important people?

Hudson Mohawke

We started at a low venue called Stereo, and it was really just a bar. It wasn’t a club by any means. Where’s Calum now? Calum started his rival night in another venue called [inaudible]. After a certain amount of time, I guess the night that myself and my friend Dominic were running was primarily hip-hop focused and the night Calum was running with Jackmaster and the Numbers crew was, I guess, a bit more electronic-focused and at some point, we, rather than being rivals we joined forces and were like, “Now we should really own this.” There’s no point, two little small nights being rivals. It’s a small enough city to not need that. Actually, this record that you queued up here is the first joint release that we actually did.

(music: Hudson Mohawke – “OOOPS!!!”)

Hudson Mohawke

That was the culmination of the idea of wanting to combine these elements of real commercial R&B and hip-hop with a little bit more leftfield electronic production. None of it was cleared officially. Shut up… It was a hit after-party and club record in the city at the time. It also exposed me to a lot of new listeners as well, which did a lot for me at the time.

Benji B

Was it a good practice, almost like a replacement for the ability to work with US artists, or even a singer or a rapper…

Hudson Mohawke

Absolutely.

Benji B

Was that clear that that was part of your dreams?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah. At that point, my focus was I desperately want to be working with mainstream US artists… or not even technically US, but mainstream R&B and hip-hop acts, but I’m a kid in my mum’s house in Glasgow, in this city that’s raining all the time in the middle of nowhere. How would that ever happen? It was like, “Right, I will get a bunch of a capellas off of Soulseek.

Benji B

Calum was talking about Soulseek earlier. I haven’t heard about anyone talking about Soulseek. It’s really good how these things can set the exact time period. This period that we’re talking about right now is in the height of the MySpace era. I remember discovering you MySpace, that’s how I first found you and Soulseek and Limewire…

Hudson Mohawke

I hope you top eighted me.

Benji B

Of course, standard. The “Free Mo” tune, that’s from that era, right? Should we play it?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah. I don’t know if I still have it on here, but yeah…

Benji B

Tell us about Hudson’s Heeters, what was that?

Hudson Mohawke

I think it was over Christmas one year, I … over Christmas one year I was like, “I’m just going to make a bunch of beats” and ended up making 11 beats in three days or something like that. Then was like, “I don’t really want to put them out, because I don’t think they’re good enough. I’m just going to put them up for free, put a download link up and just fucking see what happens.” They ended up… that took off as well and a bunch of those tracks from that have subsequently been released on various compilations and on other records as well.

Benji B

We’re talking like 2007, or something like this?

Hudson Mohawke

That was 2006 I think it was.

(music: Hudson Mohawke – “Free Mo”)

Hudson Mohawke

The other thing about this collection of instrumentals that were included on the Heeters tape was that I was sending them to MCs and stuff like that, and for the most part their reaction was like, “There’s nothing I can do with this. This is just too much of a mess for me to put a verse over or anything like that.” I was like, “Fuck it, I’ll just put them out as instrumentals.”

Benji B

It is interesting to talk about that, because I do remember at the time a lot of your music was super-left, mad syncopated and… it what it was seen as at the time.

Hudson Mohawke

It was seen as that, but now, you know, that’s fucking chart music.

Benji B

It’s interesting just as an overall question for you to say, “I dreamt of working with these people, it was 2006. I’m living at my mum’s in the middle of nowhere,” in your perception in Glasgow. Working with Kanye West, starting to make the tune that we heard at the beginning of the lecture in 2012. Six years is not a long time to make that dream a reality. If you could pick one thing on that journey in terms of a really crucial step of you moving towards realizing that dream, what would you choose?

Hudson Mohawke

There’s a number of things, but I think one would be, I was mainly pursuing a solo DJ career at that point. I remember arriving at a festival in Hungary or somewhere like that and receiving a one-line email that just said, “Can you come to LA in two days’ time,” or something like that… That was like, “Right… OK, I guess I could come by. It was a very surreal experience in terms of I’m here doing a relatively OK festival, but it’s just me performing on my own and to suddenly get an email from an address which is like @KanyeWest.com is like, “OK, this is actually happening.”

Benji B

Bringing it back to “OOOPS!!!” and the vibration that that had for you, it’s important to talk a bit more about the Numbers, the LuckyMe and that era because your crews have gone on to influence a whole next generation now and had a massive effect on dance music and hip hop. Do you want to talk a bit further about all the people involved in that?

Hudson Mohawke

It’s something that I… I’m my own worst enemy with it because I acknowledge that what we built out of that scene in Glasgow has influenced popular music in general, but I would never go out and be like, “Yeah, I invented that …” I acknowledge that it’s been an influence on a lot of mainstream pop music now, but I would never claim to have…

Benji B

I think you just did.

Hudson Mohawke

… ownership of that. It’s how music works. You hear something you like, you run with it. The stuff that I was making was … I was just, in my head, I was just ripping off people whose music that I really liked.

Benji B

Have you got any of it, the stuff that you liked? The influence stuff? You should play some of that and I’ve also heard you talking in the past about IDM and R&B or something and trying to combine those two things at the time for you.

(music: Unknown – unknown)

Speaker: Hudson Mohawke

To me at the time of making that, that’s just a straight up hip-hop beat, but the way it seemed to be perceived was that this was some weird electronic left… as you say, like IDM type shit.

Benji B

You said that, I didn’t say that. I don’t even know what IDM means. What does IDM mean?

Hudson Mohawke

It was an old term for intelligent dance music.

Benji B

I’m not in it.

Hudson Mohawke

Exactly. It was perceived as some sort of leftfield electronic kind of thing, which I wasn’t really expecting again, to me that was just me making hip-hop beats. That opened me up to a new audience as well.

Benji B

Can you tell me what LuckyMe is?

Hudson Mohawke

LuckyMe is… it’s changing by the year, but it was the name of the first club night that we started running in 2002, I think. It grew from a small club night to a record label, to a fashion brand to… there was a film-making arm of it, a photography arm. Just a group of creatives basically all collaborating.

Benji B

How did you first meet Dominic Flannigan?

Hudson Mohawke

I think I actually met him at one of the DJ battles, one of the very, very first DJ battles over the … We’ve been creative partners along with another guy called Martin Flynn. We’ve been creative partners now for 15 years or something like that.

Benji B

I think it’s definitely important for us to talk about Dom, because he has such an influence on the creative, on the visual, on the videos, on the design and everything, and it’s a little-known fact that he used to MC as well, but we’ll keep it moving. No, I’m just joking Dom. I want to talk to you about this record, by Heralds of Change, which I think might have been the first bit of vinyl that I got from you actually, is you alongside Mike Slott, this is from 2007 on an Irish label called All City. Tell us about this project.

Hudson Mohawke

This was a joint production project with a good friend of mine who… we were both making music in Glasgow and why not just try out some shit together, basically, and put out this record, which is really just a lot of instrumentals, but took off on its own little journey. Let’s see, I can’t even remember what’s on it. Yeah, I can’t even remember what’s on it…

(music: Heralds Of Change – unknown)

Speaker: Benji B

So, 2007 right? Which was also the year that you were a participant in the Academy.

Hudson Mohawke

Yes, yes.

Benji B

It’s good to have you in the couch in 2015. How was your Academy experience in 2007?

Hudson Mohawke

It was extremely nerve-wracking for me. It was the first time I’d been… it was the first time I think I’d been on a long-haul flight, I think, actually, because that was in Toronto. I was never the most… never the kind of guy to just jump into a room and be like, “Yo, let’s make music.” I always made music alone. To be thrust into that environment, with a lot of people that you don’t know, it was actually really refreshing. I still keep in touch with quite a few of the people who I was in the Academy with at that point.

Benji B

I guess everyone here, on day one, had to come up and do the thing on the couch where you introduce yourself and no one likes it and it’s always awkward and everyone hates it. Some people are more natural at it than others, but, fundamentally, we all have the same fear. Does it get any easier having been in that position as someone who you just said yourself, didn’t naturally come out of his shell? Does it get easier over the years?

Hudson Mohawke

I think you just… yeah, from experience you just learn how to handle yourself in particular situations. That was certainly a steep learning curve, to be thrown in the deep end like that, but I’m really thankful… When I actually go the email that I had gotten into the Academy I was like, “What the…” I was blown away by that, as I’d seen… There was a couple of TV programmes or stuff about it I think around that point. I was like, “Wow, if I could get into this, this would blow my mind.” Filled out the ridiculous application and… had no hopes of getting in, really, but I’m super, super-thankful that I had that opportunity.

Benji B

Something pretty special happened on that Academy, I remember, because there was a lecture with, Steve Beckett from Warp and I think that was around the time when he’d decided to sign you to Warp Recordings.

Hudson Mohawke

That was the first time that I’d met Steve and we’d been briefly in touch before that. Steve Beckett is the person who founded Warp Records, which is the label that I release on, but I had never met him before. He came and gave a lecture. That was just really inspiring in itself, because to see someone who’s… he’s I guess, Steve’s probably… he’s probably almost 60 now, something like that. To see him still have his ears so much to the ground for someone like me, who was just putting out records, we were pressing like 300 copies or something like that, for him to be aware of something like that was mind-blowing for me.

Benji B

Rustie was being signed around the same time as well, was that right?

Hudson Mohawke

Rustie was signed I think a year or two later, but we were pretty much doing stuff at the same time and Flying Lotus.

Benji B

It seemed like you and Rustie had a symbiotic relationship in terms of influence, as well.

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah, absolutely. I’m the biggest Rustie fan I guess. He’s informed my sound and I have informed his sound. I think, for a period, it was like, and it still is to some extent, but I think it’s quite good to have a sparring partner when you’re making music because you’re like, “I’m going to one up you on that.” It’s fun to have that.

Benji B

Do you feel that healthy competition thing or do you not buy it?

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s healthy in terms of keeping you motivated and stuff like that. I do think it’s healthy.

Benji B

Tell us about the effect that signing to Warp Records had for you personally and in terms of perception in the wider world, but also what it’s been like working with them since then.

Hudson Mohawke

It’s been amazing, because there’s not that many labels that I’m aware of that are the size of Warp in terms of the distribution and their outreach, but they would still give you complete creative freedom which is… it’s not something that’s… I’m not going to name any other labels, but it’s not something that you’re going to get from too many labels that are on their level. I’m really grateful that I had the opportunity to release with them. I’m still super-grateful to have that level of creative freedom to be like, “I’ve made this record that sounds like this, but the next record I’m going to do is going to be entirely different and you’re not going to tell me that I can’t do that, because I’m just going to fucking do it,” and they’re like, “Yeah, go for it.”

Benji B

Polyfolk Dance which is actually just six amazing tunes… by the way.

Hudson Mohawke

I think you’re the only person who get the drum pattern on that…

Benji B

… Is my favorite. I don’t know why everyone’s so late on that tune, Speed Stick, my words will become a Hudson Mohawke classic. We were going to play Overnight, is that alright? Because that’s the big one.

(music: Hudson Mohawke – “Overnight”)

Hudson Mohawke

That’s something else, which, at the time, was given to a bunch of MCs and everyone was like… “Don’t know what to do with this. I can’t make a song with it…”

Benji B

It’s definitely true that there’s a thread in your music that always seems to be ahead of its time. I know that sounds a bit corny, but it’s so true because I used to play this all the time in clubs, what was this, 2009? People were… half the room was definitely not ready for it, but it’s… you play it now and people think it’s the sound of the club. Has that been frustrating for you or is that something that excites you when people don’t get you straightaway?

Hudson Mohawke

Obviously there’s an element of frustration in it. Obviously, but… especially when there’s a whole crop of people coming off the back of that that are… because people are now ready for the sound, they get a lot of shine from that. I can’t help making the music that I want to make at a particular time. I’m not going to dumb it down for a particular era or a particular crowd or whatever.

Benji B

Around this time, I suppose the demand for you to play live and to DJ and all that stuff started to pick up, as soon as you started releasing on Warp. Now, obviously as most people know that made music in the room, releasing records sadly is often a business card for getting DJ bookings, in terms of actually paying the bills, as you were saying before. It’s not selling the records that often pays. It’s the DJ gigs that come around them. How did you deal with that pressure, because you strike me as someone whose comfort zone is very much the studio? You’re happiest in the studio, you seem at peace in the studio, and then suddenly everyone’s expecting you to go and perform. How did you deal with that new-found pressure of having to wheel out the decks on stage and do it live?

Hudson Mohawke

I certainly have had my share of shows, like you’re saying, where you’re playing stuff like that and most of the room is just like… I think it’s just… again, it’s just spending time doing it and building on it. It’s something that you can get more ballsy with it as you become more comfortable in front of crowds. You can be like, “Fuck you, I’m just going to play this.” Sooner or later, people will come around to it.

Benji B

One question I have to ask you, listening to tunes like “Rising 5”… some of the drum programming just makes me wonder were you actually a drummer before you were drum programmer because it’s like… you do things that only a drummer would actually do in terms of rolls and hi-hats and stuff like that.

Hudson Mohawke

I was a drummer, but only in school. I never pursued it further than that. I wish that I had, but I guess it’s just … Now I really just do it with programming, but… I guess once you’ve been drumming for a certain amount of years, you have that mindset of where a particular roll belongs or where a particular little flam belongs.

Benji B

Should we play a bit of “Rising 5” as well.

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah, go for it.

Benji B

Tell us about this album.

Hudson Mohawke

This is the first time … let me get the sleeve there. This is a record that’s called Butter, which was the first full length record that I released. I was particularly proud of it, the Hippopotamus in the gatefold. It’s the same guy who did the Polyfolk Sleeve. This was the first-full length I released. Also confused a lot of people.

Benji B

I just want to play this one for the Hud Mo drums.

(music: Hudson Mohawke – “Rising 5”)

Hudson Mohawke

Also, Chris Brown ripped that and made a song out of it and now owes me a bunch of money. Chris Brown, if you’re watching this…

Benji B

What tune is it? What’s his tune called? I want to…

Hudson Mohawke

I can’t even remember…

Benji B

Come on, don’t lie.

Hudson Mohawke

It was some mixtape tune.

Benji B

That was an amazing example of the drums that you do that I love, but there’s another really important side to your composition. Loads of people that have computers and drum machines and MPCs can make great beats, but it’s a harder thing to have a real grasp of writing a hook or writing a melody or writing a song. I think that that is one of the many things that really sets you apart. I just wanted you to talk to us a little bit about the importance of that, because everyone says, “Oh yeah, Hud Mo beatmaker, yeah, obviously one of the greatest beatmakers in the world at the moment,” but people often overlook your ability with music and composition and hooks and musicianship.

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s just… I don’t sing, but I can hear a hook over a set of chords or something like that. I’m not writing on a keyboard or anything. I know that I can hear this particular melody playing over the top of this and it just … There’s no real explanation, but…

Benji B

And you play it yourself.

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah. I program it myself. I can almost plays keys, but as far as key playing, Oliver is a huge inspiration to me as well as far as trying to learn to play keys properly.

Benji B

Musically, where do you think… obviously we can hear, you’ve played hip-hop, we played Just Blaze, it’s clear from your drums where a lot of your feeling and influence comes from and also the pitch-up happy hardcore stuff, but musically there’s a big soul thing going on in there as well. Where is that coming from?

Hudson Mohawke

I guess it’s coming from my dad’s records, which is a super-cliched answer that everybody says.

Benji B

No, no, that’s where I was going with it.

Hudson Mohawke

It came from being raised off… not even anything that’s particularly underground or anything like that. Just with the Luther Vandross records and stuff like that… Anita Baker records and this type of thing, but stuff that I was being played at a very young age that resonated with me, maybe subconsciously, I don’t know.

Benji B

Definitely. There’s something else as well which is unique to you, which is almost… I don’t know what the word is, it’s folk or something in there that’s… Do you know what I’m getting at?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah. That’s also… I guess that’s also… probably comes from Glasgow as well, because there was a big art-school, rock/slash… I hesitate to use the word folk, but electronic leftfield scene, surrounding the art school in Glasgow, which is also where we were doing a lot of our events. We were getting support gigs for… even though we were doing stuff like this, myself and people like Rustie and whoever were getting support gigs for Caribou or Sage Francis, stuff that came from not necessarily the same world at all, but we were being exposed to it. It took an influence on our own productions.

Benji B

I think one of the best examples of all of the things we’ve just been talking about, the melody, the song writing, all of those bits has got to be “Fuse.”

(music: Hudson Mohawke – “FUSE”)

Talk to me about some of the crews that you’ve linked up with, notably Jacques and the Canadian connection and in particular Lunice.

Hudson Mohawke

I guess around the time when we were developing our little scene in Glasgow there was a similar thing developing in Montreal and also a similar thing developing in LA, that particular sound coming out of these really small grungy club nights. I think maybe… I guess it was the year after I was in the Academy. We decided that we would do a gig swap, where a bunch of us from Scotland would go out to Montreal and LA, do some shows there. We would, in turn, have them back to play in Scotland. Pretty much everyone out of that crew of people has gone on to be fairly successful in their own right. In particular Lunice. I connected with him and we’ve spoken for years about doing a record together.

We spoke for four of five years about, “Oh, I need to get in the studio, I have to get in the studio.” We eventually spent two or three days in a studio, made this record, with no idea of it being anything… no intention of releasing it, no project name for it or anything like that. Just, “Here’s some stuff that we probably wouldn’t make on our own. Let’s just throw some ideas together and just see where it goes.” It ended up becoming this project called TNGHT, which we then decided maybe we should release it. Pressed up the records. That took off as its own, little scene in itself as well.

Benji B

There was a tune, wasn’t there, that you’d done that “Higher Ground” replaced. You want to tell us a story there?

Hudson Mohawke

No.

Benji B

Alright, cool. Maybe we should just play something from TNGHT’s EP, then. You may have heard one of these before if you’ve been anywhere near any sort of festivals/clubs/house parties/iTunes in the last five years.

Hudson Mohawke

The other thing I was going to say before I play this is that nowadays, I feel like this is… this sound is… it’s a little bit done for me, but it is the sound of fucking Budweiser adverts or such and such an advert. Every brand is having remakes done of it, but what was really exciting about this stuff at the time we actually made it and about the time when we released it was the fact that, because there was no such thing as “EDM trap” or whatever you want to call it, because that didn’t really exist, we were getting all sorts of across the board DJs playing the songs from yourself to fucking Richie Hawtin to Calvin Harris to… because no one knew where to file it because that sound didn’t have… it hadn’t been pigeonholed yet. It was really exciting at the time because the record even ended up on the Billboard chart somewhere. It was like number 150 or something. Even that was just mind-blowing for us. Let me find something here.

(music: TNGHT – “Higher Ground”)

Benji B

Are you sick of hearing that one yet?

Hudson Mohawke

I’ve been sick of hearing that.

Benji B

I have to say that though watching 10,000 people going nuts to that tune, at Coachella right at the height of that summer that it was really popping off was exciting enough for me being right in the middle of the crowd. I can only imagine what it was like to be able to do that. Two producers on the stage… it wasn’t really a tried and tested format. We know the DJ producer format. You took it somewhere different in terms of what’s possible for the producer/DJ instead of DJ/producer.

Hudson Mohawke

It was an experiment, really. A lot of it was just fucking around and seeing what works, what doesn’t work. It really worked for a long time until the point where I was like, “I’m bored of doing this shit.” I wanted to do something a little more varied and everyone now is like, “When is the next TNGHT record coming?” I’m like, “It’ll be there when it’s there, but…”

Benji B

I think it’s a really good subject to talk about actually, the power of “no” and the power of saying no and knowing when to say no and knowing about the art of ending things. I would have been very easy for you to rinse that one to high heaven and yet you decided to not do that and go off and make your solo albums respectively.

Hudson Mohawke

That EP ended up with… the whole shit of… US majors being like, “We need ten beats that sound exactly like this. Let’s put ten different rappers on them. We can get anyone you want. We’ll make an album. We’ll fucking …” I’m like, that would be great for a year or two years and then it’ll be gone. Where is your career?

Benji B

Was that the moment where you learn about how to negotiate saying no to things that you’d love to do, is that mad period? Have you got any advice to impart about the importance of maintaining a balance in your career of endeavors?

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s just important to… this is just for me personally, but it’s just important to keep things varied and keep yourself interested creatively rather than setting into just, “This is what people want to hear, so I’d better just keep making this over and over.” Because that’s a very easy thing to fall into. It’s not, for me, anyway, it’s not particularly exciting. It doesn’t give me the chills that I got when we made those songs in the first place, or when they were at the height of their popularity.

Benji B

TNGHT, yourself and Lunice ended up being the main production credit on “Blood On The Leaves,” which is the song that we heard on the front, sorry, the beginning of the lecture. Talk to me about the process of working on Yeezus how that came and what it was like ended up working with Rick Rubin at Shangri La.

Hudson Mohawke

I’m always very cagey about… you were there yourself, about what it’s like as far as what you’re allowed to say.

Benji B

It’s definitely always essential to observe the studio code. Vagueness will be accepted, but I’m just saying on a personal front to have done it.

Hudson Mohawke

Again, to sit in a room that’s probably no bigger than this area here with Rick Rubin and Kanye and just be like right now, feel like this shit goes here, this shit’s at here, this sounds good here is just like going from… to go back to what I was talking about what I was talking about earlier in terms of being in my mom’s house in Glasgow. I’m on a ranch in Malibu talking with Rick Rubin. Again, mind-blowing experience. Like we’re saying, as far as the details of it it’s like… you have to be… you can’t say too much.

Benji B

For sure. Talking of details, you are definitely a details person when it comes to your craft of making tunes and beats. I can’t say what it is that makes you stand out against the next beatmaker, but it’s definitely got to be something with the level of detail and precision that you put into making things. Is there a bit of advice that you can give any producer or studio head, no matter what genre they make?

Hudson Mohawke

I would say, again, just personally, a lot of the stuff I make, I don’t release, and I end up wishing that I had released. Release music, because probably about 75% of the stuff I make never sees the light of day. Then I listen to it again a year later and I’m like, “Why the fuck did I not put that out?”

Benji B

Got any dub plays to play?

Hudson Mohawke

I think it’s just important, especially now in this Soundcloud age. It’s important to have that presence. If I would do anything differently, it would be release more music, probably.

Benji B

In the more recent time you’ve worked with Drake, with Pusha T, with Lil’ Wayne. Do you want to pick any of those songs to play for us and talk about the experience of working in that environment as well?

Hudson Mohawke

Let me see. This was the song I did with Pusha and Rick Ross.

(music: Pusha T feat Rick Ross & Kanye West – “Hold On”)

Benji B

One question I wanted to ask you, and a purely practical one, is when all this stuff starts to happen and things pop off and suddenly you’re getting calls from Drake or Frank Ocean or whoever it might be or their representatives saying, “We want to work with you,” how does the structure around you actually have to change to cope with that? How does your team have to change? How do you deal with getting the right manager or the right person to negotiate this world of selling beats and stuff?

Hudson Mohawke

It’s difficult if you come from a purely… or a more electronic background. You have to learn this whole new world of how it works in terms of selling beats and working with mainstream artists and this type of thing. It’s a learning process. You need to really make sure that you have a tight team, because otherwise you’re going to be waiting on a lawyer for three months to send back a contract or some shit like that. You need to make sure that you stay on your people and you delegate stuff, but try and project manage it as much as you can personally. Try and oversee as much of it as you can to make sure it’s exactly how you want it to be, basically.

Benji B

Business-wise it can be frustrating, but creatively is it one of the most fulfilling things you’ve done working with those artists in that environment?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah.

Benji B

How was the first time?

Hudson Mohawke

I’ve always said that as much as I love working with these artists it’s the same buzz that I got from finding out that I was going to be able to work with Warp. Something like that. It’s a new… it’s the next step, it’s like a new endeavor. It has nothing to do with the fame of such and such a person. It’s more just this is a whole new world for me to learn about and explore and keep things creatively interesting for myself.

Benji B

Talking of which, if we bring it right up to date with your current album, we’re talking about all this stuff and you’ve got all this pressure and people wanting to work with you and everything. You went off and make a piece of orchestral music in a song with Antony [now Anohni] from Antony & The Johnsons which is definitely not the turn that most people that are sitting in A&R offices wanting ten new TNGHT beats would have expected you to do.

Hudson Mohawke

Or wanted me to do.

Benji B

Or wanted you to do, exactly, which is what makes it even more awesome. How did the relationship with Antony come about?

Hudson Mohawke

Anthony is someone who I’ve admired for years and years, since I heard that first record. Someone played me his first record at an after party at eight in the morning or something. I was like, “What the fuck is this? What kind of voice is this? This is just insane. I don’t understand what kind of music this is.” He became someone who I put in my bucket list of people that I really wanted to work with. I pursued that for years and years, and it never fucking worked. Eventually, he approached me, luckily. It actually worked out really well and we’re now going to be releasing a collaborative full-length record in the near future as well. Again, it’s definitely not the sort of thing that a hip-hop A&R would never want me to do.

Benji B

Do you want to play a bit of that?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah.

Benji B

This is taken from the current album which came out this summer, right?

(music: Hudson Mohawke feat Antony – “Indian Steps”)

Benji B

How many of the tunes that you do as collaborative pieces with well-known vocalists or rappers are actually in the studio collaborating and how many of them is it just like deliver the beat and see what comes back and which do you enjoy more?

Hudson Mohawke

Nowadays almost all of them are face to face, but certainly for quite a long time, it was like, “Here’s a beat, see what happens.” I think that’s still the case even for a lot of major stuff. That’s still the case. I have grown to prefer working face to face with people, just to have more of a creative flow, rather than just here’s one bit, here’s the other bit, shove them together and… It’s better to work it out as a song together. That’s something that actually I probably … probably one of the first times I had done that probably was at the Academy actually. It’s still something that I’m not incredible at. I’m still working on that craft, because that’s a craft in itself, working along with someone who may a have complete different creative vision for a song or something like that. Learning that craft is really important, I think.

Benji B

100%. Is there something you want to play before we have to wrap it up?

Hudson Mohawke

I’ll probably play this “Kettles” song. This is another song from the current album, but this is an orchestral piece. I’ll just play on there.

(music: Hudson Mohawke – “Kettles”)

Benji B

For all the tech heads here, I’ve got to ask, how was that made? How much of that is samples, how much of that is in orchestra? How much of that is played?

Hudson Mohawke

It’s all programmed, but it’s Fruity Loops, Fruity Loops again, all programmed.

Benji B

Anyone, that disses Fruity Loops.

Hudson Mohawke

I can’t play for shit. It’s programmed it, produced with an orchestral sample.

Benji B

You have to…

Hudson Mohawke

Pretty much. Again, it’s one of these things where once you get in the zone with something, it just flows. You’re not really thinking about what’s going where. It’s just flowing out of you basically.

Benji B

Amazing. This seems like a pretty good moment rather to see if there are any more technical questions or any other questions for that matter. Look, there’s quite a few hands already. It’s questions from the floor. Tradition is that there is someone with a microphone. When we have the microphone, we’ll be OK… thank you very much. Who’s first?

Audience member

Thank you for your lecture. You talked about having different creative visions about sounds when you make sounds with other people. Definitely you had this… I don’t know if it’s a frustration, but something that rappers can’t rap on your old stuff. My question is, as a producer, do you sometimes maintain your creativity to like, “This rapper, he should rap on this, so I mute some stuff and just do something like basic rough stuff.”

Hudson Mohawke

If I understand what you’re saying, I have done little things like that in the past where I’ve made, created a little bit of space in the track to allow for a vocalist or something like that, but for the most part, nowadays I’m like, “No, you’re going to rap on this because this is…”

Audience member

Yeah, thank you, because sometimes I’m like, “OK, this is too hard to rap on this.”

Hudson Mohawke

It’s frustrating, it’s very frustrating.

Audience member

Thank you.

Benji B

Thanks for your question. Next one, behind you I think, just there. Sorry, excuse me. Hello.

Audience member

Sorry, I was first. Hello. I happen to notice that you have a lot of complex arrangements. I don’t know how to explain it, but I wonder what are your references to do that, because what you show up that you grow up listening to, it’s really raw stuff and this last song you showed, I’m sorry I didn’t know you before this and I’m really surprised about how you manage to do counterpoints and all the timbres. What do you [sounds like] it’s from the 18th century, Gustav Mahler, if you have this kind of reference.

Hudson Mohawke

I really don’t know a great deal about classical music at all. In terms of the terminology of it and the arrangement, I’m not familiar with what the done thing is. It’s mainly just experimenting. I’m not classically trained at all. It’s just experimenting basically. It’s the only answer I can give.

Audience member

How’s it going. A question about mental health and the whole touring thing. You seem like a pretty, to yourself, reclusive person. I can empathize with that. Playing shows is quite the opposite environment and shit can get pretty crazy, especially with all the partying and the amount of dates that you have to do. How do you find a balance, what’s your experience been?

Hudson Mohawke

It’s something we vaguely touched on earlier, but it’s learning to say no to certain things. Saying, “I can’t do this tour,” or “I can’t be in the studio on this date, because I’m going to fucking kill myself if I have to do this shit, if I have to spend another day doing this fucking thing…” I did have an experience where I just really burned myself out. From that point, I was… you have to… You can’t do everything. You have to focus in on one particular thing, do that for a period of time, do this for a period of time. Allow yourself time to have some space in your head, which I’m still not very good at, but again, I’m learning. That’s the only advice I can give on that, is just to try and leave some space for your own.

Audience member

Thank you.

Audience member

How are you doing? [To audience member] I know you’re next, I know you’re hidden in the corner. [It just saves the mic going over there and back here again… I loved your orchestral stuff, I think it’s incredible, and I really, really like when electronic musicians or people who aren’t from the orchestral world or academically trained use the palette and color of an orchestra to work with. I just wondered… the first one I think is a great example of that. It was really refreshing.

Hudson Mohawke

Another album that really confused people as well.

Audience member

Yeah. I think it still does to be honest. I was just wondering if you were approached to do any film work at all?

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah. I’m working on a few things at the moment, but again, it’s the same NDA stuff where you can’t talk about it. Speaker: Audience member

Is it a world that you’re interested in?

Hudson Mohawke

It’s something that I’m very much interested in because I feel like that’s … as I was saying earlier, for me it’s like I want to … what’s the next step? That seems like it would be the logical next creative step to keep myself excited. I’m definitely interested.

Audience member

Sounds good, thank you.

Benji B

Let’s get a mic over there.

Audience member

Hey man. Hey man. Thank you for coming. It’s a technical question, I guess. I noticed that most producers are searching for a really analog sound and concentrating on sound design and stuff and there are other producers, like you, for example Oneohtrix Point Never or Fatima Al Qadiri who are more into doing MIDI-esuqe almost cliché sounds. I really like it actually. Can you tell me something about that? Is it about nostalgia or… I don’t know.

Hudson Mohawke

It was almost a mistake, basically, because I bought a particular keyboard which had all these sounds in it. It was the first proper workstation keyboard that I ever owned, but it just happened to have all these sounds on it. I guess from liking a lot of ’80s music that had these sounds in it I was like, “Fuck it, I’m going to use them. I don’t need some crazy modern polysynth. I’ll just use some general midi sounds, because it sounds good to my ears.” It wasn’t a really deliberate, creative thing to be like, “I’m going to reference this genre or this era.” It was just like, “Sounds good to me.”

Audience member

Do you think it improves your songwriting, because the technical limitation is like…

Hudson Mohawke

Yeah, because I feel like… this will probably piss a lot of people off in here, but I do own a bunch of what you would call real synthesizers or whatever. I find myself rather than coming up with little riffs and stuff, I find myself tweaking stuff more and fucking around with stuff which is sometimes I feel can take away from the end result a little bit, rather than just being really direct with one sound.

Audience member

One more question. I’m actually very good friends with Mamiko Motto. If it wasn’t for her I probably wouldn’t be here.

Hudson Mohawke

The same for me actually.

Audience member

She did some sounds for your video game, right?

Hudson Mohawke

Yes, she did.

Audience member

Crazy, Hudson Mohawke video game. Will there be another Hudson Mohawke video game?

Hudson Mohawke

I think there’s one that’s being made at the moment. I need to actually… thank you for reminding me, I need to chase that up. There will be.

Audience member

Thank you, man.

Hudson Mohawke

Thanks.

Benji B

Any more questions? One more here. Get the mic over there somehow. Thank you.

Audience member

Hi.

Hudson Mohawke

This is my sister by the way.

Audience member

I know how much of your work has been informed by working really closely with people who are your genuine friends. What do you think are some of the benefits and the drawbacks of working professionally and touring with people who you are really good mates with?

Hudson Mohawke

Yes, very good question.

Benji B

Very good question…

Hudson Mohawke

She should have done this whole fucking thing.

Benji B

Thanks Ross.

Hudson Mohawke

No, no. She should have been in my position! That’s another thing. Touring with… to go back to your question, touring with a group of people who maybe have just been suggested by your management or something like, “Oh, this is a good tour manager. This is a good whatever to have on the road.” That can sometimes take it out of you, because you’re working with people on something that should be a really close-knit thing, but you don’t really know each other. When there’s really tight changeovers like at a festival, or you need to be at soundcheck for a certain time, you don’t even really know one another. It’s like there can be tensions there whereas if you’re traveling with a group of friends, the dynamic just improves. That’s what I said earlier. Just having a tight team and staying on top of them and making sure everything gels properly. I’ve had to do it myself this year, in terms of the touring that I’ve been doing. I’ve had to swap out a couple of people because they don’t necessarily gel with other people that are in the touring party and that kind of thing. I think it’s very important.

Audience member

Great answer.

Benji B

Any more questions today? No. Please … oh, one more, one more.

Audience member

First, thank you for your music and the lecture. You recently broke the world record I think for the longest rap track, which is amazing – it’s essentially one song that’s an entire album and it features 20 some odd rappers. The beat progresses with the different rappers. I was just wondering if you had made it as different iterations of the same song and then you decided to turn it into this mega-long song? Did you have certain parts of the track that you had rappers in mind for, because some of the beats tend to match the rapper’s styles?

Hudson Mohawke

A lot of the really intricate parts of that were done by, I don’t know if you know S-Type. He helped out a lot with that as well, but… Because, obviously, you don’t want to hear the same fucking loop for 42 minutes or whatever. They weren’t separate tracks. It was done with the idea of, “We’re going to make the longest track.” I don’t know where the concept of it came from really, but… It was a great experience to get to work with people, especially… I liked the fact that we could bring together classic artists with contemporary, modern artists. For example, having Mobb Deep on it, but also having Action Bronson or something like that and bringing everyone together into the one project.

Audience member

Thank you.

Benji B

Please join me in saying thank you very much Mr Hudson Mohawke.

Hudson Mohawke

Thank you.

Benji B

Thank you Ross, thanks a lot man.