Mathew Jonson

(music: Mathew Jonson – “Decompression” / applause)

NICK DWYER

Now, something of note just before we started this today. Obviously, you wanted to play that track and you didn’t have it with you so we downloaded it off the I†nternet.

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, we stole it [laughs].

NICK DWYER

I wonder if you’ll get in trouble for that, stealing off yourself. What’s your whole attitude on the whole download thing?

MATHEW JONSON

Personally, I don’t mind it at all. I think it’s nice that if you don’t have a lot of money that you can take music off the internet and you don’t have to pay for it. I think most people, if they have a lot of money, then they’ll probably consciously want to buy it anyway. For me, I look at it as one, being incredibly good exposure; two, I’d rather have people listening to my music than not. If they want to listen to it, cool.

Also, a lot of the time certain records are really hard to find. I steal music off Soulseek or whatever sometimes, but it’s usually tracks either that I already have and I’m too lazy to drop them on to my computer myself, or they’re tracks that I just haven’t been able to find. And if I was to find them, in a record store? Certain tracks, I’d probably buy three copies of them, you know? It can be hard. I don’t steal music that’s on a major label that’s available to me. I’ll just go out and buy it. Certain things. It’s not a problem to me. And I don’t care if people do it.

NICK DWYER

Something else that’s interesting about that tune, if you have a look at the source that we got that from, it’s from a Gilles Peterson Mixmag. For what people know Gilles for, that’s a fairly ‘un-Gilles’ record. Did it kind of surprise you that that record blew up so much and you had people like Gilles Peterson dropping it at the Big Chill and that kind of thing?

MATHEW JONSON

It was pretty weird to see it on Gilles’s CD, just because every time I’ve heard him play he’s usually playing soul or funk, house music or disco. I was a little bit [surprised]… I was really happy that he wanted to put it on there, but at the same time, when I listened to the CD that he’d compiled, there’s a couple of other tracks that are more in the techno genre that he put on, so it’s not completely out of place.

But it has a lot of tracks that are breakbeat and hip-hop and stuff like that, that I actually think rip the shit out of my track. So [makes sheepish expression], it’s nice to be on there. I don’t think it’s of the same caliber as the music that’s on the other part of the CD, myself, but…

NICK DWYER

In terms of dancefloor action, “Decompression” was one of the biggest tunes of last year. When you wrote that tune, did you realise, “Oh, it’s a bit of a monster I’ve got here?” Or, it was just another tune, and it just kind of…

MATHEW JONSON

When I wrote it I was definitely really happy with the way it came out. Usually, I don’t really feel that much differently about a lot of my tracks. So it didn’t feel like it was better than anything I’d ever written before, per se. I try and write a lot of different music that has different feelings in it. So it’s just another piece of the puzzle for me.

NICK DWYER

How does the whole process work? Once the tune’s made, before it’s even been signed or what have you, are there certain DJs that you give it to first and you’ll only give it to certain DJs for a certain period of months? How does that process work?

MATHEW JONSON

I will pretty much give my music to just people that I know first. And also people who generally, I’ll make sure that I give either a CD or promo records to. I have a list of, say, 30 DJs that get all my promo records. Every single record I put out, they get it first. And usually it’s because either one, they’ve helped me out a lot in the industry - like Richie Hawtin, for instance, he gets all my music. He gets even half my unreleased music just to play himself, just because he supported me from the time I started, he’s been playing my records. Same with Ricardo Villalobos, all the Perlon guys, Luciano. There’s lots of people out there, anyway, that I make sure that they have my records. Just because I feel like I have to give them the respect that they deserve.

NICK DWYER

Richie, like you say, has been really supportive of you from way, way back and in a recent interview someone asked him who’s the future name in techno - and he says your name. How did the link up with Richie come about originally?

MATHEW JONSON

I met Richie at Mutek in Montréal. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that festival. I think it was Ricardo Villalobos that introduced me to him. I was pretty lucky, I met a lot of these people through living in a small town. People are bringing these guys into town, and I’m one of the producers in town. Like, I met Ricardo Villalobos in my backyard, just sitting around a table hanging out and eating food and drinking. We went to the beach, it was pretty normal, the way I met a lot of these people. When I went to Mutek, I met Richie, I met a lot of these people face to face.

I’ve always felt a lot better about working with people that I know personally as well. If I haven’t met someone face to face, I’m not going to send them promos, and I’m not going to send them any demos or anything like that. I’d much rather be working with people who I have a feel for and who I respect. I’ve been lucky to meet a lot of people who are quite high up in the industry like that.

NICK DWYER

Just to give people an idea - British Columbia has been your home for many, many years now in Canada. Tell us about the place you’re from, then.

MATHEW JONSON

I grew up in Penticton, which is kind of like California, I guess. As far as climate. Just desert, and it snows every once in a while in the winter time. It’s a really small town, there are lakes on either side of it, there’s next to no music scene there at all other than country music and heavy metal.

Then I moved to Victoria, I lived there for about 10 years, that’s where I got more into the music industry and met all the people I work with and called it my job. My family live there. The Victoria music scene has a lot going on, Vancouver has a bit going on.

NICK DWYER

How long has music been part of your life for?

MATHEW JONSON

I’ve been doing music pretty much ever since I was born. My dad plays 15 different instruments, my mom tried to play instruments but never really wanted to, she just listens to music and stuff. I’ve had it in the background pretty much all my life. And lots of instruments around the house were pretty much my toys when I was growing up. So if you ever have kids, be supportive! [laughs]

Also my dad ran a theater when I was six to 10 years old - him and my mom. They decided to put me in classical piano lessons along with my brother and sister. And because my dad was really into technology and the studio engineering aspect of things, when it came time to put me in piano lessons, I started out playing a little electronic keyboard, but on top of that was a MIDI module and a sequencer. It was 1985 or 1986 when I got that, I was 10 years old and so a lot of time I’d spend just playing around on that and writing music on it, or I’d be practising my scales or whatever.

It pretty much got to the point where my parents didn’t want to have to listen to me play scales any more. They were like, “Mathew, you have to put the headphones on.” So the headphones go on, the sequencer goes on, the MIDI gear goes on - instead of practising scales I’m writing music instead.

NICK DWYER

These early experiments in electronic sound, what were they sounding like?

MATHEW JONSON

It was ridiculous, it would be a mix - it was funny listening to Hank Shocklee yesterday speak about Public Enemy, because he was actually someone who, from the age of eight years old, was probably one of the most influential people in my life. People like him, Herbie Hancock, lots of breakdance electro music - I don’t even know who I was listening to, but it was just on the CBC at the time, which is the local Canadian radio station.

And then it was mixed with - a lot of my influences came from folk music through my parents, and classical music as well. So the music I was making would be cheesy remixes of kids’ songs, like I remember I did an electro remix of “The Sailor’s Hornpipe” - just stupid shit like that. And I was also listening to a lot of heavy metal, so it was this weird mix of electro, heavy metal, classical and folk music all just jammed into whatever it was.

A lot of the time when I was really young, what I’d do is hear something on the radio and I’d pretty much just try to remake that track and maybe put my own little spin on it. That’s probably how I learned a lot about production - just by completely copying someone note for note a lot of the time. I saw “Rocket” for the first time on a TV breakdance competition, and immediately I went and recreated it on my synthesizer at home. I did the same thing with that track “Axel F” that was on the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack.

NICK DWYER

Which, unfortunately, everyone around the world will remember as the Crazy Frog ringtone.

MATHEW JONSON

[laughs] I did a lot of stuff like that. It’s weird because I’m 10 years old, right, I didn’t have much exposure to any sort of underground music, it was all stuff that was really poppy at first. The stuff that really intrigued me, I can’t remember who the artists were, I can’t remember even what it was. It was just a lot of university radio and local radio that I listened to.

NICK DWYER

When did you first get into contact with dance culture, as it were?

MATHEW JONSON

It wasn't until, I think, 1994 that I started going to raves; I would have been 17 or 18 years old.

NICK DWYER

Did you notice any similarities to sounds that you had already been experimenting with for years before that?

MATHEW JONSON

Well, yeah, because a lot of the sounds came from electro and breakdance music. The synthesizer that I use the most right now is an SH-101 Roland and there are general MIDI presets with 101 synthesizers, and I’d been using a lot of that kind of stuff already - it was really strange, actually, because I didn’t know anything about raves or house and techno music until that point. To walk into that and meet all these people who were making electronic music - for the most part, I didn’t know a single person who was into making electronic music for the first seven or eight years of doing it.

NICK DWYER

You say you went from the stage of starting to produce and went more and more in that direction. At what point did you get your first records out, when did that side of things start to come together?

MATHEW JONSON

I hung out in the rave scene, the club scene for a couple years. I met people that also played instruments - actually, some of the people I still write music with today. We started bands. Itiswhatitis, the label I released most of my stuff for, actually started because of the band we had - like, no-one’s releasing all this music, it’s good music, let’s start a label to support it and release it. It’s kind of weird, my situation, because I didn’t have to do any real work as far as promoting myself - it all just happened right around me.

I grew up with Nelly Furtado - I don’t know if you guys know who she is, she’s a pop singer, and we went to school together. I used to play back-up drums in a combo band with her for years. We’d do all these different performances. My first record was on Dreamworks, it was a drum & bass remix I did of a Nelly Furtado pop hit. It’s kind of a strange situation.

NICK DWYER

Stuff like “Decompression,” that we heard before, is probably what most people in recent times know you for musically. But since way back you’ve produced a very varied range of styles - and you still do now?

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, completely. I get bored if I don't keep on writing different stuff. Even if a lot of my tracks sound very similar, I always try to have a different feel with them. It’s just whatever I’m feeling at the time - I write my tracks pretty fast and if I spend too much time writing a piece of music it usually turns into something where I’m picking apart pieces of it and losing the soul of it.

It’s something I had to train myself not to do, to get away from really trying to piece things together - and more just to trust the feeling. The thing that makes it feel as though it’s music and not just a bunch of sounds thrown together. It doesn’t matter how good those sounds might be, or the production quality - that’s not really that important. It’s about capturing that feeling. The way I write music really just depends what kind of mood I’m in, and I just try to put that down as fast as I can without it turning into something that sounds more contrived.

NICK DWYER

The other thing that you mentioned before, if you wouldn’t mind touching on, are your bands. You’ve got Cobblestone Jazz and the Modern Deep Left Quartet - how long have these bands been going for, who else is in them and what role do you play in them?

MATHEW JONSON

Cobblestone Jazz evolved from the Modern Deep Left Quartet, which the keyboard player in my band [Danuel Tate] started. He asked me to play; he asked my friend Patty, who DJs under the name Tyger Dhula; and also a guy named Colin, who goes by the Mole - he’s from Montréal, he releases techno. Dan is probably the best jazz keyboard player that I’ve ever witnessed play. It doesn’t matter who it is or where they’re from. This guy is a walking musical note. I don’t understand how he does what he does. He just is this music that he plays. So I’m really lucky to be able to work with him - he’s a great songwriter, a great player. And so the Mole left the Modern Deep Left Quartet, and we just changed our name to Cobblestone Jazz so that we’d have a new band but keep on working. And that band’s been going for about five years.

NICK DWYER

And musically, what kind of sound are we talking about here?

MATHEW JONSON

Cobblestone Jazz and Modern Deep Left, we’ve played downtempo, some kind of semi-hip-hop stuff, modern drum & bass, a lot of house music, a lot of techno. The way that the band started, we don’t practise - we just play. We took gigs every week and it was just improvisation.

I was classically trained in piano and jazz drumming, just in school bands, so I have a little background with that kind of stuff. And I’m not the best at reading music, but I have a better ear for music - just hearing notes and pitches, so I can improvise as well. A lot was me and Dan just bouncing off each other - like, he’d be playing something on the keys and I’d be cueing something up in the headphones that I’d write on the fly on the SH-101 or whatever synthesizer it was. I’d just write basslines that go along with whatever he’s playing. We just bounced back and forth. We just kept on doing that, doing that, and because there was always improvisation, it would go anywhere. If I felt the tempos were starting to get higher I’d turn the tempo up. There were no boundaries in what we’re doing, so it could turn from a jazzy house track into drum & bass in a matter of minutes just because someone decided to jack the tempo up and do something different. We just played whatever we wanted.

NICK DWYER

And is the band still very active now?

MATHEW JONSON

It’s semi-active. We’re still putting out records. They live in Victoria and I live in Vancouver, so it’s a little hard. Both of those guys actually just had babies - my keyboard player had twin boys, so he’s probably going to be a little bit busy changing diapers.

NICK DWYER

You’ve brought some brand new stuff with you, so shall we have a listen to it?

MATHEW JONSON

This track I’m going to play, it’s a track I wrote on Tuesday. I did this mix, just because I wanted to pop off a mix before I left ’cause after I go back it’s my wife’s birthday so I’m going to go away for a couple of days. I wanted to just capture it. I was procrastinating doing the mix of it, so it’s not done. I’ll play this track for you guys, then I’ll talk about some of the things I’ll change that I don’t like in it - some of the crappy production that doesn’t work for me.

When I say I did a mix of it, I don’t mix on computers, it’s all board equipment and so doing a mix for me is basically me with 24 channels of music going from different synthesizers and effects, and I just hit record on the stereo track - a computer or reel-to-reel or whatever - and just do the mix live.

NICK DWYER

Just before you play the track - when you actually go into the studio and you make a track, is there a particular thing you’re thinking about? Are you thinking about the dancefloor when you make it, are you thinking, “This tune would work really well with what Richie Hawtin’s playing at the moment,” or if there’s a particular label you know you might be doing a project for? Tell us a little bit about that.

MATHEW JONSON

It just depends, because I do music for a lot of different reasons. I do music for myself, as a vent. I do it as a way of meditating. I do it to make money. I do it for my friends. I do it for the dancefloor. Those elements will play different roles more in different tracks.

When I started off doing music the general feeling that was behind a lot of my music was me having problems with my parents, and sitting downstairs in my basement for seven hours every day with headphones on and making music that was incredibly sad. It was just a way of me escaping reality. It was also very common, because it was just like me writing a diary. All my tracks were just dates, and that really reflected the way I was feeling a lot of the time. Over time, halfway into playing with Cobblestone Jazz, it was still very much me being introverted and dumping all my shit that I had inside me on the table. I actually made a conscious decision to stop dumping quite as hard, because I came to a realisation that I was playing in nightclubs. Places where people go to have a good time, drink with their friends, dance.

Through improvising, right? So if all of a sudden I felt some crazy, harsh thing come out inside of me, it's really easy to translate when we’re just improvising - so all of a sudden Darth Vader would fly out of the sky and drop a big bomb on the party. Fights would break out and stuff. I’ve seen people start having sex on the dancefloor right in front of me because everything got all twisted and weird. I was looking at this being all, like, “Oh, OK, my issues are flying around in front of my face and coming on to the dancefloor.” I was creating environments where it wasn’t comfortable for people.

A lot of the music that I was making because of how I was feeling at the time in my head, I was using that as an escape for me, but I realised that’s not necessarily what everybody else wants to be doing. If I’m creating frequencies and music for myself that are allowing me to release be it bad or good energy, that’s also not responsible, because everybody in the club or rave is corked out of their trees on drugs half the time. And to do that to a bunch of people - that’s not the right time for them to be dealing with that stuff. I started to make conscious decisions to try and make music that was more like, “OK, let’s party, let’s hang out and have fun, drink, kick it with our friends” - and not be so introverted, like, “This is me” [makes spluttering noise and purging hand gesture] on everybody. It’s not really fair.

So a lot of my tracks now, yeah, they’re made for the dancefloor, made for DJs. Like that last track didn’t even start going until two minutes in. I’ll purposely put things on my tracks where it takes a long time for the beat to even get going because it’s going to take 16 bars for a DJ to line up their mix anyway, so it’s nice to have it creep in.

But I still make music for a lot of different reasons. At home I usually don’t even hit record, I’m just doing it because I need to do this meditative thing for myself that is just the way I talk to myself. And to experiment, I never feel like I have to record. But when I hit that record button, there is a reason why, and it’s either because it’s something I need to record for myself that’s not just talking to myself, or it’s for a record label, which usually means it’s for the dancefloor or for other people to listen to.

NICK DWYER

Some of this music that you’ve made is obviously personal journals - you don’t really want to release that, it’s not really for public consumption. Is that the case or have you had scenarios where someone’s heard it and been like, “Damn, I want to put that out!”? And it’s kind of like, “Well, to be honest, it’s a bit too personal.”

MATHEW JONSON

The way I’ve been thinking about it recently with my records is, some of it, me putting it on a record, that doesn’t mean that I’m forcing it on people in a club. If other people want to play it at a club, or have it be part of whatever it is, it may be part of a movie or part of whatever, sure. So I’m not worried about releasing that kind of music.

In fact, the reason I started my new label is because I want to be able to release everything. And not have to cater to, oh, I’ll show Spencer from Itiswhatitis or Richie or whoever a bunch of tracks and they’re going to pick the ones that’ll be dancefloor hits because they want to have a hot record.

What I’ve been doing recently, the last record I did, I’ll have a dance record on one side that’s cool, and then on the other side there’s a four-minute track with just ambience. There’s no beat at all, it’s just ambient stuff.

NICK DWYER

And just so people know, what’s the name of this 12"?

MATHEW JONSON

It’s a new one, it’s called "7.19 FM David".

NICK DWYER

And, of course, your label is called?

MATHEW JONSON

Wagon Repair.

NICK DWYER

Now this track you’re about to play, tell us what you were thinking when you were making this?

MATHEW JONSON

This track, I wasn’t even intending to make anything when I made it. I was literally just messing around in the studio, just for fun. I’m trying to think of what part of it came first. Actually, this is a funny story, I was supposed to be doing a remix over the next couple of days, and I’d listened to some of the stuff that was for this remix, and I was thinking what I wanted to do, messing around doing my own thing or whatever. And I wrote a line on the 101 that sounded kind of cool, and I was like, “Oh, this is kind of cool.” I played around with it a little bit. Literally just for fun. OK, maybe I’ll chuck something else on it and see how it sounds. And eventually I realised, “Oh, this is kind of a cool track,” you know? It actually developed into something where - this isn’t the finished mix, so there are things in it I don’t like, levels and frequencies that make the track all mushy and you can’t hear a lot of the sounds properly. But you’ll get an idea of what it is and I’ll tell you about some of the things I don’t like about the mix. This also has 16 bars of absolutely nothing until the drums kick in.

(Music: Mathew Jonson - unknown / applause)

MATHEW JONSON

My tracks go on forever. I think that track’s 15 minutes long. Because I just space out, forget what I’m doing. I’ll have to chop an ending off at some point.

NICK DWYER

How much of your improvisation, which you do with the other bands, comes into your studio stuff? Do you just hit record and then, like you say, you zone out for nine minutes and then you listen back and realise that your nine minutes of improv, there’s a tune right there?

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, totally. Yeah, it’s just always different. It’s kind of hard to explain. It’s just improvisation. Pretty much all my tracks, they’re just live jams, really. That “Decompression” track, the one I played first, I think it took me five hours to write all the parts and put it together with the effects so it would make it work. I think I mixed it a couple of times where I actually did stop it.

A lot of the time I hit record while I’m in the writing process, and that will actually come out being the best part of the song. Because it’s the first time I hear the bassline as well, right? So I get more excited because it’s the first time and that way I play it with a lot more energy than if I’ve tried to make something five times, trying to fix that one little mistake. Yeah, so a lot of them are just jams. Some of them I might try and mix a bunch more times. This track in particular I’ll probably mix a bunch of times, because there’s another bassline that comes in after that, there’s some other stuff that comes in. My idea for this track, I want to have it start out where it’s just all synthy. The synthesizer you heard at the beginning of it is the SH-101, it’s basically just an arpeggio that’s going around and I’m just deciding to hit in certain notes.

NICK DWYER

For people who might not know the term arpeggio, what’s…

MATHEW JONSON

Might not know? An arpeggio is basically when you hold down a chord on a keyboard and it cycles through that chord either up or down, or it may do octaves of it. So you hit a three-note chord and it might do it an octave up or whatever.

The way the SH-101 works, and pretty much all the synthesizers in my studio work, they’re all run the oldschool way. It’s all DIN sync and triggers. So that particular bassline is 16 notes that revolve around over and over again, and the rhythm of those notes is being sent by the rimshot on the TR-909 and that’s what tells the 101 to play those notes. It’s not really doing it with MIDI, it’s a bit different. And then, the reason why it sounds like it’s changing a lot is… You guys know about synthesis and stuff? Basically, on the envelope of the synthesizer, everything is down, and all I’m doing is holding on to the decay. And it’s nice because on the SH-101 the decay is a slider, right, so you can just drop in certain notes. So I’m basically just hitting, I’m just going, [mimics jamming on the slider] “Dhhh-dh-dhh-dhh,” just hitting each note. But in between all those notes, there’s all the other notes that are flying around, so if I want to do offbeat stuff or put in a little filler or whatever I just hit some of those notes, and then there’s delays on it that make it fill up more. Anyway, that’s how I’m doing it, basically.

It’s the same with the other synthesizers, a lot of them are just me playing a bunch of chords and they’re just revolving in. I’ll have the 909 on a 16-bar loop and it’ll be going round and I’ll drop in what triggers I want. And as long as the amount of triggers that are being sent are in a multiple of the amount of notes that I play on one of these synthesizers, it’s going to revolve in a loop. So if I have five triggers and five notes, it’s always going to loop around. So, if I want to do a four-bar phrase and have a change-up at the end of it, I can still use five triggers, I might have them in a different place on the bar.

Or instead of playing those five notes and having it go around again, I could play those five notes over and over again. It’s like 20 notes instead of just the five and maybe I’ll change a couple of them or something. It’s kind of basic, the way it works, and it’s kind of nice for me because it puts boundaries on it. I use computers to write drum & bass, and I love computers for that, because the possibilities are so endless that you can really just do whatever you want. But it’s also nice to work with a lot of the oldschool gear because it’s just like: This is all you can do. Just accept that fact, move on and add another part or…

NICK DWYER

Just to give people an idea, what does your studio look like, man?

MATHEW JONSON

My studio is basically: In front of me there’s a 24-channel Allen & Heath GL-2400, it’s just a very nice mixing board. On the right hand side there’s one SH-101, beside that is an Elektron Machinedrum, above the SH-101 there’s a TB-303, beside the 303 there’s this thing called a Siel, it’s an Italian synthesizer that’s kinda weird but cool. Then, above that, on a shelf – I do this purposely so I can touch everything, because when I’m mixing I have to be able to grab everything as I go, because if I want to be able to change something, I actually have to do it just with my hands whenever I want. So above that there’s a JX3P, except that I’ve got the programmer for the JX3P wired over so it’s sitting beside the mixer. So, if I want to change any of the parameters on the synthesizer, I can just do it, it’s right there. Then above the mixer there, there’s a TR-909, [gestures with hands to indicate positioning] then I put my computer there just for recording. On this side [gestures with left hand] there is an 8-band compressor with some effects on top. There’s more effects underneath the 909, too, that have knobs and stuff so I can change those if I want to as well. To the left of me here, there’s a TR-808 with a TR-606 beside it. And there’s a panel that goes up here, and there’s all my racks on this side [gestures to the left and up]. There’s a Nord Lead 3 rack sitting here, and then my effects, I’ve got an Ensoniq DP4 which goes underneath, and a couple of A3s, which are Korg's multi-effects processors. Below that there’s a Doepfer something-16, it’s like a three-band analog sequencer with 16 knobs on each one and you can assign the knobs to pitches or gates or triggers or whatever. Any parameter you want can be controlling your frequency cut-off on the synthesizer. Above that I’ve got a System 100M modular synthesizer, with a MIDI controller underneath so I can adjust the synthesizer. And then there’s another JX3P there [gestures to the left and down] and another SH-101 beside the System 100, and then under that there’s another DP4 Plus, there’s an Eventide DSP-7000, another A3. It’s all just kind of within arm’s reach.

It’s nice to be able to write tracks there because whatever I’m thinking at the time, like I’m going along and I need to turn the feedback up on the delays and wash it out so I can turn that into a breakdown, I can just do all that and it’s right in front of me.

NICK DWYER

It’s the same with all music, but in particular the more minimal techno stuff, a lot of this music’s being played on really, really, really amazing PAs where the sound’s just so incredible, you’ve really got to get every little pop, crackle and hiss perfect. In terms of your monitors, what are we looking at here?

MATHEW JONSON

This is funny because I disagree that you have to know about all these little pops. My monitors are a pair of monitors like you’d find in a DJ set-up. Like a club set-up - with a 200 watt sub[woofer] underneath it.

And I have a nice pair of Sennheiser headphones that I kind of monitor in between. But you can’t really monitor with headphones. It sucks. You’re never going to get proper bass response out of a pair of headphones. The reason why I use these kind of monitors is because my music’s getting played in nightclubs. Who wants to listen to a 15-minute long song at home that’s doing the same thing over and over and over again? I don’t listen to techno at home, I listen to Public Enemy and N.W.A., other shit, whatever. In the club though, you’re listening to it in a big room, like this [stretches arms to indicate the size of the Academy lecture room] and there’s echo, and there’s reverb. And if you’re going to sit at home with a nice pair of monitors, Genelecs or something like that, and really pick out those little pops, those little ticks and clicks, it’s not that I don’t do that on my speakers, but the feeling behind it I find is better if you’re just doing it.

So I like it to be jackin’ loud and I also like it to have lots of low end, so I always mix with the sub, because I want there to be that full range frequency there. And also, too, I find that if I’ve mixed on a pair of Genelecs or something like that, because they are such good speakers, and they are so responsive, you can actually get into all these rhythms and stuff like that where you think it’s so cool, because all these little rhythms that are being created by really minuscule things, that are so exact because the speakers are so in tune, you put that in a club with a bunch of reverb, and all of a sudden that’s not there anymore. That’s all echoed out, and all you’re hearing is the bassline and the chords and drums. If it’s a really good room, which most nightclubs aren’t, maybe if you’re at a big outdoor festival and it’s a nice Funktion One soundsystem or something that’s really nice - yeah, you will hear a lot of that stuff, and great. Hopefully your mix is good enough for that. But if you mix on a crappy pair of speakers like NS-10s, for instance? The reason why those things are the standard for mixing on is because they sound like shit. They sound like a car radio. And that’s because, if you make something sound good on a pair of those things, it’s going to sound good anywhere.

My brother has made so many tracks that are so awesome, and his mixes are actually ten times better. That mix that you just heard isn’t mastered, it’s all boomy in the bottom, there’s no low cut that’s been put on it yet, there’s no compression at all, there’s all sorts of stuff that mastering will help bring out. All those little fine points. That’s something a mastering engineer can do, you don’t really need to worry about doing that so much yourself. But he was mixing his tracks on a ghettoblaster, a Sony ghettoblaster with drivers this big, and he mixed track after track after track on this thing. And I’d always be like, “Nathan, get your shit together. You’re spending all this money on gear but you’re mixing on a ghettoblaster.” And he’d take his mixes from that ghettoblaster to big clubs, with full range sound, and his mixes sound way tighter than mine do. Because he’s just mixing on a pair of crappy speakers. You don’t need expensive monitors to do stuff. I’m going to buy a pair of Adams monitors just because, why not? It is nice to have a nice pair of monitors, like if you’re doing movie soundtracks, and that’s what I want to get into. But as far as nightclubs and all that, it’s not really necessary. And to drop the amount of money that you have to on some really nice speakers sometimes is ridiculous. I’d much rather put it into gear and effects processors and compressors and stuff like that.

NICK DWYER

Now, more often than not, when you play out as Mathew Jonson, you’re playing live. You’re travelling around the world, you’ve just given us the lowdown on what your studio looks like gearwise. That’s a lot of stuff to fit in a plane. What do you scale down, what do you take with you when you do the live thing, man?

MATHEW JONSON

When I play live I’m just using Ableton Live with a G4. I bring a MOTU 828mkII soundcard that I run ten outs out of, and then I have the promoters rent me either a GL-2200 or a Midas Venice 240. They’re not low-end or high-end, they’re just mid-range, nicer mixers. I’ll have them rent me one of those. Most importantly, what I ask for when I play live, is that the mixer has to have 24 channels, it has to have at least six auxiliary sends and it has to have mid-sweeps. Plus hopefully a three-band with two mid-sweep EQ on it, so that I can actually tune up the sounds to the club so it is going to sound half-good.

Then I ask them for an Ensoniq DP4, which basically is an effects processor that runs four different effects at the same time or any combination of whatever. So I’ll just run reverb on one channel, delays on another, maybe a phaser, chorus, or something like that on the other. I might change them a little but I normally leave them. I time up all my delays, and I time up all the reverb and stuff that I need to do for the club, and I pretty much just leave it.

NICK DWYER

Obviously over the years you’ve collaborated as well, with a few people, and how do the collaborations work? Do you enjoy collaborating?

MATHEW JONSON

I do enjoy collaborating but it’s very hard to collaborate with people. Music is such a personal thing for most people, and everybody has completely different methods of the way they write music. It’s been really hard; I’ve been really lucky to work with the people that I do in my band because we do work well together. We get into all sorts of arguments in the studio about what should be or what shouldn’t be happening.

In my band we’re all Geminis so we’re all which way and the other all the time. Some of the stuff that happens in the studio is just ridiculous. It gets to the point where one of us is storming out of the studio pissed off, just leaving.

But as you work with people you learn systems of working. For instance, with the way I work with my band, two of us will be in the studio at a time. One person’s out, because if there’s three of us, that’s too many heads in the studio trying to do anything creative. Because there’s always one person who’s kind of not doing anything and then they’re getting bored, or whatever it is. Then maybe they start thinking about something else - so get them out of there. One person doing it at a time, or two people.

Also with collaborating with people, especially with electronic music in any sense, and especially if you’re using samplers and stuff like that – the amount of hours of tedious work that you have to do using that stuff? It takes a lot of time, and for the people that aren’t on that sampler at the time, it’s the most annoying thing you could possibly have to deal with. Just sitting there when you want to make music but you’ve got to wait two hours for your friend to level out every single sample so it works the same and do all the processing on those samples to make it work.

The one guy in our band, Paddy, he does use the sampler and he’s always the one, he probably does 20 times more hours in the studio preparing for a live PA or for writing a track. He chooses to use a sampler and it’s great, I love what he comes up with when he does that, but he has to do a lot of work. I don’t do that, I don’t have the patience for that. I have synthesizers, I play the stuff, and it’s really easy.

And Dan, he’s a Rhodes player and a vocoder player and he just wants to play. He’s even faster than me, because he’s trained as a keyboard player, he can just drop it and then he’s just waiting. There’s been times in the studio where I’ve put a TV on top of his organ and then he’d watch television while we’d be working on other stuff because it would keep his mind focused and he wouldn’t be pissing us off with getting bored and doing whatever.

NICK DWYER

I was going to ask you about your approach to remixing. I do believe you’ve brought a remix with you - shall we have a listen to that?

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, this is a remix I did for Moby. It’s from his new album, Hotel, and the track that I remixed is called “Slipping Away.” His track is almost like a slow, contemporary rock ballad. It’s not really my thing so much. So basically what I did is that I took the vocals, I chopped them up a lot, I put a harmonic pitch on it - I basically dropped his vocals down a fifth. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with Moby’s music, but he has these big, epic strings that he puts in. So I took the string line that he had, chopped it up, made it all creepy and evil-sounding like I like it. Most of the remixes I do, I don’t end up using that much of the person’s parts. It usually turns into writing your own track, with electronic music. It’s also why I don’t like remixing that much. This is not mastered either, so just keep that in mind.

(music: Moby - “Slipping Away (Focus People That Slip Remix by Mathew Jonson)” / applause)

NICK DWYER

So you said just before you played that, you don’t actually like doing remixes.

MATHEW JONSON

It’s not that I don’t like doing remixes, some of them are fun. Just depending on what it is. And sometimes it’s not fun until I’ve come close to getting right into it. Because I never know what’s going to happen when I write music. Sometimes something really good will come out of it. Sometimes, like this one, I was given the remix and I didn’t even walk into the studio until two days before it was due because I couldn’t get my head around it. I was listening to the track, and it’s all about, “Hold on to people, you’re slipping away,” which, personally, I don’t really… It was pushing buttons, it was actually making me mad listening to it at times. I respect Moby’s music but for this particular track it was really hard for me to think about using the parts from it. I was like, “What am I going to do here?”

So I decided to think about it for a long time. And what I actually had to do was, I took the parts, I had to take my computer out of the studio. Because if I played it in my studio it made me so mad, it made me freak out. So I put my headphones on and I sat on my couch and just worked with it and worked with it, and basically got something out of it. I chopped his vocals up and basically made it say, “Focus people.” And then it says, “Focus people that slip.” Kind of like if you’re fucking up. It seemed to me like it was a little bit better – or more ’me’, than saying, “Hang on to all these people.” It sounded creepy to me… Anyway, I don’t know. [laughs and shakes his head]

NICK DWYER

Considering the methods that you apply to production - and it’s probably a pretty hard question to answer – is there one particular track that you listen back to and you’re really proud of?

MATHEW JONSON

A remix?

NICK DWYER

Just a track that you’ve made.

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, yeah. We’re trying to download “Return Of The Zombie Bikers” right now, hopefully it’ll download by the time…

NICK DWYER

The track’s called “Return Of The Zombie Bikers.”

MATHEW JONSON

“Return Of The Zombie Bikers.”

NICK DWYER

And it’s on your own label.

MATHEW JONSON

Yep. I like that one, I like “Decompression”, I like “Typerope”. The one which I think musically is the best is called “Freedom Engine-01”, it’s on Itiswhatitis number five. This is a really weird story, and it shows how mistakes and chaos and stuff can come into music, and make it really good if you just kind of let go.

Basically, how I made this track is, me and my friends were sitting around in the studio, on the couch hanging out, and I just jokingly programmed in something that was completely random. It had no musical influence in this at all other than maybe some of the notes that I chose, because I knew they were in kind of a similar key together. I don’t know, I play a lot of the black notes, which is totally cheating.

NICK DWYER

When you say black notes…?

MATHEW JONSON

The black notes on the keyboard. Play all the black notes, it’ll almost always sound good [laughs] in a lot of ways. In combinations with white keys and stuff, but it is pretty easy to make minor chords and augmented minor chords if you’re playing a lot of black notes. And because, like I explained, the way the SH-101 works is, you just program in the notes.

I just did it completely randomly, anyway. I counted to 16ths, so I had 16 triggers to put in. So I’m holding transpose with this hand [holds up right hand] and then plugging in a bunch of notes, and then I press play, and got it looping in a loop. And you know that, [sings] “Da-na-na-na da-na-na?” I held down the transpose button on the keyboard and I kept it held down, and it started doing that, and I was like, “OK, that sounds kind of cool.”

I was trying to experiment with myself, doing something completely random that didn’t even sound like what the arpeggio was that I was playing, like how I’d make it sound. It was like, “OK, some of these notes work.” So I transposed it, and started doing something different – I started playing “Mary Had A Little Lamb” and all the most basic things, but you’re not hearing these notes. All that I was doing was transposing the arpeggio that I had into whatever key it is of the kid’s song that I was playing.

And what actually came out, is the song’s got this awesome bassline and it actually sounds like something that if I sat down and wrote it on a computer note for note, or did it with notation, I’d be like, “Whoa, that’s really, really complicated.” But what it actually came from was complete random notes, basically being transposed at different times into something that worked. And if something didn’t work with a certain transpose, I’d try another note to transpose it to. So eventually at that time in the song, or in the bar loop, I was transposing it to a key that kind of worked, right?

So the way I mixed this track, I actually had to train myself to hold down the transpose button with my little finger, playing the transpose notes, which was something like, [sings] “Daaa da-na-na-na.” It was actually really hard because I was hearing something that I really liked, which was a completely different bassline, but I had to train myself to do that, the whole track, in a way that wasn’t rhythmic, wasn’t anything. It wasn’t a natural feeling at all, but it made something that sounded like the most intuitive, awesome, big, deep track that sounds so personal to me. It’s actually one of the only tracks that… It actually did make me cry after I made it, and in the mastering session while I was listening to it. It really hits a chord with me. A weird experiment, but it worked. I was doing that the whole time with my other hand [mimics playing]. Then on the mixing board, I'd written just like a one-chord that kind of swelled in with an LFO, that kind of came in. I basically mixed that in, and then I was doing all the mutes and all the fader changes just to make the development of it with the other hand, while I was doing that. You have to... It's cool to experiment with all these kind of weird things, because you never really know what's going to happen. I like letting chaos come in, like coming into a lot of stuff, and I try not to hold onto really technical stuff. I do have a lot of theoretical knowledge and of music theory and of studio engineering theory, but I try not to let that affect me all that much. If you get into all this really heavy thinking about stuff, you're taking away the soul of the music. What's more important, the feeling or being a nerd and going like this [mimics tweaking with hand] for hours and hours?

Audience Member

Taking away the soul of the music, now you mention it, that is the feeling I have when listening to the latest productions of Richie Hawtin, actually.

MATHEW JONSON

Of who?

Audience Member

Richie Hawtin. He’s totally into the technical part of it, and there’s no soul anymore.

MATHEW JONSON

You don’t feel any? It’s different for everybody. I’ve heard some people say that about Richie’s new stuff. I’ve also heard other people say it’s really super deep, and they really get into it. You’re talking about the Plastikman stuff, the Closer EP and all that stuff? When I listen to it, it sounds as though it’s from another world to me. And for me personally, I kind of relate to it, and I would disagree with you that there’s no soul in it at all, but it definitely doesn’t sound very human to me [laughs]. But I also don’t really know how he works, so…

Audience Member

It is interesting to listen to the new productions by him because it’s a new experience. It’s not so obvious, actually. But you were talking about getting into the film industry, maybe; you were also telling about how important it is for you to do improvisations and stuff. I’ve heard some stories and can you help me out - what’s Richie doing regarding mixing techniques? I know Richie Hawtin’s experimenting with mixing techniques, with digital audio material, with Ableton Live…

MATHEW JONSON

Personally, I’ve never actually watched Richie mix one of his tracks in the studio. He’s probably like me and he never lets anybody in when he does it. Usually. But I can tell you something interesting about what he is doing with technology and stuff. He’s starting a new label, he’s going to bring in people. Like I’m going to go in, he’s going to bring in Ricardo Villalobos, people that he’s friends with. And what it’s going to be, it’s going to be released on DVD only. And it’s kinda cool because he’s not even keeping the rights to the tracks. You can take that track and go and release it on your label or mix it somewhere else on a record or whatever. What he’s going to do, he’s going to release it on DVD, you’re going to come into his studio, and mix it in 5.1 surround stereo, because he’s got two of these AMEK boards on either side of his [desk] that are 5.1 capable. So you can take in your tracks all separated up. Or personally, I’m just going to go in there and write something new, because I write better like that. So yeah, he’s going to have that label, it’s going to be cool. There’s no one else that’s doing that at the moment for sure.

NICK DWYER

What would you say is the one biggest production lesson you’ve learned in the last few years? Or what’s the biggest piece of advice you could give to people?

MATHEW JONSON

[laughs] Ah, I don’t know what the best would be…

NICK DWYER

Is there anything that maybe in the last four or five years you figured out for yourself all of a sudden? Maybe it was something really obvious, but it’s changed the whole way your music sounded.

MATHEW JONSON

As far as the last couple years, there’s been lots of little things. I think the biggest thing in my career as far as making music was learning not to keep on adding things over the top, to try and back away. Like, even this new track that I wrote, there’s a lot of parts in it, and it needs to be stripped out a bit.

But you don’t want to cloud your frequency ranges, right? You want to have certain things. Like Hank [Shocklee] was talking about this yesterday. Certain things hold certain frequency ranges, and you don’t want to be taking away from those parts. If you have a bassline, you don’t want to stick another bassline right on top of it necessarily.

Because what I’d do when I was younger is, I’d make something and be like, “Oh, this is cool.” And I’d add a key part, and another key part, another harmonic part and just keep on adding. And the best thing I could say is that unless something sounds like it… Every single part that I write in a track, I’ll add something to it and I’ll sit there and listen and I’ll just feel it. I’ll be like, “OK, is this adding to the energy of the music? Is this making it more engaging? Is the point getting sharper here? Or is it muddying up things and making it so it’s not?”

Part by part, and even note by note, ask yourself: Is this adding or is it taking away the energy of the music that you want to be doing? I noticed that if I just trust the way I feel like that - personally, I find when I write music, I get a physical feeling that tells me if it’s a part that I want to use or not. I’ll have a track, and I might even have a bunch of parts already going, but maybe even the slightest little change on the volume of one of them like the bassline, anything, will all of a sudden make everything [come] together, and it’s a track.

And I actually get the feeling as though there’s a big energy ball right around my whole body. And it feels almost like it’s rolling. Or I’ll get the feeling that I’m falling, like standing on the edge of a cliff and I’m leaning over and I’m not actually falling off but it’s that feeling of uneasiness, like I’m going to fall. These kind of feelings.

I don’t know how you guys feel when you write music and stuff but for me it’s a huge physical feeling that happens to me when it starts and I just trust my intuition by doing that. What are these parts that you’re putting in? If I put something in and it even feels like, “Whoa, I wrote this really complicated key part to put over the top of it,“ and even though it may be something that theoretically might be the best thing I’ve ever written, or the most complicated chord-wise or progression-wise or whatever it is, and I’m really holding on to that, like I don’t want to throw it out - but sometimes it just doesn’t add to the track. Technology’s nice - if it’s something really crazy maybe I’ll record it and chuck it into my live set on its own or maybe write something around with it or something like that. But I guess, just don’t hold on to things. If you’re the least bit unsure of a part, it doesn’t matter if you worked on it for three days. A certain part, if it’s not working - don’t hold on to it, just chuck it out. Because every time I’ve thrown something in the garbage, it doesn’t matter what it is, it doesn’t matter how cool or anything it is: If I throw that thing away, right behind it in the idea chain is something that’s going to work. And if that doesn’t work, then I throw that in the garbage, and I just go through. Because sooner or later you’re going to find something that adds a certain energy and a certain feeling to the music.

NICK DWYER

Another area that you’ve had incredible experience in, in the last few years - a lot of the people in this room, some of them have already released music but many if not all of them will go on to release music. And obviously, you start getting into this area of your contracts, publishing and all that. Can we talk a little bit about contracts and your experience with this kind of thing. What’s a fair deal?

MATHEW JONSON

As far as… releasing records?

NICK DWYER

Yeah, with releasing records.

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. I guess I’ll just start with how I treat artists and how my label works itself. I guess you can start off with the basics of what you’d be offered in a record deal if someone was approaching you. Basically, you’re going to get a certain percentage PPD, which is the price per unit to a distributor. Usually, that’s going to be anywhere from… If you’re a pop star, it’s going to be 5%, 6%, but then you’re dealing with larger volumes. You’d be making a lot more money – or not necessarily – but they give you a small percentage. The reason they tell you is that, “OK, we’re going to spend all this money on your video, we’re going to spend money on driving you around in a limo, we’re going to spend money on all your dinners, we’re going to spend money on all our executives’ dinners, we’re going to spend money on everything. And that’s all going to come out of your paycheck, basically. So you only get 5% because the other 95% is for us. Because we just invested a million dollars in your record and there’s all these costs we have to cover.”

Go to any independent, it’s from 10% to 18%, maybe 20% depending on who you are and what label it is. And what that basically is the equivalent of is, for me, if I put out a record - with the costs of selling it and promo - I basically need to sell about 1,200 to 1,300 copies of that record to break even. For me to break even with my costs. And that’s before I, as a label, make any money.

But on those 1,200 records, at 18% PPD you’d be making roughly about $800-$1,000. That’s basically what you as an artist would make. Now what happens with me as a label, it takes maybe 1,200 records to break even because of costs for pressing and everything. But then after that my costs decrease. I have to pay for the dubplates to get cut and all that stuff, but once I cut the plates to get the record pressed, I don’t have to do that again for probably another 5-6,000 copies. Those plates will last that long before they’ll wear out and I’ll have to get new ones done.

So for the next thousand, I make the same amount as you, pretty much. Next thousand after that, I start making a little bit more. So if a record does really good, then cool, I’ll start making money as a label. And it’s the same with every label, like I can tell you that “Decompression”, the one on Richie’s label, I think we sold 13,000 copies or something like that.

NICK DWYER

On 12"?

MATHEW JONSON

On a 12", yeah. I can’t remember exactly what it is, but the statement that I was given, I think the label makes somewhere between $25,000 and $30,000, and I make about $12,000. The label starts making a lot more money once it starts getting popular.

There’s things you can do as an artist to change that. The deal - when you make it with someone, a lot of labels are going to be like, “This is what it is, if you don’t want it, then whatever.” A lot of labels will be like, “We want ownership of your publishing outright,” which actually means they own your track. They have to give you a percentage of that every time that they sell it, but as far as the actual rights to that track, they own it for eternity if you sign over your publishing. So don’t ever do that.

NICK DWYER

And they could sign it over to a Fisher Price kiddy’s commercial, you’ve got no say in it.

MATHEW JONSON

They own the rights. If you give them publishing, then they own your track. You don’t own it anymore. You don’t have any say in what happens with it, other than what the stipulations are in that deal. Like, one: We have to always say that it’s your track. We have to list the title and your name after it. We have to list whatever credits you put after it, we have to give you 18% PPD after it.

If they own the publishing, they’ll probably give you a publishing agreement as well, where you make this much money. A lot of people that ask for your publishing will give you some ridiculous amount of money. Saying, “Yeah, we’ll give you this big advance, maybe we’ll give you an extra ten grand right up front to own this publishing.” But then what you don’t realise is that ten grand you just got - you sold your track. So for the rest of eternity they can take that and do whatever the hell they want with it. It could be on a McDonald’s commercial or something like that and you’ll just be like, “Oh great, what did I do?”

Other things as far as a deal that you’ll get, you’ll usually have a term of signing it over to that licensing. It just means that for five years I own the licensing of your track. Then it’s yours again. You can release it on your own label, you can release it anywhere that you want after those five years. You’re basically just signing over an exclusive licensing deal for publishing. It basically means that I have a say in what happens with your track until that term is over. On my label it’s five years. Most labels ask for ten years. On my label PPD is 18%, most labels give you 13% or 15% or whatever. Because I’m an artist I try and be as fair to the artist as I can.

Another thing is third party licensing. If you license your stuff they’re going to say, OK, if I license this to a DJ compilation or if I license this to a commercial or whatever it is, most labels will say it’s 50/50. Let’s say if fabric want to use…

NICK DWYER

“Decompression” was on a ton of compilations.

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah. So most people do 50/50. I pretty much always demand that I get 60% and the label gets 40% when I’m the artist. I also give that to my artists, so as a label I take 40% and give 60%, but most labels won’t do that. It’s not that high a demand, labels will give you 60%, you just have to tell them right off the bat.

If it’s good music you can make all these demands. If you feel that it’s on a big label, and maybe it’s your first time being on a big label, and you don’t want to rock the boat too much, sure, take the deal. It’s good for your promotion of yourself, it’s a good career move, blah blah blah. As long as they’re not ripping you off. But you have to make these decisions. Certain times, certain tracks I have co-publishing agreements with, so they own half the track but it’s only until the term that it’s good for. So at the end of the ten years they don’t own that co-publishing any more - then I get that back. What publishing comes into is stuff like radio play, if it’s on television, there’s lots of different uses that your publishing can get used for.

NICK DWYER

Played live at a basketball match.

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, if it’s played live or whatever, and in Canada it’s SOCAN and in the States it’s BMI and also somebody else, but every country has different publishing stuff. If you give your publishing away, all that money that’s going to be coming in from your track, you don’t get either. When I play live at a party with 20,000 people at it, the promoters legally have to pay the music unions a certain amount of their ticket price in a lot of countries. So, if they’re charging 15 bucks to get in, they’re actually giving 7% to the music union in that country and the music union is responsible for giving the money back to the people who play their tracks live.

It never happens, but the DJs are actually supposed to write down what tracks they play, and whoever’s tracks got played make money. It’s the same with the radio, most people don’t write down their lists. But you actually make money. If I’m playing at a 20,000 person party and I’m headlining it and I’ve played all my tracks live, I could be making an extra €400 for that party alone, just off publishing. But that €400, if you sign away your publishing, goes to the guy who owns the publishing. You don’t see any of it.

Most smaller independent labels, they’re not going to demand any publishing whatsoever, and they shouldn’t and you should never give it to them. Bigger labels, you can do co-publishing deals or whatever, but be very wary and get yourself a lawyer and don’t fuck around with that at all because you can get royally screwed if you walk into those kind of deals. Especially with majors - majors are going to take that and… We’ve all heard horror stories about how you get this big deal but then you’re responsible for all that money and then you actually end up owing the label money because your record didn’t sell well. They’ve invested a million dollars and that million dollars is actually recoupable off your personal business, which means you. Which means they can take your house, and take your everything, or they can lock you up and say you’re on tour for the next five years. There’s all sorts of horror stories which you have to be wary about so be extremely careful, that’s all I’m saying.

NICK DWYER

The other thing I was going to ask you about - you mentioned some of the processes before, but just for people who don’t really know: What kind of processes does a track go through from being in the studio, maybe you’ve mastered it yourself, to being on the shelves with its artwork, packaged, ready to go, ready to sell?

MATHEW JONSON

What’s the process?

NICK DWYER

How many different processes does it go through? You talked about lacquers before, and all these things.

MATHEW JONSON

You write your track, don’t master your tracks yourself, no matter what programs you have or how experienced you think you are. You’re not. Unless you’ve been mastering tracks for ten years, you’re not a mastering engineer. You don’t want to do that. You hand it over to somebody who has a lot of experience, not somebody who came fresh out of school. They say they’ve gone to mastering school, that’s bullshit, don’t do that. You write your track, you sign it to label, the label’s going to pay for it to get mastered, usually that’s going to cost anywhere from $100 to $2,000 per track. Then the mastering gets sent to the plant. The lacquers get cut first, and the plates are made out of the lacquers, I think. I don’t know totally how it all works.

NICK DWYER

When you’re talking about lacquers just explain…

MATHEW JONSON

I’m not the best person to talk about this so much. I think the way it works, the lacquers are basically, is it acetate? I think it’s acetate, and then the acetate gets shot with metal plates around it and the grooves, I think, are cut in to the metal plates. Someone might know this better than I do. Anyway, the plates are cut, that’s something the label pays for. Then the plates get sent to the pressing plant, the pressing plant will usually press up five dubplates. If they don’t do that, that’s something you can request. So they’ll send you some dubplates.

Dubplates are really expensive to have done but sometimes they’re worth it because if you’re doing a really big run of promos, you don’t want to find out there are skips all over your record after you’ve already pressed up 500 promo copies or whatever. Most people don’t do any more than 200 promo records, but what’ll happen after is either test pressings, which will be promos, or dubplates will get pressed. Then they send them back to the label. The label will reference them, check the mastering on the record, they’ll play it all through just to make sure there’s no skips or pops or whatever it is. Then the label will give the go ahead to the pressing plant and the pressing plant will press up whatever you want to have done.

While you’re getting your records pressed you’re usually having all the artwork done, you’re having all your covers pressed up, you’re having all your labels pressed up, they’ll get sent to the plant or the labels, depending on what kind of agreement you have, and they’ll just put everything together. Then all those records get shipped to your distributor; the promos get sent to the distributor first and the distributor sends out all the promos to record stores, DJs, whatever. They place all their orders back with the distributor, and then the distributor will tell you, “OK, we need 5,000 copies,” or whatever. You press them up and send them to the distributor, the distributor sends them all out.

The process usually takes us, from the time the track is done – if we do it right away and try to get it out – it can take a month or whatever. It usually takes a couple of weeks, usually takes a week for the lacquers to get done, another week or two for everything to get pressed up, and have it sent back and forth and all the artwork pressed.

NICK DWYER

Speaking of distributors, what are you looking for in a distributor, and can you explain, for example, a P&D deal and all these sorts of things?

MATHEW JONSON

P&D deals are pressing and distributing deals, and that’s where the distributor will actually take your music and they’ll deal with everything and they’ll actually foot the bill for it too. And on top of that, they take a cut. They take a cut where normally they wouldn’t. But they’re also putting up the money to have your release done as well, so it’s almost like they’re the real label and you’re the person who’s giving it to them. You’re a sub-label of theirs but they’re the ones who are paying for everything.

P&D deals are a great way to go if you don’t have a lot of money and you want to release your own music. It’s an awesome way to go because you’re not losing anything, you don’t have anything at risk, really. On the other hand, a lot of people who do P&D deals, they handle it in their own way, they might even - if they have a whole bunch of labels that they’re playing with and they’re making money off - there might be some sort of hierarchy where they’re pushing one label more than the others. And your label’s sitting back here. Even though the demand says, “Yeah, we can sell 10,000 copies of this,” you’re not friends with the P&D deal guys as much as this guy’s friends with the P&D deal guys. There’s all sorts of politics that come into it. If you can afford to put it out without a P&D deal, may as well just do it yourself.

As far as what you’re looking for in a good distributor, you want to look for coverage. By coverage I mean: Who does that distributor deal with? And how far do their arms reach out over the world to be able to get your records out? A lot of distributors will want to be exclusive with you, and that can be good in some ways and really bad in others. Everybody’s going to lie to you pretty much because when it comes to being an agent or distributor, they’re all going to say, “We have coverage in Japan. We have coverage in South America. We have coverage in Australia, blah blah.” But usually the distributors have coverage in the country they’re in and that’s it. And maybe a little bit somewhere else, but not very much.

So be wary of that, look for coverage, look for how far they can go, look for their roster as well. What other labels are dealing with this distributor? Do your background work: How long has this distribution company been around? Are they reputable, do they have any bad history ripping off people? Or telling the label, “Yeah, we pressed 5,000 copies,“ when really they pressed 10,000 and they kept all the profits from the rest.

Especially, when it’s exclusive you want to be able to audit your distributor, so once a year you have the legal right to audit that distributor, which means you can send an accountant to their office and go through all their paperwork to make sure they’re not ripping you off. Because a lot of them will. It’s pretty easy to, if you’re in a different country. And record labels will do this too. That actually comes back to being an artist. In your contracts with artists, aside from your term and your PPD percentage, you also want to have a clause that says you have the right to audit the label once a year. Yeah?

Audience Member

You said that distributors will often lie to you about what countries they reach…

MATHEW JONSON

Not often, but you have to be…

Audience Member

Well, how do you find out if they are lying? Like, how do you know for sure where they are?

MATHEW JONSON

Phone up a bunch of record stores in that country or email them. Do a search on Google for record stores in Australia and simply email them: “Do you know of our record label?” They’ll be like, “Yeah“ or ”No.” Like, “Yeah, we get it from these guys,” or they don’t. And if they don’t you can help your distributor out, you can say, “This is our distributor, contact them if you want our stuff.”

But it’s easy for me because I travel a lot, right? So with some of the labels that I work for, every single record store that I’m in, I’ll walk in and be like, “Hey, I notice you don’t have any of our records here. Do you know of our label?” And they’ll be like, “Yes“ or ”No.” And you’re like, “OK, well, my distributor just told me that they have full coverage in Japan and there’s not a single record of mine, none of the major stores in Tokyo have my record. That means they’re lying, right?”

I’m paranoid about a lot of stuff, maybe overly paranoid, but I don’t get into a lot of trouble because I am so paranoid about a lot of this stuff. This is also why I only work with people that I know in the industry. I don’t work with people that I don’t know personally because if you don’t know someone it’s a lot easier to steal from them than if you do. And that’s a pretty negative way of looking at the industry, but the fact is that it’s not all good out there. There’s a lot of shit going on behind your back.

Agents are another shady-ass thing that you need to worry about too. You can be on an agency that’s telling you, “Yeah, we have coverage here and there and everywhere.” Because that agency’s trying to keep you at a certain place and they don’t want you to be taking other agencies all over the world. Because for their business, the best thing for an agency to do is branch out to slowly get stuff in those other places, right? And they can’t do that unless they have the power to do that as an agency, so a lot of the time they’ll tell you different stuff too. So you just have to watch what you’re doing.

[But] you don’t want to hold your opportunities back by being overly paranoid about this stuff. Even though I have this negative outlook as far as when I’m worrying about stuff, don’t take that too literally, because the thing is also, if you’re paranoid about all that stuff, you’re never going to get anywhere in this industry. You need to allow that risk of people possibly ripping you off just in order to get exposure, and to be able to get out there. A lot of people are like, “Is it cool that my agent’s taking 15% of my wage when I’m playing?” That scares a lot of people. It’s like, ”Well, no.” Of course, it’s best to pay everybody as much as… Like, pay your agent.

I have a remix agent that gets me all my remixes with Universal and Virgin and Dreamworks and all this stuff, and he takes 20% off what I make off a remix. If I do a remix on a major label that can be a lot of money that he’s making, but I wouldn’t get those remixes or get any of those shows if it wasn’t for that agent, right?

When I started off dealing with distributors and agents, when you come in, it’s not even that half the people are bad. It’s that people at the bottom of the music industry, be it agents, artists or distributors, they’re all struggling. Because there’s so much competition in the industry and they really are struggling. And so they’re going to try and protect their business as much as they can.

It’s not necessarily that they’re doing anything malicious or anything like that, they’re just trying to survive themselves, right? The music industry, since all this downloading and stuff started happening, and since there’s been a worldwide recession over the last couple years, the music industry has been one of the largest things hit. Some of the top DJs were making $10,000 or $20,000 a show at one point, whereas now they’re making half that. Record sales, even straight-ahead filler tracks that didn’t even have that much stuff, they’d be selling 10,000 or 20,000. Now, if you sell 10,000 copies, that’s huge! It’s really on a smaller scale now than it was before. Almost every single distributor in the record industry in North America has gone bankrupt in the last two years. It’s been really harsh. Certain distributors, even the ones that are still going, all the record labels, all the people that are flipping money in to get vinyl pressed right now, they’re not getting paid. Distributors aren’t paying anybody. They’ll pay the top labels, people they want to keep in good contact with, but everybody else is getting shafted, because it’s a recession in the music industry right now.

Nick Dwyer

All good. We'll go to a track now but before we get on to that, the other thing I was going to ask you is in terms of label stuff, anyone that has seen your records or your label Wagon Repair, the artwork's always brilliant. How important, I mean obviously a lot of fears, I mean some people here have a label or really some are thinking about setting it up. How important do you think artwork is?

Mathew Jonson

I think it's completely important myself. You don't have to have artwork, but it's cool. You can release your records just in a black sleeve, you know, if it's just a single. It's totally cool. If the music's good, people aren't not going to listen to it because it's in a black sleeve. You know? At the same time, if you stand behind your music and your label, or whatever, you know it's definitely nicer to have it in a nice sleeve, that's cool. It's like with my label, my wife does 90% of the artwork. I love her artwork. I see having a record label as a way of putting her artwork on the cover and spreading it all around the entire world.

One thing I do to try and actually help her artwork as well is that the artwork only goes on the first pressing of our records. If you order it... If you hear our record and you like it, you're going to order it right when it comes out of the distributor's hands, and only the people that order it first, and only how many they order are going to come across with full artwork. The second order, is all generic sleeves. It still says Wagon Repair on it, but it's all generic and so what that does for my sales is, the artwork is actually boosting the sales, because for me, the artwork is awesome and most people are going to want to have it, especially if they know it's limited, then too. Right? This is just marketing strategies that are just what we thought about. It works for us.

Basically, yeah, you want that artwork, because the artwork makes your record cool. Two, the artwork's limited, so if you got it during that first press and you're not one of the stragglers, you can show people that you're up on this shit before everybody else was because you got the artwork, right? It makes it a nice collector piece. The artwork is... On the back to my covers, I'm going to have my little sister's artwork on the back, so just like sketches she's done and stuff like that. Just because it's like a good way to, whatever, you know, just help out all your friends and it's just cool. I just see it as a good front for just putting out everything.

I don't... Even though I do think about record labels and all this stuff in a very business kind of... My dad's a keynote speaker for marketing companies and stuff like that. He's a business consultant and stuff like that. I've learned a lot about marketing products and all that kind of stuff, and yeah, I can take a total business aspect of all this, but at the same time, my label, I like to run it as unconventionally as possible. On my record label, even though I'm more popular for techno music and house music that I make, I'll release rock & roll on it, I'll release hip-hop on it, drum & bass, techno, whatever it is, if it's good music it's going to come out on the label.

That doesn't make my record sell very well, because what happens then is that I can't... My record label isn't just going to go into a box in a record store. It's not always going to be in the techno section, so it actually makes it hard for all the techno heads to get into the tracks, because they're not even hearing half the tracks, because half the tracks are in the rock & roll section, or whatever. That's a decision that I made artistically just because it's my label. I want to run it like that. If I was more strapped for cash and I had to think about the money that I was making, then I might do it differently, because what would be better would be to have a techno label or have Wagon Repair and then have a lot of sub-labels underneath it, like one for rock, one for this, because then the distributors are going to know.

This is another thing with distributors, too, is to make sure that the other labels on that distribution are the genre of music that you're putting out, because if you're on a distributor that's dealing in progressive trance or something like that, and you're a house label, all those people that they're sending to are thinking of... They're actually looking at that distribution company as a trance distributor, so they're not necessarily going to be ordering all of your records that are in another genre, right? I'm kind of shooting myself in the foot a little, because of putting out all this different music, but that's just something because kind of artistically I just think it's cool. I don't believe in classifying music or genres or anything like that. I don't like any of that. I think it's really stupid, personally. It's kind of a way that I can do that with my own label and just kind of get that message across a little bit.

Nick Dwyer

Shoot us another track.

Mathew Jonson

Yeah. Ok. This isn't mastered either. This is good. This is just like a week old.

(music: Mathew Jonson - Unknown)

NICK DWYER

So that’s brand new, that one? One thing, before we go, that I want to talk about, is… Obviously, you release a big tune, the bookings come in, the requests come in, the touring starts to increase, do you ever get to a point where you feel like you need to take a break from it? Obviously, a whole lot of transatlantic flights pile up after a while.

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah! Actually, right now I’m on a break. I just finished a month of not touring. And I just told my agent that, much to her dismay. I pretty much toured straight – I don’t think I was in Canada longer than seven or ten days since last February. I probably went to Europe 13 times in the last seven months, and South America twice and Japan twice. I just take blocks, otherwise you get burned out. You can’t really do it forever [laughs], it’s incredibly tiring if you’re going overseas all the time. I think I’d be living in Europe probably, or I will be eventually, but right now with my family and stuff like that I’ve got other responsibilities at home so I don’t do that but it’s a lot of travelling.

NICK DWYER

Speaking of travelling, where have been your favorite places to play over the last wee while?

MATHEW JONSON

I think this summer, the favorite festivals that I was at, there’s one in Japan called Labyrinth that was really, really fun, Monegros Festival… [looks at two people in the audience] Monegros people, you want to stand up? [laughs] Monegros was one of my favorite festivals this summer for sure! I had a good time playing at Sónar, that was fun. I think those were the highlights. Do you guys want to hear me talk in depth a little bit about production at all, like as far as the deeper kind of stuff?

NICK DWYER

The thing as well is that they’ll break for production workshops at about 6 PM. So, if anyone wants to go one-on-one, in deep, for the rest of the evening… There’s also an Ableton Live basics workshop happening at 6 PM as well. I don’t know if you want to help out with that.

MATHEW JONSON

Someone else probably should. I’m not the best at that.

NICK DWYER

Anyway Mathew, what’s coming up in the next wee while for you?

MATHEW JONSON

The next little bit, I actually just yesterday got asked to do a remix for Christian… Christian Egner, is that how you pronounce his name? I’m also in the process of doing a remix for Josh Wink for “Higher State Of Consciousness.” Should be funny.

Audience member

[inaudible]

Mathew Jonson

Ah yeah, it’s funny. I met him down in Brazil and I told him the story of how I used to be a crazy raver with blue sparkles in my hair and fat pants. I was having dinner with him, right? [smiles] I had to tell him. I was like, “You should have seen me when I was 18, freaking out with all my friends in my bedroom with the strobe light going.” I was just trying to make him laugh. But it’s true! I was going to raves when I was that young, so I just told him, I was joking over the internet that it would fulfil all my raver dreams to do a remix of “Higher State Of Consciousness.” So he said, “Yeah sure, go ahead!”

As far as how I’m going to do it, I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I have a lot of ideas in my head but it’s kind of the thing which I think takes a bit more work and conceptualization than I would normally put into tracks. Normally, I would just walk in and just jam it out and whatever happens, happens. But with this, because it’s already so crazy, I think probably what I’m going to do with it is take parts of it – I actually bought a TB-303 just to do the remix, just because I…

Audience Member

Do you have all the original tracks?

MATHEW JONSON

Yeah, I have all the multitracks. He had everything except the acid line. He doesn’t have the 303 line and that’s why I went out and bought a TB-303 because I figured it would not be that cool to try and do a “Higher State Of Consciousness” remix with an emulator. But I actually told him that I got this and he actually gave me a website of a good 303 emulator so I guess he doesn’t really care himself. But I have some ideas of what I’m going to do. Obviously, it’s not going to be in the same vein as what he did. I’ll probably chuck a whole bunch of drum & bass basslines underneath it or something. Still have it like techno but have it more like “Decompression” or something like that.

NICK DWYER

So we’re going to have one more track from you before you go, but Mathew Jonson, thank you very much for joining us.

MATHEW JONSON

Thanks for having me.

[applause]

NICK DWYER

So before we go, what’s this track that’s been downloading the whole time the lecture’s been going on? We finished downloading it just then, a two-hour download. Is it on your own label?

(music: Mathew Jonson - “Return Of The Zombie Bikers” / applause)