Huxley

That’s something you see on forums so often: people posting up screenshots of their projects and they’ve got 27 different kick drum tracks layered together and processed through all these elaborate effect chains.

Just find one that works!

Pick the right sample in the first place.

I think that’s such a good point: if you pick the right sounds in the first place you don’t have to spend fucking ages layering. I don’t necessarily like layering sounds. If anything that kind of thing’s taking away your time from making a better track. It’s not about doing the most technical thing. I think it’s changing a little bit now, but in certain scenes people are still more worried about how technical something is than how the song is. I think I used to be a bit like that but as I’ve grown up I’ve mellowed.

What are your reference points in terms of the overall sound of a track? What do you A/B against when you mix?

Recently I’ve been using a lot of stuff from Skudge and people like Patrice Scott and Pépé Bradock, just because I’ve been making a lot of deeper stuff since the album. For the album I was using a lot of new soul stuff, people like Eric Roberson and SZA. I think the production on Midland‘s stuff’s really good too.

I always try and get quite a clean sound just because that’s the way my brain wants to make music, but actually I prefer listening to music that’s a bit rough around the edges. It’s strange but I find it really hard to make music like that. Even if I’m using a sample I take away a lot of the roughness. I don’t know why, but I’ve always strived to make a cleaner sound. I’m getting better at not doing it.

On that kind of topic, I wanted to ask you what you think your weaknesses are as a producer. Where do you think you could improve?

That’s it. I spend too much times cleaning things up and it’s not always what I want. I also think with my arrangements, sometimes I follow too much of a linear path. That’s always been a problem for me. Maybe less so with the song-based stuff, to be honest, but for the club tracks it’s always kind of build, break, drop, break, build… I’m trying to get out of that now. I think that’s one of the things I didn’t like about my stuff last year. It all followed that same formula, which is hard to get out of in dance music anyway.

I always try and get quite a clean sound, but actually I prefer listening to music that's a bit rough around the edges.

Definitely.

Also, if I know there’s a mistake in something I won’t always go back and fix it, which is probably through laziness more than anything else. Every time I listen to the track I’ll notice it. I’m always looking to get better anyway. I could sit here and pull everything apart and say everything I do is shit, which I don’t necessarily think would be constructive!

I think you’re probably being more critical of your own music than other people would be. You’ve said you’re always trying to progress and learn more, to improve as an artist. What’s next on the agenda?

The next thing is I’m about to get loads of external effects units and start fucking around with those. I’ve got the Moogerfooger things and the Eventide stuff in my shopping cart, I just need to press buy. Apart from that it’s just going back to basics a bit and going back to writing proper deep house music and proper techno. In fact, I’ll tell you what my one weakness is, thinking about it. [Laughing] I never try to make anything sound garagey, but it always does.

You’ve just listened to too much garage.

Yeah, basically! I’ve poisoned my mind.

Huxley’s Blurred is out now on Aus Music. Find him on Facebook, Twitter and SoundCloud.