Yousef

Your favourite ever record?

Rufus and Chaka Khan – ‘Ain’t Nobody’. I first heard it when I was a 12 year-old B-boy watching Breakdance: The Movie. I loved the positive vibe on it and loved to dance to it. Since then I’ve obviously understood the lyrical content and more recently studied the amazing production values on the track. In every way a masterpiece.

The last track of the night?

On one occasion at Space in Ibiza I was playing in the main room after Laurent Garnier on the very last night of the season. I played a pretty tough set and the energy was high. The room stayed full to the very end — about 8am – and the crowd wanted the obligatory ‘one more tune’…

As the sun was up (even though you couldn’t see it in the darkened techno kingdom of Space), I felt it was a good idea to risk playing ‘Lovely Day’ by Bill Withers. It was a risk and 30% of the crowd left instantly. The remaining 70% stayed and sung along, then left wearing huge smiles. They loved it. It was a real DJ moment for me.

The worst record you’ve ever heard?

Pretty much anything off daytime radio should cover it. It’s so terrible.

Your best piece of vocal editing?

I always like to experiment with vocals after the initial recordings. When I recently recorded Chari Taft for one of my album tracks, ‘I See’, I wanted to create trippy vocal harmonies to offset the depth of the bass and hopeful sound of the horns.

After tracking the vocal I copied the same take onto two other channels and used PSP 84‘s ‘Mental Illness’ preset to pitch up and down, keeping the original vocal riding in the centre of the stereo image. I also added a light remix effect from the Traktor effects that come with Komplete 8.

The background harmonics repeatedly shift up and down, moving along with a light echo from PSP 84. The Traktor remix effect then add a gentle stutter. The main vocal sits on top of the nonsense, making sure it’s in control and the song can ride home.

The overall effect was an experiment that worked very well for me. I sometimes use the same ideas with the instruments and sounds across my mixdown to build a random dynamic and to build personality in a vocal. I ended up using a similar technique for my track with Alexander East, ‘Think Twice’. Both of the recordings have a real depth to the vocal and with multi-channel panning you can really hear the movement. At this stage I send all vocals through the JJP Vocals plugin to place them comfortably in the mix. I find the JJP series really helps bring my music to life.

A Product Of Your Environment is out now on Circus Recordings. Find Yousef on Facebook, SoundCloud and Twitter.