Mojo is Bad

The third and final day of RBMA Bass Camp was a bit shorter on the studio time, which was mainly due to two lectures that took place on Saturday - one with Jan P. Muchow and a technical lecture by Seiji.

I enjoyed Jan P. Muchow's talk very much. It was great to hear someone who works and lives with music in our geographical area. He talked about the legendary Ecstasy of St. Theresa's John Peel Session, his film scores where the music serves the purpose of story telling - which is similar to bands, where one member serves the whole group, but also mentioned how complicated is the way how his film scores written in MIDI get rewritten into notes for the orchestra. He touched the subject of silence in music, however it seems that this topic interests Daniel Baláž much more than anyone else. Daniel also proposed that live instruments are coming back to music and how refreshing it is, but Jan dismissed this idea and said he even gets bothered by the information how the music was made - now how refreshing is to hear that! I also really liked his idea that for every song there exists someone who likes it. But the more difficult part is to make music which you will truly like.

Seiji's tech-talk most likely didn't go as planned, but he stayed also for the studio time afterwards, which was really beneficial. I have even played a couple of my upcoming tunes to him on which he gave comments - Seiji is super nice and helpful guy!

A couple of final thoughts. RBMA Bass Camp is a good event that should happen in Czech Rep. & Slovakia more often. It allowed me to dream that maybe one day also our countries can belong to the map (in a music sense). The connection aspect is really great and it is unbelievable to see how much energy can flow once you get so many creative and talented people together under one roof. My only regret is that I haven't collaborated with more people, but there simply wasn't enough time and space for that.

Second day at RBMA Bass Camp started with some early studio time. Techno is truly universal and our team surprisingly settles on a techno tune with huge kicks and an interesting chord progression. I have heard some amazing collaborations throughout the day - the 'third studio' team under Dtonate's supervision is doing really well, you can hear two of their tunes on his soundcloud already, Biomat has added some clever scratches and vinyl sampling to some of the tracks and Side9000 is working on a Jeff Mills sounding techno monster.

In the afternoon there was the long awaited lecture with Hudson Mohawke. To everyone's surprise he seemed quite nervous at the beginning and have spoken very quietly. But soon he gained some confidence and talked about his production and stripped down approach he is trying to take right now, about how electronic music should be heard and not looked at (the dj or live act), about patience and luck - how he tried to collaborate with some artists and vocalists for years and then they have approached him themselves, about his collaboration with Kanye West and how Kanye is very brave and takes risks in music or about how HudMo writes his chords by hand. Then he played a bunch of his upcoming tunes. I think a video of this session should be available soon here.

First day of Red Bull Music Academy Bass Camp Bratislava was about introduction. All the participants introduced themselves and played one tune. I have chosen Klic - Arp (Bad Mojo Remix) and it I was probably the only one playing something similar to a house track or a dance tune (in 4x4 way). Regardless of that I was overwhelmed by the talent we have in Slovakia and Czech republic.

Then we had our first Studio time. There are three studios, equipped with toys like OP-1s, MicroKorgs, NI Machines and similar to play with. One of the studios was hijacked by Pjoni & Ink Midget from the very beginning and I think the guys have even finished the tune. Second one was dedicated to 'live instrumentalists' like Radimo or Dtonate and it seems that these guys have cooked something really hot. The third one was ours and all I can say is that collaborating with so many people is fun, but also difficult.

My idea was to play tracks you can wake up to, to start your day - radio friendly, positive, with a lot of vocals. Mixed fast because I wanted to make the most out of 20 minutes.

From interview with Atsuki Kikuchi in Apartamento #12 :

"... In the nautral world there is a lot of noise though, and I don't just want to put the parts of the systems back together to get a correct answer, I want to capture natural noise whenever I make anything. I always add noise to my work. It makes the work real.

What does the noise look like?