Shy FX: Still Funky

On “Don’t Rush,” from Shy FX and T Power’s new album, Diary of a Digital Soundboy, R&B vocalist Di reprises the smooth sound that made the production duo’s ubiquitous “Shake Ur Body” a smash three years ago, this time singing an ode to taking it slow (“We don’t need to rush/Love will wait for us”). Delayed gratification can be romantic, but drum & bass fans waiting for an uplifting jolt of jump-up, dub, and blues flavors won’t need to wait longer–or look further–than Diary, released last September on Shy’s new label, Digital Soundboy.

Barring Roni Size/Reprazent’s Mercury Prize-snatching New Forms in 1997, Shy FX and T Power have arguably had the most commercial success among their peers; their new productions are poised to follow suit, whether they (and jungle elitists) like it or not. After a limited, solo Stateside tour last fall, Shy–Andre Williams to his mum and friends–spoke to XLR8R from London about Diary, the evolution of the scene, and how to deal with those silly haters.

XLR8R: From your initial Diary tour, what do you see happening for drum & bass in the US?

Andre Williams: I like Drive-By in NYC, but the parties I’ve enjoyed the most recently have definitely been in LA, especially Respect. The vibe there seems to be really on point. I think people knuckled down and focused on building a scene, but the main problem [elsewhere] is people relying on international DJs and not supporting their local ones. Over here we have the whole rave culture that the States really doesn’t have, and it’s easier to build. But I think with the internet, people are now up-to-date and clued in to what’s going on.

And what’s taking place in the UK?

At the moment, it’s a transitional period. A lot of the older cats that had been in their comfort zone too long­–­who had been trying to maintain a lifestyle and be lazy–I think they’re getting a wake-up call. I don’t blame them for getting caught up, they’re only human, but it’s been too long that they’ve been knocking out tunes to make a quick pound. Now it’s back to the music, I feel.

Diary is your second vocal drum & bass album. Regarding Set It Off, a BBC forum user complained “Keep d&b for the darkside.” What do you make of the divided attitudes on funkier styles?

It’s silly! When I first got involved in the scene, we’d have events where everything was represented and played. That’s the point of this music; it’s a melting pot of different styles. Those that prefer the dark side of things and the soulful side are clashing, but it’s changing–this time around it’s been accepted more or less from all corners of the scene.

The success of “Shake Ur Body” was pinpointed as the moment drum & bass crossed into the mainstream. How did things change for you and T Power (Marc Royal) when your singles charted?

They didn’t really. You get profiled for a minute; you get 101 remix requests, but at the end of the day it only really changes if I go out of my way to recreate those tunes all the time. Mostly it enabled us to take a year out to put time into an album.

On Diary, you each made two songs and collaborated on six. Your love of soul is particularly obvious on “Sheets,” with Noel McCoy singing the Isley Brothers’ song. Who would you like to work with next?

At the minute, I’m putting down music and thinking about what kind of voice I want on what track. I’m listening to everything, not just R&B. From bloody punk to…the other day Marc brought in some orchestral music. I’d love to work with certain R&B vocalists but I don’t think many would get the beats we’re doing. At first with Di, we had to make the track sound like R&B for her to understand it. Unless you’ve been to a rave and get the whole vibe, it’s difficult–singers think it’s too fast. So we half-timed the beats, she sang, and we programmed around it. Afterward, she was coming out to the raves. She was converted!

In 2002, you said UK hip-hop’s production was lacking, but “now that MCs are showing their own identity, it can work.” How do you feel about grime’s rise since? Do grime and drum & bass influence each other?

Talk to any of the kids on road and everyone wants to be a grime MC. It’s unregulated on the business side, but the talent and the music is on fire. Early jungle definitely influenced grime, [especially] a lot of the old, distorted bass sounds they use in their productions, but I wouldn’t say they’re influencing each other at the moment. Although, we’ve just done a track with Dizzee Rascal and we’re looking to work more with some of the grime artists, so we’ll see what happens.

The dub sounds championed by your former label, Ebony, are being done exceptionally by artists like Breakage, who’s on your new Digital Soundboy imprint.

I think people have started doing it better, taking it more seriously, and not just putting unnecessary edits all over the place. At the same time, DSB isn’t just about that side of things, which is why we released “Feelings” [the first single].

Aside from stylistic departures, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen in your 11 years on the scene?

The download culture of the internet–the theft of music is alarming. You spend years trying to learn your craft and, as Marc said to me the other day, it makes it worthless when people download your stuff for free. It’s disappointing, but at the same time, if it wasn’t for the net, half the people I’ve met up with recently–half the guys on my label–I wouldn’t have heard of. I wouldn’t have easy access to their beats if we couldn’t be sending tunes back and forth via AIM.

How do you spend your spare time?

What’s that? This is my spare time right now, and afterward I’ll be running back to the studio, so at the moment there’s no such thing.

Primal Screen
Shy FX’s essential contributions to the drum & bass hall of fame.

Shy FX and UK Apachi
“Original Nuttah”
(S.O.U.R., 1994)
Williams’ third single for S.O.U.R. (Sound of the Underground Records), where he met and began collaborating with Royal at just 17, showcases Williams’ soundsystem roots: “Nuttah”‘s rolling bass and rough-and-tumble snares, along with UK Apachi’s twisting ragga vocals, punctured the national chart with primal efficiency.

Shy FX
“This Style”
(S.O.U.R., 1995)
A sample of Eric B. and Rakim’s “I Know You Got Soul” (“This is how it should be done/This style is identical to none“) was co-opted the following year by A-Sides’ “Punks,” giving props to hip-hop while carrying the 1987 classic toward the new millennium.

Shy FX
“Bambaata”
(Ebony, 1997)
Re-released as the B-side to “Feelings,” Williams’ first single for Digital Soundboy took the term “jungle” literally, folding the hum of crickets, the shriek of an elephant, and a lion’s roar into its bongo-natty frenzy. Remixed a year later by Dillinja and Roni Size as “Bambaata 2012,” this anthem is considered by many to be one of the top 10 drum & bass tunes of all time.

Shy FX & T Power feat. Di
“Shake Ur Body”
(Positiva, 2002)
R&B vocalist Di was recording in the same studio as Shy and T, and was lured away to contribute her pipes to their biggest hit to date, which rose to #7 on the charts. “Shake Ur Body” brought Latin rhythms–and fun–back to the genre.

Shy FX & T Power
“Feelin U”
(FFRR, 2003)
The second single from Set It Off featured Kele Le Roc (best known for her sexy turn on Basement Jaxx’s “Romeo”) and another impossibly infectious Latin melody. If you can’t dance to this, you don’t have a pulse.

Growing: Hardest Working Drones

Close your eyes and imagine that you’re in an igloo. You’re all by yourself. It’s pitch black. Then you start to hear the sounds in your mind, rekindling the sensations of love, life, death, and suffering. Open your eyes. You’ve just experienced the cerebral din of Kranky Records‘ ambient guitar drone masters, Growing.

Hailing from New York City–by way of Olympia, WA–guitarist Joe Denardo and bassist Kevin Doria take the sensations of human life and weave them into soundscapes of the most intricately primitive proportions. It’s a bit unfair to categorize a duo as colorful as Growing as merely an instrumental indie rock project. Their sound consists of layer upon layer of subsonic heaviness, unresolved feedback, and gorgeous flutters of delay, consummating a style and vision all its own.

The duo began playing together in college, both intent on escaping the constrictions of their respective hardcore/punk backgrounds. “Growing was the first thing each of us took seriously in any way, so it was always just about making good sounds from the start,” says Denardo. Serious is a gross understatement. Since Growing’s formation in the fall of 2001, the duo has managed to release seven albums with re-releases of several of the band’s limited cassette projects, a split remix EP, and a new full-length on the way; not to mention the duo’s latest record, The Soul of the Rainbow and The Harmony of Light, which is a weighty homage to an 1893 essay by Bainbridge Bishop regarding the relationship between color and sound.

Growing has played everywhere, from all-ages hardcore shows to the highly regarded All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in England. These experiences have exponentially evolved their creative process. With each release, the duo’s ambitions transcend the conventions of an already revolutionary sound palate. “I like to concentrate on how the sounds are resolving themselves,” Denardo muses. “And when things are good, everything is very even and I feel like I’m not at a shitty venue anymore.”

Deerhoof: Sonic Grenade

Mixing bits of rock ‘n’ roll ammunition with nursery-rhyme vocals, San Francisco quartet Deerhoof taps into something explosive yet comforting, a sonic grenade thrown into the field of all things cliché in music today. With their seventh release, 2005’s The Runners Four (KRS/5rc), fans met a newer, fresher, and more mature version of the band.

Recorded in six months at their Oakland, CA, practice space, The Runners Four is Deerhoof’s longest full-length, clocking in at roughly 56 minutes (Milk Man came in at 33, and Apple O’ just over 31). On this album, the band transitioned from epic communal blasts of sound to each instrument having its own autobiography. On the phone from vacation in Santa Fe, NM, drummer and vocalist Greg Saunier explains how Deerhoof changed up their recording methods for this album.

“There had been a couple times, like on Milk Man, where I’d written a song and I had every detail completely figured out and there was no room,” he says. “It basically was like ‘Who is the guitar player in my band? Okay, you come here and you’re going to be my robot now.’”

“We don’t vote on things,” Saunier continues. “If three people like something and one person doesn’t like something then we don’t do it. It’s very time consuming and really takes a lot of effort from everybody, but it’s also really rewarding because you finish the album and everybody totally feels like they really like it.”

That’s not to say Saunier is entirely happy; though critics and fans have praised the album, he still gets pretty heated when asked about record reviews. He pauses. Then chuckles. Then sighs deeply. “I tend to read [reviews] as much as I can to find any feedback on our music from any source,” he finally reveals. “You know, it’s just sort of my nature. I’m sort of obsessive and panic-stricken all the time.”

Sublight Records: Twisted Fairy Tale

Aaron Rintoul has a tip if you want to visit Winnipeg. He recalls an incident where a man convicted of robbing a Pizza Hut in Arkansas was legally forbidden from entering Canada. No red tape could stop true love, and so he underwent a 100-hour trek on foot from North Dakota to Winnipeg to see his internet girlfriend. Eventually, he was found wandering a golf course with hypothermia, and had to have all of his fingers and some of his toes amputated. The moral? “If you plan to visit in February, pack something warm.”

Rintoul’s fondness for the abnormal is reflected in the music on his Sublight imprint. Within two years, his label has gone from spewing out splattered beats fresh from bedrooms where the sun never shines to becoming one of Canada’s prime breakcore outposts. In winter 2005, Method of Defiance, led by maverick NYC producer/bassist Bill Laswell, released its debut album on Sublight; luminaries including Richard Devine, Jason Forrest, Fanny, Venetian Snares, Hecate, and Datach’i are also on board.

At Sublight, a dark, introverted sensibility prevails. “Many of the records explore subjects that don’t fit into the normality of society–things that are dark or perverse and also within themes that look at the world with wonder and see beauty despite the negative,” Rintoul explains. He began the label after watching Venetian Snares and Fanny perform in Winnipeg’s unheated clubs. “It sounded like nothing I had ever heard before,” he recalls. “[It was] more inspired by punk than by dance music and it really represented what growing up in Winnipeg can be like when you’re young.”

Aaron “Venetian Snares” Funk was perhaps the first artist to scream Sublight’s name loud and clear to an unsuspecting public. The inner cover of his Horse and Goat EP was a painting of a Lolita surrounded by toys and lollipops that only Dr. Freud would love. Painter Trevor Brown, best known for his portraits of bruised Japanese schoolgirls, was responsible; he also inspired the record’s chromosome-damaged ruckus. “I did have a little trouble getting it printed,” Rintoul remembers. “Several manufacturers wanted nothing to do with it but I was determined to get it out there.”

And then there’s Funk’s gabber-drummed revolt against his hometown, Winnipeg is a Frozen Shithole. One track samples a newscaster announcing that a Winnipeg wrestling coach was accused of sexually assaulting one of his students. The reporter encountered the record and called Rintoul.

“I thought for sure I was about to be sued,” he recounts. “But then he proceeded to tell me he had been playing the CD in the lunchroom at work all day and just wanted to say he really liked the album.”

Bwana Spoons: On Zines and Doo-Doo

Like some bizarre, forest-dwelling cartoon character, Bwana Spoons exists in a world of his own. No matter what medium, the playful surrealism of Spoons’ work is marked by sincere abandon and a love of exploration. Born in LA, Bwana Spoons moved to Michigan when he was three. A few years later, he failed the first grade and his family moved back to California. Spending most of his time alone, he found solace in zany Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Underdog and Wacky Races and in the pages of MAD Magazine. Finding art-making a good way to meet people, he first got into zine culture in 1992 and went on to publish notable rags like Ain’t Nothin’ Like Fuckin’ Moonshine and Pencil Fight. This quickly led to illustration work for the likes of Nike 6.0, Hewlett-Packard, Nickelodeon, Top Shelf, Dogtown, Hessenmob, Buster Design, and Vans.

Today, the Portland-based artist is immersed in many different projects. Avidly involved with zine-making, painting, and more recently, toy-making, he still finds time to hang out with his wife of 13 years, Marny, and their daughter, nine-month-old Hazel Millie Spoons. When he’s not boasting about his Lego collection (which exceeds 200 lbs) or his love for tapirs, Spoons embraces modern zine culture and moody metal. All this from a man who vows he “didn’t go to no fancy art school.”

XLR8R: How did you first get into the work you do now?

I have always been drawing. I think making Ain’t Nothin’ Like Fuckin’ Moonshine made me lots of art friends. I started getting asked to be in shows, and so I learned how to paint. These days, all I do is draw and paint, and sometimes sculpt or make comics and zines.

What artists inspired you as you found your own style?

After I graduated high school, I moved to San Francisco in ’89. I met loads of rad artists at that time who were also getting their footing. My friend Jimbo and I would make Super 8 films and draw goofy characters. I would skate and hang out with broham Chris Johanson. It seemed that everybody was making art or playing music, and everywhere I looked there was rad shit on the walls. Dripping screws and giant horses.

Do you paint to convey a theme or direct message, or is it driven more by improvisation and intuition?

My works always come from inside my guts, so there is always something floating below the surface. I do both because I have two ways in which I paint. The first is a roughly penciled piece that I usually work out through a thumbnail and then map out. The second is putting down blobs and shapes in paint, and then I see what is coming to the surface, just pulling doo-doo out of my ass through layers until I get something that I really like.

Do you feel that your art is autobiographical?

My art is more a fantasy of the world I want to live in, rather than any type of direct take on what my life is now. Now if I lived in a banyan tree and rowed my canoe over to the mainland everyday to get a banana shake–that would be auto-bio.

How do you feel about the internet’s takeover of zine culture as the majority of zines move to the online format?

It doesn’t really bother me too much. I made lots of great friends pre-internet through trading zines and writing letters. Now we just do it in a different way. I laugh when people say that print is dead. I think there is a gap between indie magazines like XLR8R and the little mini-comic, but other than that, the print culture is effin’ great. If anything, it has pushed people that do print to make their shit better. You can’t just crap out a 60-page Xerox that you made in an hour and expect folks to dig it. Now everybody is using Gocco, silkscreening, letterpressing, and hand-binding. There is such an eye for craft, and everything looks so good.

Do you skateboard? Do you feel any connection to skate culture?

I still skate about once a month, when I feel the inspiration and have the time both at the same moment. All the cement parks here in Oregon are so effin’ nice. I grew up with skaters, and skate art was a lot of my early influence. Neil Blender and Mark Gonzales are definitely early influences, and I flipped out when I got to be in an art show with Blender and met him some years back. I used to do boards for Dogtown back in the early ’90s. Those graphics really sucked ass, but I loved that I got to do them. Now I do some for Hessenmob, and maybe a board for Krooked soon.

Do you have any moral qualms with using your art to advertise a product?

Not if I like the product. You definitely won’t see my interpretation of the new H4 crawling over the earth, or one of my characters smoking a Camel Light. But if I like the product then it’s fine. I love that Gary [Baseman] does all the Cranium art, and that [Lloyd] Dangle has his work on [that Airborne stuff]. When Charles Burns did the Levi’s ads that was rad, too.

What styles of music are you into? Does music play a role in your artistic process?

With music, I am all over the board. It just has to be effin’ rad. I love Prefuse 73, Juana Molina, Brazilian Girls, Blackalicious, Dudley Perkins, St. Tropez, Slint, Pretenders, The Clash, Spoon, AC Newman. I love good, moody metal too: Mastodon, The Melvins, Pelican, and my all-time favorite, Neurosis, who somehow keep getting better and better. The silly thing is that the more deep and oppressive it gets, the happier I feel when I listen. Lately, I have been listening to rainforest sounds for painting.

Eliot Lipp Takes Flight

On the cover of Tacoma Mockingbird, a photo of Eliot Lipp is superimposed on a shot of an industrial Los Angeles skyline, his body bisected by a thick yellow line that busts a serious ’80s graphic design move. While not my favorite album sleeve ever, it does a lot to suggest the influence that moving to LA has had on this 25-year-old producer’s second album. G-funk keyboards mob all over this record, swinging through “Glasspipe,” kicking back and squelching on “Check Weight.” Meanwhile, the electro touches of “Last Night” and “Brand New” beg for an uprock or five, while the album’s languid, liquid BPMs would be a great soundtrack to a smoke-filled lowrider slowly tippin’ to the side.

In actuality, Tacoma Mockingbird equally reflects everywhere Lipp has lived (which is a lot of places). Songs “The People” and “Mashin on Em” channel the melancholy mood of his hometown: rainy, working-class Tacoma, Washington. “Vallejo” finds him under the influence of Bay Area gangster rap producer Khayree, whose underrated beats for Mac Mall and Ray Love informed Lipp’s years in San Francisco. And the Dabrye-esque feel of the record–where instrumental hip-hop tempos rub up against plenty of techno touches–reflects a recent two-year stint in Chicago, one that had him listening to Pantytec, Luciano, and Cylob alongside Kool G Rap and Coltrane.

“I make different styles of music based on what environment I’m in,” says Lipp, whose self-titled first album was released on Prefuse 73’s Eastern Developments label. “My newer stuff has been getting less beat-oriented, but I’ve also been making beats for MCs. For MCs, I’ll try to make something really minimal so that it doesn’t crowd in with the lyrics, but on Tacoma Mockingbird, I was trying to take up the space of where the MC would be with synth lines.” Though each track contains five or six different synths, the majority of sounds on the record originated from Lipp’s beloved Korg MS-20 and the Sequential Circuits Six-Trak, a 1984 analog relic. “All the sounds that I ever really need to use are in those two keyboards,” he enthuses.

While most producers are busy trying to give their productions a more organic feel, Lipp is wisely ahead of the curve–he plans to take his next record in a more machine-driven direction. “I played a lot of Tacoma Mockingbird live,” he explains. “I didn’t really sequence anything. [For my next album], I want to get the human element a bit more out of it and make it more computer-y. I want to do a lot more sequencing to keep it fresh and keep a lot of thought put into it, rather than just going with the flow.”

Kick Game: Provocative Sneaker Pimps

With the sneaker-collecting hustle running rampant–spanning everyone from junior high kids to corporate execs–we got to thinking about the people behind the shoes themselves. So we hollered at Undftd’s James Bond and HUF’s Keith Hufnagel, who own the stores that stoke the fire for hard-to-get kicks. We phoned JB of JB Classics–on a break from designing displays for the next Sneaker Pimps show–to ask him about running an independent sneaker company. From Puma HQ, industrial design powerhouse Gavin Ivester broke down the connections between sport-shoe technology and fashion forwardness, and Vans’ Steve Mills gave us a look inside the mind of Vans Vault. Here’s a sneak peek behind the scenes.

Jason Bass
Owner, JB Classics
San Francisco, CA
Suite 2206

XLR8R: What was your inspiration to start JB Classics?

Justin Bass: I was influenced a lot by going to Japan and seeing the color palette [of the shoes] and the intensity of the testing core footwear companies were doing out there. There were a lot of shoes that never saw the light of day. That inspired me to investigate all these holes in the market that existed. I have an MFA and [have had] this whole creative bone in me from early on, and I sort of applied that to this lifestyle void in sneakers. It was something that I experimented with and it became my life real quick.

Do all your shoes start off with a theme?

I’m constantly influenced. An example would be going to the UK and stumbling upon the Jack the Ripper tour that goes on in East London and then being like ‘I’d like to work out a Jack the Ripper-style shoe.’ Then comes the shaping, the silhouette of the shoe, the color palette, researching, and before I know it, it’s all applied to the footwear. A few months later, I’ll hear a rapper like Kanye West mentioning Jack the Ripper [the guy, not the shoe] in an interview. Also, I find myself more now pushing into experimenting with actual footwear construction–the materials, the assembly process. For instance, I’ll want rougher edges or certain materials to apply to killer bee graphics that I am coming out with.

Do you have a favorite shoe that you’ve made?

Some of the favorites are the huge collectible stuff. Me and NYC Lase–this graffiti head–put together the MOTUG (Monsters of the Underground), which had 10 artists [including Futura, Doze Green, and Shepard Fairey] on one shoe, produced 24 times, and released in a gallery in the Village. That was a huge inspiration to me. Once or twice a year I’ll have a shoe that will shock me at how it comes together. Usually it has to do with collaborative efforts or a graphic theme that will play across many markets at once.

What is the longest you’ve worked on a shoe to get it right?

Oh, I just move on. I seriously look at it in a painterly way. Like, if I’m having a frustrating time with this painting, I’ll move on to make another painting because the ideas are endlessly flowing. Lately, I’ve been nailing every sample [I get back from the factory]: the translations, the graphical stories, the color combinations, the materials. If anything, there are some construction issues that happen in any development stage, [usually] a matter of changing materials or applying different shoelaces or inner linings.

What kinds of things are exciting to you right now?

To me, it’s just the acceptance of this whole sneaker culture. What was once this underbelly type of thing is now making really huge moves. It’s really nice to see old graff heads and different designers coming out and putting a face to the retail part of this whole movement. And it’s global. Wherever I go, there’s another 10 new stores opening and you see the skate market adapting to this whole sought-after sneaker atmosphere. Now my mother or grandmother could walk onto a certain block and see various magazines that cover the culture.

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Keith Hufnagel
Owner, HUF store
San Francisco, CA
HUF

XLR8R: Are there certain colorways or styles you’re known for?

Keith Hufnagel: HUF green is our color; it’s the color of our bags, the vinyl on our windows, and we use it in all our clothing. It even has a PMS [Pantone Matching System] code. And with San Francisco, everyone affiliates it with the SF Giants colors, which are black and orange. We use those colors a lot, but we’re not claiming them.

What was the inspiration behind that?

Pretty much every shoe we’ve done–except the Air Max and the Vans we’ve got coming out–has a story behind it. We are based out of San Francisco so a lot of our stories come from San Francisco. The [Nike x HUF Gold Digger Trainer 1 SBs] was based on gold mining and the Barbary Coast. The mesh on the toe resembles what they use when they pan for gold–how they’re shifting the dirt around. Then there’s gold underneath the mesh, then heavily stressed-out leather. There’s a painted sole that represents gold dust, and it’s also in the 49er colors, which are brown, maroon, and gold. There’s also the sickle and ax on the side of it to represent mining with the SF logo. The Nike Dunk SBs we did had tie-dye on them because of [the] Haight-Ashbury [district] and the hippies and tie-dye being so big out here. We looked into doing them as a vegan shoe, but we ended up going with cracked leather because it looked really nice. The tie-dye was black, red, and orange, which represented San Francisco as well.

What’s the most limited shoe you’ve done?

The Air Max 1 we did with Nike that had our logo and the SF skyline embroidered on the back. [That’s known as] a ‘hyper strike’: 24 pairs specially done for one person or store, usually with their logo embroidered somewhere and in a special box.

What is your favorite shoe that someone else has done?

The Jordan IV that Undftd did. Pretty much no one is allowed to touch Jordans at all, so to do one is pretty awesome. Jordan has such a following and they really don’t retro their shoes that often–five or 10 years for some pairs. To do a Jordan shows it can be done and Undftd opened the door to other people doing it, but I don’t know if it will ever be done again.

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SBTG
Mark Ong takes custom to the nth degree.

Singapore’s Mark Ong has become infamous for his steady hands. The 26-year-old–who goes by the name SBTG (pronounced “sabotage”)–painstakingly customizes sneakers by hand, bestowing them with elaborate camouflage, custom textures, rivets, and custom buckles and straps. He is known for working mainly with Nike Air Force Ones and Dunks, but he explains that he’s been branching out.

“Recently, I’ve been customizing a lot of Converse and Vans,” says Ong. “I’m very inspired by skateboarding and I’m trying to bring back the ’80s feel. [That time] was the birth of so many things: the first skate shoe, cutting up shoes, putting extra leather on to protect against the grip tape. It’s like that time is lost and you can never get it back, so I’m trying to have nostalgia with my shoes.”

SBTG designs aren’t authorized, but so far the companies don’t seem to mind. Probably because models like the Saigon and the Casablanca are far from mass-produced–it takes Ong anywhere from 15 hours to two days to finish one pair. Though it’s a lucrative business, Ong will be turning his perfectionism to his clothing line in 2006. “I am almost always dissatisfied with products that are available, so I have to do something about it–or modify them to suit my needs,” he says. “With Royale Fam, I’m concentrating on getting all the minor details right, down to the label, the stitch, the weave count of the cotton. I just want to make my land everything that I ever dreamed of…”

Chester Wingate

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Gavin Ivester
Senior Vice President & General Manager of International Footwear, Puma
Boston, MA
Puma

XLR8R: What are some incidences of sports and lifestyle influencing each other?

Gavin Ivester: Well, actual track shoes became extremely colorful and a bit outrageous to the point where, three or four years ago in Paris, people were taking track spikes and just putting a sheet of rubber on the bottom so they could wear them on the street. That was the kind of hijacking that we love and we watch for. The boxing boot is another great example. It’s a serious product that you can actually box in–we got a great response after we put it out from boxers–but it hit a fashion trend and it was totally because people love to hijack products with an authentic story.

What are the advances in sneaker technology we’ll see over the next five years?

Lighter weight is a big trend. For 2006, we have a very significant football boot that we’re introducing–we were able to achieve the lightest boot possible without compromising stability. We used a carbon fiber plate under the foot to stabilize an extremely lightweight chassis and everything else on the boot is pared down to the minimum. Mechanical cushioning is another big thing–Duocell is our first entry into that. It’s a series of hexagonal pillars on the bottom of the shoe that collapse when you step on them. They’re hollow but the air inside them is not pressurized–not like an air system (like from Nike), where you have a volume of air or gas trapped inside the shoe and it’s at a certain pressure and that’s how you’re getting your cushioning. We get our cushioning from the properties of the plastic that make up these pillars and they’re designed in such a way that they’re meant to collapse and spring back. The main area where we saw a difference was in the rate of pronation (flattening of the arch); for us that’s an extremely important measure of the success of the running shoe.

What Puma shoes have people responded to the most?

If I look at the entire history of the company, it’s got to be the Puma Clyde. [It was associated with] Walt Frazier, a famous NBA player from the ’70s. We’re reintroducing it now. It’s a simple, extremely iconic suede Puma shoe that everybody remembers and everybody loves now. One of the most interesting stories is the Mostro, a shoe that’s now five years old. [That shoe] really affected the culture of Puma. If you think back to when it came out, there was nothing like it on the market. It was a shoe unlike what people had seen before; because of that, they didn’t really understand it or trust it inside the company. It got a really poor forecast before it launched. (If a forecast is bad enough, we’ll kill a shoe before we launch it.) Somebody in the company said ‘Let’s try it anyway. I think it’s interesting.’ It became our biggest shoe for a few years. It was the powerhouse that helped build Puma to where it is now. It put this healthy self-doubt in the back of everyone’s minds. When they see a design they don’t understand now, they sit back and think ‘I may be looking at the next Mostro,’ which is fantastic for promoting originality and design within the company.

What are some products that really inspire you with their design or function?

I like really beautiful technical products. I am a huge Apple fan. I just think Apple still gets in right. What I love about Apple is that they’re not just pretty products–the soul of Apple is that any product you pick up is easy and understandable. Apple does a great job of automating things that you as a user should never have to worry about in the first place. But I also really like cars and watches, because they’re both highly technical and highly aesthetically developed products.

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Steve Mills
Director of Footwear for Vans Vault, Classics, & Vans Surf
Santa Fe Springs, CA
Vans

XLR8R: What are some of your inspirations at Vans?

Steve Mills: If our inspiration is not coming from skate, music, or surf, then we try to make stuff that we would really wear ourselves, rather than look at what everybody else is doing. For Vans Vault, a lot of our inspiration on the materials side comes from Italy’s Lineappelle, a materials tradeshow that caters to the couture industry. On the skate side of things, we’re influenced by what our riders are asking for.

What are some colorways or patterns that never got produced?

There are some designs that we simply couldn’t use because of legal rights. We played with the famous shot of Muhammad Ali knocking out Sonny Liston on a slip-on. We did a Virgin of Guadalupe, and I think that’s something that might be made.

Is there a shoe that did better than you ever expected?

In the ’80s, Vans made shoes for the California prison system. We introduced the Vans Prison Issue about two seasons ago in our Vault line and the heat on that shoe was surprising–it sold out in a couple of weeks.

What are your thoughts on the increase in people being able to customize their own shoes?

I’m seeing more creative stuff coming out of people buying shoes and drawing on them than what’s available online. But Vans was 30 years before its time. Back in the late ’60s, they had a store in Anaheim where you could go in and pick from canvases, materials, and patterns for shoes, or you could roll in with surf trunks or a sweatshirt and they would make a shoe out of [that material] right there for you.

What’s in the works for 2006?

We are working on a Bermuda triangle with DQM out of New York, HUF in San Francisco, and Kicks Hawaii. For spring, we’re bringing something out with Circle Jerks and the Dropkick Murphys, and there’s a Descendents shoe that will deliver June 1. For Vans Vault, we’re also trying to offer a few pieces of special apparel to the boutique accounts. We worked with [legendary flannel-makers] Pendleton and also California’s Hoffman fabrics, one of the original companies that came out with the old school Hawaiian prints.

Are you doing any special shoes for your 40th anniversary?

We went back and did the first Vans shoe, [the Era], in its two original colorways: black and a kind of maroon. We also did the first Vans patterns–the Vanosaurus and just the Vans script logo. They’re only going to make 1,966 pairs, which represents the year the company was founded.

Ghislain Poirier In The Studio

The second half of 2005 brought a hat trick of major accomplishments for Montreal-based MC-turned-producer Ghislain Poirier. He started his “irregular monthly” at Montreal’s Zoobizarre, kicking it off in July with French hip-hop stars TTC. The night now draws over 250 people to hear guests including Shadetek and Ottawa’s Disorganized crew. He hooked up with England’s MC-of-the-moment Lady Sovereign, opening for her on her North American tour and remixing her track “Fiddle With the Volume,” which has been tearing up dancefloors across the continent. To top it off, his second LP, Breakupdown, a record that infectiously tweaks hip-hop and ragga with guests like Beans and DJ Collage–was released in February on Chocolate Industries. The busy DJ and producer took the time to shed some light on his “If it works, use it” philosophy, talking to XLR8R about his minimal setup, dirty recording vs. clean mastering, and his love affair with Fruity Loops.

XLR8R: How did your Bounce le Gros parties get started?

Ghislain Poirier: I was DJing a lot this year but always in a context where I had to adapt myself to other people. Sometimes funk/soul nights, sometimes IDM–I love a lot of music so it’s easy to do that, but at a certain point I was not totally free. I realized nobody would give me the liberty to play exactly what I want if I don’t take it myself. I tried it in July and it was super fun. People are really open-minded so I can do what I want. I can switch styles every two tracks if I want and nobody will care. If I drop good tracks, people will just dig it.

What’s your basic studio setup?

I’m pretty minimal in my studio, and it’s always funny when I say “studio” because I’m mainly working with just the laptop. Nothing exceptional; it’s pretty old. For programs, I use mainly Cool Edit Pro and Fruity Loops, which is so easy and–what can I say–just useful!

Any outboard stuff? Hardware? FX?

I just recently bought this little sampler, the Boss SP-303 Dr. Sample, a couple months ago. I’ve used it for some of my more ambient and noisy music that’s not released yet. Also, I bring it when I have DJ gigs to have some extra sounds, to give me a little more humanity when I’m playing.

So when you play live the setup is the laptop, the Dr. Sample, and then a MIDI trigger?

Not even a MIDI keyboard; just a little mixer to put everything in. I’d like a MIDI trigger but I’m pretty slow to buy equipment and I’m pretty efficient with the laptop and the SP-303.

How do you get the particular sounds and samples you’re working with?

I never use sample banks or CD samples. I get them all simply by sampling other records or even sampling myself. Sometimes people ask me how I did this or that sound and I say, “I did it by myself.” [Laughs]. Although lately I have been using some of the presets in Fruity Loops because when you want to do something really powerful for the club, some presets are really efficient and really clean–especially for the bass sounds. For me, it was liberating to explore Fruity Loops and find the bass, since recently that’s what I’ve been spending the most time on in my music: how to treat the bass.

Favorite microphone?

I use a Rode NT1000. It’s good for rapping but I’m not too picky about this stuff because when all my sound is kind of dirty, it makes sense also to have dirty [vocal] recordings.

Who does your mastering?

For Breakupdown, it was somebody in Chicago that [Chocolate Industries] usually uses. For other stuff, I’m doing the mastering with a guy in Montreal named Louis Dufort. He did the mastering for the next Shockout release. He’s from the electro-acoustic field but he also really digs hip-hop. What he’s doing is really key to making the sound better, more round.

You’ve done a lot of great mash-ups in addition to original productions. Will any of them ever get a release?

Yeah, in 2006 I’m doing an independent release on CD called Bounce le Remix, which will be [comprised of] 13 remixes, eight of which will also [appear] on vinyl. Some have been done for over a year and it’s club music, so it has to be released soon.

You don’t have any worries about releasing them?

Hey, when people release a mixtape in the States they put their real name on it, and afterwards they say “For Promotional Use Only.” Major labels encourage people to do bootlegs; they put the acapella on the records. So I’m seeing this release as more a mixtape than something illegal–just something I want to share with the people and for the DJs.

Amina: Whisper To A Scream

Amina has already discretely seduced their way into hearts and record collections via collaborations with Efterklang and The Album Leaf, and, most famously, as the string section for Sigur Rós. Now the Icelandic quartet provides one of the many highlights of Screaming Masterpiece–a documentary/soundtrack surveying the contemporary Icelandic music scene that finds rapture in the sounds of Múm, Slowblow, Björk, and Jóhann Jóhannsson, as well as these four women from the Tónlistarskólin í Reykjavík [the Reykjavík music school].

It would be easy to attribute the sheer prettiness of the group’s own AnimaminA EP to the geological features of their homeland, but María Huld Markan, Hildur Arsûdóttir, Edda Rún Olafsdóttir, and Sólrún Sumarliadóttir remain ambivalent about such a suggestion. “You’re bound to be influenced by your surroundings no matter where you are,” they say via a collective email. “What you eat, what you read, what you listen to–[all of] it will have an impact on you as a person. But when we’re making music, we’re not thinking about it.” Rather, they attribute their emotive music to the influence of each other. “We talk a lot when we’re composing,” admits Amina, “And tend to keep our noses in each other’s business.”

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