What’s Good? Drlkt Freddie (Part Two)

Drlkt Freddie (L-R) Van Scott and Jad Cooper

That’s something special, and what I’ve always wanted: to make people dance and feel the music no matter where they are or what they are.

That’s really the basic reason why I got into music and why I started DJing. I wanted to give the same feeling I get from a certain piece of music to other people. It’s about sharing. Now we’re getting hit up by various people from all around the world.

Continued from Part One. . .

I know you have lived all over the place and want to know more about your global upbringing. Beyond England and the States, as you have already mentioned, where else have you lived and how has that influenced where you went with your music in terms of your own personal style?
Jad: The biggest influence obviously comes from my immediate family. But also, Morocco  is a very ethnically rich country. Being on the Western peninsula of Africa, we’ve got roots in African tribal music, Arabic music, and classical Spanish music all mixed in one area. My mother listened to that music—I grew up with it—but I have the Canadian music I listened to (from MTV obviously).

Then in moving to England, there was this infusion of punk, ska, synth-pop, and indie music that came from my stepdad. I had access to turntables, etc. My stepdad had a big influence in my musical upbringing. Also, just the decision to explore synthesizers early on . . . I think my first performance with a synthesizer was about 13 or 14.

I was also playing saxophone, which was the foundation that helped me really understand music theory, although I didn’t stick to it for too long (only 2 years or so—it’s a heavy instrument to carry around as a kid!). But yeah, those are my musical roots.

Then going to New Orleans…it just broke down all the doors! I used to play music at lunchtime on Fridays. I’d carry out the big 18-inch Peaveys out to the field. Everyone would have lunch, and I’d play all sorts of music. People would bring me tapes of all sorts of New Orleans Bounce! We’d have these edited Eazy-E mixtapes—just crazy stuff! People would bring me tapes of everything from punk to rap to industrial, so I got to listen and hear all these different musical styles.

Then the radio station in college was just an oasis of very open-minded people in the middle of Baton Rouge, this very conservative city. We ran the station until the format changed, and I got kicked out of the radio station though, being a physics student, I was like, “Screw that! Let’s build our own transmitter!” [laughs] So we built our own transmitter and started transmitting underground music early in the morning. It was a 10-block station, so we could only get a range on campus.

I had different people make tapes –back then, it was tapes [laughs]—that I would just pop into this player, then we had the little transmitter and the antennas above my building that we’d use to transmit. That forced me to listen to all sorts of music, really interesting stuff. I had everything from Skinny Puppy to Helmet.

I noticed that on your individual MySpace page, you had a lot of remixes, one of which was for The Housewives, who are based in Sweden and one of my favorite groups (I love La Fleur, one half of the duo). Did you work directly with them on that track or was that something you did from afar?
Jad: Well, George [of Kinetika Records] is very good at picking out an artist and saying “Here, do a remix of these people.” I had never heard of them, but then I heard their tape and found them to be pretty interesting. So it was George who really orchestrated the whole connection. Once I heard the vocal, I immediately knew where to go with it. Van and I had been experimenting with all different sorts of beat structures, and one of the ideas I had sort of overlapped with what they were doing, so I knew it would be perfect. So I took the vocal, cut it up in Ableton, then just inserted it into some pieces from ideas I already had (i.e. the heavy backbeat structure with a really nasty, gritty sawtooth wave and bass.

Considering your mention of Ableton and more production info, what equipment do you all use as Drlkt Freddie?
Van: This year is going to be our first year that we’re performing live. So we’re getting the live show together as we speak at New York City-based venues, some venues outside the state, internationally, and George is actually helping us out. He’s doing a lot of booking for us as he is out acting manager right now. We’re very excited about that.

We are going to bring equipment to the live performances, but in the studio, Ableton Live is our primary beast. We love to use that. We’ll use Logic sometimes. It depends on the project and what we’re feeling.

Jad: There are three main platforms: Ableton, Logic, and ProTools. We get a lot of projects from other people, so if it’s a project based in ProTools, we go with that, etc. But we also use a ton of plug-ins. I think that’s our strength. We don’t use that many “canned” sounds. We split beats apart, taking elements of beats, then producing with those. We synthesize our own beats too, but for the most part, we use a lot of fresh sounds straight from synths that we actually build. That’s why I think a lot of the music heads out there can recognize that. That’s why we get a lot of love from people like Turntable Labs and Tweakheadz. They really understand the production aspect of it. They realize that these are totally fresh sounds.

Though do you all ever sample, especially considering your upcoming live shows?
Jad: Absolutely, yeah.

So what’s something you’ve been dying to sample?
Van: My vision for the live show is to do our own songs, and intersperse that with covers of songs by artists we’re influenced by. We’re still working on that. I want to keep that a surprise, at least the songs that we would cover. But I will say that the collection is very eclectic, and I think that people will be very surprised, shocked, and very entertained by the diversity of what we’ll pull from—80s synth bands to international pop stars that are world famous. It’s all over the place. Hint hint! [laughs]

Jad: As far as sampling pieces in our music. . . we’ve sampled twice, I think. Everything elsecomes from sample banks and are legally purchased. We then take the beats apart. Some samples have been created from just straight, raw beat samples from a drum machine I had. I have the Roland 707 and the Roland 909, both of which I use to create samples through effects. I have a bank of those, and I also have things that are just straight kicks, snares, and high hats.

I think that’s another thing that people recognize. They’re like, “They can’t reproduce these sounds because they’re brand new!” It’s Drlkt Freddie. Our favorite synthesizer is Oddity. It’s a simple synthesizer, but it’s a synthesizer based on synthesis technology from the 70s, so it’s got a really fat, nasty, freaky sound. You can totally design and shape your sounds in a matter of seconds.

Van: Not many other producers use it, but you can hear it when someone does. Some DJs have pieces out there that I hear and can say, “Oh, he’s using the Oddity.” He’s got the Drlkt Freddie sound! Well, not quite! [laughs] He makes it his own, but I hear it.

Jad: Being sort of a gearhead myself, I find it very hard to take music from someone else’s work. I’ll take beats, but beats are not credited to anybody. I’ll take individual elements, as if preparing something to eat or creating a film. That’s what it’s really like. Would you take a piece of someone else’s movie and insert it into your movie? No.

So you two seem TOTALLY different. Just from having met you, talked to you, observed your styles, ways of being, etc, I can see a big difference. How did Drlkt Freddie come into being? How did Van Scott and Jad Cooper get together?
Van: On the outside, we look like different people, and we act like different people. But we couldn’t be more alike. Internally, musically, we come from the same place.

We met years ago, probably about 7 years ago, 2003ish, 2004. We met through a mutual friend. I was working at Crobar doing their PR. A colleague knew Jad and worked with Jad at a studio they both worked in –

Jad: He was my manager in a way, and also kind of a PR person.

Van: So we’d see each other out on the dancefloor and at some parties. It all was all very…periphery. It didn’t go beyond that. So then I expressed interest in collaborating with people for my DJ career and to really start doing music, and I wanted to see if he and I had any chemistry in the studio. So we did one session in early 2008. After that one session, we’ve been inseparable.

I didn’t think I had much in common with him before that session either. We had a good vibe and had danced together on the floor. We both come from the underground DJ, NYC culture. He comes from the Louisiana subculture, and I come from a different subculture, and we connected on the subculture vibe. That’s where we really relate. Our humor is spot on. We laugh in the studio all the time.

Jad: He’ll cut my head off all the time! [laughs] Human guillotine!

Van: Right, so…

Jad; He’ll be like, “You can’t use that. I don’t like it.”

Van: Our love for music is deep. [all laugh] It crosses over in a lot of ways.

Jad: Another thing I learned about Van is that he’s the constant voice of reason and I am a constant voice of musical structure. The thing about Van is that he’s very very open. He understands some of the sounds and beat structures that a lot of other people are closed to and don’t understand. He’s very forward-thinking, so I know that no matter what we do, I can trust him with how far I push because he’ll always be able to go with it or pull the reigns back, and it’s fine. I’ve got all the technology stored in my head, and I can translate any music thoughts straight into sound. So I think it’s a good symbiotic relationship.

Van: I thought that each song and each project that we work on, from originals to remixes, we approached it from a unique vision. To us, it was a new piece of work. Let’s start from scratch. In retrospect, that thought that each song was different and that there was no connection was wrong. Looking at our body of work from then until now, we see the connection. You think of people big in the scene like Major Lazer and Crookers, and they all have a sound. You hear a bassline, you hear a hip hop drum sample, and it’s in every single song! Ours isn’t that literal, but I realize that there’s a sonic connection somewhere in the songs all the way throughout.

Jad: We’ll kind of off-set each other. I’ll go a little left, and Van will want to pull to the right, and what comes out is something that people around the world are really starting to feel. We looked at our last fm recent plays, and there are people listening from across the spectrum. That’s something special, and what I’ve always wanted: to make people dance and feel the music no matter where they are or what they are.

That’s really the basic reason why I got into music and why I started DJing. I wanted to give the same feeling I get from a certain piece of music to other people. It’s about sharing. Now we’re getting hit up by various people from all around the world.

Van: Yeah, this kid from Brazil was in town, and he came up to me and was like, “I love your music.” I played one of the songs that we did, a Killer on the Dancefloor remix for “Boys and Girls.”

 He’s from Brazil, and the Killer on the Dancefloor boys are from Brazil. The guy was just like, “Man, I love your music.” Hearing that from someone who had seen me DJ really inspired me. Seeing him by himself, no friends on the dancefloor, connecting with me and riding the music . . . that’s why we do this.

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