By Topher Duguay
Australian DJ and musician, Mr. Bill has released nine full length albums and has collaborated with dozens of influential members of the electronic music scene from around the world. They will performed in Winnipeg on October 29 at The Pyramid Cabaret. We chatted with Mr. Bill over the phone about their tour.
Stylus: So what made you decide to come to Winnipeg, anyway?
Mr. Bill: I didn’t decide to come to Winnipeg per se. I’ve played there once before with Chris Komus, and I really loved the place – so not coming back for three years definitely wasn’t all my call! Refer to my Facebook post on how tours are developed.
Stylus: I’ve heard about the worst show you’ve ever played in a previous interview, so what was the best one?
MB: Hard to say, but Lucky Festival in Tacoma with KJ was definitely the biggest I’ve ever played. Somewhere from 4,000 – 5,000 raging kids – yeah, you know it’s big when you’re differential perception is 1,000 fucking people – what’s the next step from there? “Oh it was somewhere between 40,000 and 80,000.”
Stylus: I noticed that you said you primarily use Ableton’s native VSTs for composition – is that still the case and if so, how come? I’ve noticed they tend to have a pretty poor reputation for whatever reason.
MB: Really? See I’ve know them to have quite a good reputation, actually. I mean shit Culprate makes almost all his basses with Operator, and he’s one of the best for sure. What’s that old saying? A bad craftsman never blames his tools? I’d agree with that in this sense. Ableton native plug-ins are totally capable of doing some nutty shit if you’re also capable of doing some nutty shit!
Stylus: Since you’re very into sound design, what are your feelings on subtractive synthesis vs FM synthesis (and additive synthesis, depending on how much you’ve messed around with that)?
MB: They’re different. I would never try to get some metallic bell sound out of a purely subtractive synth (luckily Operator does both, hey? hehe) – and I’d rarely try to make some old Warp Records, detuned synth sound using FM really (although I guess you could actually). I’d say FM synthesis may be more versatile, but subtractive synthesis is probably more functional (depending on your goals). Additive synthesis has kinda become my new favorite thing actually! Things like Razor, Icarus, Lazerbass, etc, they all just have SUCH an amazing sound to them.
Stylus: Is there any carry-over from your days as a metal musician to what you currently do when you play live electronica?
MB: Absolutely. A lot of the playing on the drum-pad is super technical, and very arbitrary sometimes – and in that way it reminds me of playing metal. You never really improvise in metal, the idea is to just make the most technical thing ever, practice it 1,000,000 times, then play it exactly that way on the day. A lot of parts in my set are like that, but a lot are also kinda improvisable, too.
Stylus: Do you have any hopes for where “the scene” (electronica in general) will go in the future? I know you mentioned you liked what Flume is doing right now.
MB: I love what Flume’s doing. This is gonna’ sound like the stupidest, and saltiest thing to say – but I’ll say it anyway. I really hope that to get to any sort of ‘level’ in electronic music, you should have to be doing something that is actually interesting, which sounds stupid, right? Because, what’s interesting differs from person to person. Basically, what I’m sick of seeing is people DJ’ing WAVs out of Ableton, or from USB sticks in CDJs and talking on the microphone every two or three mixes – like, that’s their performance… People seem engaged, and good for them, if they’re having a fun time, and everyone’s loving it, then that’s great! But, I can’t help but think two things: a. If those DJs were forced to be restricted to their own catalogs, how many of their sets would become extremely underwhelming overnight, and b. If the audience really understood what they’re doing, would they still be so engaged? Or is it the mystification of not knowing what they’re doing so much that’s keeping them interested?
Stylus: Can you expand a little further on Corrective Scene Surgery? The idea seems really interesting, although I haven’t seen any of the ‘adaptive comic book’… To add to this, how’s Corrective Scene Surgery coming along?
MB: So, the adaptive comic book is in the cover artwork of the tracks. If you go to my SoundCloud playlist and click through the playlist and look at the artwork for each track, so far you can make out a story of a guy that goes to work, gets in a car accident, dies, and is currently based in purgatory I guess. Let’s see where it goes from here, hey? It’s kinda all up to Funi as to what he decides to do with it next. As for the musical side of it, I kinda created it to be never ending as my own ‘label’ – a safe space for me to release music that no labels want to release, and to have the security of knowing it’ll always be there, and I think knowing that, and having that has really opened my mind to doing a lot of things I wouldn’t usually allow myself to do musically.
Stylus: Since you’ve done at least two large-scale collaborative works that don’t seem to have much in common with how most electronic music “works” (The Collaborative Endeavours and Corrective Scene Surgery), do you have anything else like that coming down the pipeline?
MB: Well CSS is still going. Hold your horses.
Stylus: The music industry is pretty difficult to make a living in as of now, but you’ve managed to do it while not really being a household name as a musician. How’d you do that?
MB: I run a website called mrbillstunes.com – and early on, I figured, I’m studying audio production at University, I’m spending all my days on Ableton, or YouTube, learning about Ableton from other people – everyone I worked with at the time, I seemed to always be able to show them better and faster ways to do things, so I figured, why not make tutorials… So, I did, and it kinda snowballed a bit there for a while. So I monetized it by making these large courses on my website, and as modest as I am about most things I do, I totally stand behind these courses. They’re totally worth the money. I’m convinced you should be able to go from not knowing a thing to being able to produce music after watching one of these 10 hour courses (The Art Of Mr. Bill).
Stylus: In a previous interview you did, you talked about wanting to start working more with hardware as opposed to software – have you?
MB: A little bit, I have a Moog – Mother 32 now, and I’ve been working with that quite a bit (hear the end of “Midichondria”) – it’s nice, I like the randomness of it more than the actually tonality and “warmth” that everyone seems to rant about. Also, something about tactility; getting me off your mouse and keyboard and onto an actual device has some sort of effect on the way I deal with perceiving sound as well, so I do more unexpected things.