Richard Burkinshaw and Jamies Rial AKA Audiojack return to Ralph Lawson’s 2020 Vision this month with an intriguing concept EP. Their latest four track release is titled ‘All by Mouth’ and that’s exactly what it is. The EP features sounds solely from vocal samples. Not only have they shared an exclusive full premiere from the release with us today but they’d fielded about most pertinent questions about their skills in the kitchen and this innovative release.
WWD: Cheers for joining us lads. Tell us, when it comes to skills in the kitchen. If you had to serve the When We Dip team up a nice meal, what would your go-to recipe be?
Great question as we’re both well into cooking as is the label owner Ralph Lawson and we’ve all got into the kitchen together on his trips over to play in Ibiza (where we’re based).
Jamie: I’ve got some go to dishes but they will probably sound a bit wanky written down but to be fair I probably wouldn’t cook them if you guys were coming over I’d go for something more relaxed that we could do outdoors. I think I’d do spicy BBQed chicken with a Mexican street salad, rice, peas and some ice cold San Miguel.
Rich: BBQ season has just arrived in Ibiza so I’ve switched from cooking inside every night to BBQing on the terrace. In years gone by that might have meant a meat feast but I eat a mostly vegetarian diet these days so cauliflower, courgette, corn, onion, mushrooms, green beans, asparagus, maybe some root veg chips, padron peppers, a few homemade dips, rice, and some (hangover free) saltwater Er Boqueron beers if we’re feeling really posh.
WWD: What’s the worst thing you’ve eaten on tour?
Where ever we go we try and eat the local cuisine and any of their specialities and most of the time it’s great as we eat pretty much everything but fast food. We asked to try the local speciality in one place though and all we could understand for lack of accurate translation was that it was some kind of soup. Rich commented that the cheese in it was a bit weird but it actually turned out to be chunks of pigs stomach lining.
WWD: What’s the best meal you’ve had this week?
Jamie: As much as I like high end food I reckon the nicest thing I’ve had was some left overs from the night before in a toasted wrap with loads of hot sauce was my favourite.
Rich: last nights was nice, can’t remember beyond that! I unfroze a couple of curries I’d made before (one adzuki bean, one chickpea and veg), with rice, and a spiced Asian BBQ fish thing, pretty tasty, quick and healthy.
WWD: While we’re on the subject of mouths and what not, yours play a big role in the new EP 😉 Talks us through the release on 2020 Vision. What was the process like?
It was a case of building your music in the same way as we normally would, but first we had to go and find the sounds from a huge bank of recorded vocals without proper labelling to look for sounds that sounded like a bass or clap or hat or whatever. Then we just got started without much agenda and saw what worked as we went along.
WWD: Where did the idea come from?
We decided to dig out a load of old samples from years ago and going through them found a huge library of recorded vocal parts and phrases. They had never felt suitable for our music when we got first them but on a second listen we thought it would be fun to make a track from just vocals and 2020 liked the concept for a whole EP in that style so we went ahead and did it.
WWD: What was the one thing you found most difficult about putting it together?
It was an arduous process finding suitable sounds for our needs amongst the endless unlabelled lists but the real challenge was making them sonically competitive with other music out there so it becomes something people can hear in a club environment rather than just listen to at home. We were also very wary that with only a limited sound source it could end up sounding very samey.
WWD: Delving behind the production for a minute, tell us about some of the plugins and how you used them to affect the sounds?
We did lots of filtering and EQing to separate the sounds on all of the tracks and then added various effects to give the simple tracks a little more character. With Fluent it’s all built around delays and Vowels we wanted to leave naked and keep the fact that there it was all from the mouth really obvious. Stutter is the one where we really went to town on the effects and aside from delays and standard stuff we built racks with multi layered random sample cutting.
WWD: What was the label’s reaction when you told them the concept behind the release?
Because 2020 have released some of our more left of centre stuff before we felt they would be the ones to send Vowels to and they were really into the track and said we should have a skype. We spoke to Ralph and Bobby at 2020 and they suggested doing a full EP in that concept.
WWD: Do you find yourself spending more time involved with the label rather than producing or do both work seamlessly around the two sides?
Sometimes it feels like you’re spinning plates a bit, but it’s our own silly faults if we take on too much stuff to overfill our days so we just have to get the balance right. That is an ongoing ambition…
WWD: Where to next? What are the big dates coming up for you guys?
Well we have our debut Essential Mix on BBC Radio 1 broadcasting in June which were buzzing about! Like most rave kids of the 90s we grew up listening to the essential mix every week, and as young DJs it’s one of the things you dream of doing. We also run a little free party in Ibiza every Sunday through summer at Veto, the first one of the summer is on 15th May so we’re looking forward to that starting too. We’ll be spending most of the summer on the rooftop practicing and learning our live show and BBQing stuff. Our next big plan is just to enjoy the summer. Time for a break from email, get back to nature, let loose and hopefully have a lot of fun.
Follow: Audiojack //2020 Vision