LOOKOUT: How did you decide to apply to 2007's RBMA in Toronto? Did your decision have anything to do with Toronto as the place where you began to study music?

DR: I'm friends with Scott C (The Incubator), who served as one of Montreal's "Mr. X"s that year. He urged me to apply. It was the first year I had ever heard of RBMA, so I applied without really knowing that much about it. The decision didn't have anything to do with Toronto being my hometown; it was, however, a really different experience of the city for me. I moved to Montreal when I was 16 so I never went clubbing in Toronto, and I wasn't really ever immersed in Toronto's electronic or hip-hop scenes. It was like being a tourist at home, considering the majority of my musical experiences in Toronto happened at The Rex and the Top o' the Senator (which doesn't exist anymore).

Did all of the members of Indigone Trio apply for RBMA? How did you take your personal experience and translate it into something that the entire band could benefit from?

I was the only member of Indigone that applied to RBMA. Being able to work closely alongside engineers and producers, I got enough of the technical language of recording and mixing to make the recording of our album, Cycles, a much more fluid process. The awareness of music as sound, and how to deal with different kinds of sound, has definitely influenced my composition since RBMA.

How was RBMA different from other workshops you’ve participated in like the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop and the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music?

It's pretty remarkable how similar they all are, actually. I often refer to RBMA to my jazz-inclined friends as the "Banff Centre for electronic production." They're quite similar in the sense that they foster immense amounts of creativity in a short timespan. In all of the workshops, there's an expectation that you're in a creative, artistic headspace the whole time. That phenomenon of having the artistic impulse always turned "on" is really refreshing, something I still find hard to replicate in my daily life. The only major difference I can think of was that for BMI, there were concrete deadlines - we had a reading session with a real live big band every two months, and we were expected to bring in significant amounts of new material to the reading. At Banff, too, there were concerts and shows to prepare for. RBMA wasn't structured around deadlines but there was definitely an awareness of the fact that we only had two weeks to make the most amount of music possible.

Having studied jazz performance at McGill, did you learn anything unexpected from artists who had never gone to school for music?

I was blown away by the inherent musicality of people that had little or no formal training. Our ears are our guide, anyway. One thing I took away was this sense of being able to break the rules – if it sounds like it works, then it does, regardless if it's theoretically totally correct.

What kind of relationships – friendly or work-related – did you make during RBMA? Have you kept any of them?

Sarah Linhares and I have been working together since RBMA. We knew each other through radio and didn't actually know that the other had applied, or that the other played music, before RBMA! I'm still in touch with some of the RBMA alumni from our term. Heliponto, a house producer from Belo Horizonte, Brasil, produced a track with me during RBMA that came out on her record, Eletronia, and we have another project together on a back burner. I'm still in touch with Mara TK, Kez YM, and Camplaix, among others, and I hope to work with them all again soon.

Do you have any advice for this year’s RBMA applicants?

Take your time with the application and be honest. I know the 17-page questionnaire can be daunting, but the reality is that the answers given throughout the 17 pages is how RBMA creates an instant 30-person family.

I want to re-iterate something I said at the info session. It may appear that RBMA is geared strictly towards "electronic music." It's not. It's a balance of electronic music production, and music creation of all kinds. I encourage anyone who's remotely interested in learning any element of electronic music production – from improvising with Live or Max/MSP to recording their own albums to producing hip-hop, electro, or whatever – to apply.

The Golden Child Disciple of J Dilla and Flying Lotus

Though his discography is rather thin, Hudmo’s status as the rising golden child of the UK Warp/LuckyMe/Wireblock community has long been established. He was Scottish DMC Champion and UK finalist at age fourteen, and the few EPs and compilations that have escaped his bedroom studio met with enormous critical acclaim. His Polyfolk Dance EP and his work with Mike Slott as Heralds of Change solidified his position as the heir apparent to Dilla’s legacy of chopped, distorted sample-based hip hop and Flying Lotus’ ongoing digital reconstruction of abstract hip hop production. At times listening to Butter, Hudmo seems to triumphantly achieve that “promised one” rhetoric, crafting furious, kinetic beats that tear forward through warped electronic melodies. Hudson bombards the tracks with layers of alternately polished and buzz saw synth lines, pushing them forward and gridding off their melodies with chopped vocal creations. Especially during the middle passage of “3.30,” “Trykk,” “Fruit Touch,” and “Zoooooom,” Hudmo seems to embrace and faithfully execute the dogma of turbo-charged glitch hop. At other times in the album, however, he seems bored by the limitations of the genre and transforms his vision into that of…

The R&B acid revisionist

At certain points throughout his career, Hudmo has expressed an infatuation with the potent pathos of contemporary R&B. His bootleg bass remix of Tweet’s jam “Ooops” is widely considered to be the song that directly preceded his signing to Warp. In interviews past, he has mentioned the looming possibility of joining Erykah Badu or Chris Brown in the studio someday soon. On Butter, his collaborations with vocalists Olivier Daysoul and Dam Funk stand in stark contrast to his other tracks; they operate under an entirely different aesthetic. Tracks like “Joy Fantastic,” “Tell Me What You Want From Me,” and the extraordinary break up song “I Just Decided” tweak the butter-smooth (no pun intended), nu-soul efforts of 80’s R&B classics like Belle Biv DeVoe by throwing their earnest hooks over enormously busy and glossy backing tracks. Hudmo’s effects work well enough with the flamboyance and vitality of his guest vocalists to give classic R&B a neon/day-glo facelift.  Olivier Daysoul in particular comes off like Slick Rick’s New Jack twin in his star turns on “Joy Fantastic” and “I Just Decided.” The eclecticism of Hudmo’s surreal subjection of R&B to his own eccentric means is eclipsed only by his turns as…

The Triumphant Abstraction

Two of the tracks off Butter that attracted the greatest prerelease buzz were the massive cuts “Fuse” and “Rising 5,” neither of which fit neatly into the artistic modes of Hudmo described above. These two are the true gems of the album. Both songs seem to incorporate elements of live instrumentation jammed through powerful electronic filters in ways that amplify digitally yet preserve entirely their   organic melody and vitality. They are too sprawling, too awe-inspiring to be considered hip hop; there is not an MC alive who could take on these massive constructions and make them his own. “Fuse” sounds as if some one took a triumphant yet tinny 8-bit synth line from an old Zelda game, remastered it a bajillion times and crafted a goddamn anthem out of it. Though Butter as an album is most likely stronger than the sum of its components, “Fuse” and “Rising 5” are its most exciting contributions. If these tracks are indicative of his newest assumed artistic identity, then we can expect exciting things in the future from Hudson Mohawke.

Though this cut isn't on the album Butter, it still ranks as one of Hudmo's most popular and innovative to date. Check out Hudson Mohawke's bass remix of Timbaland's beat for Tweet!

Hudson Mohawke - Ooops

The artists include the headliners:

Hudson Mohawke (Warp):
There is no musician working today who is able to dart between the sample-heavy nature of hip hop production and the glitch-ridden breakdown of digital cacophony with the sheer sense of joy and artistry that Hudson Mohawke works into his tracks. A founding member of Glasgow’s LuckyMe collective, Hudson Mohawke recently released his debut album Butter on the iconic Warp Records. Some say he is picking up where label mate Flying Lotus left off; as the leading light of eccentrically melodic leftfield hip hop. The rest are just thrilled to see where he goes from here; live and on record, Hudson Mohawke is one of the most promising and dynamic producers out.

Mike Slott (LuckyMe)
Once known primarily for his work in the duo Heralds of Change with Hudson Mohawke, Slott’s solo releases, including a remix for Flying Lotus and his new micro-album Lucky 9teen on LuckyMe, have established his diverse, innovative take on everything from free jazz to classical hip hop. His Flying Lotus “RobertaFlack” remix tells the whole story. Slott takes the track’s esoteric melodies and makes them pristine centerpieces, chopping the beats to a delirious glitch abstraction, all while shrouding his creation with a shifting ambience of digital haze that evokes a sense of rhythmic warmth rarely heard in electronic music.

And the RBMA inductees:

Poirier (Ninjatune)
The power of DJ/producer Poirier’s bass will blast through any flimsy attempt to classify his music. While the purists struggle to label his sound as dancehall, soca, or electro, Poirier just takes what needs from all three and unleashes the result in a raw dance floor frenzy. Poirier’s tracks are sparse landscapes of Caribbean drums made superhuman with pulsating, pitch-shifting, and infectious bass and synth patterns. His style evolves and tears through new genres constantly, leaving a trail of packed, chaotic dance floors in its wake.

Lunice (LuckyMe)
Lunice is Montreal’s proudest young son of the moment. A member of the LuckyMe Collective, Lunice has been blasting his progressive bass street-hop and rocking some legendary shows in Montreal lately, like the Pop Montreal Red Bull Megahurtz and even a spot opening for Flying Lotus at Club Lambi this past summer. Following a serious of remix collections and an EP with Al Ripken Jr, Lunice will most definitely be popping up on everyone’s radar after he’s through with the Red Bull Music Academy. Expect big, big things, people.

Amenta (UpMyAlley)
Toronto’s Amenta is an intriguing case. It’s easy to spot in her music influences ranging from jazz to soul, to R&B, to hip hop, to new wave, to modern electronic experimentalism, and on and on. Lucky for the listener, Amenta tends to blend all her composing elements into sleek yet soulful compositions with outstanding pop sensibilities. Add in a hugely dynamic stage presence and it becomes all too clear why Amenta is heading to the Red Bull Music Academy and beyond.

Ango (Noyes Records)
Ango unleashes nothing less than raw sonic digital fury onto the dancefloor. A treasured Montreal native, Ango has been blowing apart speakers at the infamous Turbo Crunk nights as well as his own Too Low Booty Throw Monthly parties. Catch him live before he blows up at the Red Bull Music Academy!

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