Sounds Defy Gravity

Tectonic head-honcho and dubstep producer Rob “Pinch” Ellis gives some nice words and inspirations in this week’s Fact Magazine online. The Bristol-based music guru gets into many subjects including sound mastering, Flying Lotus, the Tectonic label and the future of dubstep. Read the entire article HERE. Thanks to Fact Magazine for this excerpt.

Of all the artists assembled for Tectonic Plates Vol.2, Flying Lotus is perhaps the least expected. Was his track something he’d already made then offered to you, or did he produce it with Tectonic in mind?

“I’m not sure what his original intentions with it were. He just sent me a bunch of stuff and that was the one I picked out. But I think he kind of finished it off for the project – what I heard originally was the demo version, though I didn’t know that at the time. Without wanting to sound like some kind of tempo nazi or whatever [laughs] – I wanted it to be within mixable range and he’s gone for 142bpm which is within the  normal mixable range for dubstep. To be honest with you, Flying Lotus isn’t normally a Tectonic artist, neither is Benga, and neither is Joker really – but the tracks that I’ve pulled for this compilation I think have got a very Tectonic feel about them. There is definitely a family element to the label, and you’ll always see regular faces on the label like myself and 2562 and people who’ve sort of come through being part of the Tectonic family, but also I like to think that it’s a place where people who don’t always concentrate on a sound that’s particularly Tectonic have the chance to put something out which does fit in with that sound. So for example the Benga track is quite a techno-y one and Flying Lotus’s one isn’t really a dancefloor tune but it’s got that deep, cinematic sound which I think is quite Tectonic.”

One thing that’s always struck me about Tectonic is how well-organized it is; everything is done efficiently and to a very high standard. So I wondered, is this the first label you’ve ever been involved in running?

“No, it’s not the first label I was involved with. The first would have been Subtext which was 2004, put out a couple of Vex’d tracks. That was really where I first was involved with every stage of vinyl manufacture through to the distribution and things; once you’ve done it once and you’ve made some kind of successful route into it, then following on from that isn’t anywhere near as big a step. We’ve been quite lucky in having a lot of support from the distribution company that we use, Baked Goods: they helped put us in touch with designers who can organise the CD layouts and so on so that we just need to feed them the photographic images and they can arrange it and so on…”