Adultnapper's Australian Debut

As Adultnapper prepares himself for a flight to Ecquador, where he will play the Tripy Tripy Fest before heading to Australia for his debut tour, beginning in Melbourne on September 30th, Casey van Reyk managed to snag some of his time away from current rehearsals. With a new record label, a bunch of new singles, new collaborative projects both on stage and in the studio, and a new album due in February 2012, there was plenty to talk about. 

What are you rehearsing for? I have a joint live show with one of the artists from my new label, his name is Black Light Smoke and we have our first live performances in November so we’re in rehearsals pretty much non stop when I’m here.

Is that the Scissor and Thread label showcase in Washington? Well, there is going to be one before that, probably in New York on November 18th, it just hasn’t been announced yet; we’re just figuring it out. But there is going to be one in New York, one in DC, one in Miami, one in Chicago, we think, and one in LA. We are trying to do all the [label] showcases before the end of the year because after that it goes in to my album tour stuff which I’ll be doing solo.

What is the name of your project with Black Light Smoke? It’s going to be Lightbluemover vs Black Light Smoke. On Scissor and Thread I will only release as Francis Harris or Lightbluemover, which is slower than any Adultnapper stuff, and a little bit more electronic, a little bit more analogue sounding. And then my solo Francis Harris album (titled Leland) is mostly…umm… I don’t know how to describe it. It’s some house but it’s more like IDM house, or pervert style house… sort of neo classical and ambient and some jazz… stuff like that. It’s quite different from anything else that I do so it’s going to be under my own name. Plus it’s a requiem for my father so it’s a very personal album.

How long have you been working on it? Well let’s see, my father passed away in February of 2010 and I started working on it almost immediately after, in March 2010, so it’s been around a year and a half in the making.

Is the thought of sharing the album daunting at all? Not any more. The albums gone through many different forms, it was ‘maybe’ going to be on several different labels and in the end I started my own label (Scissor and Thread) to do it because I felt it was too personal to have anybody else put it out. The main comment would be that it’s really heavy, you know, it’s very emotional, and I think it’s difficult to have someone give a criticism about something that’s so personal. So I figured I’m not going to tailor this album to someone else’s label, with the caveat of adding a clubbier track or adding, I don’t know, something. Always adding one element because that’s what people like to do when they sign records, especially albums.

Francis Harris "lostfound" [clip] by Scissor and Thread

Because they need to have input in one way or another? Yeah. It’s proper A & R but… I made this album, I wrote this album, I engineered this album, I mixed this album in a bigger studio, much different from anything I do in dance music, and I sat in and mastered the album with Joe Lambert. I was part of the entire process so I didn’t want to hand it over to somebody who wanted to do something else with it. The other thing is that the album became something that really didn’t fit the mould of what current dance music is. I mixed the album at like minus 10dv, in a very old, almost 70’s fashion on an SSL board… very soft, not loud, with lots of dynamic. It was produced, mixed and mastered for a vinyl format.

Everybody is so gloom and doom about the vinyl industry because all they think about is sales, they’re not really thinking about why they’re putting out vinyl and what the purpose of putting out vinyl is. People who are putting out vinyl because they think oh, well, it’s good promo to put out vinyl and people are going to buy it more if they know it came out on vinyl… those are completely the wrong reasons to put out records on vinyl. If you’re making a record in Abelton and it’s never touching anything outside of a computer, there is no point in putting it on a vinyl record anyway. There is nothing analogue about it so why take it out of the format that it was made?

 

So what did you use to make the album? Primarily, the album is made of recordings. There are no soft synths… there’s hardly any synthesizers, really. Most of the sounds that sound electronic were found sound recordings that I created. There was a digital aspect to it but the source of everything is an actual recording. No samples just lots of field recordings, lots of sounds, and a lot of percussion instruments. There’s live cello, guitar, drums, sax, violin and lots of different little weird instruments I collect.

Are you playing most of the instruments or do you have guest artists on the album? I play guitar and piano and I do all the programming and the drums. Greg Paulus from No Regular Play does trumpet, my friend Emile plays cello and there were other players on it too. The vocalist on three of the songs is Danish singer Gry and she’s actually one of the main artists on the label that we’ll be producing and promoting in the next year. Were going to be doing a couple of singles by her and a full-length album. She’s a really amazing performer, vocalist and pianist.

The first single (lostfound) from the Francis Harris album, Leland, was due on the 20th of September? Yeah but there’s been a delay. Basically the process of the record is very specific. Hardly any of the artwork is done with a computer, everything is photographs and photocopies and everything is hand stamped. We get deliveries of the photocopies and everyone has to be there stamping them. The fed ex delivery was about 3 days late…

I actually want to take some on my trip to Australia and see if there are any shops that want them as it saves on the shipping. That’s another thing with the label we’ve been doing; I’ve been bringing records to my shows and selling them at my shows, which is very old school, and it’s worked. Every show I’m selling like 10 records.

The album is due in February? Yeah and the second single is in November, which is sort of a noise / jazz / ambient piece with two Black Light Smoke remixes that are fucking mind blowing and than a remix by NSI. It’s such a huge honour to have NSI remix it because they don’t really do any remixes and it’s a really epic, beautiful, amazing piece. So I’m really excited about that single, we think it’s going to be a big single for the label. The Mathew Herbert remix of lostfound also… he’s done a dub version too which is incredible.


Francis Harris "lostfound" (Mattthew Herbert's Let Yourself Go Mix) [clip] by Scissor and Thread  

In between that I have an Adultnapper featuring Black Light Smoke on vocals coming on Poker Flat in November, a Lightbluemover coming out on My Favorite Robot and a Lightbluemover vs Black Light Smoke coming on Supplement Facts. Then I have a few singles coming out with M.A.N.D.Y., one out in October and one in November. And all the Frank and Tony records! There’s like 10 singles and an album coming. 

Australian Tour Dates: 
30.09 SUBSONIC MUSIC FESTIVAL LAUNCH FEAT ADULTNAPPER, WORD BAR, MELBOURNE, VIC
01.10 SUBSONIC FESTIVAL LAUNCH FEAT ADULTNAPPER, BREWS BROTHERS MICROBREWERY, BRISBANE, QLD
03.10 SUBSONIC & CHEMISTRY PRESENT ADULTNAPPER, FAVELA, SYDNEY, NSW

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