Here comes the fun…
Despite being involved in the most serious of all dance music scenes, Gaist are keen to point out exactly how much fun they have in the studio when they make their tracks. Deeply suspicious of this unorthodox approach, the ever-cynical
probe the pair about their supposedly entertaining working practice.
: You guys are very keen on having fun while you produce. What’s that all about? SA: “Well, that’s fundamental, isn’t it? That’s the core thing that goes straight through to our DJ sets and productions – everything really. If we don’t enjoy it, then what’s the point of doing it? We could go and be successful in other careers that we don’t enjoy. So we want to enjoy this one, and subsequently I think that helps us be successful.”
: How does this fun approach work on a practical level? AW: “It normally starts with me taking some ideas and putting them down in Live, so I can get an idea of how the track is going to go – a direction. Then I’ll come to the main studio at Stu’s, and that’s when Stu has his input and we start to really build the track.
“If I’ve missed something, Stu will say ‘What about if we try this?’. So there will suddenly be two sets of ideas going into one track, and as a duo, that works. Sometimes, when I hit a brick wall, I can turn up and go, ‘I’ve got no idea where this is heading,’ and Stu will suggest where to take it next. Before we know it, we’ll both be back into the track again. It’s always like a ‘eureka’ moment for us.” SA: “Initially, the process is additive – we kind of throw things in there, then hand it over to the other person and see if they like what’s been laid down.
“Being a duo, that’s one unique thing we have. I sometimes feel like producers that are in their own studios by themselves with no outside perspective from another person can end up shelving projects. We very rarely give up on a project, because we can get an honest opinion from each other right away, and get new ideas and inspiration. A producer that’s in a studio by themselves might say, ‘I’ll come back to this another day’… and then they probably won’t!
“These days, it’s a bit of a cliche that a producer will have hundreds of unfinished tracks on their computer. We genuinely don’t fit into this mould – we’ll either work something out, or completely sack it off and move onto something else. I think it’s a productive way of producing.”
: When working together in the studio, do you have individual roles? SA: “I think Adam takes the lead on percussion. Having been a percussionist in a band, he can hear rhythms before he’s even laid them down. He’ll hand it over to me, and that can trigger another idea. So we don’t have any set formula. I can have my headphones on. working on something else on my laptop, and I can just about hear the project that Adam’s working on, so I can suggest changes when they come to me. So it’s a situation where we both contribute. AW: “[Ableton] Live really works for us as well, because you can just chuck ideas in and pull them out.” SA: “Yeah, it’s good for jamming. We’re very much like a band jamming in a garage!”
: How did Mind come about? SA: “One day, we had a conversation between ourselves – we decided we weren’t hitting the level of production we wanted to. Everything we’d written up to that point didn’t feel like it had hit the mark. We felt we needed to really focus our efforts rather than being slapdash and saying it’s ‘good enough’. And we started Mind the very same day!
“We decided we needed to really focus our attention, and so that’s what we did. I feel like it’s the first time we were really, really brutally honest with ourselves, and that made us apply everything we’d learned up to that point. As a result, Mind became the lead track of an EP that ended up doing really well for us!”
“We very rarely give up on a project, because we can get an honest opinion right away”