The Track: Pablo Bolivar

Culprit, 2017

The Catalonian king of chilled-out techno Pablo Bolivar has appeared on the cream of Spanish labels including Regular, Software and Dpress Industries, and in his thirteen year-long career he’s dropped a whopping six albums, the last of which was released by his own label Seven Villas. Future Music headed over to his Barcelona studio to find out how he achieved the haunting sounds of

Encore Une Fois, which – thankfully or regrettably, depending on your personal preference – is not a cover of Sash!’s Euro house banger of the same name.

Your sound would broadly be described as techno. Do you have a more specific definition of it?

“I like to call it deep techno or dub techno sometimes... it’s not really bangin’ techno, you know?”

What do you think really defines your sound?

“The atmosphere and melancholic feeling, the deep chords and dark vibes.”

What inspired Encore Une Fois?

“I created this track especially for Culprit. From the beginning I wanted to make the brother of All Clear – the main track of the EP, so All Clear was the inspiration for this track. It was recorded and produced in my studio in Barcelona. I think it took me a week.”

You use a lot of classic old-school sounds in this track, but alongside modern production techniques including some quite strong sidechain compression.

“Yes, I really like the classic analogue sounds– they’re all raw drums with not too many minimal sounds or too many samples from libraries. For this track I mix in the kind of deep trance or more melodic elements with the sidechain with the raw drums and percussion... I always try to rework the classic sound, because classic is good but... I think it’s not good to ‘abuse’ the classic sound too much!”

You made practically all the sounds on this track yourself from analogue instruments, is that correct?

“I used the Analog Rytm from Elektron and then the DSI Prophet-6. Maybe a couple of shakers from a library, but not that much else!”

You use the Analog Rytm a lot in the track. What is it about the instrument that you like so much?

“I love the sound of the hi-hats and how you can customise them. It’s a powerful machine I think! When you add a little bit of distortion it’s amazing. The depth of the machine helps you find special processes for the hi-hats and snares where you can add the second layer with some white noise and it makes the sound even more stronger. I really like it!”

Why so much Prophet-6?

“In this track it’s like the main synth, it’s between a bassline and a chord that is doing a long chord like a pad in the background. I found the right chord in the Prophet with the chord memory, and it changes off of the tom. I spent a lot of time trying to find the right notes for that line. Yeah I think the Prophet is the perfect tool to make these these kind of sounds, I’m really happy with this synth!”

You use a lot of analogue instruments, but predominantly digital effects. Why is that?

“When I record the audio from hardware I try to use its own effect, but yes, but sometimes I need some extra effects with a proper automatisation. It can be difficult to do that with the hardware machine.”

“There are no rules in making music. I encourage everybody to watch as many tutorials as possible, try out all the techniques, but don’t limit yourself to what you’ve learned. Experiment and have fun. I feel like every great producer has made their own rules and has their own unique sound.”

In Encore Une Fois there are sounds that will only play once in the entire track. What’s the thinking behind that?

“Yeah, I try always to find the cleanest details. In this case in this track it’s just those moments, those little... ‘drops’ I call them, at just the right moment. So yeah, these kind of the details make tracks a little bit special.”

In the video you talk about speaking – you like getting the getting the synth line to speak.

“Yeah so it’s like... so it’s not a flat sound. It’s like one synthesiser will do a line, and the other is replying to that voice. In these in this track for example it’s just in the break down where these are like three or four times the synthesisers are ‘speaking’.”

With some of the resampled synth lines, you play them back warped in Simpler, and you used the beats mode for that. Why beats mode?

“Yes so it doesn’t change the harmonics, it keeps it in the same tone even if you change the tempo. Simpler is super easy to use and it’s a nice trick to use in tracks, I used to use it a lot. Like when you put a chord into there and you play it in different octaves, sometimes that can have a really nice result.

What kind of reaction had you had to the track?

I play the track in almost every show and the dancefloor reaction is really cool, I dont get bored of it!