Kevin McKay
The Glasgow Underground boss tells FM about his life in electronic music
Kevin McKay has been producing and DJing on the Glasgow club scene since the early ’90s. He’s arguably best known as the boss of Glasgow Underground, the label he founded in ’97, which has racked up an extensive release list featuring the likes of Romanthony, CamelPhat and Mateo & Matos, alongside Mckay’s own tracks.
In the mid ’00s, he found himself working behind-the-scenes on several chart hits, as a co-producer in Linus Loves and behind the ’boards for Mylo’s breakthrough LP Destroy Rock & Roll.
FM caught up with him at ADE 2017.
How did you get started making music?
“I started as a DJ. I moved to Glasgow to go to university in ’89, and this club was just around the corner. I went there clubbing and was like, ‘Wow, what is this?’ I’m a guy from a small town on the west coast listening to the charts on the radio… I thought ‘fuck that’. I’d never heard any of this stuff – Strictly Rhythm, Nu Groove – I got into buying the records, then making mix tapes.
“Everyone who was DJing was making tracks to try and get themselves a name, or more gigs. I started making music with a friend who had a basic sampler, an Ensoniq EPS 16+, a Roland D70, which was pretty unfashionable at the time, and a little Soundcraft 12-channel mixer. We just started putting tracks together. I was the guy that had some musical experience but wasn’t great on the music front. I was slowly trying to work out how the people I thought were amazing made their music.”
“I had a lot of ideas of how I wanted the music to sound – a deeper house sound, which was unusual for British producers at the time. I kept having ideas for new tracks, and my friend would musically try to make them happen with me.”
Have you got your eye on any new studio gear?
“At the moment I’m getting really back into sampling. A lot of the stuff I’m doing is just stuff that complements sampling, and I’m making more classic house tracks. I’m not looking to reinvent the wheel; I’m not Mr Modular Synthesis. For me, that palette is quite well defined, and so I’ve got a really solid bank of stuff I really like. The most recent thing I got were the Lethal Audio plugins, they’re really nice. It’s similar to the Nexus but cheaper… So, great!”
What’s going to be big in electronic music over the next year?
VIDEO ON “The one that everyone is always THE DVD trying to answer. For me I felt a real resurgence in proper house music. People like Roger Sanchez and Kerri Chandler can be really affected by the press because maybe there’s been too much tech house recently? Everything’s got like ‘here’s a hoover noise’ and ‘here’s a sample from Dominator.’ It’s all got a little bit predictable. People are looking for that more authentic, more livesounding house music.
“I’m excited to see where it goes. Maybe we’ll see people mixing up those classic house and disco flavours with a bit of the energy from tech house, because people still want to have excitement on the dancefloor. You can still have that energy but without the hip-hop samples and stuff that has come to typify tech house.”
What production tips can you share with FM readers?
“The best tip is to be yourself. Don’t copy anyone else. Find out what you love, what really means something to you, and just do it. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. You’re never going to be successful copying someone else, but you’ve got a chance of being successful if you do what means the most to you.”
What’s your current studio setup like?
“It’s super-simple. I used to have all the analogue gear, Roland this, Jupiter that, a bunch of outboard, different delays and effects and all on a desk. In the end I got fed up of how complicated everything was, and so now I have a Mac and a set of really nice speakers – some Dynaudio BM15 actives. They don’t make them any more but they sound nice for creating on. Someone else always mixes my records, so I can enjoy the groove.
“Then it’s just Ableton and my favourite plugins – Korg, Arturia, The Lethal Audios – and sampled sounds that I’ve collected over the years.”
What made you choose Ableton Live?
“I started out with Cubase on an Atari. It was really simple. When you could first make music inside a computer, most of the DAWs were really glitchy, and Pro Tools was great but it didn’t evolve. Then Ableton came along and it was cool… and Ableton 5 and 6.... Wow! Warping. I’m into samples, and now I’ve got warping – great idea, how come no-one else is doing this? So I switched from Pro Tools to Ableton and I was amazed at how easy it was to pick up. Nothing’s come along to top it.”
What’s the one piece of studio gear you couldn’t do without?
“Ableton Live! If I didn’t have that, I’d be back to the drawing board with something else! I’d be watching YouTube to find out how to do things. I can already feel the panic starting to go through my body!”
What’s the latest addition to your studio?
“The Lethal Audio plugins – the rompler and synth. It’s great for bass. I get a lot of stuff in at the label and you can hear they’re using the Arturia plugins and all the analogue modelling for bass. It’s great, but with modern production levels and how loud the records are, if you’ve used something like the Arturia Moog, it might sound great, but if you look at the wave it’s moving around over time and not changing with the BPM of the track. That’s fine but you’re not going to be able to get a solid level of power – that feeling where you’re in a club and you can feel this kick and bass just perfectly ‘there’. You’re going to struggle to do that with a synth that’s trying to model analogue behaviour and doing its own little things.
“The more sample-based synths are perfect for that because the bass doesn’t change. For really solid, powerful house tracks, you don’t want the bass to be too crazy.”
What’s your dream bit of gear?
“If I had Deadmau5’s studio, then fantastic. If I had the budget and the time to create something like that – but even then I’d still have to work it all, so I’d need Deadmau5’s studio and an engineer. Someone to bounce ideas off. An amazing studio, plus an amazing engineer. That’s the dream right there.”
When approaching a new track, where do you start?
“I tend to find the hook of the track first – what’s going to be the main focus of the track? I like tracks that correspond to classic song structures without sounding too much like a pop record rather than a club record. I still like the hook and relief from it. So the two hooks that are going to play off each other, and then maybe the middle eight. Once I have those three things, then I’m excited about making the track.”
What are you working on right now?
“I’m trying to finish an album that’s been thwarted by people not clearing samples, which is a bit annoying. I was 14 tracks done and now I’m back to eight tracks because I’ve had six samples knocked back.”
want to know more? Keep up with Kevin’s latest news at: www.kevinmckay.co.uk
“An amazing studio, plus an amazing engineer. That’s the dream right there”