Interview: Current Value

The neuro master teaches us how to transcend to another level, and talks through the literal ups, downs, ins and outs of his new live show. James Russell finds out first-hand how he does it, and more importantly, how he does so much of it

From his Berlin and Warsaw bases, Tim Eliot has won plaudits from drum & bass insiders and neuro VIPs. Whether dabbling in modular with pal Dean Rodell as Machine Code or taking it on the road with his latest audio/visual project, Eliot has always been one to push the boundaries, and after 20 years in the game, that’s a lot of pushing!

“Nothing would bore me more than going back to what people expected me to be before,” he asserts. “I mean, I understand that they want to remember the old times, but that was all part of the whole path – it has nothing to do with now, and it would actually kill the creativity! That’s why I keep provoking… to see what’ll happen.”

And provoke he does. Tim’s new live show, CVAV, tests the limits of what’s expected from a live gig. With both audio and visuals controlled by Tim himself, it doubles the technical feats necessary for a modern live show.

FM: CVAV looks very impressive – and er, huge! There’s some complicated stuff going on there. What was the initial idea it sprang from?

Current Value: “It might look complicated, but simplicity was one of the things that we had in mind – so it must be working quite well! To have a dedicated video made for an audio track is one thing, but we wanted something a bit more interactive. If a kick drum hits, we wanted the whole display to light up in response. And the bigger the screen, the bigger the effect. It’s amazing to see.”

The lighting of the space must’ve had to be handled differently too…

“Yeah, I gave some instructions to have it darker than usual – fewer lasers and beams and stuff going on, and just in certain spots, so that the people really could enjoy the video. That can be very disturbing – people wouldn’t look at the video and then all of a sudden you’d have all these laser beams floating all across the room and then there’s not much left.”

Go on, then – let’s go down the rabbit hole. How does it all work?

“It was all very doable – since I’m using the Lemur app with Ableton, which means there’s a lot of MIDI stuff and Wi-Fi MIDI stuff already; it was actually quite easy to just involve another computer that’s doing the video stuff.”

So Lemur’s controlling two separate laptops – one for the audio and one for the video?

“Exactly, so we had to do some scripting to make sure that the signals went to the two computers at the same time – for example if I control the low-cut and high-cut filters in Ableton at the same time, these things should affect the brightness of the picture also or a colour – an effect coming in or something fading out.”

And then it was just about making Lemur control two things at once…

“Exactly. Lemur has certain behaviour parameters for knobs and faders – you can set the tension for a fader, or how fast it reacts to certain things; if it jumps back; if it hits the wall, something gets done for you. For me it’s about controlling as many interesting effects as possible and being able to make the set really juicy and interesting.

“It’s worked pretty well, and we haven’t had any major problems with projecting or sending the signal to the front-of-house, which is always an issue. We made sure beforehand that we could technically handle things like that perfectly. Shortly before one test set-up, the MacBook that handles the video stuff just wouldn’t come on. It wasn’t doing anything for five minutes. Eventually we found out that there was some kind of electromagnetic field under the performance table, and we had to get out of that field. The screen locks had kicked in for some reason, and that means the whole computer board was switched off. We held it up in the air and all of a sudden the thing came on!

“Other than that, we’re actually pretty safe with the whole thing… although there’s lots of Wi-Fi and MIDI signals, but some of that can be replaced with cables. It’s safer; there are too many phones on in the audience, and a lot of video and beamer stuff is controlled via Wi-Fi signals, so that can interfere. There’s a learning curve for all of that stuff, but it’s working fine – it’s more like a walk in the park! All the work’s been done beforehand, there’s no stressing out now and the crowd gives you something back; we’re happy to say that we’re quite enjoying it.”

So what’s next for Current Value?

“Well, what we’re looking for in this life isn’t going to be delivered by any show, by any audio signal, by any video content – we’re constantly looking for something else because we’re not rooted in this world. You’re never going to be satisfied – that’s the whole point and that’s what you have to constantly change, constantly push, constantly find something else.”

Another boundary you often push is that of loudness. What’s your attitude to loudness?

“It’s a sort of competition that goes on. It’s necessary to survive within the music around you. But it’s also in the business side of things; people don’t want to sign tracks that aren’t loud. I guess the purpose of it all is probably to evolve things further; to keep people’s jaws dropped; to have something actually going on instead of just, ‘Oh yeah, that’s quite nice’. Nice isn’t going to do it at the end of the day. Nice isn’t going to win anything. Nice isn’t going to progress anything.”

So does every Current Value track have to go balls-to-the-wall, maximum bang-for-your-buck?

“I’m not pushing it too hard now with loudness,

but if you think, you can get certain things right, and then you can make quite loud tracks. The truth is, at the end of the day, there’s boundaries that you can’t really break. It’s physics – if you want to be loud you have to sacrifice bass, and the other way round. Are we being louder or are we weakening signal quality?

“Of course there’s tricks – there’s psychoacoustics. You have to know quite a bit about it to actually make things work, but in the end it’s still tricks. Noisia had an interesting statement to make on the Drum&BassArena awards: ‘People, it’s not about the loudness, it’s not about how loud the snare hits, it’s not about blah blah blah, it’s about the musical content’… and they’re right. I think we should all step back a bit and take more space to actually do what we like instead of just pushing the boundaries. Maybe one day we’ll decide to go 6dB down and start doing it the way it’s supposed to be.”

Those guys have given you a lot of support – always singing your praises on Noisia Radio…

“They’re in their own league – I’m grateful to have support and inspiration as well. And I’m inspiring them as well so it’s back and forth, and that connects people; it propels everything and you want to make more tunes; there’s a bit of fire again and it makes it more worth doing. I’ve not met producers and artists yet that have distanced themselves so much from their own product. Noisia just look at it, they analyse it – totally cold, as if it was someone else doing it – and sitting down, reviewing it, rehearsing, doing it again. They really take the time; I’ve never seen people doing that in that way. It’s really impressive, and it shows you they’re not snobs.”

What about you? Can you take that step back from your own music?

“I’m very distanced from my own product as well. I’ve developed a skill set to do what I want to do. In as little time as possible, I sit down and I click together the tune as far as I can, and then I press play after half an hour maybe, and eventually I’m 60, 70, 80 percent there.

“That’s one of the biggest problems of producers: they constantly listen to a loop for example and then they fall out… yeah, you’ve been listening to it for fucking two hours! How can you still like it? If it’s good and you don’t want to stop listening to it, that’s something else; they’re looking for what’s wrong, and then they keep listening.

“The training aspect of the whole thing is really important. That’s why I keep telling people to listen to stuff before they do anything. Actually see what’s going on in the music. To know what you want and then to have the analytical ability to step back and really honestly look and then really listen. It’s not magic, it’s training!”

Presumably, you must’ve had your moments when you couldn’t get anything done…

“That used to happen a long time ago. It happened quite often actually, but in the last few years I have a sense of whether something is going to work out or not. When I have an idea, there’s still something like a revision going on – you know if it’s really worth sitting down and keeping going, or to just do something else. I used to stress myself out if I hadn’t made a tune for a week. I mean it was the way for me – it had to be like that.”

What is it that you’re looking for these days?

“Anything could inspire a new direction. Maybe I’ll pick up some jump up ideas, because I love some of that stuff. It’s a very hard scene, jump up. You don’t just get into the scene like that. Capital J played a mix on MixCloud and it was about 186bpm – like ridiculously fast. As someone that comes from neurofunk, I thought it was ridiculous, and then I listened back to some neurofunk set and I thought, how boring, how disappointing. I mean the tracks sounded much better on the neurofunk, but the vibe was so dead. Even jump up at 172 to 174… it just doesn’t work – no one will play a set like that. The most important thing I think for the jump up producers’ side of things is to be really, really fast with your ideas, otherwise you get lost in technicalities, and that’s exactly what happens in

“Nice isn’t going to do it at the end of the day. Nice isn’t going to progress anything”