THE TRACK: OC & Verde, Indica
Ben O’Connor and Jon Verde discuss their latest track’s conception
Yoshitoshi, 2018
With their distinctive, mystical sound and releases on labels including VIVa and Knee Deep In Sound, OC & Verde – aka Ben O’Connor and Jon Verde – have garnered support from some of the biggest DJs in the world including Adam Beyer, Maceo Plex and Joseph Capriati. FM headed to their Lancashire studio to find out how they made rolling, proggy monster Indica in Logic Pro, and discuss the pitfalls of sampling ‘exotic’ vocals.
How did Indica come about?
Jon Verde: “We found the vocal sample in an old sample pack that featured a load of Rajasthani vocals that this guy had recorded. We played around with it quite a bit to get it to sound a bit fuller – you can hear on the video that the original doesn’t sound anything like what we finished with. We made it fit the track with the reverb and the EQ and we pitched it down a couple of semitones to make it sound a little bit more eerie.”
Do you have specific keys you’ll usually work in?
JV: “We’d already come up with a couple of melodic ideas in another project and the vocal had to be pitched down to fit, but that suited it; it made it more eerie and a bit darker which suits our style more. We don’t work in specific keys, but it’s always minors because it sounds a bit darker.”
Did you have to change the melodies or did everything sit together from the off?
JV: “Yeah it was one of those where it just came together really, really quickly. The arpeggiator that we’d come up with just fit perfectly over the top of the vocal. It left it enough room to breathe, and I think we moved things around slightly arrangement-wise just to give the vocal a bit of space.”
What kind of vibe were you trying to go for with the track?
Ben O’Connor: “Well, Solomun had been playing quite a lot of our stuff, so we kind of wanted to go down the road of not-too-tough techno. We originally had a tougher kick on it, and it was a lot
more pounding, a lot more driving. We’d decided that didn’t work so we took it off and put a lighter kick on it. We thinned the bass out as well, made it a lot less driving, and added some more melodies. We like Solomun playing our tracks so we like to give him stuff that sounds like the things that he plays!”
Will you often tailor productions for a specific DJ?
BOC: “Well, we always keep within our sound, but if there are DJs playing our tracks then obviously we want to keep them playing our tracks. So we try to stick within the style of what they’ll play, which is also the sort of thing we’re going to be playing anyway. If you start throwing curveballs too much they’re not going to play those tracks, or it’s going to be harder for the tracks to get signed to the label you want.” JV: “How did you describe our style the other day?”
BOC: “We’re kinda like the peak time of Solomun’s set, and the warm up of Adam Beyer’s set. That’s where we fit, we’re kind of in the middle. That’s that’s the lane we’re creating for ourselves, and that’s what we did with this track.”
Was getting the track signed smooth sailing?
JV: “No it wasn’t actually, because labels were a little bit concerned about the vocal and where the vocal came from. They
“The vocal had to be pitched down to fit, but that suited it; it made it more eerie and a bit darker which suits our style more”
didn’t want to offend anybody!”
BOC: “Yeah, there’ve been incidents recently where people used Eastern-sounding vocals and [it turned out that] they had been prayers; there’s been a bit of backlash. So we had to investigate what the vocal actually said!”
What does the vocal say?
BOC: “It doesn’t say anything! It’s just a chant. But a few labels have said they’re not taking tracks with vocals on like that at the moment. Solomun issued an apology because he [unwittingly] played the Islamic call to prayer, and Dax J did a similar thing. So there was a bit of a kick-off about that. All our tunes do have that sort of vibe. We don’t really pay attention to what the actual lyrics are, just the sound. Artbat were gonna remix it for us but then, because they’d had trouble with a vocal like that, they decided against it. So we just put it out as a single track. We’d done stuff with Yoshitoshi before and we wanted to do something for Sharam [Tayebi, American-Iranian DJ]. He wasn’t bothered by the vocal, we’d got it checked out; he’s been hammering it all summer.”