Interview: Container

Ren Schofield’s Container project returns with his fourth album, called (as were the previous three), LP. The saturated beats and mangled basslines remain thankfully intact. Hamish Mackintosh caught up with the man himself

Ren Schofield seems a man wilfully out of sync with the high-gloss, DAW-reliant electronic music production values of the modern age, and you can’t help but love him for it. Container, his musical alias, has long been known for a DIY ethos to techno that’s been honed since debut album, LP, in 2011. Visceral, crushed beats vie with hypnotic, tape-saturated synth melodies and basslines to make the intense ‘avant-techno’ that’s become synonymous with Container.

Previously based in Providence, Rhode Island, Schofield’s geographical move to London has, thankfully, seen him lose none of the wilfully perverse musical rough edges and new album, LP, is a brilliant assault on the senses as well as the dancefloor. Future Music caught up with Ren at his new London HQ to discuss said new album and his refreshing devotion to a smaller amount of choice musical options in a world obsessed with a ‘more is more’ ethic. Proof that you don’t need the newest whistles and bells to make compelling contemporary dance music if you stay – and there’s no other way of putting it – self-contained.

Having recently decamped to London, what gear made the journey over the Atlantic with you from your studio in the States?

“Basically, I brought over the bare essentials that I need to be able to play live. So, I brought my Roland MC-909, my Vermona filter, my four-track cassette (a great little Tascam 414), a couple of delay pedals and my computer. That’s pretty much all the gear I have in London so far. Back home I’ve left guitars and a couple of weird keyboards.”

Given that you’ve recorded using cassettes for a long time now, are you surprised by its resurgence?

“In a certain way, yes.”

How has the move across the Atlantic affected your music-making process?

“I’m not sure… it’s hard to say at this point. It’s a bit more cluttered. Back home, my whole room was my studio, so I had a lot of space to do everything pretty comfortably whereas now it’s a much smaller environment and I have to be more concerned about neighbours being home and it’s a little more restrictive in a way. At the same time it’s maybe good as it’s just a different way of working on things. ”

Did all of your studio gear make the International transition in one piece?

“Well, I’m used to travelling with it all the time for shows but it’s always in a state of disrepair because of that. Recently a lot of the gear has been in pretty bad condition, so each show tends to be quite stressful as to whether everything is going to work or not. There’s usually some problem I have to troubleshoot. So, the answer is: it’s in as terrible condition as it usually is!”

An older bit of kit like the Tascam probably takes a fair bit of looking after to keep it ‘match fit’?

“That’s actually a bit more durable than some of the other things because I feel like the circuitry in it isn’t as complex as, say, the MC-909, which can’t take the abuse so much. The 909 is something that was built more with being used in a home studio and just sitting there and never being transported and tossed around by baggage handlers!”

So, all the synth-lines and basslines on the album come from the MC-909?

“Yeah. I originally had the MC-303, which came out when I was a teenager and I thought that was great. When that died, I upgraded to the MC-909 because I was familiar with it and I just know how to use them so well. I’ve tried switching to other machines to try it out, but I really don’t enjoy the process of learning a new piece of hardware very much. So, while I was learning other bits of kit, I just realised that I could already do everything I was trying to do on the MC-909. There are a few things I’d add to it and be able to do with it but, for the most part, I like it, as I’m so familiar with how it works.”

Having had an MC-303 previously, FM wondered if the 909 is a little less complex to program?

“Absolutely. Once you get used to using the 909, the MC-303 definitely feels like a goofy toy! It does take a little while to get how the programming works but once you’ve got it you can do so much with them. For me personally, you want to be making music and not spending all your time learning how to use new machines.”

Does the MC-909 get routed through the Vermona filter for most of the tracks?

“The Vermona Lancet is on probably most of the tracks on the album. It’s cool.”

You’re known for using the cassette machine in your process, where did it stem from?

“I guess I just always had a four-track around since when I was a kid, so it just naturally made its way into my setup. I just quickly realised that it could be used as a mixer as well as being able to play tapes at the same time, which is a cool feature to have. It’s just something I’ve stuck with, really and it would be pretty weird not to use it now.”

So, is there any software used in your process?

“Basically, on the album the only software used is a VST/AU called Shepherd by Blind Dog Designs (www.blinddogdesigns.com). The guy who designed it hit me up a couple of years back to see if I’d be interested in making some preset patches for it, but I’d literally never used any computer music programme in my life so I told him I might not be the best person to do it but I’d give it a shot. It’s pretty easy software to learn and I had a lot of fun making the patches with it. During that process I

ended up using it for a couple of songs so ended up having to bring the computer out live just to play those songs. I’m trying to phase it out a bit, so I don’t have to take the computer out live, but it’s still used on three tracks on the new album.”

What about the pedals you mentioned earlier?

“I just have the Boss DD-6 and 7 delays, classics.”

When you’re putting a new track together do you jam it all then arrange it all afterwards?

“A little bit of both. I might go into it with a beat in mind that I can type in in step mode and I can then build things around that. Or maybe a looser thing of just tapping it out and putting it all together… it just depends. It’s easy for me to do things quickly on the MC-909 although there are other machines where you could do it more quickly. For example, if you were trying to program a part that was in 3/4 then a part that was in 5/4 then, in order to program it in you’d have to make it, so the pattern was 15 measures long instead of just having one part that just repeats three times or five times. You need to think that out in advance and it does require a lot of extra button-pushing which is kind of annoying.”

Do you envisage yourself moving on from your beloved 909 at any point?

“I suppose I’ll have to one day, but I really don’t want to think about that just yet. I learned it pretty much through experimenting with it and you can figure out all the basics of what you need to do as time goes on. You’ll discover something it does and eventually I’ll maybe look at the manual and go ‘wow, you can do that with it too’! ”

Anything you’re keen to add to the musical pallet?

“To be honest, I don’t really think about gear that much. Occasionally, if I’m at a shop I’m interested to see what the new machines are but I’m usually so broke that actually buying anything is an idea I really shouldn’t get too excited about. So, that’s prohibitive but it’s also something I’m not terribly interested in. If there was a company like Roland who was still making new versions of their grooveboxes, then that’s something I’d be very interested in. But that doesn’t seem to be something that any of the companies are interested in bringing out.”

Did you ever experiment with the Yamaha workstations or Korg Electribes?

“Yeah, I have messed around with the Electribes a bit and they’re cool. If I couldn’t handle working with the 909 at some point then that’s definitely something I could switch to. But, from my limited time with the Electribe, I do still prefer the 909.”

Are you pleased to see hardware make such a huge comeback over the past few years?

“Honestly, I don’t really care that much. If it sounds good and it’s interesting live, I don’t really care what you’re using. That stuff doesn’t matter much to me.”

Is there anything in your studio that doesn’t then go out on the road with you for live performances?

“Usually everything I mentioned previously, the Tascam, the MC-909, the Vermona, the computer and the pedals all come out with me. I am trying to phase the computer tracks out a little but it’s basically everything I use when I’m writing the songs that I need to use for the show.”

What’s next for Container?

“I’m working on some new tracks so there should be an EP finished and ready to come out relatively soon… maybe sometime in the first half of next year. I’m doing some shows too, the usual stuff.”

Given that this is your fourth album entitled ‘LP’, where did the concept come from and is it something you’re going to continue with?

“I guess, originally, I didn’t even intend for that to actually be the title of the album, but I liked the generic aspect of just stating what it is on the record. Then it ended up being the title of the first album… [laughs] and I’ve just ended up rolling with it.”

There are several standout tracks on the album, but we particularly like Leaker. Could you talk us through the writing/production process behind it?

“I have to start this by saying that the original tracklist for the album is not what it actually is on the album due to some ridiculous mistake. And so

“If it sounds good and it’s interesting live, I don’t really care what you’re using”

the titles of the songs are all mixed up from what I know them to be, so I first will give you a description of the process behind what I know to be Leaker and then on what possibly could be what’s called Leaker on the album.

“For this song, my idea was to take a normal 4/4 beat where the bass drum would have three hits per measure but make the pattern three measures long and put one of the bass drum hits off by one step in each measure to hopefully give the beat a kind of warbly and morphing feel. I programmed the hi-hats and claps to follow this same structure but left the snares on the 2s and 4s as usual to keep the wooziness locked into some type of grid. Once the beat was in place, I sort of arbitrarily punched in some random notes for a potential synth line that followed the original bass drum pattern and ended up being quite happy with the result. From there it was just a matter of deciding what parts would come when. This is one of my favourite songs, but I have to say I don’t really like the recorded version that much and it comes off a lot better live. (This is maybe called Drain on the album though.)

“Or… if it’s the other Leaker… my idea was to have a track that was slower, creepier and calmer, less about the beat going wild and more about the background sounds, so I made a few patches with that Shepherd programme I was talking about and recorded three of them to cassette and as the cassette played tried to write a beat that wouldn’t bury those sounds. There is also a nice percussion sample in here that’s taken from a bubbling water dish for cats that was running out of water and making a hard-sputtering sound.”

How important is the signal path when you’re making new sounds or is part of the fun just finding out what makes good sounds?

“My options are either clean, distorted, or filtered, and I usually opt for all three at once, so it’s just a matter of deciding what sounds work best with each one, which is straightforward, so it isn’t something I’m really spending a lot of time thinking about.”

If you could ‘Container-ise’ any other artists’ music, who would it be and how would you approach it?

“I’ve done a handful of remixes for people (Four Tet, Panda Bear, Fucked Up), but I don’t really love any of them. I find the process a bit dull, mostly as I know they want it to be ‘Container-ised’, as you said. If there wasn’t pressure to make it sound that way, I’d have more fun with it. With some of the software stuff I have now, though, I could give it a better go. I’d be interested in covering someone’s song instead of remixing it, that’d be more fun, especially if it was a rock band or something like that.”

want to know more?

Container’s new album, LP, is out now on Spectrum Spools. For more info, head to gentledefect.bandcamp.com or twitter.com/gentledefect