Octave One
We quiz Detroit’s Burden brothers on their studio, hardware-powered live set and how they keep the creativity flowing after almost 30 years in the game
Octave One have been a cornerstone of Detroit’s techno circuit since the early ’90s, known for their rich, soulful production style, as well as one of the most impressive live shows in the business. This year saw Octave One return to their alternative alias, Random Noise Generation, for their first album under the name since 1991’s classic Falling In Dub.
We caught up with the core duo of Lenny and Laurence Burden during this year’s ADE to talk studio, workflow and why a motorbike is the secret to beating writer’s block.
What’s your current studio setup?
Laurence Burden: “We’re currently based right outside of Atlanta, Georgia. We moved from Detroit about 10 years ago. We have a full studio once again – it’s overflowing man.”
Lenny Burden: “We have a ton of stuff. A few key bits. As always we centre our studio around our TR-909. We’ve had it since the beginning; we’ve always loved the 909. A Moog Voyager. A ton of Roland MKS: the 80, 70, 50, 7. These are all rackmount versions. We’ve got it all. We’ve centred all of our studio around rackmount pieces because it’s a smaller space. As far as just to play, we like the Roland JP-8000.”
Laurence: “We still love it. It’s so easy to work to. Real simple.” Lenny: “We’re definitely hardware-based.”
Laurence: “It was always a mix of what we owned at one point and stuff we had on our wishlist. We kind of went back and grabbed a lot of our wishlist. As far as newer pieces are concerned: we bought an MPC Live for the shows.”
Lenny: “In the studio, we still prefer old gear. ”
What production advice would you give to your younger self?
Lenny: “That’d probably be: ‘Don’t spend so much time on the intricate details’. You’ll never make the perfect hi-hat. You’ll never make the perfect kick. Allow a groove to be a groove. It would have saved so much time.”
Laurence: “For me, it’s that we should have bought more outboard stuff quicker. Compressors. Effects units. I mean, we didn’t buy anything. We bought keyboards and drum machines. We kept buying those pieces. We didn’t buy compressors for a long time. A lot of our early stuff is uncompressed, straight to two-track tape. It was crazy. That’s why it sounded so …small.” How do you go about starting a track?
Laurence: “We’ll start in so many different ways. We might have done something live that felt good and we try to do a rendition of it in the studio. Or one of our brothers (there are actually five writers, we’re just the two who like to perform live) might come up with something: a bassline or a drum. Any of us. We just kind of pass it around, saying ‘What do you think?’, ‘Would you add anything onto it?’. A lot of times, we’re also pulling things off tracks, because we put too much onto them, editing vibes a bit. There is no set way of doing it.”
What’s the secret to beating writer’s block?
Lenny: “Writers block definitely occurs. But it’s beneficial to have so many people to get ideas from, so that, basically, if I can’t come up with something from scratch myself, I can see what someone else has and start building from that.”
Laurence: “I just get on my motorcycle and get out of the studio. That’s my writer’s block elimination pointer. Just get out and ride.”
Should producers learn music theory?
Lenny: “Some producers probably should. Sometimes you’ll be listening to a really good track and then you’ll hear that they’ve just started dropping in stuff that’s totally off-key. Totally left. It messes the track up. For some people though, they don’t need music theory because it’s in-built, just natural. That, I think, is the balance. You need to know who you are. Even for us, a lot of times something will be in key but it will just bother me so much that I have to change it because, even if technically correct, I know that if I listen to it enough times it just won’t sit right.”
Laurence: “You need to know yourself. And it can’t hurt. Especially early on. Knowledge doesn’t cripple you. Just do it man. Get in where you fit in.”
Which classic track would you have liked to work on?
Laurence: “GrooveLaChord [by Aril Brikha] because it’s perfect. I used to love spinning it. Because of the way it makes you feel. The way he was building it up and breaking it down. “And it was still kind of progressive. It had a lot of momentum.”
Which producers do you find inspiring?
Laurence: “That’s hard for us because we don’t really draw a lot from other dance music; we draw from other things. For me it’s still Barry White. It’s something about how he worked with strings and heavy bass that still works for us. That’s what I draw from. When I hear grooves, I can hear how to translate that to dance music.”
Tell us about your current live setup...
Lenny: “Once again, all the manufacturers are making their old gear new again. For instance, Roland has a boutique line. Recently we’ve incorporated the Roland TB-03, the Roland SH-01A, and basically it’s just old things in new boxes. The Akai MPC Live now is basically a DAW in a box. Everything now is repackaging what has already happened and putting it into a more condensed package.”
Current projects?
Laurence: “We’ve decided to do something a little bit different to our normal four to the floor stuff. It’s under the name ‘Never On Sunday’, after a piece earlier on in our career. It’s downtempo. We haven’t tried a complete project like this before. We just wanted to try something different.”
Piece of gear you’d save in a fire?
Both: “909! Everything else can burn! That’s us.”
want to know more?
Endustry by Octave One Presents Random Noise Generation is out now. Go to octaveone.com for more info
“Don’t spend so much time on details …allow a groove to be a groove”