THE TRACK PABLO NOUVELLE

Beating Heart, 2020

Eclectic beatsmith Pablo Nouvelle has entranced listeners with his unique house and downtempo sounds on labels such as Armada and Black Butter. We hooked up with Pablo to discuss Milambi, his

VIDEO ON collaboration with award-winning West African

FILESILO

singer-songwriter Angelique Kidjo, and find out more about how he makes his way-out sounds.

You made the original idea for during the filming of a video for Armada, how did that come about?

Milambi

“I was in Amsterdam visiting Armada in 2018, and coincidentally they had just finished their studio. I had the honour to be the very first one to do a session in there. They were like ‘we’re going to film it, you just do whatever’, so I was there trying to have an idea and get something going while people were running around me with cameras. It wasn’t really going well and I wasn’t on my computer, I didn’t have my plugins or synths. Because I didn’t have any plugins that worked for percussion stuff. I just got on the mic and started to make some drum noises and stuff with my mouth. They all seemed very impressed and were like ‘oh my gosh, this is so organic’ but I was just desperate!”

How did you feel about the track after you’d finished the video?

“Bad! There wasn’t much there actually, it was very average and just a bit ‘dead’ sounding and not very organic. I wanted to put some meat on its bones and I had some samples from The International Library Of African Music to do a remix for Beating Heart which is a label they work with, so I started to try out some samples from the library. So, I was replacing each part of the project bit by bit, and eventually everything got replaced apart from that African sample I chose.”

Through Beating Heart you got involved with Angelique Kidjo…

“She heard about the project and she was sent different tracks from producers working on the same library. She heard an early version of my song and chose it, and I didn’t know this was happening, I just got an email that was like, ‘hurry up, send the track, do it now!’. So I did, and then a few days later I got those stems back with no questions asked and no answers given!”

The vocal stems you received from Angelique were totally dry, is that how you would prefer to receive them?

“It always depends on who is doing what, but I don’t mind the stems being dry as it gives me more possibilities... so I guess it’s the best case to have them dry.”

Do you prefer to use hardware?

“Well there are great plugins and I use a lot of Serum at the moment. Besides that, yes, I love my hardware especially those David Smith sounds, it’s just a completely different thing if you have an instrument that you can lay your hands on. If you’re lucky, it’s not perfect, it wobbles a bit and that makes the magic!”

You made an alternative version of the track that’s different from the release version, but it got rejected. Did that make you sad?

“I was alright actually, because something you don’t talk about often in creating music is that it’s a process of doubt. All the time. Every element I make I doubt. Is it good enough? Do I really want to use it? I like it for the first hour, then get annoyed by it. By the second hour I throw everything out. I think, ‘What the hell am I doing here? Why don’t I get a real job?’ For every song I release, I make another 20 songs I didn’t release.”

Is that ratio really that high?

“At least, yeah.”

“Every element I make I doubt. Is it good enough? Do I really want to use it? I like it for the first hour, then get annoyed by it. By the second hour I throw everything out. I think, ‘What the hell am I doing here? Why don’t I get a real job?’”