Photek
The electronic pioneer dishes the dirt on his Myth of Fingerprints remix
> There aren’t many areas of electronic music that Rupert Parkes hasn’t had some form of influence in, and remixing is, of course, no exception. With dozens of projects under his belt for a diverse array of artists, he’s naturally a great source of advice on remixing, too.
“You’ve got to choose what’s going to lead it,” he says. “Are you going to put it into a new style, or are you going to re-imagine the whole thing on the same scale – just your version?” Did you get to choose which track you were going to do, or was that decided by other people? “As soon as the offer came up, I wanted to do Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes – that’s the one that immediately jumps out for me. But they said it had already been assigned to someone else, and that I had to make a second choice.
“I decided to go through the album and refamiliarise myself, and I’m glad I did because Myth of Fingerprints is a much more suitable track for me.”
There’s a lot more going on in that song, though. Did that make for a harder time?
“It just made for a better remix – and actually an easier one too. Sometimes it’s a really complicated Rubix Cube that you’ve got to figure out, but some things flow really easily and seamlessly. That’s what that remix was for me, it came together so quick and my first idea worked.”
How do you start a remix?
“There’s one decision early on: am I going to keep the integrity of the original and just tweak it into a new place, or am I going to do something completely new using the best sounds in the toolbox? Quite often I’ll have different roads that I want to go down with a remix. I’ll make headway into three ideas, and keep flipping between them until I commit to one.
“There are so many approaches you can take. There’s the tempo; there’s how much of the vocal you’re going to use; maybe there’s a good guitar riff in a track that only works at a particular tempo. You have to think about what all these options are, and what’s working best for you. Sometimes that can go on for a few days – just trying to figure out which one you’re going to commit to. But for this mix, everything I did worked straightaway.”
What are the toughest situations in the life of a remixer?
“Sometimes you’re asked to do a specific style. Actually they say, ‘You do whatever you want, but what we’d really like you to do is a drum & bass mix!’. You listen to what they’re giving you and it’s like 116bpm, and you’re going to have to rip the track to pieces to make it fit. Sometimes it’s all about what’s feasible technically.”
Your remix of Myth of Fingerprints really makes use of the backing vocal in ways that shine a new light on it.
“Those backing vocal and the harmonies… when I first got my hands on them, I decided I was going to make them count a lot. They really added magic to the original, so I knew they could add magic to the remix too.
“And somehow, that particular shred of guitar I used. Out of all the guitar parts that were in there, this one bit had the magic touch.”