Derivative - in an original way
Chromeo are cool. Extremely cool, in fact. On their new long player Adult Contemporary, the duo once again skilfully skahe and stir the sounds of funk legend Prince, the soft pop-rock of Hall & Oates and the glamorous disco house of Daft Punk into a tasty sonic cocktail. But with so much of their inspiration stemming from the past, it seems only logical to ask: Is this original? Does it have to be?
Beat / Image is incredibly important in popular culture. It seems to be pretty important for you guys as well. How would our world be different if we paid less attention to looks and listened more instead?
Chromeo / In our conception of what a band should be, looks are equally as important as music. All our favorite bands have a look: The Strokes, Wu Tang, Prince ... What would The Ramones be without their look? What would The Rolling Stones be without their tongue logo? Our biggest musical influence is probably ZZ Top and it’s not for what their music sounds like: it’s for their look, their vibe, their consistency and, most important of all, their commitment. Sure, making music can be about hearing. But being an artist, a band, a musical project, that’s a 360 thing. We love Iron Maiden for the stage show and the t-shirts, not the sounds. Nothing wrong with that!
Beat / „Adult Contemporary“feels like a natural continuation of your discography. At the same time, it does introduce a few new elements. In terms of sound and musical style, do you tend to prefer artists who change with every album or those who find their style and then stick to it? Chromeo / We love both, honestly. The Beatles changed; A Tribe Called Quest stayed super consistent and just refined their aesthetic. We’re definitely the latter. But in our case, every album is a reaction to the previous one. On Head Over Heels, we went super slick, super collaborative; we purposefully worked towards a big, wide, clean sound. We wanted to involve a bunch of writers, producers and guests on the record. So on Adult Contemporary, we decided to do the opposite. We wrote and produced and arranged and played everything ourselves and only worked with one mix engineer for the whole thing, Morgan Geist! In that respect there’s a bit of a return to form, but in terms of production chops and sophistication, we implemented everything we’ve learned along the way — it’s definitely the culmination of 20 years of craft for us.
Beat / In relation to sound, one often reads words like „material”, „sculpting”, and „design”. How does your own way of working with sound look like?
Chromeo / Those terms are absolutely relevant and very useful metaphors. When we stack synth pads, we spend a lot of time tweaking – sculpting - the sounds so that they layer well. EQs on drum sounds can actually affect groove and pocket. One thing to remember with analog gear is that you can’t sculpt too much. You have to leave things a little messy. Philippe Zdar (rip) who mixed Fancy Footwork and Business Casual was an expert in that. Some low end has to stay muddy — with overlapping frequencies — because that creates warmth. Some stuff can stay loud because analog distortion is beautiful.
What‘s new?
Beat / It is often said that there is never anything genuinely “new” in music and that we are only ever creating variations. What‘s your take on this? What does originality mean to you? Chromeo / Originality is an overrated, Romantic, 19th century construct. If you had told a Renaissance artist they were original they would’ve thought it was insulting. We sort of agree with that, but more in an intertextual, postmodern sense. Everything is re-phrased and re-contextualized. You study the greats until the point when, using all your influences, you come up with a personal twist, a personal way of combining and distilling them. We’re flattered if we’re called original but we’re not insulted if we’re called derivative. Hopefully we’re derivative in an original way.
Beat / Do you see yourself as part of tradition or a lineage?
Chromeo / Renaissance artists said this: we aim to be midgets on the shoulders of giants. Our whole career we’ve been open about our idols and influences, be it Hall & Oates, Prince or Daft Punk. In a few cases, we’ve had the honor of hearing one of our heroes tell us we were part of their lineage.
There’s no greater compliment. We’re music fans — fanatics — first and foremost. So hopefully we walk towards the future whilst keeping an eye on the past … it’s like walking forward but facing the back … like moonwalking.
Beat / If you‘re trying to create the sound of a particular era, is it important to use period gear as well?
Chromeo / Nope. At this point you can do anything with everything or vice versa. We just love working with analog stuff because it’s what we’re most comfortable with, it brings us pleasure and gives us constraints - which in turn stimulate our creativity.
Beat / Do you find using presets lazy?
Chromeo / It‘s not usually our thing but we’ve used some presets — the basic bass present on the Yamaha DX-100 is phenomenal. Some of your favorite albums contain a ton of presets — it’s just about how you combine and arrange them. Laziness can happen everywhere, not just in song choices. Because our music treads such a fine line, we always find ourselves working extra hard to not be cliché. The words “I just wanna” in a song, we find those lazy. They’re cringe to us. But listen to Vampire Weekend or Phoenix’s lyrics — they’re so unusual and that’s what makes them great.
Beat / Were there things you specifically did differently on Adult Contemporary compared to Head over Heels?
Chromeo / Everything was different. Down to the vocal recording, processing and mixing. Most of the vocals are super dry. Morgan Geist is one of our musical heroes and we were so psyched to have him mix the album. He used the H3000 on all the vocals and it really gave them a cohesive sound. The brief with Head Over Heels was „let’s make this sound big and expensive”; the brief with „Adult Contemporary“was “let’s make this sound cool and classy.” On Head Over Heels, the songs would start collaboratively — often
with other writers and producers — and we’d then take them to our studio and rework them and really impregnate them with our sounds. On the new album — much like our older ones — everything started with us and everything ended with us. Two best friends locked in the studio for months and months.
Beat / How did you put together the sonic- and gear-palette for „Adult Contemporary“? What were key elements?
Chromeo / For „Adult Contemporary“it was interesting: we wanted to revisit the brute, unpolished MPC-style drums of the Fancy Footwork era. But on other songs we wanted live drums. We wanted a less layered feel than Head Over Heels, but we also strived towards slicker, more sophisticated orchestration: string arrangements, horns, drawn-out song outros. At this point we have our go-to synths that make their way into every song — Juno 106, Elka Synthex, Jupiter 8, Prophet 5, Minimoog, Korg MS20 … but again, we wanted at least one new sonic palette on this record. Something that would clash within those textures. It ended up being the Ensoniq SQ-80. It’s on almost every song.
Beat / How and for what reasons has your music set-up evolved over the years and what are currently some of the most important pieces of gear and software for you?
Chromeo / Well the great Chromeo tragedy was when we could’t use our late 90s Cakewalk Pro Audio sequencer on a Pentium II. We managed to keep that thing running until the White Women album in 2014! We were literally looking for old Pentiums in garbage dumps. Now we’re on Cubase - and yes, a Mac - but we’ve made it look like the old Cakewalk and use it almost the same way — all MIDI. We use Cubase and only a handful of plug-ins, which we sometimes get rid of to send our mixer pure, unprocessed stems. For vocals we do ProTools, always have. It’s all pretty straightforward. The secret sauce is that our drums have always been individual samples (kick, snare, hats etc) that we chop up, isolate and program from scratch. That’s because we’re from a 90s hip hop background. That’s the way DJ Premier does it. We don’t use loops, we don’t stack loops. So all our songs’ pockets have a strange, very personal feel.
Beat / For „Adult Contemporary“, how important was the actual performance and the moment of performing the song still in an age where so much can be “done and fixed in post?”
Chromeo / Well we were never great players, so to speak. We love to cheat and fix in post. But we also like to keep things spontaneous and sloppy when needed. The flavor comes with combining it all. Think of Prince: dirty, live, one-takes of guitar over a mechanical, repetitive, Linn drum loop. If he had live drums in “Kiss” it would be cheesy.
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