Consistency is the Key: Paul Keeley’s ‘Sunset Midnight EP’

Consistency is the Key: Paul Keeley’s ‘Sunset Midnight EP’

20 September, 2007 | 3.26AM

• Section: Music News
• Written by: dnmngn

Canada’s Paul Keeley has got enough material released on digital labels to have you go cross-eyed watching progress bars while it all downloads - and it all sounds good.

Keeley’s EP titled ‘Sunset Midnight’ on the Australian label EQ [Grey] kicks off with the tech funk emo-coaster ‘Tokyo Midnight’, which rides the arrangement’s mood swings and twists and turns on a solid groove chassis. 

When asked for a b-side, Paul supplied the genre-bending ‘Sunset Boulevard’.

No twists and turns on this one, just straight up, floor rocking, disco inspired, good times house music that’s all about the build.

Both tracks have passed every test: warm up, hype up and wind up.

They’ve received enthusiastic nods from heavies like Masiello, Fanciulli, Wisternoff, Pappa and Cattaneo, and are currently enjoying the view from position 3 on the auspicious Balance Record Pool chart.

We fired Paul a few questions to find out a bit more about what makes this man tick.

When did you start pushing the plastic rodent around to make music, and about how many tracks have you done since?

I’ve been making music with computers since around 1993, when I got my first computer and discovered the tracker scene.

Technically, I didn’t use a mouse to create music - the interface was all via computer keyboard input.

It was all very mechanical, and very different than the linear approach that I use now.

During my tracker phase, I think wrote around 20 or 30 songs - most of them unreleased. (Last time I checked, there were a few still online at ftp://ftp.scene.org.

My artist alias back then was GLiTcH.

My Pulsewith and early Thinner releases were actually tracker-based as well.

Since then, I think I’ve written at least another 20 or so, not counting the unreleased material.

You had a computer meltdown earlier in the year, but it seems that you’ve managed to overcome it with the ‘Midnight at Sunset EP’ on EQ [Grey]. Any other releases on the horizon?

Yeah I had to replace my PC laptop’s motherboard three days after the extended warranty ran out. Not-so-perfect timing there, but then I guess that’s what I get for using a laptop as a main production environment.

I decided that it was a sign, and made the leap to a Mac.

The ‘Midnight at Sunset EP’ is made up of the first two tracks written with the new setup, and I’m quite happy with the results.

Aside from the EQ [Grey] release, I have a track appearing on an upcoming Audio Therapy compilation sometime in the near future, and a remix appearing on a future Discoteca release.

I don’t have anything else definite on the horizon, but more is certain to come - I’m just striving to produce as much music as possible so that I have something to offer when people ask me for new material.

You’re pretty quick to knock out a tune. What’s your approach to writing?

I’ve just now gotten myself into a proper sort of production flow.

Adjusting to my new set-up took some time, but now that I’m comfortable, I can usually complete a track in a week or so, and sometimes sooner - all at the mercy of creativity, of course.

I’ve pretty much got it down to a science, usually starting with either the drums, which will decide the overall tone/texture of the track, or a bassline/hook, which will give a hint of the main emotion of the song, and then build up from there.

I tend to write an eight or 16 bar loop at first with a few variations, making sure every element works well with the other, and do most of the mixing and apply all of the effects at that point.

Then, I essentially de-construct it during the arrangement process, saving all automation and such for the final sweep, after I’ve got everything flowing the way I like.

There’s nothing worse than having to sift through a tangled mess of automation parameters during the editing process.

I usually like to let a track sit for a few days, so that I can come back to it with a fresh ear and do any necessary final tweaks before it’s ready for the masses.

My iPod has become an invaluable tool for this, so I can listen while on the go (it makes for great walking music), and it gives me an alternate listening source so I can get an idea of how the track will sound on a poor sound system.

If it passes that test, then I know it’s good to go.

Why a live show when you could just DJ?

Lately, I’ve been doing a sort of hybrid live/DJ thing when playing out.

I prefer it to strictly DJing since it gives me more freedom to play around with the tracks when at the club.

I used to have every instrument rendered separately, and in chunks so that I could completely remix each track using Ableton Live.

However, I found that it took all of my attention to actually pull it off at a show, which meant staring very intently at my laptop screen the entire time, which is not a very exciting spectacle.

So, now I just render each of my cuts into three or four separate parts that play all the way through, and always keeping the drum tracks separate.

This way, I can still mess around with drum and synth loops and effect them independently if I want to, but I can also just trigger all of them at the same time and play with filters and effects using my MIDI controllers.

This enables me to actually interact with the people on the floor, and gives a more DJ-centric sort of feel to the performances.

It’s a good happy-medium for me.

Give us a tech snap shot of your current studio environment. Do you have a collection of ye olde faves or are you the type that’s continually on the look out for the latest plug in or soft synth?

My current DAW set-up is an Intel iMac running Logic Pro 7.

I mainly use the built-in instruments within Logic - the ES2 (a three-oscillator subtractive synth), which is essentially my main workhorse.

Along with that, my recently-aquired Access Virus TI takes care of the thick bottom-end synth work and other rich bits, and I use NI Kontakt2 for drums and percussion.

I’ve also got a Korg KARMA workstation, which I use for synth accents and pads, and an old and crackly Juno106 which I still use from time to time for making weird and interesting sounds - I love its digital filters and their unique ‘steppy’ sound.

I’m not really a huge gear-head though, mostly because my budget isn’t quite big enough for all of the crazy new toys out there, although I definitely lust after them.

I find it’s good to be limited, as it prevents me from being distracted, and allows me to really delve deeply into the tools that I have, finding new ways to make interesting and inspiring sounds with them.

After all, It’s not necessarily what you have that’s important; it’s how you use it.

The ‘Sunset Midnight EP’ is available September 24th.

• (0) Comments
• (654) Views
• Check out Paul Keeley on Beatport