Korn’s Jonathan Davis on dubstep and his new electro project

Korn’s Jonathan Davis on dubstep and his new electro project

8 December, 2011 | 12.36AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: 12th planet, datsik, downlink, dubstep, excision, feed me, kill the noise, korn, noisia, skrillex

And now for something completely different: we bring you an interview with none other than Jonathan Davis of the iconic nu-metal band Korn.

That might seem an odd turn of events for Beatportal, but as you’ve likely read, Korn’s new album The Path of Totality finds the band enlisting the talents of some of dubstep’s heaviest hitters: Excision, Downlink, Datsik, Kill The Noise, Feed Me, Noisia, 12th Planet, and, yes, Skrillex. (It was Skrillex, himself a former screamo singer, who helped kick off this new phase of Korn’s career with the collaborative single ”Get Up,” released back in July, and who invited the band to appear on stage with him at his Coachella appearance this year.) The results are a fusion of Korn’s dark, melodic metal with dubstep’s chainsaw riffage. It’s a risky maneuver for both the band and its collaborators, but it also sounds a lot like the shape of things to come, as dubstep continues to infiltrate popular music in increasingly unpredictable ways.

We spoke at length to Korn’s frontman, Jonathan Davis, about the project. He talks about the genesis of the collaborations, the natural affinity between metal and dubstep, and his own solo electro productions, due out next year; he also expands upon his controversial comments to Billboard, where he claimed, “We were dubstep before there was dubstep.” Read on for the full interview.

Let’s start by talking about dubstep. How did you first encounter it, and what did you think at the time?

I first encountered dubstep on your site, Beatport. I’ve been DJing for three years—I’ve been DJing since I was 16, actually. I started right when the electro-hop scene started, you know, with Afrika Bambaataa, and fucking Kraftwerk and all the old electro-hop stuff. So I’ve been a huge fan of electronic music for a long time.

When Beatport came out, I got on that immediately so I could listen to music, because I can listen to the music on there. I buy constantly because I DJ, do gigs and stuff. I think the first dubstep song I encountered was an Excision song. I went back and listened to the more old-school, traditional, like Nero, Skream and stuff like that, where dubstep originated, where it was more dub, more reggae influenced. Hearing Excision and Datsik and Downlink, the Rottun crew, I think Excision invented heavy dubstep. He took it to the next level. He’s a huge Korn fan and he’s into metal, and he started making the bass sound like a guitar, almost, really riff-oriented. So I was really impressed by that.

We really were a bass-music band before we even knew. We had elements of dubstep before there was dubstep.

Lo and behold, he contacted me and wanted me to sing on one of his songs. So the first song that we ever did, I did with them, before it was Korn—we did a song called “Tension,” which is on the album, it’s a B-side, the last track, and that’s just pure dubstep, there’s no guitars or anything, it’s just me singing. It’s a collaboration with Datsik, Excision and Downlink. And that came out sounding good. I was all, “Hey man, let’s just see if we could do some other stuff.”

I listened to some of Sonny’s stuff, Skrillex. I called him the day his EP dropped and asked if he’d be down to work with us. And he’s a huge Korn fan, because he interviewed me for Revolver while he was in From First To Last.

I called him and he came down and we did three songs together. We did “Get Up” in three and a half hours, and then we did two other songs. We’d experiment.

Afterwards I was with Skrillex [and Korn members] Munky, Fieldy and Ray, and I said, you guys listen to this stuff; I have an idea. Just listen. So I played it and their jaw hit the floor. I go, what do you think about mixing the vibe up of what we do, and everybody decided, let’s do it, as an experiment, let’s see what happens. We were going to do an EP but we had so much fun, and I met some of the other producers, and we just kept going.

What was it like working together in the studio? Are you jamming, and he’s making beats on the fly?

He brought an idea in, and he had the beat done, and Munky jammed on guitars to it, finding the right riff. And we went back and forth. Sonny works extremely fast in [Ableton] Live. It really helped that he had a background in rock and he knew how to arrange the songs in a standard song [format], instead of a DJ-oriented one.

We’d make people puke. I think it’s just the sheer force of bass and what it does to your body, how it moves you.

You talked to Billboard about the similarities between dubstep and what Korn has always done—the tempos you use and the importance you put on the bass. That’s interesting, because metal has traditionally been more focused on mid-range. How did you guys get such a bassy sound?

That’s something that we wanted to do back when we were kids, in ‘92, ‘93. We were all about bass. We had seven-string guitars tuned down as low as they could go. Fieldy had a huge bass setup. We were throwing 808s in—we really were a bass-music band before we even knew. We had elements of dubstep before there was dubstep. We didn’t even really realize that. I remember I was going through our catalog with Datsik and Downlink when we were on tour together, and I’m all, “Check this song out, this is like ‘99!” And Reggie’s doing wobble bass and shit, with pedals. And they’re like, “Fuck, that’s wobble bass, before even there was wobble bass!”

I think it kinda worked because we were the same kinda thing, we were all bass-driven. We were bass-heavy; some of our fuckin’ songs are at 140, and the same kind of vibe, a half-time thing. I think that’s why this really worked. And it blew a lot of the producers’ minds when we were playing old shit. For most of the producers, they were like, “Dude, you’re a huge influence on us.” Which kinda tripped me out. But yeah, we were a bass-heavy band.

Why was bass always so important to you guys?

It’s the sheer power of it. I mean, when we used to tour, we used to bring out 120 subs. Sixty a side. We’d make people puke. I think it’s just the sheer force of bass and what it does to your body, how it moves you.

It was like Cape Canaveral in that place, all the analog equipment.

For Korn III, you took more of a back-to-basics approach in the recording, and you avoided a lot of digital technologies and post-processing. This record is completely the opposite; was making this album easier or harder than the last one?

This album was easier. The other one was—we always like to experiment, so we wanted to experiment and see what it was like working with Ross [Robinson] again. And I think we made a cool, old-school record. But this one was easier because we were having so much fun and doing something so trailblazing and different. It was making a new genre of music. Just how we stumbled upon it and working with other producers, it felt like we were creating some kind of magic. So it was a lot of fun, a lot of fun. But a lot of hard work.

How exactly did you work with your collaborators? Were you in the studio with them, or was it more a matter of sending files back and forth?

We did all the songs with all the producers except for Noisia and Feed Me, because they were in the Netherlands and in London. So with Noisia, they’d send me like five ideas, a 32-bar idea of a song, and I picked my favorite three, and then we went from there. We arranged the stuff into a regular song form, and I sang, and we did guitars and bass and drums, and I sent them back to Noisia and Feed Me, and then they did their final touches, and then we mixed it.

It’s a real back-and-forth collaboration.

Yeah, both ways, for those guys. The other producers, like Kill The Noise, 12th Planet, Excision, they were all at our studio, so it was fun being in the same room and going, “Hey, what about this? Can we do this?” It was like Cape Canaveral in that place, all the analog equipment. They’d be working on patches in one room and then Munky would be doing guitar, analog, in the other. It was great.

How long did tracks usually take to come together?

It varied. It took two days with 12th Planet, two days with Kill The Noise. Excision and Downlink, they were there for three days and we got three tracks done. So it just depended on the producer. I was just left with a bunch of parts, and I’d take them and arrange them into the song form and tweak ‘em and try and keep the integrity of both Korn and the dubstep music. There was a fine line, it was real easy to fuck this record up. It could go really bad, really quick. So I spent a lot of time on the arrangements and on melodies and trying to turn them into a song.

How does producing music this way affect how you guys will play the songs live?

First, we got the album done, we’re like, “How are we gonna do this shit live?” Then we hooked up with a guy and he built this amazing rig. Live, we play everything live. The only thing that’s done on tape are the bass wobbles, because they’re tempo-sensitive. The rest of it is completely live. Ray plays all the drums. For the five songs we played in our set, he had over 30 different kits, they’re all automated. So he’s playing a verse line, then when it kicks into the chorus, it automatically switches his kit completely into a different set of samples. And it’s all done live. We wanted to do it as live as possible, so it’s a different experience when you see it live.

You played with Skrillex over the summer, right?

Yeah, we did Coachella.

What was that like?

Amazing. He’s all, “I want to bring out a couple of my friends—here’s Korn.” That’s an all-electronic crowd, and the crowd lost their shit. “Oh my god, it’s Korn!”

We went out and did “Get Up,” and the place just mobbed out, it went crazy. It felt really good to play in front of a crowd that we thought didn’t know us, but they do.

Are you finding more of this kind of crossover between the dance-music scene and the metal scene?

Yeah, man, we got fucking glowsticks at our shows now. It’s awesome. I remember at one show there were two big, massive pits. One was just people pitting, and the other was, like, a couple guys with the glowsticks on the strings, doing their crazy tricks—you know, spinning them around, doing all that. So they’d do their thing for a little while, then they’d back out and the guys would mosh. Then the pit would open out again, and they’d jump in and do their crazy glowstick twirling shit—it was fucking amazing, it was like, dance culture meets metal culture. It was fucking amazing.

Do you see this album as a one-off kind of thing, or do you think it’s a way forward for a new kind of fusion between rock musicians and electronic producers? Is this a model for a new nu-metal?

I think it’s a way forward. I think there definitely is gonna be a fusion—I know there’s gonna be people trying to do what we do. I haven’t wrapped my head around what we’re going to do for the next record, but I’m sure some of those elements will stay with us. But we try and pioneer different stuff, so we don’t want to do the same thing over and over.

It’s actually not the first time you guys have done something related to electronic music—you covered Cameo’s “Word Up” back in 2004.

Yeah, yeah, we had two other electronic albums. We did one, See You on the Other Side and then Untitled--[the first] was with The Matrix and Atticus Ross, and then Untitled was Atticus; Atticus is Trent [Reznor]’s programmer. So those were more industrial-type, darker albums, with electronic elements, but this one was something totally different, and exciting and heavy and pumping.

Are you worried about a backlash from purist dubstep fans?

A lot of people thought we were just bandwagon jumping, but it’s something that I’ve been into for a long time, and I have an extensive knowledge of electronic music. I was stoked to have fucking Kill The Noise and Feed Me, because I was a huge Lifted fan, and that’s Ewun and Spor, you know? So I go back to the drum ‘n’ bass days. I love jungle. Every producer I sat with, I freaked ‘em out on the knowledge I had of the music, so this wasn’t just me going, “Oh, this is dubstep, this is what’s hot!” It was nothing like that. I have a general love and compassion for the music and always have. I just wanted to make that clear to fans.

Thanks so much for talking to us, Jonathan. Good luck with the record, and we’ll send you a link when this is up online.

Awesome, man. I’m working on an EP too. My DJ alter ego, J Devil. Hopefully that EP will be done early next, and I’ll be sellin’ it on Beatport.

Is it a dubstep project?

No, it’s—I’m an electro head, I love electro, so it’s all 128, 130, but it’s got dubstep influences, and it’s really dark, and I’ll be singing on it.

Have you done other material under that alias?

This is a new thing. I think Steve Aoki’s gonna sign it. He’s really interested in it with Dim Mak. He’s heard some of the stuff I’ve been doing with Downlink and Datsik and on my own, and he’s really excited about it. I definitely think in the future you’ll be seeing me on Beatport.

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