Interview: Nadastrom’s filthy orgy of sound

Interview: Nadastrom’s filthy orgy of sound

19 January, 2010 | 8.02AM

• Written by: Zack Rico
• Filed under: Music News: dava nada, dubsided, hip hop, matt nordstrom, nadastrom, switch

Is nothing pure these days? Dance music and hip hop, once embittered nemeses, no longer deride each other, but are in a clumsy bed pinching each other’s wanton rhythms in a filthy orgy of sound.

However, from the mixed-race comes beauty, and in-breeding has never led to anything good.

Washington D.C.’s Matt Nordstrom and Dave Nada aka Nadastrom are from one such corrupted stable. With Nada’s background in punk and Baltimore Club music, his raw beats and aggressive street sounds mix with Nordstrom’s much-revered techno and house templates, and the result is one hell of a bastard.

Nadastrom’s music is like a soundclash of soundclashes, with crunk, hip hop, electro house, techno, and dancehall squished together into an all-mighty heaving mess.

What ties it all together is superior sound quality - no doubt due to Nordstrom’s engineering prowess (he has, and continues to be, Dubfire and Sharam’s go-to man-in-the-studio), and fidgety dancefloor appeal.

We dialed ‘N’ for Nadastrom, and got Dave Nada and Matt Nordstrom on a conference call to find out more about their sizzling project.

Switch has influenced both of you. He also released Nadastrom’s first EP on Dubsided. What similarities can you see between your music and his?

Matt: He has definitely been a big influence on us. He kind of made house really exciting again, when he first came out. He was one of the producers that brought us together, when Dave and I started DJing together.

When Switch invited us to release on Dubsided, that was a big thing for us, as we’re big fans of his music and the production routes he takes.

Dave: Switch’s music when it came out just sounded like nothing else. I think for us, that’s something we want to emulate. Get weird with it, and try different things.

Plus his sound quality, and production rocks.

How did you feel about being on Dubsided?

Matt: Dubsided released a lot of groundbreaking music, before Switch put it on hiatus. Trevor Loveys, Jesse Rose, Hervé, Switch - all of those guys are great.

Before I got into house, I was a big drum & bass head. I paid more attention to London sounds than anything else. When we sent our tracks to Switch, he said we had an interesting American take on the London sound.

So Dave, how much does Baltimore Club affect the Nadastrom sound?

Dave: The way I always like to view it, is that Club music is one of the foundations of our house. I started putting out Club music on Tittsworth’s T&A Records.

Club music influences our tracks via attitude and groove. On the last EP we put out, one of our favourite tracks was ‘Ghetto Pass’, which has two sides to it - it goes from a techno track to a Club track. As far as attitude, we always want to have that funk, and raw street vibe.

Structurally as well, we’ve learnt a lot from classic Baltimore Club producers like Rod Lee, Blaqstarr, and Unruly Productions.

Techno is all about peaking, and I was used to big intros and outros, but with Nadastrom productions we more slam stuff in and out, and do it in a fluid kind of way.

Was there a learning curve for producing Club music?

Dave: Definitely. I tried to make Club music, but kept hitting certain roadblocks. I had cool ideas, but couldn’t take it to the next level.

That’s when Matt and I started collaborating, and we learnt off each other’s ideas. It was refreshing.

Matt, when it comes to fidget and hip hop-influenced beats, that must be quite a different creative process to the techno you’ve made in the past.

Matt: Absolutely, and that’s why Dave and I worked well together. Techno is all about peaking, and I was used to big intros and outros, but with Nadastrom productions we more slam stuff in and out, and do it in a fluid kind of way.

Dave and I learnt off each other in that respect, and it’s probably what defines our sound.

For instance, when we sat down to do our Tittsworth remix of ‘WTF’ we started out with just the vocal, and I was like ‘How are we supposed to remix this?’.

I was really worried that DJs wouldn’t be able to play it, but in the end it worked out just fine.

A lot of your tracks have hip hop elements.

Dave: Yeah, I would say so. Not that I want to sound like the typical hip hop cat, but J Dilla continues to be a huge influence on us as producers.

When we grew up in the mid to late ‘90s, hip hop culture was huge. People like Wu Tang and DJ Premier really influenced us. And even today, we take note of a lot of hip hop and even dancehall.

Just the other weekend, we played with Tittsworth and heard this new Nicki Minaj track ‘I Get Crazy’ featuring Lil Wayne. We completely freaked out about it, it was like updated old skool hip hop, but totally fresh.

Do you see much middle ground between hip hop and dance music?

Matt: Absolutely. Even a lot of hip hop guys are collaborating with dubstep producers at the moment, like Rusko and 12th Planet. We’re seeing a big crossover between electronic music and hip hop.

Would you say Diplo and Laidback Luke’s ‘Hey!’, which you remixed, is a good example of that type of crossover sound?

Dave: I don’t know how much of an impact that track had outside of the US, but in the US it was definitely a big club tune. Not sure how much love it got in the crossover scenes.

Matt: I’m not sure about ‘Hey!’, but a lot of Major Lazer’s stuff is in between dance music and hip hop. Also Afrojack’s tunes - you can play his stuff in a club in the States and it’ll go off.

Deadmau5’ ‘Ghosts N Stuff’ was a big crossover hit, and was in TV shows a year or two ago. Ed Banger was really big for the crossover. And from the hip hop side, M.I.A., Diplo, and Santogold are all big.

All your remixes turn out quite differently from each other. Are you trying to be as varied as possible?

Matt: We always try to not have the next thing sound like what we did before. But sometimes, we can’t control what happens in the studio, like we’ll go in to try and make a heavy record, and it come out deep and housey.

Matt, with your background in techno, have you thought about experimenting with techno and hip hop together?

Matt: I can definitely see how that sound could come about. A lot of hip hop is stripped down these days, with just some 808 beats, a simple melody, and rapping. You could easily make those stripped down elements from techno standpoint, and that would actually be pretty cool. It’s actually something we might try to do this weekend!

What’s your studio set up like?

Matt: We use Logic mostly, and it’s actually a very simple studio. We work with Ableton Live and Reason in the back end, as Dave is good with Reason, so we chain that into Logic for a few plug ins here and there. But I’d say it’s 90% logic. And then, just a good sound card and some monitors.

On the hardware front, we use an Akai MPD24, which is basically a midi controller based around MPC pads, so it has velocity touch sensitivity. It’s really cool for trying out new grooves, and it saves me a lot of time.

For MPC users, the MPD24 is crucial. I was never that much of an MPC user, but I can see how it was such a huge thing for hop hop.

Matt, considering your list of production credentials, I’d expected you to be a bit of a hardware freak?

[laughs] Well, I used to be, but now inside the computer you can do so much. At the moment, I’m working on trying to get everything onto one laptop, so that I can easily work with other people on the road.

To be able to record a track on the fly wherever you are is amazing. I love the portability aspect.

Even with Ali and Sharam [the Deep Dish duo], we’ve made their set-ups completely portable these days.

Are you still working a lot with Dubfire and Sharam?

Yeah, I’m still working with them both.

Dave, what’s your studio set up like?

Oh man, it’s all laptop for me buddy. I came from playing with bands, so I still have a lot of my old instruments.

Like what?

I used to play guitar and bass, and I played in a punk band. I still have all my guitars, amps, and a drum kit, although I don’t play that enough.

One of the things Nadastrom is known for is sampling, something that the fidget house scene became famous for. Which one of you is the sample wizard?

Matt: Dave is really good with samples so I’ll let him answer that.

We’re huge fans of classic funk breaks. Almost every one of our tracks has a classic funk break

Dave: We’re huge fans of classic funk breaks. Almost every one of our tracks has a classic funk break. One of my favourite things to do is to not just sample a certain loop, or a sample from a break, but to try and recreate them. Or replay them.

It sounds redundant - to replay a sample - but it can give much more freedom. So we always resample loops, and layer them with a live version.

How would that work?

For example, we might record a live snare, and then lay that over a break. One of the latest kicks I’ve got into, is cutting up breaks.

When I hear a loop or a break, and I think it sounds dope, I will replay it on live drums, to make it sound more organic. That’s much more interesting than reorganising a midi file.

It gives a little more bite and crispier beats. I also sometimes record drums, or the sound of me whacking something, through a mic.

Is that your live band background coming through?

For sure. I played in bands for seven or eight years, so I can’t not use the gear that lies around my studio. It took me a long time to get used to midi controllers, as I was so used to recording and playing stuff live.

I remember the days when you had to be on point, and do single take recordings. I still try to do that now in clubs, to try and get something right in one take is satisfying when you pull it off.

Matt: There are some people who can program the perfect loop, and it’ll sound so natural. Todd Terry is the master of that. One thing I still do, is record drums by having not only a mic on every instrument, but also a mic for the room, to record the whole atmosphere of all the drums working together.

And then if you bring a drum loop underneath all of that, it can sound awesome.

That sounds meticulous. How often do you guys nerd out?

Dave: We nerd out a lot. There are so many ways to skin a cat. I still learn from Matt every time we work together.

And if I figure out something interesting, we’ll geek out, on frequencies or whatever. I love to construct beats and drum patterns. That’s my speciaility. Matt is the engineer whiz. We sometimes even nerd out on production videos - the Claude VonStroke one that came with Future Music was our last talking point!

Word has it, there’s an album in the works?

Matt: Yeah, we’re working on it right now. We’ve also got an AC Slater remix coming out on Trouble & Bass, and a remix on Mixpak Records.

At the moment, we’re just floating around a bunch of album ideas. Hopefully it’s going to be the next big notch release for us.

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