Tide Pool Interviews: Betamax Warriors / Richard Skinner

Fractal · Site Admin

For our next interview, we sought out our main man in Scotland: Richard Skinner of the Betamax Warriors, who gave us the monumental tdpl10, and a lovely remix for tdpl15.

Hello across the Atlantic.

Hiya.

Who are you, to be precise?

At this precise moment I am Eddie Cointreau - but to my family I am Richard Skinner

Pleased to meet you, Mr. Cointreau. Do you have any other alter egos we should be aware of?

Aye, probably too many. the other main ones are Betamax Warriors, The evil twin project, and if I want to be a dick people on forums, I use blartboy.

And where are you?

Sitting in my flat in glasgow. Friday Night. Still suffering from last night's excesses

Have you always been there?

No, I've lived (and had hangovers) all over Scotland. Rural Angus, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness and now Glasgow

Are you going any place, in any sense of the phrase?

Considering having a wee snooze before i go out to see zerodb play at the sub club tonight.

How is the scene in Glasgow? Soma / Slam are based out of there, yes? What sort of an influence have they had on the city?

The scene in Glasgow is great and very diverse. You can generally go out each weekend and hear someone that hasn't ever played there before. of Of course Slam / Soma have no doubt been very influential on the scene here in the past but there's a lot of new folk in town now doing a lot of other (and often more interesing) stuff. I've only lived here a couple of years so as far as I'm concerned they've not made a great deal of difference to me. they have a great forum though: www.slamevents.com/speak

What do you use to write / create / conjure / produce music?

At the moment I use a combination of Ableton and Cubase, but as I learn more about Ableton I seem to be using Cubase less. though sometimes I write the whole tune in Cubase and avoid Ableton all together. Depends on what kind of mood I am in I suppose and what I want the software to do

What sort of mood do you find ends up working best with each piece of software?

Fuck, I wish I you hadn't taken "mood", so literally. When I didn't know Ableton so well I'd start a track in Cubase and then use some of the features in Ableton to add to it. With "after dinner mince", for example, I did all the keys and midi in Cubase then did the drums in Ableton. but the main reason for doing it that way at that time was because I felt more comfortable recording keyboard parts live in cubase.

Does Ableton always equal acid techno, for example?

Ableton = beat repeat. enough said.

You mentioned to me that your Eddie Cointreau stuff was going to be more acid-ish - do your other projects have similar, related sounds? And how do you think using multiple aliases affects your work, in terms of people being able to find your music / coherency of sound / etc

I think each alias has its own sound, so its easier to put things out under different names, because then folks wont get confused by loads of different typs of music from one artist name. For the eddie cointreau stuff, it's going to be straight up clubby tech house, more loop based dancing fodder for jumping about to in clubs. With the betamax warriors it's always going to be more about melodies and (without trying to sound wanky) more musical and experimental stuff, without so much emphasis on dancefloor tracks and more about something nice to freak out to in your headphones. The evil twin project is where the two kind of meet in the middle. Dancefloor tracks with a bit of music thrown in.

And what sort of softsynths / VSTs do you work with?

I generally like to go for the freeware stuff that you get on KVR, though I used to use novation v station a lot but all my tunes ended up sounding like trance so I made a concerted effor to move away from it. Nowadays i manly use drumatic and dr fusion for midi percussion, and free synths for the res, though i am a sucker for the waves plugins for the extra effects and stuff

Name me some names on the free synths, do.

Tweakbench have been very good for me. cheap, but full sounds. there's always loads of stuff on the KVR forums too, and recently i have been playing with the Insert PIz Here plugins: http://www.thepiz.org/dl.html. Really raw noises, but a bit of tweaking and you can get some great noise.

Also, if I can enter some deeply nerdy production areas, what are some of your favorite Waves stuff?

I use their reverb and eq's a lot. mostly because their presets are ace and you don't have to do too much to get a great sound.

What do you use for compression & reverb and the like?

For compression I use camel crusher a lot at the moment. makes things sound a bit mental. reverb is generally the waves one, but I use the ones on Bbleton a lot too. In fact, I use most of the plugins in Ableton too. They are quite handy for wee bits of effect.

What sort of instruments do you play, if any?

Played keyboards since i was at school, learned xylophone then as well, but not had so much need for that recently. Played saxamaphone for a bit, but gave that up after a wee while cos they made me practice on a clarinet and it made a crap noise.

Regards the keyboards, do you ever play parts for your tracks? Or do you just program them out?

For the betamax warriors track I play all the keys live because sometimes I quite like writing that way. I'm not denying I spend a good bit of time in front of a piano roll editor though.

All hail the piano roll. I'm looking for some incisive question about the value & musicality of recording stuff live vs. meticulously editing it together, but the exact phrasing is escaping me. In general, what are your thoughts on the issue?

Sometimes i play things when I am drunk. The piano roll editor is good for making me sound a bit more sober.

Also, I recall you mentioning some time back that you do a live show? Tell me more, do.

I've taken some machines out to play a few times, but I've still not put together a proper live show. I wish I could but i'm not sure exactly how i want to put it all together live and what kind of interface works best for me. I want to be fucking with everything at once and i don't think i have enough hands. Maybe I'll rope someone else in to press buttons and twist knobs

I know you DJ - where do your DJing influences come from?

First DJ that I heard that really blew me away was Steve Bicknell and then Andrew Weatherall very soon after. Their mixing was always really tight and their choice of tunes was always that wee bit different to any one else. So i would say I have been influenced by hearing them the most. Over the years I would say I have been influenced by loads of folk especially my mate Plum. He has great records and is a cracking dj. Out of the more well known folk such as Dave Clarke and Ben Simms, it has more been about studying the way that they play records and manipulate them to create new grooves and stuff, and maybe Hawtin a bit for that. But for me it's really more been about listening to as many DJ's as I can to hear new records to buy and play myself.

Can you go in to more detail on creating new grooves and such?

Not really, it's just getting one record and putting another on top and fucking with them to make them both sound good together. Kinda what most folk do when they write tracks.

Gotcha. What do you try to accomplish when you're DJing?

Probably gonna sound really cheesy, but i just want folk to have a good jump about and enjoy themselves to what I think is fantastic music. I've never really been one for this journey pish when playing out, though I do like to have a consistent build up over the time I am on. I save all the journey nonsense for when I do mixes because it's a lot more effective if you know someone will be listening to it in their car, house, mp3 player or whatever.

Fantastic music is always good times. Are you adamant that you always play what you think is fantastic music? Or to paraphrase, if you're going to make people jump about, how much do you have to pander to them?

Every piece of music I own is there because I bought it because i like it so when i am playing out I know at least Iam always going to like it. Then it's just about choosing which of those records will work on the crowd I am playing to. So, to paraphrase, I am totally self indulgent but i will choose my records to suit the people there at that time.

Thanks very much for your time sir!

The Betamax Warriors MySpace is here.
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"basically"

adamo · Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2007 11:12 pm Post subject:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDYwzKaicFo

plushiest · Posted: Sun Apr 01, 2007 5:28 pm Post subject:

I wish I could work it on the beta machine like that.
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That's a little bit too loud

blartboy · Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 9:18 am Post subject:

is this guy saying the betamax warriors cause impotency?
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“Right now, everything sounds like a fat child throwing a Casio keyboard down a flight of stairs and hitting an old man at the bottom who's playing Verve songs badly on an over-priced guitar,”

The Sky Patrol · Posted: Fri May 21, 2010 4:46 pm Post subject:

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I would say he was spot on.
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blartboy · Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2010 8:36 pm Post subject:

da fuck?
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“Right now, everything sounds like a fat child throwing a Casio keyboard down a flight of stairs and hitting an old man at the bottom who's playing Verve songs badly on an over-priced guitar,”

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Don't you know Blart?

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“Right now, everything sounds like a fat child throwing a Casio keyboard down a flight of stairs and hitting an old man at the bottom who's playing Verve songs badly on an over-priced guitar,”

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