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Sixtoo Sixtoo has been 6 feet two inches since he was fifteen. Fifteen is also an important number in all matters Sixtoo for another reason, because that’s how many years he’s been involved with the underground hip-hop scene. In that time he’s been associated with 1200 Hobos, Sage Francis, Buck 65, Sebutones, Sage Francis, Peace (Freestyle Fellowship), L’ronius, Aquasky, The Goods and Anticon, to name a handful. Basically, if he had actually had a resumé, it would be some resumé.
Also known as Robert Squire, his new album, Chewing On Glass And Other Miracle Cures, is another notch for the Ninja Tune wall marked ‘superb underground hip-hop albums of 2004’. You can read what we thought of the new record in our accompanying review, but luckily you can also hear what Sixtoo thinks of the whole innovative episode himself. Pixelsurgeon snuck out of work early to make a long distance call to Canada, and found that the man behind some of the darkest, most atmospheric music we’ve heard all year, is really rather relaxed, and keen to talk openly about his musical experiments and discoveries. As well as shiver a little when we ask him about the long, dark, Montreal winters…
PIXELSURGEON: Hello Sixtoo/Robert. Thanks for taking some time out for us at Pixelsurgeon. Your new album marks yet another great Ninja Tune release, in a year that has already seen great albums from both Blockhead and Skalpel. Does Ninja feel like home to you now?
I mean, no more so than anyone else I make music for a living with. I make music for a lot of labels, but I happen to have friends within the Ninja Tune family here, and so it makes dealing with business a little easier. There are people I’ve admired over the years that are involved with Ninja Tune, but no more so than any other label really.
You have talked about wanting the new album to sound like a real band, which implies that your approach was slightly different before. What would you say are the main differences in direction between your earlier material and the new album?
Primarily the stuff that I had been working on before was all samples from records, and it’s only in the last little while that I’ve gotten comfortable enough as a producer and engineer to really jump in and makes samples that sound like those original records. And not to mention, I only stepped up my studio to be able to do that stuff this year. Two years ago I bought an electric piano. Since then I’ve been writing a lot of music on it as opposed to just sampling stuff. Then, working with live players: my friend Matt Kelly helped me write a lot of this record, in terms of filling in space, and writing a couple of new melodies for some stuff that I had written. Right now, I’m just feeling like the dj live show is kind of over, and we want to present something that’s us playing samplers, and instruments live, in combination with creating something that’s coherent, and then uses the reference point from the older music to make something new.
Is it true that you spent four months on the album before abandoning it and starting again?
Yeah- I scrapped that record. It was originally going to be a sample based record, and I had a bunch of beats that either got transformed into other stuff, with more live play, and I gave away a bunch of beats to some rappers, and just ended up scrapping the project.
Was that a depressing time, or was it inspiring because you had seen a way to move things forward?
It was very much an inspirational thing. I’d been wanting to change my approach for a while, and the last couple of records that I put together, the Antagonist Survival Kit, the Villain Accelerate record, the Duration record, I think put a sense of closure on the last bunch of material that I’d worked on, and really explored those ideas to the fullest.
The liner notes make it clear that your techniques and equipment vary from one track to the next as the task in hand requires it. But is there an overall pattern to the way you approach making music?
I think primarily I always start with drum tracks, and I think that’s just something I get from being a hip-hop producer. I usually start with drums and then fill in the instrumentation afterwards. Or in a couple of cases, there was decision like ‘okay, this song’s going to be in this key’, and then we’d write some samples and add drums afterwards, but normally it starts with drums, we fill in the chords, and then add the noise last.
Do you write anything down when preparing to record a track, or even when you are in the middle of it?
No, but I have a pretty good memory for that kind of stuff. I’m kind of a gear freak, and I take mental notes all the time of what mics are good for what, what compression settings work on different things. And that sort of stuff is coming more as intuition now, than say like three years ago when I started really getting into recording instruments and stuff.
Your music is often dark and atmospheric: how do you know when you have finished a track?
For me my music is so stripped down; I’m not one of those producers who needs to add tons and tons of layers after something’s done. I think it’s sort of a blessing of having been involved in beat-based music before venturing into actual music (!). You can have really stripped down elements and make them work, and have them feel like they’re a finished piece, and maybe that’s what I get from being a rapper as well. I try not to clutter stuff up. I think, so long as there’s bass, mid-range and high, and dope drums in every song, then it fills up the spectrum and that’s the whole.
Were all the tracks written in one consolidated period, or does the album represent a body of work that was in development for much longer?
They were all written in a period of around five months, pretty much. But I mean in terms of recording everything it came together really quickly. In two months we recorded and mixed everything.
Would you say that the Rhodes you were given a year prior to recording is at the centre of this album?
I wrote a lot of the stuff on there yeah. Since then I’ve bought a Wurlitzer, because I find it’s a more evil version of the Rhodes! And so, I’ve been writing a lot of stuff on the piano, and then my friends and Matt fill in the accompanying parts; they’re all classically trained musicians, whereas I’m just sort of a hack, you know?! I’m just more able to put together a feeling, and let those guys help me out with the instrumentation.
What were your experiences with music growing up?
Well I’ve never had any formal music training of any sort, but I mixed sounds for the Symphonic band in my high school, so that’s how I learned to use a mixing board, and effects units and all that stuff. Mixing live sounds, especially for big bands like that, you get really good at figuring stuff out quickly. And I’ve been making hip-hop music for, I guess, fifteen years, so almost half my life I’ve spent making music in some capacity, but never with any formal training of any sort.
How much of a role has moving to Montreal played in shaping your sound? For instance, you talk about having recorded the last track, Closing Day Sale, under the grey mindset of a January in Montreal…
Yeah, Montreal in the winter is f***ing devastating! It’s so unbearable that you don’t want to leave your house, and the only thing that you can do is find some refuge in making art and music. So in terms of keeping productive you have no choice. But we live in a neighbourhood where there are a lot of venues. There are always shows coming through. It’s easy to keep your ear to the ground when you live in a city like Montreal. It’s really helped my music in a lot of ways.
There seems to have been a lot of collaboration with people on your record too. Please can you explain what different contributors brought to the process?
It’s funny because on the press release it focuses on ‘featured players’, but really it wasn’t like that. The people who played on my record, with the exception of Matt Kelly who’s a collaborator in my band, are all just active musicians in Montreal. Eric Craven plays in The Hanged Up, he was in the neighbourhood, and I share the same jam space with him. Norsola from Godspeed You Black Emperor is a good friend of mine, and Thierry I see in the café almost every day. So just by virtue of the fact that those guys are all active musicians, is more so how they ended up on my record other than some sort of attached fetish factor that associated me with any of those people. In terms of actually writing anything, it was all me and Matt.
Which do you prefer: Playing live, or recording new material in the studio?
I think the only thing you can take pride in now is your live show. If you’re dealing with labels and stuff, the ownership of material gets so blurred that you don’t even necessarily own your own music, especially if you sell your publishing or whatever. Being able to put together a dope live show that translates what you’re working on musically is really important. I think a lot of people take shortcuts with that stuff. I go to see a lot of shows related to the whole sampling and techno environment, where it’s just some dude with a f***ing blue screen, and I don’t want to watch that; it’s not entertaining to me.
You’ve played some gigs recently with Amon Tobin, Kid Koala, Blockhead and Bonobo. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
It was cool, it was basically a scaled down version of what I was doing. Since that was mostly a dj tour, we had to really tone it down, in terms of what we would normally bring with us on stage. So it was basically a laptop show, but I think it went over pretty well.
Was that the first time you had played with them?
I’d toured with Amon before, and I’d met Bonobo before. I’ve done shows with Eric (Kid Koala) of course. I mean, pretty much everybody except for Blockhead and Bonobo, I’ve played shows with, or toured with.
Your new album artwork is really interesting. Did you play much of a role in the creative process?
I didn’t actually. It’s one of the first projects where I’ve just given somebody complete creative control. I sent my friend Ryan Buchnea all the tracks individually, and we had discussed the concept for it before he started doing it, but I had enough faith in him as an illustrator to really do the artwork and the booklet without much direction. You know, he’s got one of the sickest hand styles around, so I just said, ‘go ahead, do your thing’.
What’s your favourite Ninja Tune release from recent months?
Actualy, it’s stuff that’s not out yet. Amon (Tobin) is making a lot of digital reggae tracks. They’re f***ing killer man. I’m sure you can imagine…He’s trying to hook up some Jamaican reggae artists right now to do some toasting over the top of the rhythms. Also, I kind of like the Skalpel record, I liked the last Fog record, the Loka record, in fact all of the stuff that’s been coming out recently has been really good.
If there’s another musician or band that you’d trade places with, living or dead, who would it be?
Oh man! Living or dead? I’d probably say Miles Davis. Yep, Miles Davis.
What’s next for Sixtoo?
Well the album is out next week. Woah, that’s crazy! Right now, I’m working on a few things. I want to do a follow up ep and turn it into a fifteen-minute version; I think it might be Old Days Architecture. And I’m working on another ep that’s got a bit more of a post punky feeling, and I want to call it Six Vicious. So, a lot of stuff in the works!
Well, thanks very much for your time Sixtoo. Best of luck with the new album, and all your future projects.
Yeah, no worries! Thank you.
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