The Art Of Making Hip-Hop
Brisbane beat masters RESIN DOGS have been playing their brand of modern hip-hop infused with dub, funk, dancehall and breakbeat for just over a decade – with their revolutionary spirit they return from hiatus with new single, Definition and the Coming With The Sound tour – a five hour live hip-hop extravaganza. BIANCA VALENTINO gets the low down from ROCK B.
What’s things been like for Resin Dogs lately?
Really busy, we’ve been trying to get the show together, to assemble all the various people and extra musicians and vocalists that we’re having on board and we’re trying to get our heads around the new technology that we’re taking on the road. We have some DVD manipulation equipment now. We’re getting that together and getting our heads around that. Between that and finishing off the album, rehearsing and releasing the single, it’s been a very hectic time.
But you wouldn’t have it any other way, right?
Oh no! We’ve had it other ways and we much prefer this.
Resin Dogs have their new single out, Definition and the full length coming in September I think I heard?
Yeah, that’s the goal.
Your last album was released in September too!
It’s a habit, every three years in September (laughs)
Do you feel the new material picks up where Hi-Fidelity Dirt left off?
It’s probably more of a break, a breakaway from that. I think that artists with their third album, you have to show some sort of growth. We wanted to make a really concise statement. Our last album was very much an ideas kind of album. If an idea had any merit we’d put it in there like a kitchen sink sort of thing. It was very varied across the tracks. It played like a compilation album, a bunch of different styles. It was very much a democracy sort of thing. We approached it in a very democratic way. This one had much more of an outline, we wanted to make an album that flowed and that was really contextual, everything had to be in context with everything else. It was more of a solid statement about what we were going to do and where we were going.
We got a producer on board we got Brad Ballou from The Nextmen. He’s helped us a great deal in keeping that sound consistent through all ten/twelve tracks, whatever it will end up being and getting it to flow much better than the previous album. Hopefully we’ll have put together a concise statement.
What’s your favourite thing about the new single, Definition?
I like the sound of the beats, I like the modernness of it. We’ve been doing it for ten years and things have certainly changed in hip-hop in that time. I like how it came together as well with the international aspect of it. We were over in the UK touring when Mystro did his part and then we came back here did some touring and got Hau from Koolism to do his part. It’s a very internationally put together kind of thing. Bits were done here and in London with Brad Ballou. It’s like a document of what we’ve done over the last twelve months to two years of touring with the band and our head space. It’s a nice document of where we’re at.
Resin Dogs collaborate with so many different musicians and MCs, how important are those extra collaborators to the overall Resin Dog sound/vibe?
I think it’s good. It certainly helps us to stay fresh, fresh for us as well as the listener. Because we don’t have a full-time vocalist as such it helps us to not get so pigeonholed. I think it’s allowed us to change our sound over a number of years. People aren’t going to get sick of the one voice on a Resin Dogs album, there’s always going to be a bunch of different voices on there.
How have you guys grown in the time between the releases?
Musically I think that the music has been trimmed back a great deal. We weren’t afraid to throw everything at every song on our previous albums. They had a sound to them that was cool but now we want to strip it back, everything has to have a reason to be on there which in turn gives it more space. We’ve slowed the beats down a little bit, we’ve given them more space to breathe so they’re a lot stronger and bigger and hopefully we get a really large sound off the album. There’s some song writing maturity on the album we hope as well. We’re collaborating with a whole bunch of different people that we like, I mean we always have but our constant touring and travel has allowed us to broaden our outlook. We can have Lazy Grey like we did on our first release and we can also have people like Mystro or Young Gun or Demolition Man. It’s quite exciting to be able to do that.
During the downtown between albums, did you have time away from each other?
Yeah. We always do.
‘Cause I know you have all your side projects.
Yeah. There’s always time to get away and do your own thing and that’s important as well. We’ve been doing it for ten years so we know everybody’s personal space. We know when people need to have a break.
Do you find that when you do come back together you each have your own fresh energy and perspective?
Yeah totally. Different people in the band like different things, some prefer studio, some prefer the live thing and the travel.
What do you prefer personally?
I like travel. I absolutely love it. At the same token, I don’t have a family, some of the other guys do. They don’t dig the travel as much. We have to find some happy medium in there.
Do you have any new tricks you’ll be pulling out for the new record?
We’ve always got new tricks! Some things were hinted at last time on the album, Hi-Fidelity Dirt, we did Gunshot Dub with Spikey T which has a kind of a skanking reggae feel. This time we’ve gone full blown dancehall with Demolition Man. I don’t know how that’s going to go over? It’s got nice strong beats, Brad really helped us with the beats. New tricks? I think you’ll just have to wait and see!
Is there anything that you learned from making your last album you wanted to utilise this time around?
Mainly consistency of vision. We were like ‘Is that a good song?’ If ‘yes’ fine but ‘Does it fit the picture of what we’re trying to do?’ Whereas last time it was like ‘That’s a great song we have to stick it on the album’. It didn’t flow as good as it might have, it was more varied than this album will probably be but it’s more of a statement about where we want to be. That and having a producer this time rather than self-producing. It’s self-produced to a large extent but just having another voice their saying ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ or ‘Maybe we do it this way?’ or ‘No this doesn’t fit?’
What type of things have been inspiring the album both musically and then outside of music?
The travel definitely and just hanging out in different places with different people and going out and hearing different sounds overseas. That’s really opened our mind to a lot of different sounds. I think a lot of great albums have come out in the last twelve months. For hip-hop in general it has been an amazing year, with Kanye West being so huge and Damian Marley’s album is amazing, we’ve been getting really into that. There’s a lot of different really strong music around at the moment.
I wanted to ask you, when you do tour overseas, do you find that you really do tend to grow?
Totally! I think so. Half the time we’ll be touring and if we get a night off when we’re touring Australia we’ll just have a night off but over there you think ‘Wow! I have to go see something’ It’s usually so different and something that is so far removed from what you’re used to. It’s like putting yourself out of your safety zone which is a really great place for an artist to go.
What’s one of the biggest things you brought back from your last overseas trip?
Just a book full of phone numbers really from the point of view of putting an album together. Musically we kind of knew that where we were at was over overseas. If we wanted to make inroads into Europe and the UK I don’t think Grand Theft Audio is going to cut it for us. We wanted to come back and make a statement with our third album. We wanted to have more of an international sound, whatever that is? But yeah, a big telephone book full of names.
A few musicians that I’ve spoken with lately told me about finding inspiration in everything and everywhere around them, one guy was telling me that when he goes down the pub and hears clinking glasses he can hear something in that! Do you ever get things like that?
For sure. I think with hip-hop and with us in particular it’s just listening to records, finding old records that sort of things, hearing drum sounds and being emerced in the scene as well… I’m not sure about clinking glasses at the pub though? (laughs) I think when we get back to Australia it’s always nice to be in our own environment and away from all those really big city pressures that they have in London. We stayed in some fairly lovely areas in London and once we got out of them our creative juices really got flowing.
Out of all the new material, what songs are you most excited by?
I’m feeling the dancehall one. I don’t think we’ve ever done a straight dancehall tune before. It’s not something you hear everyday on the radio in Australia. I’m excited to see how it will go over. Demolition Man has done a really great vocal. You often don’t know what’s going to happen when you ask vocal performers to collaborate with you on a track. It came back this time and we were just blown away! It was just completely done and finished. He did it in one afternoon, he nailed it. It’s quite an amazing vocal performance. I don’t know how Australian audiences will receive dancehall? I think it’s quite a small sound here. But hopefully with people like Damian Marley opening doors all over the place there’s room for it.
Have you been recording in you home studio?
We did a lot of it in Brad’s studio in London, the initial part, and then we went down to Byron Bay to Rocking Horse which is a studio up in the hills. We fleshed it out with a whole bunch of musicians we invited to come along and we really worked on the tunes and really stripped them back to nothing. We’ve gone to a whole bunch of different places to do mixing, there’s been a whole bunch of different mixing environments.
I like how Resin Dogs’ music has so many different layers yet it’s still simple, if you get what I mean?
Yeah. We’ve tried to do that. We’ve really tired to simplify it, still have the layers there but to make them fit, make them interlock a bit better. Hopefully it will come across as one big whole, or as a whole and people can listen to it on different levels as they get more and more into. That’s the goal, every musician would love to have an album that sounded like that. That was our starting point.
Do you feel the environment where you record can add a certain vibe to what you record?
Oh definitely yeah. Rocking Horse at Byron Bay is fantastic. We’ve done every album we’ve recorded there. A lot of history has been made in that room. It’s a beautiful location. It’s a great spot, it’s away from everything, mobile phones don’t work up there. We’ve been flooded in the last three times we’ve been there. We all hang out and we all cook for each other. We’re just there trapped, well not trapped, trapped voluntarily by our own accord.
What’s the biggest progression you’ve seen with Resin Dogs after all the years of writing, performing and touring?
It’s hard to say, we have changed a great deal. The beats are stronger. I think we’re getting better at making songs about one idea rather than a bunch of ideas. We’re maybe a little smarter writing-wise and mixing-wise. You tend to learn more and more as you go, you develop and grow within the art of making hip-hop.
Do you guys have a philosophy behind the music that you make?
We’ve got to love it I think. We don’t put anything out that’s half-arsed, in our opinion. We don’t really sell it out anymore than… we don’t use our music to promote stuff we’re not into. That’s a hard one, the philosophy of the music.
It seems as though over the years Resin Dogs haven’t followed anyone else’s rules, how important is it to keep things that way?
Very important. We put out all our own stuff through our own record label. We’re not that good at playing the game. We don’t want to play the game. It makes things a little bit harder for us here and there but I think at the end of the day we can sleep at night. We’re doing what we love in a way that isn’t compromised by some weird ambition to make a lot of money, or to be famous or to get into clubs for free. People’s motivation is very apparent in their music. If people want to have a huge hit, you can hear it in their music and if people want to make a lasting statement, you can hear that too. Most people fall in between those two poles, I think we do – we want to be able to sleep at night and be able to look each other in the eye.
Has there ever been a time when you’ve had to compromise yourself as an artist or your art?
Certain things. There’s certain things you have to do with touring. A lot of events are sponsored by companies that we don’t necessarily want to help promote or support. The reality is that the business is that it is a business and they need that money to make that event happen. Musically… even when we’re on a major label, we’ve always had control, we stressed that in our contract – we wanted to have the final say in everything. More so with the musical side of things you can see that potential to compromise more.
How would you compare your shows here to shows overseas?
They’re quite similar. We played in Hungary at a big festival not long ago to a predominantly non-English speaking audience. We thought ‘How’s this going to go over?’ and the music just did. We’ve played festivals here for years, we just played our natural game and it worked. I think if there is a vibe and everyone is feeling it, it doesn’t really matter where you are.
You guys are heading back overseas to Europe and the UK this year?
Yeah we are. We’re doing the summer over there.
Footage I filmed while at the Colors Of Ostrava Festival with the ‘Dogs.
I know that live shows are such a huge thing for Resin Dogs, are you ever conscious about how the audience perceives you?
No, it’s a strange thing. We don’t get to hear how it sounds down the front. We can watch videos later or whatever but it’s hard to say how it comes across.
When you talk to people after shows, what is it about your songs that they say they relate to most?
I think they feel the vibe of it maybe and the vibe that we’re enjoying ourselves doing it, hopefully that translates – that’s best you can hope for as a musician. If you’re enjoying it and that comes across to other people then they can enjoy themselves. There’s nothing worse than going to see a band that are completely over it and bored, that comes across quite easily. We try to keep our shows fairly fresh so we don’t get bored and other people don’t get bored.
What Resin dogs song do you think connects most with the crowd during your live shows?
That’s a hard one. A lot of it has got to do with radio and recognition of songs. You can tell if you’ve had a song on the radio and you play it live you get a good response because that’s what people know you for. Songs with interaction suit audience participation very well.
Do you think about that when you’re writing the songs?
Not when we’re writing, no. We just tend to keep it natural and with flow. We don’t write songs for a purpose, we don’t think ‘Oh, the album needs a fast one, let’s write a fast one’ or ‘Let’s put a big breakdown here so we can get the audience into it live’. I don’t think that comes into it as such. Maybe later when we’re mixing the single we might think ‘That could work well live’.
What’s been one of the strangest situations where you’ve heard one your own songs?
I was up late one night just doing work on my computer at home, really boring stuff like accounts or something and maybe emailing someone about some really mundane rubbish and there was a party over the back and they had our album on. It was funny because here I was in this really boring situation and then there’s these people over the back really digging our music. I should have gone over! (laughs)
I wanted to ask you what’s been one of your most humbling band related experiences?
For myself personally, I bought a double bass recently ’cause that’ something I always wanted to do, with hip-hop being so much into jazz samples it’s really worth while in the show but, coming from electric bass I hadn’t trained musically like that when I was young. We played a show in Byron Bay, I think it was The Beach Hotel? It was my first gig ever with a double bass and The Living End were recording up in the hills so they’ve come down for a drink and Nick Launay who produced the Police I think and Midnight Oil and Peter Gifford from Midnight Oil one of the original bass players, he’s a good mate… so they’re all having a drink at the bar, all these guys that are insane bass monsters and international producers of repute and I just had a shocker. I had one of the worst gigs I’ve ever had. It was very humbling. It was very much back to the drawing board. (laughs) I don’t know? It’s just one of those things!
What’s the stuff that matters most to you guys?
Musically, just to put out music that’s good I think that’s one of our main motivations. In the studio it’s, to put out music that we can listen to in a couple of years time and not cringe and to make something that’s really current. And Live, to put on a live show that is actually a good show and that flows well. We’ve been really lucky with the live shows, people don’t seem to have gotten bored with it. Maybe it’s because we try really hard to keep it interesting, we’ve always got new MCs and different things and now with the visual aspect… ’cause we’ve done it for ten years, we’ve got to stay excited about it. Our way of doing that might hopefully rub off onto other people.
If people could get one thing from your music, what would you want it to be?
I don’t know? Just a warm fuzzy feeling! (laughs) or maybe just that they get the inspiration to make their own music. We make all our own stuff in the bedroom. All the music we have ever made has always started out on a sampler. Anyone can do it. World peace! That would be nice! (laughs)
Anything else to add? Anything else I should know? Or that you want to plug?
We have to plug the show (laughs)
Of course!
There’ll be seven MCs on stage and five hours of world class hip-hop along with all the usual things. We’ve assembled quite a thing we’ve got Hau from Koolism and Mystro from the UK, Abstract Rude from LA, plus DNO and Def Wish Cast is going to hop up and jam with us. It should be fun!
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