Goldfinger | Tricky
Sep 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Jason Newman
TRICKY AND ENGINEER VINCENZO LORUSSO ON THE ONE-HANDED AND RAW PROCESS OF DEVELOPING KNOWLE WEST BOY, A LOOSE TRIBUTE TO THE UK ARTIST'S FAVORITE SONGS
WHAT CAN BROWN DO FOR YOU?
For as little regard given to certain aspects of production, the producer devotes every day to Brownpunk, the record label he founded two years ago with “In the City” music festival director Emily Taylor and Blackwell. Having met at a music conference in Brighton, England, Taylor and Tricky discussed the idea of starting a label together for up-and-coming talent. After getting Blackwell on board, the label currently has 10 artists on its roster and plans on releasing its first album by Danish singer Kira Skov next year. Most artists who start their own labels have past industry horror stories to guide them on how not to run a label. For Tricky, it was the exact opposite.
“The 'ole vibe was, Island [Records] let me do what I wanted musically when I started,” he recalls. “That was their ethos. It's just music and letting the artists make their own mistakes. Let the artists make Brownpunk. It's really that simple. People ask me, ‘So what's your ethos for Brownpunk?’ That's a mad question. Good music. That should be the ethos for every label.”
Like his own work, the musician has surrounded himself with a broad group of genres and characters, including garage-blues rockers The Dirty, reggae-pop group Laid Blak and the funk/hop-hop hybrid of 1st Blood. With any of these artists, Tricky takes a formal hands-off approach to their music, choosing not to produce or guest vocal on any tracks (barring the odd remix here and there.) Perhaps stranger than that, the new label honcho admits to not liking everything he signed, focusing more on general tastes than his own.
“Who am I to say? I might not like it, but there might be a million other people out there who do like it,” Tricky says. “I might not like the music, but if they got a vibe and there's passion there, that's the artists that will succeed.”
MELLOW MY MAN
After 90 minutes of hanging with Tricky, one thing is clear: The man has mellowed out. Maybe it's the fact that he turned 40 earlier this year. Maybe it was the years out of the spotlight, hanging with Jamaican relatives in the Bronx who didn't give a sh*t who he was. Hell, maybe all the musical segmentation today has rendered the idea of the “superstar” quaint and obsolete. But the man who once wrote, “They used to call me Tricky Kid/I live the life they wish they did,” now says he's more interested in connecting with fans than anything else.
“To be honest, this album is the first album I've done for people who listen to my music,” he says. “I been getting some of the most beautiful stuff saying, ‘We miss you. When are you coming back?’ Because of the Internet, 14-year-olds who shouldn't know who I am are fans. It's such a wonderful thing for all these people to wait and stay with you, and this album's for them. It's the first album I've ever done for anybody.
“I was in Philadelphia, and a nurse came to the show and said, ‘We play your music to the kids in the burn unit.’ That's what I'm into now. It's easy to stay grounded because it's not the superstar [treatment] I'm getting. It's the people who say that I helped them get through a certain period of life. That's what I'm here for.”
TRICKS OF THE TRADE
Computer, DAW
Antelope Audio Isochrone OCX master clock
Apple G4 laptop, PowerMac G4 Dual 1.25 2 GB RAM
Apple Logic Pro 8
Digidesign Pro Tools|HD3 Accel with 192 I/O, Pro Tools LE 7.3 with Digi 002
ViewSonic 21-inch widescreen monitors
Console
SSL AWS 900 with Total Recall
Plug-ins
Drumagog
Fairchild 660, 670
Mics, preamps, EQ, compressors, effects
AKG C 451 B with swivel and CK 1 capsule, D 12E mics
DBX 160VU, 160X compressors
Empirical Labs EL8 Distressor
Focusrite Liquid Mix compressor/EQ
Neumann KM 184, TLM 103 mics
Røde NTK mic
Royer R-121 ribbon mic
Sennheiser MD 421 mic
Shure SM57 mic
TC Electronic Reverb System 6000 with Remote
Universal Audio LA-2A Leveling Amplifier
Urei 1176 compressor/limiter
Synth, sampler
Akai MPC4000 sampling workstation
Korg Triton Extreme keyboard
Monitors
Dynaudio BM15A monitors
JBL LSR 4326 5.1 monitor system
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