FUTURE FUNK
Jan 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Deana Morgan
Los Angeles' Projections is not a duo of lab-coat-wearing geeks, but it's not afraid to experiment. The pair's debut album, Between Here and Now (Guidance, 2002), is a savvy urban concoction of funk and soul melted over a dance-music base. These two are like the bastard children of Thievery Corporation and Tosca, fostered by Bebel Gilberto and James Brown.
Simon James and Danny Hastie met three years ago and started making music almost immediately. It was the lack of stress in working together that kept them going. “I was amazed at other producers and the amount of conflict they have in the studio,” James says. “With us, it just goes.”
James and Hastie recorded Between Here and Now on basic equipment: a 350MHz Mac G3, an Akai MPC2000, Steinberg Cubase VST, Sonic Foundry Acid and Sound Forge, Propellerhead Recycle and a library of more than 10,000 pieces of vinyl for sampling fodder. And Projections creates its live, fuzzy feel with old analog pedals and keyboard finds.
“When you use the older analog gear, the imperfections in sound make the music that much warmer,” Hastie says. For example, the fat bass line in “Rival Cruise” was recorded using a mid-'70s Roland SH-3a keyboard, and “The Nutcracker” was recorded with the Roland SH-3a, a live bass and a DOD delay pedal.
“Backbone,” one of Projections' first completed songs, features a mixture of live bass, stand-up piano and Fender Rhodes. “By tweaking the stereo delay on a low setting, the drums acquired a deeper, vibrating effect,” explains James. “We used a lot of sweep delays in ‘Backbone’ to create that left-and-right-panned speaker effect.”
Most of the album incorporates heavily tweaked live instruments. “Luminate,” for instance, layers live cellos over a fuzzy Brian Eno-ish background. “That fuzz was created on a Roland Juno-106 by tweaking the distortion with the resonance and feedback,” James says. “And on ‘Luminate Part 2,’ we used Juno pads and live flute solos, which were manipulated with the [Prosoniq] NorthPole VST plug-in to create that feedback sound.”
Both James and Hastie have been musicians for years, which has greatly helped them to learn how to tweak live sounds to create an ambience. “Whenever we'd record live, we'd adjust our compressors to get different tones and play with the microphones to create that gritty feel,” James says.
Projections is already working on its next album. Future plans include more live vocals, fewer samples and (hopefully, James says) a lot of gear sponsorship. Payback for working tirelessly to make a living doing what they love, a few doors already have opened for the Projections partners. However, as one who knows, James has a piece of advice for those overly anxious to make it in music: “Don't quit your day job just yet.”
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