HIVE
Apr 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By Lily Moayeri
California-based DJ/producer Hive — who is known for his aggressive style of drum 'n' bass — began making music in the abstract hip-hop realm. But after working with egocentric MCs and not having as much control of his music as he would have liked, Hive found himself shifting into increasingly more intense beats. Hive subsequently released two artist albums, Devious Methods (Celestial, 1998) and Working With Sound (Celestial, 1999); an excellent EP, The Raw Uncut (Vortex, 2001); a comp, Bedlam (Rockwell, 2002); and numerous singles. He has also run a drum 'n' bass weekly, Konkrete Jungle, for two years in Los Angeles. Despite steadily producing drum 'n' bass for the past nine years, Hive has only recently garnered international acclaim, thanks to a strategic collaboration with Keaton of the UK-based drum 'n' bass crew Usual Suspects.
Hive and Keaton's Renegade Hardware crowd pleaser, “The Plague,” caught the ears of the British heavy hitters, who, along with their worldwide counterparts, began to take notice of Hive's skills. Showing that Hive was more than an accidental hit-maker, his solo follow-up, “Neo” (initially commissioned for The Matrix Reloaded soundtrack), proved to be his biggest tune to date. “Neo” and Hive's latest floor-filler, “Bring It On” (another collaboration with Keaton), began in the same way that Hive starts every track, with breaks. Using three to four breaks from sources such as the Internet, records, CDs and other producers, Hive chops them up in Propellerhead ReCycle 2.0.
“You can chop on every drum hit,” Hive explains. “Then, you export the file into Logic's EXS24 sampler, quantize it so that all the hits play on time and make that into a loop. If I have four breaks running together to make it sound like one full frequency break is playing, I pull certain breaks out, mute them, take out some of the hits, do reverses or filtering on some of the drum sounds. A key part of my sound is to layer drums so I have a lot to work with. I'll process it digitally inside Logic with plug-ins. Once I have all of the drums running together, I'll output to my desk and insert an outboard EQ. I like to EQ the whole drum group using a UREI 545 [parametric EQ]. It makes it gritty — it's got a character of its own, it's solid state, and it sounds really in your face.”
In a natural move from drums to bass sounds, Hive used the classic “Reese” bass line (named after DJ/producer Kevin Saunderson, who has recorded as the Reese Project and Reese & Santonio) as the inspiration for both “Neo” and “Bring It On.” With a lowpass filter, only the bass comes through, with the mids and highs cut out. “It wavers a bit; it's not one pitch,” Hive acknowledges. “I put that in my E-mu 6400 Ultra sampler with an LFO controlling the volume, basically making it move, playing in waves. I do that so the bass has some dynamics. It's not just going full-on; it rolls more.”
Hive's current imprint, Violence Recordings, plays host to The Sound of Violence (2004), a new double disc featuring Hive's own tracks and remixes on various labels (Metalheadz, Advanced, Moving Shadow and Tru Playaz among them), as well as the best from Violence. Using the same mastering process as his original productions, Hive recorded The Sound of Violence with Stanton Final Scratch, a Pioneer DJM-600 and two Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntables through a TC Electronic Finalizer 96kHz and into an Apple Mac G5 Dual 2GHz.
“Audio comes out of my computer onto the Mackie [CR-1604 VLZ], feeding into the Manley Massive Passive Stereo Valve EQ,” he says. “I'll do a mastering EQ on the whole mix, run that into my Finalizer's high-quality converters for digital and analog conversion. I'll soft clip it so I get a hotter master and multiband compression. It cleans up the mix, makes it sound fatter and brighter, compresses frequencies that are out of control, smoothes out the whole tune and gets it louder.”
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