MUZIK BY NUMBERS
Aug 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Kylee Swenson
There's a bit of irony in the X-Press 2 name. First, the British house-music act is not a duo, but a trio of DJs and producers — Ashley Beedle, Darren “Rocky” Rock and Darren “Diesel” House. Second, X-Press 2 isn't exactly known for their speedy delivery. An entire decade passed between the initial recording of their first international club hit, “Muzik X-Press,” and the release of their first artist album, Muzikizum (Columbia, 2002). It's an added bit of irony that X-Press 2 is busier than ever thanks to the overwhelming success of a single titled “Lazy.”
Part of the reason Beedle, Diesel and Rocky waited 10 years before releasing an X-Press 2 album was because they were skeptical about the project almost from the start. The trio was actually disappointed with the single “Muzik X-Press” when they recorded it in 1992. “We went in the studio with one idea and worked toward that idea, but it didn't come out the way we wanted it to,” says Rocky. “We were a bit dejected that we hadn't achieved what we'd wanted to achieve. But people were playing the track out, ringing us and saying, ‘Oh my God, that record is just massive.’ We were like, ‘Reeeaally? Wow!’”
“Muzik X-Press” received enthusiastic reactions from club audiences and DJs such as Pete Tong and Junior Vasquez, so X-Press 2 headed back to the studio to record several more singles, including the hits “London X-Press” and “Say What!” Although these follow-up singles were successful, Beedle, Diesel and Rocky decided to put X-Press 2 on the back burner while they pursued solo projects, including Beedle's Black Science Orchestra and Rocky's Problem Kids. When the three reunited, it wasn't as X-Press 2 but as the jazzy, downbeat group Ballistic Brothers, with additional member Dave Hill of Nuphonic Records.
Because Beedle, Diesel and Rocky were so busy doing singles and albums under different names and because they had released two Ballistic Brothers albums — London Hooligan Soul and Rude System — to considerable critical acclaim, it simply didn't occur to them to record a full-length X-Press 2 album. “We were happy just doing singles and remixes as X-Press 2,” says Beedle. “Our manager, Chris Butler, pulled it all together and said, ‘Look, go make an album for God's sake!’ All it took was a little shove in the right direction, and here we are.”
Although Beedle, Diesel and Rocky consistently did remix work as X-Press 2 throughout the '90s, they revitalized the project as a recording act in 2000 with the release of the club hit “AC/DC.” In 2001, they recorded two more massive, floor-filling singles, “Muzikizum” and “Smoke Machine.” The overwhelming response to their most recent single, “Lazy,” featuring vocals by former Talking Heads leader David Byrne, showed that X-Press 2 could find success beyond the dancefloor, setting the perfect foundation for the release of their debut album. Featuring their last four singles and several new tracks, including a collaboration with Yello vocalist Dieter Meier on “I Want You Back,” Muzikizum is a heady collection of pounding crowd pleasers and dance-music anthems.
THIS IS NOT MY BEAUTIFUL HOUSE
X-Press 2 may be known as a house music act, but the trio has always tried to transcend the consistent, thumping four-on-the-floor beats and simplistic song structures that only sound good in a club through a massive sound system. “A 12-inch record needs to tell some sort of story,” says Beedle. “I picked up that idea from a '70s New York DJ named Walter Gibbons, who invented the commercial 12-inch remix. He's passed away, God rest his soul, but he's my hero. His remix of Double Exposure's ‘Ten Percent’ was the ultimate disco record. He took a three-minute song and turned it into an 11-minute tour de force.”
“So many dance singles are just groove records,” Diesel adds. “We try to record songs that have a beginning, middle and end. We've always tried to create something that has a story and drama. We've always made records that are in your face — a lot of peaks and breakdowns. There are so many records, but there's a lack of big, in-your-face records.”
In the studio, Beedle, Diesel and Rocky pull ideas from a massive vinyl collection that encompasses disco, techno and many other genres of music. Manipulating small snippets that they've sampled — even just a single beat or sound — the group then processes their inspirations through plug-ins, samplers and processors. As ideas progress, they may bring in an occasional session player, such as Pete Z, who recorded some keyboards for the band. But mainly their songs are built up round-robin style from simple sounds they find on records. “Someone will have a strong idea or something that they've found,” says Rocky. “We'll follow their lead and head down a certain path.”
As one person bounces off another's idea in the studio, the others assess the overall picture as it's forming. “Certain individuals concentrate on a certain aspect of a song,” says Diesel, “If they're busy working, then maybe one or two of us will keep quiet and see how it's going. Sometimes one of us will pop in and say, ‘Oh, I'm not too sure about that.’ So it's knowing when to put your opinion across and when to hold it back to see how a song develops.”
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
“Lazy,” with its deep synth-bass groove, body-moving hi-hat and snare and David Byrne's verse/chorus/verse-structured vocals, is house music with a healthy pop twist. The contradiction of energetic, uptempo music with Byrne's lyrics — “I'm lazy as a man can be” — adds a little humor to the mix. The collaboration was a happy accident of sorts. Although Byrne was a fan of the Ballistic Brothers project and at one point had asked them to go on tour with him, X-Press 2 didn't immediately think to ask him about collaborating.
“When we started working on ‘Lazy,’ we had a couple vocal samples, and we built a groove up around those,” says Rocky. “The song sounded a bit more Derek Carter-ish, a kind of Chicago bouncy sound. Then Ashley and I did a couple of little vocal bits that were reminiscent of Prince or something like that. We got a nice instrumental groove track going. Our engineer, James Brown — not the James Brown — said it sounded like Talking Heads, so we sent the track to David Byrne. He wrote and recorded his lyrics and sent them back to us with a few other bits and pieces that he'd added. We took it apart and reconstructed it around what David had written. It was one of those situations where we felt we needed to be a bit more musical, so we got Pete Z in and changed the backing track somewhat. We kept the basic groove but added the keyboard parts and changed the bass line to fit what David had done. It took us about a month after we got David's vocal to get it exactly right. We mixed it three or four times before we were completely happy with it.”
Because X-Press 2 have regular DJing gigs, they can test out their work in progress. “We'd get a mix done,” says Rocky, “put it down to a CD-R, take it out and play it. I'd think, ‘Oh, that's not quite right. We need to make this a little bit louder.’ Whenever a demo would get a great response, we'd go back in the studio and work on the track some more. A couple tracks didn't make it on the album because they didn't get a great reception when we played them out. We're quite fortunate that we've got the facility to audition tracks before we're committed to a certain arrangement.”
CROSS-EYED AND PAINLESS
X-Press 2 use an impressive DJ setup — six turntables, three mixers with built-in sampling and effects, two CD decks and a Red Sounds C-Loops sampler — for live performance. Their sets are totally improvised, with Rocky acting as the anchor and the others following his lead. Rocky usually starts off with a main groove on one or two turntables. “Then the other two will cut in a loop, sound effects or an a cappella out of the sampler,” he says. “There will be times when I'll mix a whole track into whatever Ashley's playing or whatever Diesel's playing. We have an idea of how everything goes and just follow that formula. It seems to work for us.”
In addition to his two Technics decks, Rocky uses two Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD turntables. “The CDJ has a loop facility,” he says. “You can store up to three edit points on any track, so you can remix tracks live. You can also store edit points and loops on a little Smart Card.”
But Rocky gets most revved up by his C-Loops sampler, which he uses to trigger additional sounds into the mix. “It runs off the mixer's headphone socket,” he says. “It's basically listening to what you're listening to in the headphones. It has a bpm engine in it, so all you need to do is hit one of the buttons to record a loop, and then it edits the loop so it's perfectly in sync with whatever you're listening to. You run it through a spare channel on your mixer so you can mix in your next record and mix the beats that you've just taken off the previous record on another channel. You don't need to chase it or speed it up or slow it down, because it does that for you with whatever's coming out through the headphones. I'll use the C-Loops to play a drum loop over the top of my track or to trigger a vocal sample. Then I'll alter the pitch and filter off some frequencies with the mixer so it turns into a weird noise.”
With all these sound sources at their disposal, the trio has a lot of improvisational possibilities to work with. “We never have all of the equipment playing at once,” Rocky admits. “At most, it'll be like five or six things going on — a few different tracks, a loop, maybe a few different sound effects from the other two — but never much more than that.”
Considering that everything they play is improvised, intertwining five or six sounds simultaneously is no easy feat. How does X-Press 2 avoid the “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome? “You just gotta give each other space,” says Beedle. “We try to make sure we're looking at each other constantly, and we're using our eyes and ears to make sure whatever we're doing complements whatever else is going on. If you're in an orchestra, you're not going to play over the top of each other too much.”
As impressive as orchestral arrangements can be, orchestras have written parts and cues, and there are usually no off-the-cuff improvisations flying around. “Well, we just gotta make sure that between the three of us, the concentration meter is on high,” Beedle says. “You can't take your eye off the ball, man! And you gotta make sure the track that you're going to play after the next guy is in the same groove and same key. That just comes naturally from playing together. There's also a lot of cutting and scratching and all kinds of stuff going on top. So it's quite a collage. Sometimes mistakes are made, but hey, that's the name of the game.”
THE X-PRESS WAY:
LIVE AND STUDIO GEAR
LIVE (and studio)
(2) Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD turntables
(3) Pioneer DJM-600 mixers
Red Sound C-Loops sampler
(6) Technics SL-1200 turntables
STUDIO
Akai S3200 sampler
Akai S5000 sampler
E-mu SP-1200 sampler
Korg Trinity synthesizer
Mackie Digital 8-Bus console
Pioneer EFX-500 effects unit
Roland JV-1080 synth module
Roland VP-9000 VariPhrase
X-PRESS 2: A SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
X-PRESS 2
ALBUMS
Muzikizum (Columbia, 2002)
REMIXES
Black Sunshine & Sorted, “Reach Further” (Black Sunshine, 1992)
Blake Baxter, “Touch Me” (Logic, 1992)
DJ Duke, “Blow Your Whistle” (FFRR, 1993)
Rock 2 House, “That Disco Thang” (Mouse Trap, 1993)
Shades of Rhythm, “The Sound of Eden” (ZTT, 1993)
Mark Almond, “The Idol” (MXX, 1994)
Fire Island, “There but for the Grace of God” (Junior Boys' Own, 1994)
Gerideau, “Take a Stand for Love” (FFRR, 1994)
MD X-Press, “God Made Me Funky” (Nitestuff, 1994)
River Ocean Featuring India, “Love and Happiness (Yemaya y Ochon)” (Strictly Rhythm, 1994)
Chugger, “Thank You” (Back to Basics, 1995)
D*Note, “Garden of Earthly Delights” (Dorado, 1995)
Dreadzone, “Captain Dread” (Virgin, 1995)
Criminal Element Orchestra, “Go Around” (4th & Broadway, 1996)
Dubstars, “Stars” (EMI, 1996)
Lectroluv, “Simply a Man” (Produce, 1996)
Trancesetters, “The Search” (Pukka, 1996)
Mark Almond, “Adored and Explored” (Mercury, 1997)
Olive, “You're Not Alone” (RCA, 1997)
Maurice Fulton, “I Want to Talk” (Pagan, 1998)
Rec Rangers, “Toot Toot Hey Beep Beep” (Skint, 1999)
Sunscreem, “Exodus (Part 1)” (Lightning, 1999)
DJ Pierre, “Wet Dreams” (Nucamp, 2000)
Cevin Fisher, “It's a Good Life” (Wonderboy, 2000)
Green Velvet, “Answering Machine” (F111, 2000)
John Johnson vs. Saints & Sinners, “Summernight 99” (Sounds Good, 2000)
PQM Featuring Cica, “The Flying Song” (Renaissance, 2000)
Wayward Soul, “DJ Friendly” (PIAS, 2000)
Fatboy Slim, “Star 69” (Skint, 2001)
Sister Bliss Featuring John Martyn, “Deliver Me” (Multiply, 2001)
16th Element, “Warp” (Loaded, 2002)
Big Bang Theory, “God's Child” (Defected, 2002)
SINGLES
“Muzik X-Press” (Junior Boys' Own, 1992)
“London X-Press” (Junior Boys' Own, 1993)
“Say What!” (Junior Boys' Own, 1993)
“Rock 2 House” (Junior Boys' Own, 1994)
“Tranz Euro X-Press” (Junior Boys' Own, 1996)
“The Sound” (Junior Boys' Own, 1996)
“AC/DC” (Skint, 2000)
“Muzikizum” (Skint, 2001)
“Smoke Machine” (Skint, 2001)
“Lazy” (Skint, 2002)
BALLISTIC BROTHERS
ALBUMS
London Hooligan Soul (Junior Boys' Own, 1995)
Rude System (Soundboy, 1997)
SINGLES & EPs
“I'll Fly Away” (Junior Boys' Own, 1995)
“Peckings” (Junior Boys' Own, 1995)
Ballistic Radio EP (Soundboy Entertainment, 1997)
“Blacker” (Soundboy Entertainment, 1997)
“A Love Supreme” (Soundboy Entertainment, 1997)
“Tuning Up” (Soundboy Entertainment, 1997)
“Marching On” (Soundboy Entertainment, 1998)
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