Natural Flava
Mar 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By Chris Gill
“What I love about America is if you work hard and believe in yourself, you'll do okay,” says Dave Ralph. The respected progressive house DJ, who moved from England to America about three years ago, has become so enamored of the United States that he named his latest mix CD Naturalized in homage to his aspiration of becoming an American citizen. “I've got my green card and a stamp in my passport. I'll be swearing my allegiance here sooner or later.”
Although patronizing, patriotic banter has become commonplace after the events of September 11 (which, ironically, was the date that Naturalized was released), Ralph's sentiments are honest. After all, America has been good to Ralph. Stateside dance music fans have made his previous mix CDs for the Kinetic label, Tranceport II (1999) and Love Parade: Berlin (2000), some of the best-selling electronic music compilations of recent years. Wherever he appears in the U.S., he regularly spins records at clubs and festivals in front of crowds numbering in the thousands.
And Dave Ralph has been good to America, too. Naturalized includes tracks by American homegrown talent like L.A.'s Deepsky (“Until the End of the World”) and Pittsburgh's Pat Foosheen (“Origins”), in addition to familiar efforts by Fatboy Slim, Laurent Garnier and X-Press 2. Ralph prefers to maintain residencies in American cities like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., instead of at British superclubs or in Ibiza, like most other progressive house DJs. And even though last year's Mekka tour, in which he was scheduled to participate, was canceled, he believes that America's dance music scene has a promising future. “It's entirely possible for America's scene to become the best and biggest in the world,” he says.
Ralph is preparing for his own future by producing his first album of all-original material. While he has collaborated as a producer, remixer and singer/musician on several projects (such as Bassheads, Jelle Boufon, The Argonauts and Tea Freaks), he's only recently begun to work on solo efforts. Ralph's own “Islands of Light,” which opens Naturalized, hints at the direction that he plans to take, but he emphasizes that he's also looking beyond dance music for inspiration. “I'm really into bands like Creed, Tool and Fuel at the moment,” he explains. “I like the rawness of that music. I've played guitar for a long time, and I want to have a mixture of electronic and traditional instruments on the album. I enjoy making my own music more than anything else I do.”
How did you get involved with producing music?
The first record I worked on was called Is There Anybody Out There? by Bassheads, which came out in 1991 and reached Number 5 on the UK charts. It was an anthem at the time. That was my first experience being in a studio. I had no idea what to do. A friend of mine called me up on the phone and played me this loop that I thought was awesome. He told me that this guy wanted to go in the studio and do the track with him. I asked him to let me come, and that's how it happened. We went to Nick Murphy's studio in Halifax, which was in his mom's front room — we weren't allowed to make noise after 6 p.m. Nick had his little Atari computer and some keyboards. I had no idea how that stuff worked, but I put my input in. That was my introduction into production. I got the bug right away, and I saw how you don't have to be a great piano or guitar player to get things done. I grew up playing guitar, and I can play keyboards well enough to do what I do now. I had some understanding of music, but I threw it all out the window and tried to find out what MIDI does. It took me a long time to get my head around that. Once I grasped that, I learned how to use the studio. Nick taught me how to use a mixer and effects. We did some tracks together that never saw the light of day.
You also experienced some success with the track “Hope.”
I met these other guys, Warren Le Sueur and Mark Mitchell, and we did the Jelle Boufon single “Hope,” which came out in 1997. By the time we did that, I knew what everything did, and I could be an active member. You can't learn things overnight. It takes a lot of time. “Hope” was really successful, but we had a huge falling out over the publishing. That taught me a lot about working with other people. The record company politely killed it because they saw that there were problems. I was fortunate to get a publishing deal, which enabled me to buy my first studio in Liverpool. I started making records under different guises. I stepped away from using Ataris and started using Macintoshes, which was a whole new experience. I recorded a couple of tunes as Coloured Oxygen that were really successful, and I did a remix. Then I got my studio [equipment] stolen. Stupidly, I didn't have it insured because that was just an extra cost, and I didn't think anything would ever get stolen. I learned the biggest lesson of my life because they got everything I had. All they left me with was the mixing desk and an empty rack, because they couldn't get it out for some reason. I lost my computer, all my sample CDs, everything. That knocked me back. I couldn't move forward because I didn't have any money, and I couldn't generate any money because DJing wasn't huge yet. I was just surviving.
How did you end up doing your first mixed CD for Kinetic?
I was touring with Paul Oakenfold in Europe and all over the world, and I met [Kinetic Records boss] Steve Lau in Ibiza. He told me that he really liked what I was doing and asked if I wanted to go on tour in America as the opening DJ for BT. I spent four weeks over here doing that. That was my first foray into American dance culture, and I was blown away by it. I started getting all these gigs. Paul released Tranceport on Kinetic, which was hugely successful, and we carried on with touring. Then Steve asked me to do Tranceport 2, and my life became great. After doing that, I decided to move to America. I started making some money, and I put all of my money into my studio.
What made you decide to relocate from the UK to the United States?
I always liked the States. I was coming here so much, traveling back and forth across the Atlantic all the time and putting a lot of miles on Virgin Airlines. After a while, it was nonsensical. I was coming home to England on a Monday and coming back on a Friday to do a gig. I had a lot of friends who lived in Miami, and they were saying that I should move there. Eventually I packed up and went. The scene has always been really good here. I always thought that since the first time I toured here with BT.
Did you feel removed from the scene in the UK?
What's going on in the UK is overrated. One of America's fundamental problems is that people here are worried too much about what goes on in England. There's too much focus on outside talent. That's not to decry what goes on in any other country, especially England, but I don't feel that England is relevant to what goes on in America. Case in point is John Creamer, who has been around for a long time. I believe that he has just done a deal with a British record label, which means his record will just get exported back here again. Everybody will think he's English, but he's homegrown American talent. Too much of that goes on. Too much emphasis is put on Europe and England. People here have to stand up and be counted and go, “Hey, we've got some great records and artists here.”
Who are your favorite American artists?
Deepsky is going to be massive. They've stepped away from being a dance outfit. Their new album is pumping, vibey, young and angry. John Creamer is really deep and dark. Moda is really good. As far as DJs go, Jon Debo and Alex Whelan, who manages the Yoshi Toshi shop, are some of my favorites, as well as D:Fuse, who is becoming huge now. There are too many to mention. It's interesting because America is such a vast country, and there are so many different flavors from different areas. You've got people spinning breaks, progressive breaks, trance, and this and that.
I understand that you've started working on an album of original material.
I've just moved near Boston and built a studio in my basement. I want to do a project album, sort of like what the Alan Parsons Project used to do. I want to create something that is organic and electronic at the same time. My roots are in rock — not soul or techno. I want to have guitars on the album. I want it to sound like it's real, not like it's overproduced. I've been thinking about this album for the last four years. I'm going to take my time doing it, which I can do since I have a studio in my home and can work on it any time. I used to spend about 80 percent of my time in the studio, and when I wasn't there, I was out DJing somewhere. The first thing I'm going to do is with Noel Sanger, who is a great guitarist. He used to open his live set with a 20-minute guitar solo.
What do you have in your studio?
The heart of it is my G3 laptop, which I take with me on the road. I use [Emagic] Logic Audio, but only for sequencing, and Pro Tools LE, plus a lot of plug-ins like Pluggo. My friend John Debo has a full Pro Tools|24 MIX setup. He keeps on trying to convince me to go down that route, as well, but I like having my hands on knobs and keyboards. At home, I plug the G3 into a Magma expansion chassis, which has a SCSI card, and a MOTU 2408 that gives me access to my Mackie D8B mixer. All my analog stuff is plugged into the D8B as well. From an analog base, I can come out of the desk, lock it into the 2408 and go back into the computer so I can sequence stuff with all the plug-in effects at my disposal. To avoid using too much processor power, I send some tracks digitally to my [E-mu] E4 and sample them. I'll run vocals through a Focusrite Platinum compressor and Vocal-Master, through the 2408, straight to hard disk. It sounds really clean. My monitors are Mackie HR-824s. I really put those monitors to the test before I bought them. I recorded tracks through them, played the tracks in the car, played them on the worst stereo amplifier, played them on the best stereo amplifier, played them in a club, and everything sounded the same. You don't have to compensate when you use them. I only wish that they were a bit more powerful so I could really crank them.
How do you record your bass drum sounds?
I always sweat over my kick drums. Paul van Dyk's kick drums are so wicked and solid. Whenever you listen to his tracks, the kick drum is always there. I don't know if that's because of his offbeat bass line style, but the kick drum is always predominant.
A great place to start is the Steinberg LM-4 VST plug-in. The drum machine sounds really good, and it's clean. I took the 909 from that and put it in my sampler, manipulated it in there and compressed it. But it took me a lot of trial and error to get a sound that I really liked. I have an M-One, a D-Two and a Triple-C made by TC Electronic, and I used those processors and the compressors on the Mackie desk to make the kick drum sound awesome. The bass drum needs to have a click on the attack, so I like to put some top end on it as well. That click is just as important as that boom. Nick Murphy taught me to cut frequencies instead of boosting them. Less is more in this case.
When you're selecting tunes for your mixed CDs, how do you plan it out?
I have a two-pronged approach. I started working on Naturalized in June and recorded it in July. In June, I started thinking about records. My first thoughts were to go back through the records I had received over the last six months. I'm not scared to put an older record on a mixed CD. Sometimes they're not available anyway. I put together a pile.
My next step was to contact my friendly record companies — the ones that have been supportive of me — and ask them if they had anything that they think I might like. I always tend to ask for a lot more records than I'm going to put on the album because of the logistics of putting some of them together. They might sound great out live, but in the studio environment you might hear some key clashes going on, or there may be some wrong syncopations of rhythms. It's always nice to have too many options instead of too few. It's just a case of doing some groundwork.
Sometimes I forget records. I'm a big believer in working a record. I'm not playing them in the same place every single night. If a record is in my box for two or three months, that doesn't worry me. It worries me that people are snobbish about that. Don't decry a record because it's a few months old or it's commercially available and the public can get it. That doesn't mean that it's over. Sometimes people want to hear tunes that they know. As a DJ, I feel that it is my responsibility to do that and to educate people as well. It's a fine line. I believe in being an entertainer and being professional about what I do. The people in the club pay my wages at the end of the night. You've got to watch the crowd, and if you're losing them, you've got to pull out that record that you know is going to work. But there are also times when you get a record that is so cool, and when you play it out, people get it immediately. I've always said that the day that I get that wrong is the day that I'll give it up.
DAVE RALPH GEAR LIST
Apple Power Mac G4 dual 800MHz
Apple PowerBook G3 with Magma 4-slot CardBus
BLUE Mouse cardioid condenser mic
Digidesign Pro Tools
Emagic Logic Audio Platinum
E-mu E4 Platinum sampler
E-mu X-Lead Turbo sound set
E-mu Mo'Phatt sound module
Focusrite MixMaster analog stereo audio processor
Focusrite VoiceMaster mic preamp/vocal processor
Ibanez PF200 electric guitar
Keyfax PhatBoy MIDI controller
Korg Triton Rack module
Mackie HR-824 studio monitors
Mackie D8B
MOTU 2408 audio interface
MOTU MIDI Express XT MIDI interface
Novation Supernova II Pro-X
Panasonic SV-3800 DAT recorder
Pioneer CDJ-100S professional CD player
Pioneer CDJ-700S professional CD player
Roland XV-3080 synth module
Stanton 680 cartridges
Tacoma acoustic guitar
TC Electronic D-Two multitap rhythm delay
TC Electronic M-One dual-effects processor
TC Electronic Triple-C compressor
Technics SL-1210 turntables (2)
Vestax PMC-270A DJ mixer
| Want to use this article? Click here for options! |  |
