Idle Hands _ Interview With Jake Conlon

We had Calvin / CWS on a little while back, who himself has been the “super-resident” for years. You’ve been doing a bit of that yourself, haven’t you? Will you tell us a bit about how you got started with Resonance?

I first met the lads, Andy & Dave, with my friend George after an Atomic Jam about 4/5 years ago. Basically, two different sets of mates sat in the same room, realising they both entertained the same sense of humour. Literally just making odd noises and shouting at each other in their respective dialects.. anyway, it grew from there really. Then just decided to put a night on as we eventually finished an EP and wanted to do a launch party.

I’ve been lucky to play alongside Skirt, Inigo Kennedy, Joton, Phase, Casual Violence, Radial and more, but the ethos has always been that the people on are people we like, so if nobody turned up, at least we have a club soundsystem and our favourite people playing for us. It’s great being a resident. You play for people who come to the nights and as it’s a small scene, it’s like playing for friends really.

Great – any ‘best of times’ / ‘worst of times’ ?

Being involved with Resonance, finally having somewhere to play out regularly and all the extra gigs that have come from people seeing me play out is the best thing. Worst thing was someone attempting to pull my trousers down during my set, people trying to mix records when I’m not looking and the usual people yapping whilst you are trying to mix. Hopefully that’s all the bad stuff you get in one lifetime and its happened at the start of my journey.

Trousers?! FFS…

Ok.. change of direction Jake. Making music.. how long have you been producing for?

First started messing about with Music on the Playstation console but I couldn’t tell you an exact date. I’d shown interest in music and it seemed to relax me, so I was given a laptop, but it was stolen from home whilst I was on a family Holiday in October 1999. I can’t remember what the program was either, It could have been an educational version of Cubase…..

I had started reading Computer Music around the same time. From Computer Music, I got a demo copy of Making Waves and a demo copy of Fruity Loops 3. You couldn’t save in either, so, I’d synthesise all the sounds and parts with automation in Fruity Loops and bounce them down for sequencing in Making Waves. I’d be coming back from school on lunch breaks to make sure my efforts were still there and the computer hadn’t froze.

I’ve used Reason since version 2 and have been on Ableton since version 4. Reason is what I use for creating sounds, as I know the the program inside out. More often than not everything is bounced down and put into Ableton for mangling. I suppose its the same method I’ve used since day one really, except I can now save. These days though, I usually end up saving over some changes I had wished to keep.

Cool, well I suppose we should talk a little about the fact that you won the Mattias Fridell Remix Competition. Well done again Jake! I know you felt that it was a bit rough at the time, but it turned out great. You were saying at the time that it was 2 different remixes? An ambient version layered over heavy beats.. that’s right, isn’t it?

Yeah, was fun to do. Knocked it up in an hour or two on a Sunday, lay in bed, Match Of Teh Day on mute. It sounded a bit rough due to me making it on a pair of £5 JVC earphones. I take the same casual approach to every remix I do. It’s a lot more fun. Everything is chopped up beyond recognition and made into my own. I quite enjoy decimating someones vision and shoving it back completely different. The ambient version became a chunk of the finished remix and was pushed in the final mix as atmosphere.