Scarce _ Interview With Boner M

Boner M gifts an incredible mix from his archives for subsekt 056.

This interview has been a long time coming for one reason or another. An absolute fuck-up on the blog / user error meant that it did not get published. It can only be described as an embarrassing schoolboy error. But moving swiftly and apologetically on..

I got in contact with Boner M after hearing AnD on Boiler Room. A friend posted a link to Antsinplot 001 afterwards and I had to find out more. A few messages later and I got chatting to Tony – The man himself..  and was soon sent a raucous outdoor set from 2007,  It’s superb.

We had a good chat about his background, music production and recent collaborations. He’s from Finland and the mix was recorded at an old racetrack there, so we talked about that too – which was great as its not often that there is an ‘actual’ story to go with mixes usually. Just adds to the whole vibe. Listen to it and you’ll see what I mean.

Oh and by the way.. He has a new one out on ARTS. The Tsiu EP. Pure dirt. Definitely worth checking out.

 

Hi Tony, how are you? Thanks a lot for agreeing to do the mix & interview. Great to have a chat with you as I’ve been checking out your music a lot since hearing that collab you did with Johann Platt recently. I checked out your music on Pennyroyal & Don’t with subhead. Really like your stuff a lot. Have you been producing music for long?

I can’t complain, even though the summer over here is mostly moist & damp with occasional sunshine. The fascination of sound began with C64’s cracktros & demos. For some odd reason I never got my hands on a SID tracker, so I started to get my freak on with Amiga trackers. One can easily calculate how long ago it was. First software I got was from a magazine cover disk. Hmmm, looks like the odd reason was just that all of my buddies whom I exchanged disks with were gamers.

In those days I used a number of different names and most of them are better left unmentioned. But I did put out some sounds for a mod group called Ural 13. The founders later became Ural 13 Diktators and the tracker group was no more.

Do you like collaborating with people? Have you known Johann long?

I’m not sure. So far yes. Platt is an old homie from the student cap era, which was around 10+ years ago.

How did you get involved with Don’t and Jerome Hill.. Great label!!

By accident. I have to admit that I hadn’t even heard of the label when Jerome approached me  via Soundcloud. I have to blame / thank Mark Hawkins’s kind persuasion skills for forcing me to sign up there in the first place and of course for beating those jungle drums.

That was a good bit of luck so. How did you hook up with Untold’s Pennyroyal? I remember reading at the time that he was starting a new label, focusing on “rough & ready” Techno. I guess that is a good description. Were you interested in all the Hemlock stuff before you got involved?

That happened via SoundCloud, as before. The story is the same with the label as well. I’ve never heard of Hemlock and it was one of the favourite labels for another DJ friend of mine. Small world.

Listening to the flow of your tracks, it sounds like you do a bit of jamming during the production phase?

For years I’ve been using only Reason with midi controllers. The feel is close enough to real machines with a healthy dose of more possibilities.

Yes, a bit of jamming means pure jamming. I only program a few patterns and hone the basics. Then I start the recording and knob twisting the track out of the ether. Sometimes I need minor post-editing in terms of cutting out sections. Sometimes I don’t touch the take at all. Zoidar for example was one of those lucky takes.

You’re probably not a great collector of software or hardware then. I’m guessing that you like to keep things simple?

Simple is my middle name. Even though my main tool is a software, which can’t be expanded, I do have a small midi-setup; Amiga, C64, MT32 & Microkorg, for screwing around.