Baitercell and Timmy Schumacher interview (2005)

NZ Musician, February/March 2005 (Vol: 12, No: 1) By Stephen Jewell (photography by Dave Holmes)

The Bass Technique of Baitercell and Schumacher

Kog Transmissions original Chris Chetland, aka Baitercell, DJ Timmy Schumacher and vocalist Bex Riley catapulted New Zealand's burgeoning breaks scene into the international spotlight when their debut Baitercell v Schumacher 12" vinyl single What's Down Low, topped online breakbeat radio station Breaks FM's World Chart in 2004.

What's Down Low has garnered praise from the leading dance artists like recent Big Day Out visitors the Freestylers, Ninja Tune's DJ Food, Way Out West and Kosheen and has sold around 3000 copies since being released by UK label, Passenger.

Over a year later, What's Down Low is still going strong as a drum'n'bass remix by Passenger label heads Aquasky and the track is also included on the debut album from the newly-abbreviated Baitercell and Schumacher. 'The Wall of Bass Technique' will be released through Kog and an as yet unconfirmed distributor in early April.

"What's Down Low was definitely the turning point for us perception-wise internationally," says Chetland when I meet him and Schumacher at Kog's Kingsland studios.

"It was a track we wrote in one way and then we reconfigured it. We sent a preview version to Aquasky and they liked it. It was the first track we did with Bex. We'd heard her on an Agent Alvin track, The Hustler, which was on [Kog 2003 breaks compilation] 'Return of the Booomshwack'. She had a really sexy voice and attitude, which is what breaks is about in so many ways, so we got her in the studio. Coming from my side of things, which is more of a band background, I'm really interested in working with vocalists. It gives it an extra level that you can have fun with."

Schumacher, who made his first track Interstate Pimp with Substax's Nick Farrands, and Chetland, who has previously recorded with various members of the now-slimmed down Kingsland collective as Baitercell and Chumbwa, have been recording together for nearly half a decade now.

"I've been into breaks for a long time and obviously Timmy is also into breaks," recalls Chetland. "We just chatted and I said 'Come up if you want to write some music sometime'. I wanted people to write music with. Collabs are always good. We ended up writing Nazty Gymnaztix. Then Timmy and I were both in England at the same time. He was at the Red Bull Music Academy and I was over there gallivanting around. We hung out and talked about music. Being in London is definitely a good inspiration, not just to get out of London but also for coming up with lots of ideas, which we did and when we came back, we started getting into it."

It was a tentative time at first because Chris had a lot of stuff going on with Kog while I was coming up and trying to do some stuff with him," continues Schumacher. "He was like 'Yeah, we'll get together'. We ended up writing Nazty Gymnaztix on a Friday night, although it took us a long time to get around to doing it because Chris was so busy and we both had our own stuff going on, so it took us a while to realise that we had a good partnership."

After the success of What's Down Low, Chetland and Schumacher next released Lay It Down through American breaks label Zone Records, run by DJ Icey, whom Schumacher describes as "... the Frankie Knuckles of breaks". However, the pair actually recorded Lay It Down before What's Down Low and the former track was also included on 'Return of the Booomshwack'.

"We played it at Alpine Unity and it complete slaughtered the dancefloor," declares Chetland. "That was when we said, 'This is what we do'. Take no prisoners, with maximum bass. Everybody else will be like 'cool' and have all this thinking shit but we'll just basically lay it down. It's got a pretty moronic bassline. It's one note pretty much. Keeping it simple and keeping it dumb, and that's why it worked. Don't over-complexify it. Play it out. That's what I like about Lay It Down. On big (sound) systems, it's nothing more than in your face."

"The main thing is that we deliver our tracks in the best way we can to the audience on the night." - Timmy Schumacher

Despite the success of their vinyl singles overseas, Chetland and Schumacher will initially only release their debut CD album, 'The Wall of Bass Technique' in Australasia then later turn their attention to the northern hemisphere.

"It's been written as an album, in that if you're talking about an album by, say King Crimson, the whole thing tells a story," claims Chetland. "Anyone can write a collection of singles but that's not an album, that's more like a compilation. To actually write songs that are telling aspects of a particular story over the whole album is heaps harder but it's more beautiful. You only get one chance to put your album out so you might as well see what sort of story you can tell with it."

Apart from breaks, 'The Wall of Bass Technique' also encompasses hip hop and electro.

"It all came from the same lineage and goes back to (Afrika) Bambaataa for me in many ways," explains Chetland. "On this album, we take the lineage back to what Bambaataa did (in the early '80s) and how it went off into hip hop one way and on the other side, Miami bass, which for me is the progenitor, the start of what breaks are about. On the album, to say that you've got hip-hop here and breaks over there and to then take it all back to where it initially split, to actually discuss that lineage within an album, is really interesting."

"There's also the closer inspiration I have, which is the records that I buy from the UK," adds Schumacher. "I was brought up listening to rave and hardcore music, which I think you can hear in our music. That then crosses over with all our modern day influences like all the Southern Crunk (hip hop) shit that is coming out from Lil John, Bonecrusher and those guys, which we both love."

'The Wall of Bass Technique's' hip hop vocal element is supplied courtesy of some of this country's leading rap artists, including Mareko, Flo on Show, Dei Hamo producer John Chong Nee and his offsider, Monarch. Bex Riley also returns for some tracks, including next single Lock and Load while newcomer Niki Ahu appears on several tracks, including the album's Mareko-spearheaded title track.

"Chris was playing me some of his crunk beats one day and I piped up and said 'This is the opening track of the album and why don't we get Mareko?'" recalls Schumacher.

"Mareko is such a good storyteller," continues Chetland. "Virtually no other MC has his ability to relate a story directly to the audience. He was basically the only sensible choice for the introduction track. So we got him in, gave him our beats and the names of the tracks. We also told him what we didn't want, which was most of your rap stereotypes. It was a straight delivery and he really came to the fore with it. It's very different to what he usually does."

However, 'The Wall of Bass Technique's' most intriguing collaboration is with Jordan Reyne, who appears on Leap of Faith. "I was familiar with Jordan's stuff from her track Transistor on the Breaks Co-op album 'Roofers', which is one of my all-time favourite NZ tracks - I'll always play it on my NZ Music Week show on bFM," says Schumacher. "I really love her vocal delivery and lyrical content. I had a dream that one day I would work with her and then Chris played me one of the beats he had written, and I was like 'Jordan Reyne would be perfect for this'."

"She liked the Chumbwa album ('Sonnets to Orpheus') that I'd done," continues Chetland. "The thing I like about her track is that it is probably the heaviest track on the album but she's got such a delicate and beautiful voice, with such a sense of space. It made for a beautiful juxtaposition that actually melds together. It's got my favourite synth sound that I've created in the last three years on it. It was great to get someone would could pull that extra bit of information out of the track. I know what you can put into a track as an artist when you write a song and to actually get vocals that take it to that extra level is rare, but Jordan has really done it on Leap of Faith."

According to Schumacher, the album title neatly sums up their varied but always bass-heavy style.

"It started off as a joke," he admits. "Chris was producing a track, EQing it all out and I was like 'Jesus Christ, man, is there no frequency you haven't covered?' He turned around and just goes 'Yeah, it's my wall of bass technique!' I thought about it and realised that it was a great name for an album. It kind of represents our production style, which is all about intensity and in your face like a wall of sound."

"Like what Phil Spector did," continues Chetland. "A wall of noise, particularly with bass as there's so many more frequencies that you can get nowadays. I started off doing a lot of dub and if you want to learn bass techniques, write dub tracks. I've spent a lot of time working on the tricks of how you get good bass. For example, we quite often use four different bass sounds to actually create a bassline. It's important, because when we play a track, or when one of our tracks is played live, I want it to jump out over everyone else's tracks. I want it to be the biggest tra

ck."

And Schumacher and Chetland should know what works on the dancefloor as they play out regularly at venues such as Auckland's Fu Bar, although their 'live' show is apparently still a work in progress.

"Timmy DJs and I've got my laptop, from which I play extra riffs and throw in samples, while Bex does vocals," explains Chetland. "We've tried a few things. But to not use Timmy's DJ skills would be silly, so we work around that, but there's lots of different ways we can do it."

"It's scalable," insists Schumacher. "All the way from just the two of us to bringing in more and more vocalists. We could probably do a lot of it on (new software) Ableton but we haven't taken that on board yet. But at the end of the day, how we do it doesn't really matter. The main thing is that we deliver our tracks in the best way we can to the audience on the night."