a polished vibert

by esa ruoho & sean portnoy

helping to shape trip-hop and drill n' bass as wagon christ and plug, luke vibert's still happy being a bedroom producer. after his recent tour of the states with dj krush, he picks up the phone while waiting for his indian takeout in new york. text by sean portnoy.

grooves: i guess you were here originally for some cmj [college music journal showcase] stuff, right? now you've done that a couple of times, come over for cmj?

vibert: yes. although both times it was just the first date of a much bigger tour, and we just sort of expanded upon around that. and we did 11 gigs after that every night until sunday night.

grooves: and you did it with dj krush. now what was that like? had you worked with him or met him before?

vibert: i'd never met him before or worked with him, and we just did one night, i think, where we played together for like half an hour or something. just him scratching some mad shit over the top of my two decks-sort of mixing-and that was cool, but other than that we just did our own specs on the tour. we both hung around for each other's sets most nights. it was really nice, got into each other's shit.

grooves: now you have to confirm something for me. i had some people tell me that at the cmj show you did that dj spooky was setting up and sound checking over your set.

vibert: kind of. yes. because they cut my set out and just put me on in the set change overs. so, there were two live band playing, spooky and rob swift's band, and talvin [singh] actually as well, and they had to kind of sound check stuff as well just to get the levels right and shit. so it was no one's fault, but just sort of shoddy time sort of thing. by the time i had turned up at 10 o'clock, it was already running an hour and a half late, so it was just kind of bad luck really. but i was the dj, so i was the easiest to cut. everyone else was doing more of a live thing.

grooves: have you played live at all yet? i know you've mentioned in the past that you haven't played live.

vibert: i've kind of tried in the last couple of months - just taking some tiny bits out with me - like this little yamaha sequencer thing i've got, qy something or other, which... has got loads of sounds on it. loads of drum kits and shit. so i've played with that a bit, and i like tambourine and a bit of percussion. but not much more really- i haven't brought anything really from my studio with me. the qy i only really got to play around with, and so i just take that out- it's nice and small. but geneerally i prefer playing dats and records. it's so much less stressful than taking out really old bits and pieces. i tried in manchester, in england, to take out my 303 and drum machine and compressor and effects unit, and the 303 broke. so i was like, oh, fuck, that's the last time i try to take out a bit of old analog shit.

grooves: so what is your philosophy in terms of djing? i know that people were surprised in seeing some of your shows this time that you were playing actual hip-hop like digital underground or stuff like that. i don't know why they thought that was so strange. but i guess if you're the trip-hop guy...

vibert: yeah. like the last tour, i didn't bring much really, because it was with aphex, i thought he'd be more into an uptempo kind of breakbeat set. and i thought, shit, dj krush is going to be playing all hip-hop, and i'm going to want to fit in with him more. but i mean i like playing that stuff anyway. it's my favourite stuff to dj, really. in england, at least. i just feel a bit cheesy, really, playing american stuff to americans. and it's usually out-to-date, the stuff i play, 'cause i'm not concerned with sort of playing really up-to-date hip-hop. i always play stuff that i feel like playing. so i always get a bit slightly worried. i usually just stick to breakbeat stuff and drum 'n' bass and stuff that i feel more comfortable playing. but this time i played more hip hop. i just fancied it.

grooves: is there any hip hop recently that's come out that you kind of enjoyed?

vibert: yeah. most of the rawkus stuff. definitely. it's fuckin great. maybe i'm just one of the few people that liked the last tribe called quest album. i thought it was cool. i quite liked the gang starr album. but i don't really get that much these days - new records. i usually get stuff a few months after it's come out. via sort of listening to it at friends' houses and stuff like that. i haven't really had the chance to go out record shopping out here yet... so i'm not sure what's the latest shit.

grooves: unfortunately, a lot of it's like puff daddy and that kind of stuff, where they really don't do that much interesting stuff with the samples. they just kind of play them as is and use that because it's an easy way to make it recognizable.

vibert: indeed. yeah. easy cross-over. i mean, i quite like some of that stuff just because it's so in your face, almost, and cheeky the way they do, but other than that, it doesn't have that much longevity to it or whatever, nothing really to grab on to.

grooves: let me ask you about the new album. i found it to be a little, i don't know if you had any thoughts about it, but it seemed to be like a little lighter than throbbing pouch. what do you think went in to the change in the mood between the two albums? i mean, obviously there's been some time, but...

vibert: yeah, i think just the time, really. and maybe being more comfortable with the gear that i've got. just kind of being more chilled out, really. i've still done tracks which were a bit stranger and fucked up, but i didn't really want to put them out on virgin [wagon christ's uk label]. i wanted deliberately to pick the more kind of tuneful, more structured kind of track.

grooves: i guess the most out-there track on tally ho is probably 'juicy luke vibert?' obviously, a couple of interesting things: one, putting your name in the title of the track, and the other thing being the whole phone sex-line motif.

vibert: i wasn't really thinking of phone sex, actually. it was more because i just got this flexi-disc free with a porno-magazine, this really old '70s one. 1979. some australian porno mag and it just had basically that track on it. but i just sort of did my own version of it.
it was just this woman called juicy lucy, and it said, "listen to juicy lucy while you enjoy her sexy pics." i just kind of re-did like a funk track in the background, and because it was a flexi-disc, it sounded horrible. and i just sort of re-did it, did a little cheesy funk track, and then fucked it all up with flexi-disk noise. and putting the two things together and then recorded my voice really badly, and after that, edited out any slur words with stupid noises. i just did it for a laugh.
i didn't think of it as a track i was going to release at all. but somehow it got into my head that it needed to be on the album, right in the middle.

grooves: now there are a couple of things i found interesting in terms of just doing a little research, you know, reading past interviews. one thing is you sort of, in the past at least, were very proud of saying you were a bedroom producer. some people think of bedroom or headphone listening... in some sort of pejorative sense. do you still feel satisfied calling yourself a bedroom producer.

vibert: absolutely. yeah. definitely. i think that's the thing that shapes what i do the most, because it just makes it so much more personal, being in my bedroom. if i was in a studio, i would be thinking a lot more coldly about stuff. but as it is, i just do stuff when i feel like it, and when i'm really relaxed and in the mood, which is usually three in the morning or something. and ti'd be really hard to get studios at that time of night and feel as relaxed as i would at home. i definitely think that's the biggest influence on my work- just if i can do it all at home. i mean the only time i've been into the studio is when i did the hip-hop stuff for big dada. and i still recorded all my stuff at home, but we had to record vocals in the studio and that took one day in the studio. and it was just so boring and cold feeling with engineers and shit. i just wasn't into it at all. so, i'm definitely proud of working in my bedroom.

grooves: something related is you've sort of been involved in what have been kind of made into genres. you know, like trip hop and with the plug stuff more like drill n' bass. what do you think of those labels and being associated with those genres that have been sort of set up?

vibert: well, i think with the plug stuff, it's fine. i mean, i never like being put in an category, but i know you have to be somewhere [and] with the plug stuff, i think that's cool. but i do get a bit miffed with, maybe say, a couple of times on the tour i was billed as wagon christ but playing drum n' bass, and i didn't have any drum 'n bass with me. so [i'm] deliberately just wanting to play the ... much more downbeat sort of shit, and it was a bit frustrating sometimes because people came to see drum n' bass sets. that can be a bit difficult, but generally it's cool- although i haven't done any drum 'n bass for a while.

grooves: yeah, i was just going to ask you - what is the status of plug, and have you been listening to a lot of more recent drum 'n bass?

vibert: well, really, no, just the odd bits that get sent to me, which, you know, i think are fine and which i would have really liked a couple of years ago. but it just doesn't seem to have moved on much, for me at least. it's maybe moved in a direction that i'm not too keen on. seems a bit more cold, sort of emotionless, more robotic, most of the stuff i hear. and i prefer the more funky break sort of stuff.

grooves: do you think you'll record more as plug in the near future?

vibert: no. not in the near future, but i definitely wouldn't rule it out. i might suddenly get into doing loads of drum 'n bass tracks again. but i just haven't been inspired, really. i've done like literally about three or four this year, and so i wouldn't have enough maybe for one ep. so it's just a bit, well, i never try to force myself to do anything: i just work on what i feel like doing, and it's just been a lot more downtempo generally. or disco-ey kind of tempo. nothing much faster than that.

grooves: now how did the plug album get picked up by nothing, and i guess you've also worked on a nine inch nails remix. what was that like?

vibert: well, it was [because of] "fire"- that remix- really that the album got picked up. the first one i did for nothing was a meat beat mix, "asbestos lead asbestos" about a year ago, maybe a bit more. and then in january of last year [1997], i did a nine inch nails mix, and that's what made them pick up the album. i think through the mix they just checked out all my stuff and wanted to put out the album, which was new at the time. but then it didn't get released until about eight months after that.

grooves: right, and without "life of the mind," right, because of the sample clearance problem.

vibert: what they said was we can try and clear this sample. but once they explained what they had to do to clear a film sample, i said, "oh god, no, don't bother. i'll put this other track on instead."

grooves: what do you feel about that kind of clearance stuff?

vibert: i'd be into no copyright at all, personally. but i know it's obviously never going to happen. i just try to make it workable, really. on, say, the wagon christ album, we just cleared one sample that was really big and quite obvious, but all the others i just sneakily hid and kind of didn't even tell virgin about them, really.

grooves: is there someone who's responsible for picking stuff up if it's not clearly obvious, or is the onus on you to tell them that you...

vibert: yeah, the onus is definitely on me to tell them about all the samples, but a couple were embarrassing, because a couple they actually heard. i hadn't told them about them, and then they heard them. like one was this fucking huge bit of barry white. i didn't even know it was barry white, 'cause i just had it on this really old dat, and someone spotted that. it was a bit embarrassing. so i had to redo this little string section of the track, but other than that it was fine. there were a couple we tried to clear, and the people were really unreasonable.

grooves: really? in terms of the amount or in terms of just not wanting it to be used?

vibert: well, in the sort of demands they make. like one was just this bit of a bassline from, you know the old pop group japan? sort of '80s? well, it was the bass player's band or...it was the bass player's solo project. and it was this one rough little bassline, and i kind of cut it up so it was really different, but they wanted 100% of the royalties for that track and 1,000 pounds. i just thought, it's not worth it for a bassline. i just took the track off, which was a shame. but yeah, a couple of things were like that. so usually i'll try and just make it really fucked up with the sample, so you can't tell what it is.

grooves: so what's your studio look like nowadays? i know when you started out you didn't even have a sampler and you just had a drum machine or whatever.

vibert: well, it's just in a corner of my bedroom. really small. it's just like my atari computer. i've got one little rack with a sort of mixer at the bottom and then the computer and monitor and sampler. and other than that it's just two keyboards and couple of effects units and that's it. just really simple, tiny. it's just the sampler, really, that's where i do all the work. the sampler and then writing it all on the computer.

grooves: so you still stick with your old atari?

vibert: yeah. absolutely. i bought an atari t-shirt yesterday, just 'cause i represent atari.

grooves: what do you like about that as opposed to a mac or a new pc or something?

vibert: just 'cause i know it really well, and it does everything i need personally. 'cause i don't record on the computer, so i don't need anything with effects or anything. i just need a really basic sequencing program, and i just know that one so well that i don't even need to think about it. it's just really comfortable. so, that's...[what] i like. i could do it with my eyes closed.

grooves: what are some current things you're working on, or is there some stuff you're going to release in the future?

vibert: for about a year now, i've been working with this guy who plays pedal steel guitar. and he came out with the verve recently on their american shows, playing with them as their guitarist and dropped out. he's called bj cole, and he's also worked with rem on their latest stuff. but he wasn't doing anything when i met him first a year ago; he was just doing session work for people in england. he really liked my plug album and kind of came up to me at a gig and said he played steel guitar. and i just thought, wow, that would be wicked to get together with him, and he's got a lot of friends who've played some stuff on the tracks we've done - like cello and piano, double bass, percussion, lots of nice stuff. so we've got nearly a whole album together now. kind of weird, freaky, live hip-hoppy type stuff. and there's a couple of drum 'n bass tracks on it. so that's hopefully going to be the next project for me, hopefully early next year. maybe march or april. but we haven't got a record deal for it yet, so we'll sort of shop around and see who gives us the best deal. that might be ninja or warp or other people.

grooves: so how does it feel to work with live musicians like that and sort of incorporate yourself into that setting?

vibert: well, the way we did it was always just when we worked with more people and bj, i just sort of did a little backing thing. drums, bass, maybe a couple of chords, and then he did all this stuff on top. he's got one of those eight-track things, so i never really worked with him. but it was really nice to hear the tracks afterwards, and then i'd just go round and we'd mix the track together - like what i did was just in two-track stereo and then he'd do six other tracks with like whatever, with cello and stuff like that. so it was really nice to have them playing on top. it was cool. it really makes them come to life, more than samples.

grooves: have you been thinking even in terms of there being another wagon christ album somewhere down the line?

vibert: well, with virgin in the u.k., i've got a five album deal for wagon christ, so unless they terminate it, there'll be another four albums at least.


[inlay at some point of the article]
"i've got one little rack with a sort of mixer at the bottom and then the computer and monitor and sampler. and other than that, it's just two keyboards and couple of effects units and that's it. just really simple, tiny."