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TRACKS UNTOLD: U-ZIQ’s ‘GOODBYE’ with Mike Paradinas

Added 2022-10-26 17:17:34 +0000 UTC

TRACKS UNTOLD: U-ZIQ’s ‘GOODBYE’

with Mike Paradinas

In this Lux Cache track breakdown series, we invite artists, producers, engineers and songwriters to uncover the creative process of their work in their own words. In this chapter, we are joined by IDM visionary and Planet Mu founder u-Ziq (aka Mike Paradinas) to discuss his 30+ year legacy career in electronic music, discussing working alongside peers such as Aphex Twin and Squarepusher and breaking down the production of his recent single ‘Goodbye’, giving us a behind-the-scenes look at his offkilter breakbeat sound.

This article is available as both a Patreon text post and a preferred-viewing .pdf document format (download at the bottom of the post). We ask you kindly to not share Lux Cache content outside of the Patreon, our contributors rely on your donations.

Remix stems for u-Ziq’s ‘Goodbye’ are available exclusively to Premium Subscribers, downloads can be found on the Lux Cache Patreon page.

Cover art for u-Ziq’s ‘Goodbye’ by Tyrone Williams - released by Planet Mu in 2022.

LC: The 90s experimental dance music scene from yourself and peers such as Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Luke Vibert had a foundational route in music being played in clubs, such as acid house and jungle, but were developed with nicher dance music subgenres to create different emotional contexts. How much of this development was an intentional practice versus a playful experimentation of ideas?

MP: I can only really talk about myself here, but my ‘foundational route’ and I suspect that of all those artists you mention, was rock, punk, indie, dub, reggae, hip hop, pop, industrial, some modern classical and funk (the rare groove scene), before any exposure to dance music. It was within that foundation that I was exposed to House and Techno in the late eighties. Those influences came out in our music quite naturally I think. In a different way with all of us. My exposure to the new electronic club music of the late eighties was still quite novel by the time I came to be writing electronic music. I would hear something I loved and almost immediately try to incorporate something of its ideas into my sound. I was very much into Detroit techno thanks to the compilations released in 1988 and 1990. I saw myself as trying to formulate a UK response to this, a uk techno which showed our English influences as children of the seventies. Rather than just making a carbon copy of Detroit as some were doing, or making music purely for the dancefloor (which I wasn’t talented enough to do) I just pooled my influences.In answer to your question, the emotional richness was intentional, however there was a large element of improvisation in finding the musical places we ended up in. The context is of course important. It’s all we had in those days: record shops, small clubs, all great environments for meeting people and exchanging ideas.

u-Ziq, 1997.

LC: Does your work as u-Ziq parallel with Planet Mu? Has your work at the label inferred your own creative and production process? What overlap do you see in the two roles?

MP: The music I've chosen for the label has undoubtedly influenced me, yes. There were times when I have explicitly tried to make dubstep or footwork, unsuccessfully - so I stopped trying. I guess I have to make my own version, my own music and influences naturally pop out. Mu artists have been helpful too; given me samples, suggested software, that sort of thing. There’s a lot of business involved in the label too, which requires a very different approach to the creativity mindset of making music. I guess the overlap is to trust your decisions, trust in your music taste.

LC: In a curation sense, are the primary differences in cultivating a label in 2022 versus when you founded Planet Mu in 1995?

MP: In 1995 you had to have a phone and a fax machine. Music was sent on tapes in the post. CD-Rs weren’t even a thing yet. We got the internet around 1999. It did change things, but quite slowly. Dialup wasn’t really that great for anything but email and message boards. Once broadband arrived around 2001 then we could send music and artwork far more quickly by email and it changed everything. Obviously we sold a lot more records back in ‘95. The “inkies” were very influential then - meaning NME, Melody Maker and Sounds, the 3 music papers, you had to establish a presence with them to be guaranteed any countrywide exposure. The dance music monthlies were only just being established. Mixmag, DJ and Record Mirror had been around a while, but Jockey Slut, Muzik and the likes were just starting. But they had a far smaller readership compared with the 200k+ of the inkies.

The advent of downloads in the late 90s, and then streaming a decade ago were other big changes. All these things affect the job of curation. Whether an artist is likely to be “press-worthy” etc. Especially these days. It’s odd now, some of our bigger sellers struggle to get any press, but some of those who get blanket coverage can still sell quite poorly. I think it’s to do with having an older audience for some artists and those who appeal to a younger audience just don’t sell as much, at least physical copies. So that’s one difference now, the emergence of ‘legacy acts’ who may have been big back in the day, but would now struggle to get any press attention, but they still sell in large numbers thanks to their ageing fans. The older audience has more money too so we do bear that in mind. It is still possible to establish newer artists (with younger and older audiences) though, such as with Jlin who seems to appeal to a wide amount of people. So I guess the bottom line is always the quality of music. And that’s always what I think of when listening and signing. Everything else flows from that, and those other considerations are usually later on down the line.

Planet Mu, founded in 1995 by Mike Paradinas.

LC: Do you have any favourite memories from the first 5 years of running Planet Mu? What were the big lessons in those initial releases?

MP: At first it was just an extension of what I had learnt from releasing my own records through both independent and major labels. My first few releases were by my friends or associates (like most labels) but I quickly learnt that demos were not a reliable source of exciting new material* and to cast my net wider. I thought that we didn’t want to get stuck in a rut of being associated with “drill & bass” or “idm” and wanted to show ourselves as a label with a wider remit. I contacted those whose records I liked such as Hellfish and Remarc (who were sometimes quite tricky to find in the pre-internet era). With our Amµnition parties we sort of made a scene coalesce around the hardcore tekno, breakcore, idm and jungle scenes which I guess sort of evolved later into stuff like bangface events. I suppose purely practical lessons are around learning how many records to press in advance, when to spend money on a release or invest in videos, that sort of thing.

Another lesson learnt from early on was to work from home. The first few years we didn’t have money to rent an office, but it quickly seemed obvious to me, especially with the advent of broadband, that this wasn’t required for this sort of business in the 21st century. It was just me for the first ten years, but once we had others working for us and with us, they also worked from their homes. As well as being financially efficient, it also enables people to organise their lives and childcare with much more flexibility.

*This is because people sending demos often second guess that the label just wants more of the same, but worse.

LC: Planet Mu is a label that seems to always be reinventing its legacy, with releases that cover a very broad range of electronic music. Does the legacy of the label ever play into your approach in signing a new artist? And in the 26 years of the label, do you ever find similarities in the new artists of today that call back to the early days?

MP: These days, yes, the label’s legacy forms an integral part of signings. Mainly because that is a better chance of making some money, which we then use to continue and promote newer or marginalised artists. The recent signing of Bogdan Raczynski was initially instigated due to his amazing new material, but his higher profile of a former ‘Rephlex artist’ among people of a certain age sealed the deal and meant we could risk more money on him as we are probably guaranteed a return on it. Money doesn’t figure in the initial decisions to sign, only music, but then I take proposed releases and play them to the people I work with, and the financial considerations are always a factor. Along with press-worthiness, which usually correlates with how interesting an artist is and usually how interesting their music is.

LC: Could you show and tell us some of the sound design and production tricks that went into Goodbye? What is the general workflow to approaching your sound and what criteria do you look for? (please include screenshots + any extra samples etc you're willing to offer!)

MP: ‘Goodbye’ was the last track I wrote for Magic Pony Ride. I was trying to compile the tracks I had into an order, but it was missing something a bit more melancholy.

It started off with the Amen sample. I was fiddling around with it, stretching it in the Logic Pro arrange window and it suddenly made this weird glitching, aliasing sound (which wasn’t repeatable) so I bounced down the bar I was working on and used that break sample for the basis of the beat in the new track. Here’s a screenshot of the opening beat. I simply cut up the rhythm I had previously made (I didn’t save that project).

Breaks chopped inside Logic Pro X by u-Ziq

I was trying to channel Dillinja a bit here… a very trebly amen but lots of sub and a sort of sound system rhythm. Of course it didn’t really end up much like that, but it was the starting point for the vibe.

The next element I made was the piano figure, which was an EXS-24 “bosendorfer piano chord” preset layered with a harp sample. Trying to keep it restrained. Hard for me.

The string/pad sounds came quickly after that as I started arranging the track.

The vocal samples in the first breakdown are from the Alchemy synth which is bundled with Logic Pro. I layered several different heavily delayed voice samples, all with the same melody to create the wordless voice effect.

Once I had the rhythm and initial melody, which is the quick part of the writing process, the remainder of the time was spent arranging the track, which I find to be the most time-consuming part. Balancing the parts, making sure nothing out-stays its welcome etc.

‘Goodbye’ project file inside Logic Pro X by u-Ziq

LC: Is there anything of the process of ATARI, or any other of the original hardware that you used, that you would still attribute to your current production process inside Logic? Has it become easier to create the complicated rhythmic and melodic patterns now, or do new challenges arise?

MP: I used to use Cubeat on the Atari, which was a budget version of Cubase, which of course still exists. The workflow was very similar to today’s Logic or Cubase in terms of it being a virtual tape machine going from right to left with tracks going top to bottom. The main difference of course is the instruments, in the nineties they were all external hardware instruments controlled via MIDI, whereas today they’re all “in-the-box”. I find it much easier nowadays to write tracks in a few minutes while I wait for a kettle to boil, while I’m cooking, or after I’ve put the kids to bed.

One big difference for me is the mapping of samples onto keyboards. I used to have to record a sample (say a drum break) into my Casio FZ-1 sampler and then I would map a different drum hit onto each key, sometimes pitching it or reversing it, so I could then play the keyboard and come up with creative rhythms on the fly which would then be recorded via MIDI into Cubeat. I now just drag a break into Logic and cut it up visually while pitching takes place by transferring individual drum hits to different tracks with pitch plug-ins on them. It’s a very different workflow but I’ve got used to it now.

LC: How much of your production process is focused around the keyboard? What software and hardware tools do you tend to gravitate towards?

MP: I use the ‘musical typing’ keyboard on Logic, i.e. the actual typing, letter keys on my laptop. I used to use an external MIDI controller keyboard, during the Chewed Corners and Heterotic days, but it broke. I seem to have been able to write good enough melodies and rhythms without it, so I’ve not yet replaced it. I haven’t used any hardware instruments for a long time. With such good sounding plug-in instruments and effects there doesn’t seem to be much point. If you’re being creative, then I think it’s important not to inhibit the flow with all the troubleshooting that’s involved with integrating hardware with DAWs. The same goes for updating operating systems too unfortunately.

I tend to use the Logic Autofilter a lot as it introduces warmth, as well as Izotope Ozone mastering software after everything is finished.

LC: - How do you interpret the visuals and aesthetic of Magic Pony Ride and Goodbye EP to the sonics of these projects? How important is visual art to you in crafting or enjoying an album?

MP: I wanted something that stood on its own. Too many artists want images that reflect their idea of how the music sounds, or feels, like a form of synesthesia, but I think that leads to poor artwork, so I chose some photos by Tyrone Williams who had been introduced to me by Joe Shakespeare (of the Knives label). We had used him for previous projects on Planet Mu such as the DJ Nate album and my Challenge Me Foolish album, and I had just chosen a photo of his for my collaboration album with Mrs Jynx:

‘Secret Garden’ by µ-Ziq & Mrs Jynx, released November 19, 2021 by Planet Mu.

MP: While I was looking through Ty’s work for the Jynx collab, I saw lots of really interesting photos which I started putting aside for future µ-Ziq use. So when the time came (half way through 2021) I licensed several of them for the series of EPs and albums. They don’t have much to do with the music other than being quite bright. I wanted to have interesting textures and imagery.

‘Magic Pony Ride’, ‘Goodbye’, ‘Goodbye Remixes’ & ‘Hello’ by u-Ziq, art by Tyrone Williams all released in 2022 by Planet Mu.

MP: In a funny turn of events, I was watching the BBC’s Great British Photography Challenge with Rankin about a month later and saw that Tyrone was in it, and he ended up being one of the co-winners, so he’s a bit of a celebrity now.

LC: The bio for your Magic Pony Ride cites that you were inspired by digging through the archives from remastering Lunatic Harness. What struck you from going through those older tracks, was there anything that surprised you from your memory of them?

MP: Not really, that they were quite colourful and intense I suppose. I think it enabled me to get into the headspace of those tracks again, and that was the key to unlocking some latent creativity, perhaps. One surprising thing I had forgotten was that almost every track was made up of pasted together performances of different tracks, sometimes spiralling off in other directions, so it had to be patched together for the remaster; a lot of work.

Mike Paradinas, 1994 - “My studio in a mouse-infested shared student flat above a pizza shop on Merton High Street. I had dropped out of university but was still sharing it with my Architecture student friends.”

LC: There is a relaxed air to Magic Pony Ride, churned-up breaks often falling into an ethereal pad-heavy glistening soundscapes. In your long experience in music, how have your motivations for music production changed? How do you keep production playful?

MP: That’s not something I consciously think about when making tracks, I either have the inspiration or I don’t I guess. I do work hard at it and I try to devote as much time as I think a track deserves.

LC: Having seen multiple eras of electronic music trends, production technology and cultural context, from the business and creative sides of the industry, how do you foresee the future of experimental dance music and its position in culture at large?

MP: I have no idea how things will pan out musically. Things always change and not always to our liking. I also have to try and work out what holds for the future so I can run the label. At the moment, the cost of living crisis does present an immediate threat to everyone’s income in many sectors. So we do have to take reduced income into account when deciding what to press on vinyl for example. Less vinyl in 2023; put that in my predictions. But the larger artists will get larger and there may be less middle ground. I really don’t know.