BANG. That's the sound of the first guest mix of the year, over 100 minutes in length, smashing through your screens courtesy of today's guest, Lyeform, producer and founder of the Life Force Sound collective. Check it out...
NT: First off, introduce yourself to the loyal readers of Night Tracks...
LF: My name is Ben, I produce under Lyeform. I am a 25 year old from South West London and I run the web label Life Force Sound.
NT: Standard question, but how long have you been producing? From the stuff you've been sending over, you seem to have found an "identity" pretty quickly...
LF: Yeah I am still new to this. I only started producing properly when I discovered Ableton in late 2011. I had messed with other sequencers before then but as a curiosity, thinking I could never actually make anything listenable.
Thanks for the "identity" comment, A producer/musicians's identity is one of the things I enjoy the most when listening to music, so I guess I have been subconsciously trying to form my own little nuances in what I do.
NT: Where do you take influence from? To me, your stuff reminds me a lot of instrumentals of some of the darker yet commercial garage of the late 90's/early 00's, some of which is hugely underrated, in my opinion. What do you make of the rise of people like Wen, Visionist, etc. and their style?
LF: I love the rhythms of the 06-08-ish dubstep (Toasty, Hessle Audio, Apple Pips etc) which feel like an extension of the Groove Chronicles type garage.
Wen, Visionist, and all those those producers coming through right now are outstanding, its brilliant that there seems to be a place in the scene for it, and each of the producers seem to be forging their own little corner/variation of the sound.
NT: Tell us a little about Life Force Sound, which formed initially as a collective before emerging into a net-label, if I remember correctly. Do you think there are benefits to "collectives" in a day and age where so many people are fighting to be heard, and it seems the preferred method of getting your music out is to send it to as many people as possible?
LF: My role in it really is just to keep things going – I ask the producers if they want to get involved and help them decide what they want to do/release, I veto if I don’t like it, but that’s about it. I guess part of the beauty of digital is with its low overheads you can really put out whatever you want without worrying about the size of the market for that sound. I am a big fan of vinyl, but its not the most important thing.
There are so many different ways to distribute/market music now, being a 'collective' was just because the word 'label' didn't really feel quite right. The best thing to have come out of it has been seeing the guys involved collaborating and pushing each other to make better music, I don't doubt they are all going to end up doing bigger things in the (near) future.
About the last statement, I don't like the amount of spam there seems to be on music sharing websites ("great song, please listen and comment and like and share my ember breaks David Guetta remix"), there needs to be more online etiquette.
NT: What's coming up in the near future for Life Force Sound? Any artists we should be keeping our eyes on?
LF: We have a very busy schedule over the next few months, LFS005-09 are all in the works (and might not come out in order). LFS005 is the Nomi - Ghost remix EP:
One guy to look out for is Della, we are releasing a final mix of his tune Young Kid with some remixes. Also here's a bit of a preview for something that has been in the works for the past 5 months...
NT: That Della tune is something else. You've put together a guest mix for us, talk us through your selection...
LF: This is a bit of a random mix, there is a lot of LFS in there, some of my own music, some older releases from artists I look up to, and some recent dubs.
NT: Finally, it's that time. If you had to pick your three favorite "Night Tracks", what would they be?
LF: 2562 - Nocturnal Drummers – it’s basically 1 drum loop repeated for 8
minutes. Not sure how it keeps me interested the whole time I suspect
voodoo..
Muroidea - 30mg/40mg. This scares the fuck out of me.
Old Apparatus - Hammerhand ft. Mowgli – just an outstanding tune.
NT: Big up man! Thanks for your time! If you wanna download the guest mix, click here to grab it...
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