BEPPU / Q&A
Do you have a philosophy behind how you approach music making as Beppu or is it more free and experimental.
My current work as Beppu is guided by texture and reduction, and with that in mind the approach is more sculptural. Reducing everything to what is essential and allowing each element enough space to breathe. Another area of interest is the noise floor, rather than reducing or eliminating it, I want to highlight and find ways of incorporating it into the music, making it a highlight with delays and filtering to give it movement, the structural foundations of the tracks.
In short “Hiss Dub”.
Is the mixing desk central to how you work with Beppu using effects to build layers or do you approach it another way?
The mixing desk is essential, it’s where all the sculpting occurs. Once all the stems are running into the desk it becomes a site of performance, I live print the effects to tape with forces the hand in real time decisions that either make the music come alive or require another take entirely. Plenty of bullets sweat!
How important is using tape and other analog recording drives to create
texture and imperfections? Do you records to different tape?
Tape has always been my medium. Many of my teenage years were spent hunched over a four-track cassette recorder and this has guided how I use the computer in my process (a glorified multi-track). There are things about tape that I love, the hiss and warble and the limits you can push the saturation level.
For the Beppu recordings tape is used more as a texture, so I will run things from the four track into the desk and will occasionally mix down to the reel to reel machine. There is always a magnetic head somewhere in the mix.
Do you use field recordings or found sound in your music?
No field recordings in the current Beppu material. Sometimes I’ll leave an open mic during capturing which allows some found sound into the work. I do have a BBC sound effect 7” of record crackle which is used extensively (filtered and delayed of course).
BEPPU– FORMS EP
