Integrity Records is pleased to announce the release of the latest installment in the «Yellow» Artist Series, which has featured a diverse group of producers and live
Integrity Records is pleased to announce the release of the latest installment in the «Yellow» Artist Series, which has featured a diverse group of producers and live artists in the past, including minimal Archiv, Crane de Poule, Fabrice Lig, Miles Ellis and the guest. John Beltran. The fifth and final release features Toronto-based DJ/producer Oliver Osborne, who is making his label debut with his exciting «Hold On» EP.
The release features four tracks that showcase Oliver’s intricate production style, incorporating elements from a variety of genres including techno, house, and ambient music. A combination of organic and electronic sounds; Lush instrumentations, groovy basslines, intricate rhythms, and vocal breaks can be heard throughout the release.
An immersive soundscape that transports listeners to a new yet familiar place, Oliver’s «Hold On» EP is an immersive listening experience for those who prefer electronic music with a little more depth and expression.
We have had the pleasure of interviewing Oliver Osborne and this has been the result.
How would you present your work to someone who doesn’t know you?
I would present it on a sunny rooftop with about 200 people, a well-stocked bar, and a well-tuned Dinacord sound system.
However I think I’m actually being asked how I would describe it.
That is a tricky one.
Early 2000s Cadenza Records meets a DJ Shadow who listened to a lot of African music in his youth.
I’ve often actually described it as house music for people who don’think the like house music.
My discography is pretty broad, I’ve released ambient EPs, downtempo, and techno, but the majority ends up landing in a kind of Afro-Latin kind of place, at least as far as the percussion is concerned.
And your last job? Where is it born from? And where do you want to lead?
If you mean job job then it is one I still have.
I have always marketed my own events, artists, and releases, and I’ve become pretty good at it, so these days people pay me to Market things for them.
If you mean this project, it started with me wanting to work with Eddie. He is one of the most significant acts to have come out of Singapore (where I lived for 10 years), so he has been on my radar for a while.
I had the urge to make some techno, and the first person I thought of was Eddie.
‘More Than You Need’ was well received, but the second track wasn’t. Ed made it clear that he wanted the release to have some breath, so ‘Odio e Amo’ came to life.
With that one in the bag, he pushed me to deliver a third which show a more musical side of what I can do.
I’m not sure he was quite expecting ‘Hold On’, but he liked it!
What is fun about this release is that the four tracks come from very different places. To look at the release as a whole I’ve really pulled on quite a broad range of range of influences.
The first couple of tracks that were put together are very much a product of the decade I spent in London in the early 2000s and being in the epicentre of of minimal techno boom. They’re straight off the floor of Fabric, straight out of Corsica Studios, 93 Feet East, and I’m really putting influences together in a way that I actually haven’t done for really quite a while.
“More Than You Need’ is probably about as hefty as it gets, for me
On the other side, “Hold On’ is pulling from the kind of jazz that I’ve listened to over the years and I think I’d point specifically to the Avishai Cohen trio back when they had Mark Giuliana on drums.
And finally, the ‘Other mix’ brings that together with Afro-Latin influences, and arguably the jungle influences from the 7 or 8 years I was playing that sound.
In terms of where I want it to lead Well listen, I would be interested to do more Soundtrack, or “gun-for-hire” gunfire music production, whether this is film, TV, or even advertising because I think that can be quite intellectually chewy and lets you do stuff that wouldn’t make sense when you’ve got a dance floor at the end of the process.
It’s a very different way to work when you’re not trying to negotiate that kick drum baseline tussle the way that you would with a real dancefloor focussed track.
What message would you like to convey to the public?
That house and techno producers can go way beyond house and techno.
I don’t really have a big burning cause that I want people to know about.
Don’t be a dick, and listen to good music.
How did your last project come about?
Ah, so I miss interpreted that previous question.
What do you want to transmit in this work? What is the concept behind it?
As mentioned in a previous answer, the influences have come from various very different places, so in a way I am telling people that I have range as a producer.
There is no single concept that ties all four track together, to be honest.
But I do typically have a specific physical environment in mind when I am writing music. As I mentioned, earlier ‘More Than You Need’ is Room One at fabric at about four in the morning.
Odio e Amo was an after party, sun rising, people outdoors.
With ‘Hold On’, I didn’t really have a physical environment in mind, but I was I was trying to write something that a group of musicians would write rather than a producer would write.
So there’s a bit of a bit of a piano solo in there. I was very deliberate not to repeat myself, from an arrangement standpoint, any more than a group of musicians would naturally echo and evolve phrases.
The ‘Other Mix’, the dancefloor version, I knew from the outset that I wanted to finish by blending into the original and delivering a very musical finale.
There is a beautiful track by Barotti called ‘She Might’ where the track finished with this soaring string arrangement and no percussion. That was kind of the template.
I also really wanted this one to hit hard on the floor.
I think it may well just be the kind of stuff I tend to find, but a lot of the left field stuff I listen to often isn’t very heavy hitting. And so I kind of wanted to marry a sound and an approach that was a little off the beaten track, but to still have it really slam. And I think I think I got to where I wanted to do where I wanted to go with that with that other mechanism.
The ‘Other mix’ of Hold On is probably the track that pushes boundaries the most. From the drum programming so some subtle engineering elements.
For example I side-chained the kick against the bass, rather than the other way round. Not something I often hear in house music.
Over the years I have heard various tracks that have shown me an angle on making house or techno that I hadn’t considered before. Something that has shown me a new approach, or an unexpected combination of ingredients.
So I hope at least one person listening to this release will have that reaction and make more interesting music as a result.
As for your studio, what is it currently made up of?
I’m standing in my studio right now so I’ll talk you through it.
Behind me I have a few shelves of mainly percussion instruments. Maracas, various shakers I don’t know the names of, a Djembe, clave, kashakas, tambourine, kalimba, a bamboo flute, slide whistle, and a couple of other bits.
I usually buy an instrument when I’m on vacation, so I have stuff from Colombia, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand…
I also have a few guitar pedals, including a Boss Loop Station.
Off to my left I have a 50s Orcana reed organ, a Hofner 12 string guitar, a Simon & Patric 6 string (steel) semi-acoustic, two small midi keyboards, and a Rogue Mandolin.
On my right I have a condenser mic, and a couple of Sure SM58 that I usuall use to record percussion, as I find them a bit more forgiving than the condenser. Also easier to position. I also have a high-hat, and a ridiculous amount of headphones.
I use a Scarlett soundcard, with Neuman KH80 monitors.
I also have a turntable and a ton of vinyl.
What is the one instrument you would never get rid of, no matter what?
The semi-acoustic.
What was the last record store you visited? And what did you salvage from there?
Salvage is a good word for it.
I’m within striking distance of maybe half a dozen vintage or thrift stores that have records going at like $2.
So, about once a month I will swing by one of these places and spend a couple of hundred bucks on a pretty random assortment of records.
When it’s two bucks a pop, you can really afford to gamble on how a record will sound.
Here are some recent favourites.
I picked up a Herbie Hancock. Piano improvisations record. We have Mahalia Jackson Sunrise Sunset, there is an incredible track called La Malaguena which is on a record called 50 guitar South of Boarder Volume Two by Tommy Garrett. It’s an absolute belter.
How to foretell your future by Harold Sherman, noted authority on ESP, which is literally just a full LP of him talking about ESP and how you can do it and how you can detect it.
Also had picked up some Jane Fonda Workout records. A bunch of like old stand up from the 70s, A Monty Python LP, an Eddie Murphy single ‘Boogie in Your bButt’
But at the same time there are plays and operas recorded to record it to wax. It’s absolutely phenomenal.
For me it’s a win win win when picking this stuff up. Because if I pick something up, and it’s in decent condition, and it’s the kind of thing that I listened to for fun at home, fantastic. That’s a win.
Secondarily, maybe it’s I would have listened to it happily, but it’s a bit damaged, then that’s sampling material.
And then with this process of picking up so much older music, there is a music history component to it. Especially as much of this stuff is quite off the beaten track musically.
Even people who aren’t into music will have some idea that an original Aretha Franklin record is going to be worth something, so they’re not giving that to a thrift store.
So the process is essentially helping me pad out historical map of music.
There are also lots of foreign langage records to be found, that were either imported, or in some instanced printed in Canada.
Do you have hope for the future of music? How would you like the future of the music industry to be?
My big hope is that quality music will continue to be made and to be appreciated.
Obviously, this doesn’t happen by accident. Great music won’t naturally rise to the top, someone needs to market it.
You’ve got this scenario where the charts and your major media channels are playing an incredibly small amount of artists.
So I’m hoping that in this post-pandemic, era, that there will be a resurgence of interest in live music (DJs or live bands).
I hope that local governments stop making it so difficult for live music venues to exist. I think this is part of the process in terms of this kind of consolidation of kind of power and revenue in smaller and smaller hands because there are fewer and fewer venues you can actually operate.
Especially outside of your major metropolitan areas. But even very much within them. Clubs and live music venues are shutting down.
Live music, and hearing music that you’re not expecting to hear is a critical part of anyone’s musical development, not least of all the performers themselves.
Playing smaller gigs is a way to hone your craft while earning a buck.
So hopefully the future of live music is that small venues somehow become more plentiful, that there is a hunger to go out and see live bands and hear new music.
I’m not sure whether this is ever going to be something that we as humans will do in any great numbers but mainly because we will kind of warm to the familiar instinctively but I would love people to take a more active a proactive approach in terms of the music they listen to.
To not be happy to just be kind of foi gras duck force fed the same vanilla diet of big pop tracks all the time.
There’s no such thing as bad taste in music, there is just a bad approach to music. Are you passive or are you active? And if you’re passive, you’re just gonna get fed the same (often pointless) shit.
Can you reveal some future projects?
I currently have an EP underway that I’m working on for Garden Groove. This is a Cape Town based label that I did a show with a couple of weeks ago.
I’ve got a couple of tracks, not confirmed but very much in Souta Musik wheelhouse. That’s a Bali-based label that is putting a lot of great tracks out at the moment, very much in that Afro house end of things.
And in addition to that, I am slowly piecing together an album, which is as far as the core tracks is basically there. The next stage is to really approach it holistically and create segues and really make the tracks flow together.
I really wanted to kind of like want to be one of those storybook albums that you do want to listen to end to end in order as well. Hopefully, there being some nuggets in there that people want to pull out and play on the dance floor.
What makes you happy.
Any number of things make me happy. Spending good time with good people, some decent vino and some great music, that’s it did for me.
Playing a couple of gigs overseas recently, watching that first couple of tracks land, in a foreign land. That made me pretty happy.
What bothers you?
Not a lot to be honest.
Other than perhaps my tenancy to procrastinate sometimes.
I’m not an easy person to bother, thank fuck.
