RA sticks its head around the door of Jamie Jones' East London studio to find out which machines the Crosstown Rebels man is loving.

"..if they were making good music, it wouldn't matter if it were made in Ableton or Logic."I'm glad someone said it.

great interview

thanks for this, always wanted to see a machine love feature on him. one of my favorite producers and DJs.

here here - you think the average kid dancing his/her ass off cares?

RA is the best

I don't think I make music in the same genre but it's amazing how our processes seem to be nearly identical.

I make music on Ableton and I put stuff on Soundcloud www.soundcloud.com/netwerk (PLUG ) - and I'm sick of reading message boards where people go on and on and on about little things that don't make much difference. Slating tracks that fellow bedroom producers have put up for not changing the organ sound after 8 bars, saying that the delay should have been longer on the high hats or that side-chain compression should have been employed more on the bass-line.

I shouldn't read message boards...

Anyway, Jamie Jones is the new Preacher Man. Ha!

K

PS. My tracks all have nice organ sounds, considered delay on the high hats and a healthy amount of side-chain compression. Always.

Awesome piece. I've never even been that big a fan of Jones' music, but reading his insights into process gives me respect for the guy. Let's have lots more of these articles, RA! Sometimes, being nerdy is far more revealing than "personality"...

he oozes coolness

jamie is the man, love his music and his sets. nice guy as well. good on him, he is making serious bad boy tunes, his sets are incredible, his labels are very exciting with a load of promise and it all seems to be done while he's having more fun than anyone else. so much respect!

Great interview

I agree with Jamie and with other talented artists such as Carl craig, its not what you have but how you use it.

nice ineterview , could do with a few more pics tho

Great read. Extremely informative from a technical as well as artistic point of view.

These Machine Love features keep on delivering the goods...

super cool article. am diggin how he lets us into his studio. big ups my man

These features always inspire

inspirational!!!!!! "ketamine tech house" now that's sounds hawt...

one of the most honest and insightful interviews i've seen a producer give - top notch. 4 hours to nail a top ten track? cock ;]

nice! Jamie Jones 4 president

Yes, please!

I've sat in with Jamie and some friends messing about in our studio here in LA and his workflow is indeed insanely quick. I have NO idea how he does it! Whatever he's doing it's rubbed off on Lee Foss as well, the way they just get in the studio and work it blows my mind. Great read

depressing interwiew:
alway the same crap of how you make a track in 45 mn, of how, after a while, you want to make "real musik" with "real musicians" and a band as if electronic music was something to leave behind (well, when made with a playstation maybe ...), and finally of how exlcusive your sound is because you've got one piece of very limited vintage gear ...
now what about "real artists" for the next interviews ?!

very good interview. One of the better interviews i have read!

Great interview, great music! tks jamie jones and RA

great dj , great producer ! nice

amazing inspiring interview, would be interested to know a little more on how he goes about adding effects to a track

There isn't anything dishonest or inaccurate with what Jamie's saying, and frankly it's hard to find something constructive in your criticism. You'll hear the "45 min" line often with lots of electronic and traditional music producers. Omar S has said something similar. There's footage of Herbie Hancock in the studio with Qunicy Jones, punching in a funky drum pattern and grooving with funky synth lines on the Fairlight with something that could easily become a good song, all in about 20 minutes. It isn't that it's easy to make great music, and I don't think that's what he's saying. But if an idea or concept takes more than 2 hours to sketch, maybe it isn't worth sketching, or your musical ear and production skills aren't up to it yet, or you aren't in the right frame of mind to be writing music and you need to go for a walk, get your ego and self-consciousness under control.

About his desire to work with bands, he might not even be disparaging electronic music, but maybe it has opened up a part of him that he didn't know he had, like musicianship. It seems like he's a musician at heart. Electronic production opened me up to the possibilities of music since I had no mentorship or lessons, and inspired me to start jazz lessons. I will always love electronic music, but that doesn't mean I don't want to move in other directions. David Frank of The System is on the record as saying that he wanted to use electronic instruments as tools of expression in and of themselves, not as cheap replacements for acoustic instruments, which is how many electronic instruments were originally imagined and implemented. You can hear it his productions, and he was technically "in a band," and a good one at that.

Concerning hardware and vintage gear, it can be very inspiring, much more inspiring than looking at a popup window in your DAW. There is something about sitting in front a piece of kit that takes up physical space, that has a physical aesthetic to it, and you are forced to physically interact with it as opposed to clicking around a plugin. You form emotional connections and ways of thinking as you slide and twist the controls, and you form a history with it. It also forces you to be present and focus on just that piece of kit, on the sound coming out of it. A lot of vintage kit is also a pleasure to work with because it's simply built well. I have yet to find a keyboard that feels as good to play as my Yamaha SY77, it allows me to play and therefore inspires certain ideas. There is also imperfection that is hard or impossible to achieve with software. You are also forced to work with the machine, as opposed to dumping it and pirating yet another plugin to mine more prefabricated presets. No offense, but I hear a lot of people bragging about producing, but all they've done is pirate one piece of software after another. It's like a relationship - the most rewarding and productive ones are often the ones you're forced to stick with. And if it really doesn't work after a good try, sell it at a loss on eBay. Love rarely comes free of material loss. TBH, hardware is 95% workflow and 5% sound. Like Jamie, I played with various software toys, but I didn't really appreciate software until I had slugged it out and learned a process with hardware.

In any case, some young producer out there might read your comment and get confused. I'm personally very glad that Jamie took the time to share part of his process. It's informative in this age of little mentorship and little lineage. Listen to the man - he taught himself everything. I had to teach myself everything. Older producers and DJs often complain about the direction music is going in. It's because they pulled out, they didn't pass it on to the next generation, they didn't have mediums like this to share technical aspects of the art. Electronica tends to be a bitter geek's art form these days, if you ask a question you're treated like an idiot by the last generation of people who had to teach themselves, like you're supposed to google it or you're stupid and unworthy. It's nonsense. Any other art form people are collaborating and teaching each other, taking on apprentices, passing on the craft.

Peace, man.

Says the man with the Jupiter 8.