Sound Colour Vibration (Music | Art | Film | Technology | Science | Culture)

Califonia now has in its puzzle and maze of cities one of the most concentrated groupings of instrumental hip hop and electronic producers that are pushing music forward. That Purple Bastard, who was very recently a resident of Texas, is a seasoned but still relatively unknown producer who has relocated to California to further expand on his journey with making music. Through his first place spot in the first Beat Cinema “Beat Battle” competition, I was instantly on the hunt for his works and was surprised at the wealth of remix work he has to offer through his Soundcloud.

The production That Purple Bastard brought to his Danny Brown Remix EP is phenomenal in so many ways, showing his diversity into different forms of production and musical technique. He has a lot of style, color, texture and density and is mindful of his musical surroundings, giving a lot of attention to space when vocalist and MC’s are present. The instrumentals he completed for the Renzo collaboration Happy Hour EP are beyond words and are the works that I have been drawn towards the most.

We contacted That Purple Bastard recently to open up some dialogue about his move here to California, gear, the Beat Cinema Beat Battle he took first place in and where he wants to take his music next. We are very proud to present the results of this exchange along with an exclusive remix of A-Trak and Zinc’s “Like The Dancefloor” that is seeing its premier here.

http://www.thatpurplebastard.com/

Q&A with That Purple Bastard
Conducted by Erik Otis
January 2013

Sound Colour Vibration: I wanted to first ask about your background in Texas and how you got started producing music and who or what are some of your biggest inspirations to your foundations in music?

That Purple Bastard: I was always involved in the arts growing up and did mainly visual art up until I went to college, so I was really a late bloomer musically. When I started college at University of Texas in Austin I started hanging around some different people a lot of whom were older than me, one of those people was a DJ from Atlanta who mixed vinyl. We used to get high and go to this fool’s apartment and he would really go in mixing and I decided I wanted to learn how to do that. Also, probably a good 75% of stuff I was jamming at the time was Chopped & Screwed mixtapes by the originator DJ Screw (R.I.P.) and knock-offs like Swishahouse from my hometown Houston, so that stuff was a huge influence on me and still is even to this day.

I got some turntables and a mixer and just started fooling around with them, just trying to learn them intuitively without seeking out a lot of instruction or direction aside from just watching other people mix and asking my friend questions occasionally. And I got gradually better and really developed a good ear for mixing/beatmatching/layering which was something foundational that would really help me become a better producer later on. I started getting into production little by little, but after moving back to my hometown of Houston I was really in music purgatory for a long time where I was just dabbling but not really doing anything serious or even knowing what the next step was to take. I’m sure a lot of artists can relate.

Eventually I decided I wanted to step my game up as a producer and went to Houston Community College to learn audio engineering. That was a really eye opening experience and really filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge as well as providing numerous other opportunities. During that time I recorded 2 albums: “Bang Juice”, a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Shawn Callahan & “That Purple Bastard” a solo album from which my name was spawned. Despite having plenty access to digital recording, both of these albums were recorded on a cassette 4-track because I enjoyed the limits of the medium and wanted to do something raw with actual instruments and analog gear. Having not been brought up playing instruments, my playing was adequate but probably pretty sloppy to a trained ear, but I was really just interested in using the raw tracks as material to make something really transcendent in the mix.

I was really interested in live mixdowns and the mixing board as an instrument very much in the tradition of Dub Reggae pioneers like Scratch Perry & King Tubby so I was using a lot of their techniques for analog music in tandem with more modern ideas like glitching and stuttering (I was also really big into IDM). Following that I linked up with an MC I met through work named Ensane and over the course of about 8 months I produced, recorded, mixed, and mastered an album for him called “The Him”. Departing from the aesthetics of my previous projects, I produced this one entirely “in the box” using Reason and recording digitally. This was really a watershed project for both of us and really put us on the map with the local hip hop scene in Houston and really got us both out there doing shows on a regular basis. Through greater involvement with the local scene, I would go on to produce full EPs and tracks for other MCs both locally and regionally and the rest is history.

SCV: What brought you to California and what type of differences are here in Cali from where you started making music?

TPB: Texas is a really amazing place and I’ll always be a Houstonian in my heart. That being said, there’s not really a good infrastructure there musically unless you’re trying to exclusively make hood rap music. There’s not even a great infrastructure for that either because the scene is over-saturated with artists doing the same shit and maybe 1 or 2 artists get “put-on” yearly. And this is in the fourth largest city in America we’re talking about, a city with over 4 million people. Not great odds. Like I mentioned, I started out producing instrumental music, but there’s really no audience for that down there, so I wasn’t able to really build a following until I started making beats with people rapping on them. I feel like here in a LA that shit is almost the opposite because of the Beat Scene out here. It’s very producer-centric as opposed to rapper-centric which is of course very refreshing to me.

Some friends had been telling me that my stuff would be better received out here, but I didn’t really realize how different it is out here until I really got in the mix and saw it for myself. It’s really liberating to know that I’ll be able to find a following for whatever kind of music I want to do be it producing for rappers or some instrumental shit. Plus I’ve already got a big following back home as a result of all the hard work I put in down there. The irony of the timing of my move (I’ve been in Cali about 4 months now) is that right now Trap music is really huge, which borrows heavily from Southern hood rap music (also known as Trap), the same music I’ve been listening to for most of my life! I had a WTF moment the first time I went to Low End because I was expecting something really different, but found something really familiar instead.

SCV: You were a part of the Beat Cinema’s first beat battle and you took first place. What type of music did you present and how important was the energy you brought to your visual presentation while moving through the sequences of executing your live sound?

TPB: Well for the rules of the Beat Battle they only wanted us to have 2 minutes of material prepared. I’ve publicly released over 100 tracks and probably all of those were longer than 2 minutes, so I had a really hard time choosing what I wanted to present. Basically what I ended up doing was backdooring 8 bars each of my favorite instrumentals from the last year which turned out to be a good decision because no one else really did that in the first battle.

For my part, the Beat Battle was really a comedy of errors because my laptop crapped out on me 2 days prior and I ended up using my SP-404 in the battle which I hadn’t used in close to a year. Additionally, I misunderstood the rules and only loaded 2 minutes of material onto my sampler meaning I played an almost identical set in both rounds. On top of that, I was the guy who literally no one knew and sat in the back of the bar by myself for most of the night, a true underdog. Because of all that, I was really not expecting to win whatsoever, but still tried to perform the hell out of what I did have and it paid off! It was a really great experience where people really showed me a lot of love and I give a lot of props to Beat Cinema for really connecting me with a fan base out here.

Along with Beat Team Supreme who have featured me in a few of their weekly beat cipher mixtapes (including this week’s) and had me perform at their last show, I owe Beat Cinema a debt of gratitude for really putting me on locally.

SCV: What artists have really lifted you outside of yourself live and made you go crazier then you ever have before?

TPB: I’m really an introvert at my core, so I find myself really enjoying music the most when I am listening to it at home or in private. I’ve seen many of my musical heroes live before, but really my favorite shows have been by artists who I really didn’t have a ton of interest in seeing in the first place. When I was working on my Audio Engineering certification I worked as a live sound engineer for a time at a small Jazz club in Houston owned by former NFL linebacker Marcus Spears. Most of the artists who I ran sound for were Smooth Jazz artists, a genre that I really had no interest in whatsoever. The thing is that most of these artists were really amazing players, old guys who had been session musicians for most of their lives so you couldn’t really help but be impressed by their level of skill and the small venue really allowed me to witness some amazing moments musically that I wouldn’t have otherwise been privy to.

A couple of years back, I started a monthly underground hip hop showcase called Turnin’ Headz which still runs to this day and is the longest running showcase of it’s kind in Houston. Think Low End Theory but with more rappin’. The showcase was part of my effort to change the musical climate and it focused on diversity. I consistently put together lineups of performers who really had no business being on the same show and many of my best live show experiences were a direct result of that. We brought some amazing talent out of the woodworks and for many of these artists it was their first show or our first time seeing them. We also had open ciphers at these events which spawned some really amazing and energetic moments which were like sand paintings, unique to the moment and impossible to recreate.

SCV: What type of gear are you most comfortable with and what type of gear would you like to add to your inventory?

TPB: When I first started out I used a bunch of analog and vintage gear and had a pretty decent collection: Juno 60 synth, vintage Korg drum machines, a circuit bent Atari, a vinatge AKAI sampler, live drums, etc. The more time has passed, I’ve gradually switched to a more economical approach and pretty much produce exclusively using Ableton and Reason in tandem. I pretty much sold what gear I had left before moving out here because I was moving to a smaller place, but really producing inside the box really allows for producing in a manner that is both quicker and more concise. Also, the longer you do this kind of stuff the more you look at it like a business as opposed to strictly creatively and I’d say at least a good 90% of musicians don’t really see a return in the fiscal sense on what they invest.

I do all right between mixing and mastering jobs and people hiring me to produce original tracks or remixes for them, but at this point it’s not really enough for me to rationalize going out and buying a bunch of outboard gear when I can get practically the same results faster using software. That being said, if I reach a point in my career where I’m making money hand over fist then I would probably go back to buying a bunch of gear and make more process-driven stuff, but for now in the greater context of my life that really doesn’t make sense for me.

SCV: What type of big picture paths are you trying to take right now?

TPB: Generally speaking I’m just trying to work smarter and harder than in the past. 2013 will really be a challenge because 2012 was a huge year for me, I released 2 EP collaborations and close to 30 singles, most of which got picked up by a lot of blogs domestically and worldwide and really exponentially increased my audience and fan-base. Right now I’m shopping my stuff to labels and trying to link up with good people so I can take my stuff to the next level. The Danny Brown remix EP I released 2 weeks ago was originally conceived as a demo to Fool’s Gold records so that should give you some idea.

Also being in a new city I’m trying to pay dues and not be some egomaniac who moves in thinking he’s gonna run shit. So there’s a balance there, out at night showing love, networking, and taking in the scene, by day sending emails, brainstorming different avenues, and continuing to produce the best possible music I can.

www.thatpurplebastard.com
http://soundcloud.com/thatpurplebastard

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