Two decades is a long time in the music industry but that’s how long the Burden brothers – the core unit of Lawrence and Lenny Burden with occasional input from Lynell, Lorne and Lance – have been making music as Octave One.
Considered to be part of the ‘second wave’ of techno from Detroit, they got their break when their track, I Believe, was featured on the (10 Records) compilation, Techno 2: The Next Generation (alongside Carl Craig, Marc Kinchen, and Jay Denham) in 1990.
They went on to form their own label, 430 West, and since 1990, the Burden brothers have released over one hundred records.
Throughout their careers they have worked with such artists as Derrick May, Underground Resistance, Eddie Fowlkes, Juan Atkins, Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir, Members of the House, Terrence Parker, and The Martian (Red Planet). They have remixed tracks for such artists as Massive Attack, Akabu (Joey Negro), DJ Rolando (Jaguar), Steve Bug, John Thomas, The Trampps, Rhythm is Rhythm, and Inner City.
2000 brought the biggest Octave One release to date, Blackwater. The track has appeared on over 30 compilation albums worldwide (with comp sales exceeding one million collectively). Late 2006 brought the release of the first full length DVD/CD project from the group, Octave One featuring Random Noise Generation Off The Grid. Then 2008 brought their first studio album in 4 years, Summers on Jupiter.
Octave One are on their way to Australia for the first time. They’re playing at the Sydney festival, in the Becks Bar, on Saturday 29th January. Check out our exclusive chat with Lawrence Burden and the live set from La Maison that they sent across.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Download the mp3.
S: Hey Lawrence. How are you?
LB: I’m good man!
S: It’s 8am here.. what time is it there?
LB: It’s 4pm here.
S: How’s the weather?
LB: It’s good. It’s a little rainy but this time of year and season in Atlanta that’s what we’re expecting.
S: I think we’re expecting about 85-90 F here today.. so you are coming over at the right time.
LB: (laughs)
S: So this is your first time in Australia..
LB: Yep – it will be our first time there. We’ve never actually been to Australia! We have been looking forward to it for ages but this will be our first time actually touching the shores man.
S: Any reason why it has taken so long?
LB: Uh, just, I guess finding the right promoters to pull it off or whatever.
S: How do you balance playing live, studio time and the business side – having a couple of record labels – of what you do?
LB: In the beginning it was a lot harder just because we had so many artists. I mean, at one time I think we had up to about fourteen artists between our two labels. It was just kind of mayhem – you were always on the phone and there wasn’t really much of a balance. Three quarters of what we did was pulled towards our business at that time. And yeah, the music side really suffered.
But we streamlined things down over the years. We had sat down over the years and decided that we really missed the music side of it. The business side of it was good and we were pushing a lot of artists but at that level it can be a bit of a headache too (laughs).
So, I mean, we had to get back to the part that we really enjoy because you got a lot of artists with a lot of attitude. And everyone is a rock star. You know, it’s like, “You guys… come on… it’s music we love – don’t get caught up in all the hype because you read your article in..”
It’s music – let’s just enjoy the music part of it. We’re glad to return back to that. So, mainly it’s now an easy fifty-fifty now. It’s not hard now just because we’re primarily the artists as well as the label. So that brings some balance and makes it easer for us.
S: That’s great to hear. I guess when I was preparing to chat today I was remembering all of the great records you have produced. And I have always felt that positivity in your interviews. That feeling that you’re giving back and, as artists, you just want to cut through the noise.
LB: Yeah that’s it. We always look back at what our reason for getting into in the first place. I mean, we just loved it! I think, over the years, I see guys who I have known for years and they get kind of caught up in the whole.. I don’t wanna call it the ‘star syndrome’ but it is just that. To me, it’s always been about the music and not any political agendas. I didn’t get into music for whatever agenda. That stuff is cool and you have an awareness that you get over time. But that’s not what drew me to producing dance music.
I love the sound of synthesisers, kick drums, hi hats! We still try to keep that really pure for us and pass that on to our fans.
S: And it’s so exciting when you discover something new, or learn a new technique isn’t it?
LB: Oh man! It always is. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing it – there is always something new to learn. And if there isn’t, you need to sit aside and go do something else. There’s always a new adventure, a new sound, a new technique, or a new rhythm.
I mean, I might hear a new rhythm that is totally non-dance related and it just kind of influences me to go into the studio and create something towards dance.
S: Well speaking of pushing your sound further, I guess your last album was all about that?
LB: Yeah, we had some ideas that we wanted to get out and we just wanted to try some things. We wanted to get them out of our system really! (laughs) That’s what Summers In Jupiter was all about. It was to purge a bit, you know, and to see what happens. That was our purging session.
S: Now you are bringing it full circle because you started the Revisited series last year.
LB: Yeah, yeah, we have.
S: I have really been enjoying your Read Only Memory remix for Aril Brikha. And you have a remix from him coming up in the revisited series next. Tell us about that..
LB: Oh yeah, Aril is a good friend of ours. We’ve known him for years and he asked us to remix that track. We were just like ‘Alright man but you’ve gotta do one for us as well.’
We’ve always wanted to work with Aril on some things and it was a lot of fun. It was a different for us because of his style. It took us a little while to figure out what we wanted to do with it, you know.
S: I was going to ask about that because you’ve really made the track sound like one of your own.
LB: To me, I think that’s always been the key for us when we’re doing remixes. I mean, if I want somebody to remix one of my cuts I want their flavour. So we just kind of did the same. We tried to give it the Octave One flavour as if we were producing with Aril when he made the cut. We try to and on a good day it happens! (laughs)
S: When the magic happens! (laughs)
LB: Yeah man, that’s right.
S: So how would you describe the Octave One sound? In your own words.
LB: Well I would probably have to think about all of my brothers and I. It would turn from jazzy to industrial to wow.. it’s all of those elements. Soulful. All of those elements kind of mixed into dance music. I’ve got one brother who’s into deep, deep jazz and any time he works on a track it has a jazz element. Lenny likes the rougher edge, more of the industrial kind of style. And I kind of like a deep, soulful thing. Then I have younger brothers who produce as well and they’re much more towards hip hop or pop.
So it just depends which guys come together to produce on a track. But it’s all of those elements in the form of dance.
S: But generally it’s you and Lenny as the core unit right?
LB: Well, yeah, generally. Then there are brothers who pop in and occasionally outside artists. But yes, generally me and Lenny are consistent as the core.
S: Yeah. It’s really fascinating listening to tracks that you guys create vs tracks with your brothers. You can definitely hear the extra influences.
LB: Oh yeah, I mean you never know what’s gonna happen. You just go in and let it do what it’s gonna do.
S: I mean, I remember hearing Blackwater, which was a huge track for you guys and Lorne worked on that with you didn’t he.
LB: Yeah he sure did – that was him on there.
S: So is it something where you sit down and one of you brings an idea to the session?
LB: It can happen in so many different ways. We might just be in the studio chit chatting, you know, and literally someone might start playing some things on the keyboard or something and then another brother might add to that.
What we used to do – and a lot of people don’t know – we used to just sit in the studio and have jam sessions. We wouldn’t even record it, we would just jam, you know. A lot of times it still comes back to that but now we might say, ‘hey man, we need to sequence that.’ (laughs)
That’s what we used to do though. We might just be sitting around talking, you know, having good times and laughing and stuff. Then brother might start on the bassline or brother might start on the keyboard lick, or you might hear a string rhythm or somebody might start with some drums. Sometimes if we bought a new piece of gear everybody wants to touch it. That might bring in three or four new songs real quick. You know, it’s never a set way how we get into whatever’s going on. It just kind of..
Sometimes a brother might be at home and he might have started something too. He might say, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’. And we might go, ‘That’s cool – take this out here or change the rhythm there.’
So it comes to us a lot of different ways.
S: I guess it works well having the critical ear of more than one person on your tracks. You were speaking about your studio there.. I was interested to know how your production methods and the equipment you’re using has changed over the years.
LB: I guess we stick to what we know. It has been consistently the same but the equipment has changed. Sometimes we get bored with a piece and we get rid of it. Then four or five years down the line we really miss that piece and we’re scouring all over the internet trying to buy it back! (laughs)
Generally, for the most part, we’re always going to be hardware. That’s what we love and it’s the most consistent thing of what we do. We tried to touch into the software side of things for a minute but it’s not us. So our approach has always been from the hardware point of view and that’s pretty much consistently what’s going on with us.
S: So, it wasn’t until 1999 or around 2000 that you started performing live, right?
LB: Yeah it wasn’t until then that we starting going out consistently to perform.
S: You had been doing a bit of DJing before that right?
LB: Yeah, actually, I was DJing quite a bit – mainly in Europe. That was around 1994 that I ventured off and toured around there. It was fun but it reached its peak. I was always gone, coming home for a day or two to wash clothes and then going back out.
It turned into work and my approach with music was that I said I would do it until it turned into work. DJing started to not be fun any more and it was work. So I thought I wasn’t benefiting or the fans because my soul wasn’t in it. I was having a punch the clock attitude.
So we started the live thing. That was so much more fun for me because it gave me a lot more tracks to play with for starters. It was different too. I don’t want to call it the ‘same old, same old’ but for me DJing kind of turned into that. There was only so much I could do.
Performing live was kind of limitless.
S: Did you start playing live before Blackwater really became popular?
LB: Actually we started performing right before Blackwater became popular.
S: It was serendipitous timing though..
LB: Oh yeah for sure. You have to thank Jeff Mills though because he really got us to focus in on Blackwater. It was him and Electric Indigo.
We weren’t paying attention to it. We were working with Jaguar at the time, helping Mike Banks with the Jaguar situation.
S: Yeah sure. So let’s talk about your other group, Random Noise Generation. I think the last thing you did was 2006. Are you still considering that to be active or have you put that away now?
LB: Wow that’s a good question because literally, maybe about two weeks ago, we were sitting down and talking about what we wanted to do with Random Noise, since all the focus had turned into Octave One.
We haven’t put it down. We have some ideas that we’re going to toy with and we want to see what actually becomes of it. We’re going to try a new approach – I can’t explain it really (laughs) – and see what comes of it.
Random Noise was always an experimentation of sound. It was mainly samples of that nature. So we kind of want to go back and see what happens.
S: Sure, and do some experimentation under that name I guess?
LB: Exactly, exactly.
S: On another note, Detroit has been in the news a lot due to the financial downturn and the way the car industry is. I saw some photos just before Christmas of some beautiful but disused buildings. How has that affected you guys?
LB: Well, you know, when we go back to visit Detroit – we’re there six to eight times per year – we see a steady decay. But, for us, it was different because we were always living in that decay. Maybe if you live there – I still have brothers and family who live there – they don’t notice it as much because it’s a day-to-day thing.
We notice it now because we live in Atlanta and when we pop in we see how things have changed. And a lot of times we lived in that environment. If you live a certain way it doesn’t seem so unusual because that’s your situation. But yeah man, we see it. it’s a lot of decay. It’s sad to see because the city has so much soul and so much passion. But it has just been robbed of its economic base and it’s hard to really bounce back from that if no money is coming in.
It’s a day-to-day struggle. It’s always been a day-to-day struggle in the D anyway but now it’s more of a dire day-to-day struggle.
S: So, what’s coming up for you and your labels this year?
LB: Well as far as the label is concerned, we’re gearing up to add a couple of new artists. I don’t want to talk about them yet just because we’re not quite sure. A couple of people who we really kind of like their style. We have steady productions coming from Octave One as well.
We’re continuing the Revisited series with the Here, There, Beyond which is quite a few remixes from various artists. It includes Luke Slater, to Ken Ishii. It’s quite a few people who we have been fortunate enough to get to do remixes.
We’re also working on a brand new album that we’re going to release in the fall. It’s as yet untitled but we have been producing tracks for it, and that’s going to be Octave One as well. Actually the new album is really coming together too – it’s really solid. I’m really excited about it as well.
S: That’s great – I’m looking forward to hearing some new stuff from you guys.
LB: Thanks man.
S: On that note, I’m going to let you enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks for your time today.
LB: No problems man, see you soon.
Connect with Symbiosis on...