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Weasel
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Chocolate Weasel "It's a plan so cunning, you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel." That's the idea, anyway, behind producers Marc Royal and Chris Stevens' Ninja Tune project, Chocolate Weasel. Royal - who's more widely associated with his bleak ambient-infused drum 'n bass releases under the guise of T-Power - finds a refreshing, wacky alter ego in Chocolate Weasel. Exhausted with drum ‘n’ bass’ limiting conventions, the notoriously somber magnate dug deep into his unabashedly electro-funk roots. One single ("Music for Body Lockers") and a few remix projects later, Royal and Stevens emerged with a plethora of '80s-kitschy, deconstructed grooves and hooks fondly recalling the likes of Kool and the Gang or Kurtis Blow. Many a wary listener will note, however, the retention of darker influences in the sample palette on their new full-length, Spaghettification. The inseparable duo anticipates a future of funkier wide open pastures - including a whirlwind North American tour with Ninja labelmates, a new Chocolate Weasel album, and possibly a new T-Power album (which Stevens declares, "definitely won't drum ‘n’ bass as we know it!"). Why did you choose to make this kind of music? Chocolate Weasel is very different from the kind of stuff you've both worked on in the past, like T-Power… "Well, we chose to start a new project from fresh with Ninja. We didn't really think that T-Power was with the Ninja mentality…" Which is? "Ninja mentality? Well, I think it's all about having fun. Enjoying yourself, doing it for the love of it. We got too caught up with T-Power and being a bit serious. And we also got caught up with reading a lot of conspiracy theory stuff. It was getting very dark and nasty… we just needed to change direction. The other thing was that we were getting pretty bored with drum ‘n’ bass. We really needed a fresh name and a fresh approach. Now we're able to work with all these styles that we've always admired." What kinds of styles? "Particularly electro, hip-hop, funk, fusion… but everything, basically. Did you see the credit list in our liner notes? Just a varied list of stuff. It was the acceptance of "it's cool to like anything," like the cheeziness of Parliament and George Clinton, and Frank Zappa as well. They're not names that most of the drum ‘n’ bass fraternity would admit to liking. It seems that drum 'n bass isn't inclusive or open-minded by nature. I mean, you cannot deny what's happened in the past or that you listened to crap at one point. I listened to Kiss when I was young. OK, it was crap, but it has put me where I am at the moment, so maybe it wasn't so bad after all. The other thing was, we went back and listened to a lot of old stuff. Marc was very into electro in the '80s - not so much me, but I also have an appreciation for it. We listened to a lot of old tunes that at the time you had clouded judgment on - you know, you only liked what was cool at the time. You go back and find that there were some really classic tunes that still sound good on the whole… but there's still some pretty cheesy stuff there." You once said that Chocolate Weasel came about because you "can't take the piss within drum ‘n’ bass." "People do take themselves way too seriously with drum 'n’ bass. For example, Marc and I have been going back and forth about Goldie's new album. It's crap, but you've got to say, maybe he was just trying to do something different. I mean, he obviously failed, but maybe there is some - I don't know - integrity… well, I can't say integrity… that's a bad choice of words. But, he is being honest in that he is trying to do something different, and just failed at it miserably. It was beyond him… Maybe there was at least some honesty in the effort, though, beyond the normal realms of drum ‘n’ bass. Anyway, there's just nothing exciting happening. Everyone's just settling into a formula, just trying to please the DJ's, you know? They can't do anything too different cause they're not going to get any plays out of it. It's a sad, sad mentality." What's the division of labor like between you and Marc? Are you really the "sample master" between the two of you? "Yeah, so it's been said. I work with him on T-Power stuff too, but there I've taken more of a backseat. I've worked a lot as an engineer, so I've worked with most sorts of music. I also used to be in a sort of indie band when I was back in New Zealand. Marc is a London boy." What are some of your favorite sample sources? "With all the movie stuff, we try and get as obscure as possible, in a vain attempt to cover our asses from publishers and whatnot. And then, we bury it in the mix as well. Lots of crappy, B-movies - sci-fi and horror stuff. But for this album, we actually went outside the house with a microphone and taped a lot of stuff from Speaker's Corner. We made two tracks with that - one which really obviously sticks out, "[The Non-Sensical] Ramblings [of a Lunatic Mind?]." There's just an abundance of sampled material in there. We also went running around the streets listening to background noises - like car traffic, kids, whatever…us playing in the snow." How do you like to approach the samples that you use? "Well, when it comes to breaks, Marc's fairly anal - and that would be a polite term to use! The amount of time we spend processing breaks, just getting a bar's worth of drums, a lot of other people would spend that amount of time doing a whole tune, you know? We spend a couple of hours getting a break down so tight - making it really, really clean, and run it into the sampler. But then we add some noise back onto it, like we might use pops and crackles and hisses. So, maybe it sounds a bit stupid, cleaning it up just to fuck it up. But I think primarily we get everything as clean as we possibly can and then take it to "dirty" it from there. Because, obviously, if you use really clean sounds it's going to come across in the mix. As for the ambient samples, they're random; in that we just try and maybe put effects on them or maybe put them in the computer, or time-stretch them so much that you start getting errors happening, like glitches and things like that. It kind of puts an organic feel to it." Do you do all of this out of your home? "Yeah. We are at home all the time, basically, here in Marc's bedroom - only there's not much bedroom left. It's like this vast, expensive studio with a little bed in the corner. We're also working on Macintosh fairly intensely. We've got an assortment of keyboards, plenty of Roland samplers, effects, everything." How do you see your music transferring to a live performance? Have you done a live Chocolate Weasel set before? "No, and we're not really going to do it live. We've done T-Power live. On the Ninja tour, we're going to be DJ'ing primarily. We don't feel like we can really pull it off live, at this stage. We'd need a lot of equipment. We did a little T-Power tour last year, and started out with the intention of trying to be live; and using a lot of dub/reggae mixing techniques; and also sort of making soundscapes over the top of things. Well, tracks were breaking down and we were doing long ambiences that went on for three minutes or so, and we found that people can't really take that on the dance floor. They need a beat, basically, all the time. So, it turned from being live and enjoyable to becoming a "beat" set basically, with us just mixing beats for an hour. It was pretty much push, play, stand back. I don’t think it was very interesting to look at, either: A couple of guys twiddling knobs on the stage." I actually love watching artists do it live. I was kind of looking forward to seeing you perform a live set. "Well, we are going to be sort of playing with things. I mean, most of the Ninja acts are doing this cut-up, full-on DJ set, whereas we're just going to play the tunes. And we've got some toys - Marc's got his keyboards and I've got some effects and stuff to play around with on top of the tunes. We'll be playing a little bit of everything - things we've enjoyed, you know? Like Black Dog, Mad Mike… I think we've got some Kool and the Gang. It's going to jump everywhere… maybe some Ryuichi Sakamoto somewhere." Do you feel most people notice and appreciate the complexity of your work? "We've always tried to do things at different levels. I think the samples, if you actually take the content of what they're saying, always offer multiple levels - the humorous side and the more serious, dark side. I think with the samples people really only take the humor one way. Musically, most people are looking for the drums."
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