Behind Our Music

Hey guys,

This is our first Blog transmission ever, so hopefully through this you can have a look behind our process of doing music together. Our debut album recently launched worldwide through ESL Music and we´re stoked to be part of the ESL family now. The feedback has been very positive so far and we´re getting played on worldwide radiostations, etc. After all those years building up our label, Switchstance Recordings, and creating our own unique sound for Ancient Astronauts, it is good to see such a positive development.

You know sometimes it can really take you down when you work hard on the music that you believe in but do not have the possibilities to reach as many like-minded people worldwide as you would like. Of course, we always moved forward with our music and level of production. That´s what we always are focused on, but when you stay true to the original art form of Hip Hop, Funk, Reggae and such and not jump on every new hyped sound genre coming from somewhere in the world, then sometimes you feel like a starving artist. And without a crew of likeminded friends (like our core of people behind Switchstance Recordings), you could not really keep the faith in what you do.

Ancient Astronauts means for us to respect the old traditional forms of music that influenced us over the years and combine them with our own production techniques and live played instruments to pay respect to live music culture and the roots of deejaying and vinyl records. We try to take the traditional warm and organic sounds of jazz, funk, etc and combine them with new influences to create a timeless sound…and timeless music for us always sounds fresh. No need to add too much electronic and dry influences to let the music sound “new” or “fresh”. For us that´s a modern mistake in music perception. Timeless music is what we´re aiming at, no hyped up musical creations that you´re tired of 6 months after it´s release.

So when we meet in Kabanjak´s Evergreen Studio in Moers we try to have a good time and feel whatever we do. We never really have a 100% plan that has to be fulfilled. It´s like riding down a mountain with your friends – you see a cool spot and hit it, if it´s cool you stay there, but if you think it´s not the right spot and see a better option than you move on. Time is the master and good music needs it´s time. Of course you can do a track in one day which never has to be touched again, but mostly a tune grows on you and opens up new directions while working on it.

Today we started with very positive energy because we heard that the first two dates for our first USA tour are confirmed: New York on the 18th and Washington DC on the 19th of September. It is planned to hit the key cities in the USA so we hopefully will play in Los Angeles, Miami, Oakland, San Francisco, Atlanta, Boston, Austin, Baltimore, etc. We can´t wait to come over and see more of the States and check out the real music scene – not the stupid pop crap you see on MTV nowadays

So the first confirmed tour dates were a really nice information to start our studio day with. Next up was the honor to pick a track from the new Ocote Soul Sounds album for remixing it. We are big fans of the guys (highest respect for Antibalas) and as their new label mates we are in the enlightened position to hopefully do a killer remix for them…as well as our friend and label mate Federico Aubele. We already started with a remix for a song of his new album – actually we thought it would be easier to remix his music but you always face new challenges.

First we were not quite sure if we should give it a more kinda Funk vibe to it or go with a dubby dopebeat version to accompany his lyrics, so we did two different instrumentals. Later we decided to go for the dubby dopebeat instrumental cause his guitars sound wicked when dubbed, but we wanna dive deeper into it and record again, send the sounds through the Ecolette and twist them up on the MPC. We highly appreciate his way of musical expression so we wanna give it the best remix treatment we can achieve.

Through a good friend in the states we just got confirmed that we can soon do a remix for classic material of Junior Reid of Black Uhure fame – pure goose bump feeling after receiving these news. It’s such an honour for us to get the chance to rework such a big reggae artist, so we can´t wait to start with that.

As usual we always work on some heavy bootlegs to serve as our own dance floor weapons under our moniker The Beatstalkers. Today we combined a new killer instrumental called “Smokehead” with classical Hip Hop lyrics by The Artefacts and they perfectly fit together. For quite a while now we were looking to find the perfect musical platform for these lyrics and now we think we found it. We always play around with different instrumentals and a cappella but it is not easy to find something that fits perfectly together to give the lyrics a total new backing, but this day we were lucky. We´re looking forward to test this on the dance floor this coming weekend. A day like this was a good day. We´re looking forward to the next steps with our tour planning and remix projects and as usual keep an eye open for other positive developments…

blog transmission over…

the Ancient Astronauts

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