Deco Charts an Analogue Future on 'Timescales'

LA producer Deco (real name Matt Rosenzweig) isn't out to serve up any massive drops to festival-going EDM tweens—but the guy does love his bass. He insists his "tribal bass" tutorial on Beatport isn't so much a reaction against America's perversion of dubstep, but a logical blueprint for a sound that he and his stable of Deceast artists are building from the ground up; a deep, atmospheric form of bass music that synthesizes past and future.

Deco credits drum 'n' bass and jungle legends LTJ Bukem and Goldie with originally pulling him into electronic music in the mid-to-late 90s. His first forays into DJing came after hosting a drum 'n' bass program on his college's radio station, WRAS Atlanta 88.5. After a move to LA, he hooked up with Insomniac (the crew behind Electric Daisy Carnival), where he got a crash course in the electronic music industry, eventually becoming a resident DJ for the brand's Bassrush events.

When I spoke with Deco, we examined the lasting influence of dnb and jungle on his album Timescales (out October 14th). We also talked about science fiction, dubstep's identity crisis, and the lack of historical context that plagues the booming electronic music culture.

THUMP: I want to talk drum and bass. Back in 2006, I saw LTJ Bukem, one of the genre's innovators, play a set. It was interesting because at the time I wasn't a dnb fan. Anyway, Bukem blew me away. How did he and other dnb DJs and producers influence you?
Deco: Goldie and LTJ Bukem were my first two electronic music influences. LTJ Bukem had Good Looking Records, and Goldie had Metalheadz. When I heard some friends talking about an emerging sound called jungle, I went to my neighborhood record store and asked them to point me toward the jungle section. The clerk handed me a Metalheadz compilation, Platinum Breakz 2, and a Good Looking Records compilation called Earth Volume 2. The Good Looking compilation was a good summary of what was going in the atmospheric drum 'n' bass world—the stuff that was more laid back. Listening to it today, it sounds like it could never really work on a dancefloor.

What was it about Platinum Breakz 2 that appealed to you?
It was the point at which jungle was turning into drum 'n' bass. Things were getting darker, more technical, with a more futuristic feel. It sounded like music that would belong in Bladerunner. Those two albums sounded so foreign to me. I didn't really understand how the music, especially the drum beats, were being made. It sucked me in big time. I started going to raves and clubs in Atlanta that had drum 'n' bass rooms, and started buying this music on vinyl because it really wasn't on tape or CD.

Your track "Skyline 3040" really stands out as having a futuristic vibe. You mentioned Bladerunner—did futurism and science fiction in general influence the album?
When it comes to futurism and science fiction, I really get into the dirty, gritty, sort of analogue future that isn't sterile, clean, and precise. You don't see that in a lot of science fiction anymore. I want to see dirty mega-cities, or spacecraft that have been beat up and lived in.

Cyberpunk, in other words.
Yes, I definitely read plenty of that growing up. What I noticed is that a lot of sci-fi movies made in the late '70s and into the mid-'80s have a gritty, dirty future vibe. That is what I heard in the early Metalheadz music. The film Oblivion was cool, but everything is perfectly clean and spotless when the characters are not on Earth. That just doesn't get me as much as the old Alien movies.

The latest Judge Dredd movie, Dredd, sort of hits those gritty buttons, but I can't decide if it's a great science fiction film or just good. The slow-mo drug visuals and time-stretched audio in the film are amazing, though.
There is a Vimeo series that posts behind-the-scenes footage of movies. They did one for Dredd, where they interviewed the sound designers and mixers, and it was really fascinating.

What was it about Massive Attack that tripped your trigger early on?
A year or two after getting turned on to jungle and drum 'n' bass, trip-hop artists like Massive Attack, Portishead, Tricky, DJ Krush, and artists like that became popular. One of the albums that really stuck with me was Massive Attack's Mezzanine, which might be one of my top five albums of all time. It's perfect. I listen to it every couple of months, and it's been that way since it came out in 1998. What they do really resonated with me because they had the darkness and atmospheric feel of jungle and drum 'n' bass. They also had the sampling, dusty beats, and breaks of '90s hip-hop that I was into. And then they had the dub reggae influence.

Let's talk about the Timescales title track. The drums are quasi-military but asymmetrical at the same time. How did you construct that beat?
That's cool that you picked up on that. When I was in high school I was in the marching band on the drum line. I've always had a big affinity for marching drum cadences, and batteries competing against each other with this insanely technical snare work. I also really like this roto tom playing and tuned bass drums, where there are four or five bass drums that pitch up and down. I spent quite a bit of time trying to program that cadence in a sequencer, and it was really hard to do. I got as close as I could in evoking that drumline sound, but I was unable to get super-technical.

Did jungle and drum and bass influence your approach to electronic drum rhythm?
Yes. It's not so common today, but ten to fifteen years ago the big thing in jungle and drum 'n' bass was to chop up a drum break and contort it into every twisted format imaginable, where no two bars are the same. That really caught my attention back in the day.

When did you start recording Timescales?
From January to June of this year. Up until the beginning of 2013, I always had my studio set up in my bedroom. This was the first time that I've actually moved into a dedicated studio space. I lived in there for 12 hours a day, so that's when the album really started coming together.

Did you have an idea of what you wanted to pursue sonically in the writing and recording process?
Sonically, I was really going for something that was bass-heavy that could combine soulful, deeper vibes with stuff that is more tech-y and futuristic. That is my favorite aesthetic. On this album I really started to push myself as an engineer and producer to get things to sound really good sonically. I also wanted to find a balance between the person that would listen to the album in their car or in their headphones, and the person who might hear the more dance-oriented songs in a club's soundsystem.

You recently put up what you call a "tribal bass" tutorial on Beatport. What was the motivation?
Basically, I've spent the last five years really involved in the dubstep scene. At this point, it's hard to even say what that word means anymore. There is this identity crisis with dubstep. If I were to play my music to some younger kids, they would say, "That doesn't sound like dubstep," because it doesn't have a big drop and doesn't sound like it belongs on a big festival stage. So, myself and the other people in my world are really struggling as far as how to describe the music we're doing.

So, you're not really reacting against the popular understanding of dubstep, but looking for a better way to describe your music?
Right. And I don't think anyone would consider tribal bass to be a real genre name, but I think it really sums up the songs that are in that chart and playlist. They're very percussion-heavy and pretty minimal but weighty songs. You can play them on a soundsystem and feel them through your whole body. It's not designed for home listening the way a Burial album would be designed and thought of.

There is a reference in Timescales's album materials to our tech-driven, hyper speed culture. On a conceptual level, I've always thought electronic music was well-positioned to express concerns about techno-culture, or package the atmosphere of it. Is that what you were getting at in describing Timescales?
I think that what's largely going on with electronic music right now—the constant looking-for-the-next-thing mentality I see more and more in America, and in western culture, in general. It's kind of an interesting schizophrenia. What's going to be the next hot sound? What's going to be the new genre? Who will the next break-out artists be? But, electronic music constantly references the past. You're seeing that a lot right now in the rise of UK garage and house influence with artists like Disclosure. That sound was really big ten years ago and now it's back, just repackaged in a slightly more pop-friendly way.

This stuff just sounds new because a lot of people come to electronic music through the club world, and most people don't stay in it for a very long time. They don't have a lot of historical context, and will think that Disclosure sounds unlike anything they've ever heard before, even though someone who has been listening to electronic music for fifteen years will immediately think back to MJ Cole and Artful Dodger and artists like that.

Tracklist from Deco's Timescales mix:

01. Warsa - Terminal 502 [forthcoming Deceast]
02. Deco & Mesck - Slated [forthcoming Deceast]
03. SP:MC - Air Lock [Tempa]
04. Geode - Aliased Fever [Innamind]
05. Deco - Trenchtown (feat. Truth) [forthcoming Deceast]
06. Horace Andy vs DJ Madd - Cuss Cuss (TMSV Remix) [Moonshine]
07. Las - Preaching [Black Box]
08. Darj - Southfields Riddim [Tribe12]
09. DJ Madd - Never 2 Late (feat. G. Rina) [Roots & Future]
10. Geode & Promise One - Buck One [Innamind]
11. Congi - Closure [Deep Heads]
12. Deco - Skyline 3040 [forthcoming Deceast]
13. Perverse - Somber [New Moon]
14. Deco - Late Night Fading [forthcoming Deceast]
15. Geode - Vie [Innamind]
16. Deco & Mesck - The Way We Fall [Deceast]
17. Deco - Musical Family [forthcoming Deceast]

Catch Deco's upcoming dates:

SUNDAY OCTOBER 13 SMOG x DECEAST @ Dim Mak Studios, Los Angeles

SUNDAY NOVEMBER 17 DECEAST x TIMELESS @ Medusa Lounge, Los Angeles