Dance music producer Recloose returns with a third studio album, an eclectic mix that again utilises the talent he has discovered since moving to New Zealand in 2001. Shane Gilchrist reports.
Funn, funk and fatherhood. Recloose is a big fan of all three concepts.
The former Detroit beat-master, who moved to Wellington in 2001, got married, had a son and now lives in Auckland, has been taking in the sights of Northland this week. His mum, who knows him by his real name, Matt Chicoine, is over from the United States. Hence the sightseeing.
There is mention of the Bay of Islands, but the weather hasn't been all that flash. In fact, it's ‘‘real s . . . at the moment'', Chicoine explains from Whangarei. The driving break has given him a chance to get on the phone and explain his latest album and a forthcoming tour that includes gigs in Queenstown and Dunedin next week.
Perfect Timing - a collection of bold bass lines, wacky synthesizers, jazzy vocals and horn stabs set to a range of inventive beats - follows two previous studio efforts, 2002 debut Cardiology and 2005's Hiatus on the Horizon, as well as 2006 live album Backwards and Sideways.
Released just over a week ago, Perfect Timing has a title not short on irony given its rather long gestation. Much of the music was initially recorded in 2002, when Chicoine worked on ‘‘some rough stuff'' with American friends Justin Chapman and Genevieve Marentette.
Though there were some good ideas, the tracks were never developed to a point where they were ready for release, so Chicoine revisited the sessions, updating them and recording with a new group of people.
‘‘The album sounds, in some aspects, pretty retro,'' Chicoine says. ‘‘There are some old-school sounds coming through. We've taken things from five years ago and other stuff is influenced by stuff from 25 years ago. It has all ended up on this thing that has been glued together . . . It's not a very methodical way of working, you know.''
Clearly, Chicoine likes to play with words as much as he does with drum loops and samples. The name he gave to his last album, Hiatus on the Horizon, was also tongue-in-cheek - a nod to those in Detroit who thought a move to New Zealand would be the end of his musical output.
If anything, he has become less of a recluse. Arriving in a Wellington scene peopled by Fat Freddy's Drop, the Black Seeds and Trinity Roots crews et al, Chicoine found himself drawn to a slightly more relaxed rhythm. The effects of the migration are evident on his albums: Cardiology, a debut recorded largely by himself, featured hard, cold beats and little in the way of melody; follow-up Hiatus, on which Chicoine utilised an eight-piece band (including members of the Black Seeds and Trinity Roots), was a much warmer effort.
Perfect Timing is another step along that continuum, Chicoine confirms, pointing to his collaborations with a range of vocalists, including Tyna Keenan, Rachel Fraser and Joe Dukie, aka Dallas Tamaira, of Fat Freddy's Drop.
‘‘It definitely is a continuation of the Hiatus path in that it is me experimenting in my production style and messing things up as I do, but still collaborating with Kiwi musicians and bringing styles and flavours that are a little less common to the New Zealand palate . . . and having fun with it, messing around and getting interesting results from these pairings.
‘‘I guess with this album, it's definitely influenced by funk of a certain era. That's quite a popular sound where I'm from and it's something that a lot of people grew up on. Prince and Parliament, a lot of these things were quite big, and still are, to this day . . . I just thought it wasn't so much the case down here. It's not like no-one has heard of Prince, but it's not such a daily thing,'' Chicoine says.
‘‘Tyna, Dallas and Rachel and the people in the band are more used to hip-hop or the dub-reggae sound or jazz. So I really liked the idea of doing this danceable funk music that is musically credible. It is always a challenge to keep dance music interesting, I find. And that's what I really try to do with my music.
‘‘There is some truth that Wellington is a musically rich place and has been for a long time . . . that has had a very strong bearing on the direction my music has taken. Doing the live thing, for instance; that was something I never would have done if I'd stayed in Detroit.''
Chicoine still likes to return to Detroit, a place he describes as strangely inspiring. It was there he got his first break as a dance music producer. In 1997, he served techno pioneer Carl Craig a sandwich that included a demo tape among its ingredients. The marketing ploy worked, Chicoine going on to work as a DJ with Craig's Innerzone Orchestra. Subsequent releases on Craig's Planet E label bolstered his reputation.
‘‘Detroit is a rough place to live; it's very poor; there is a lot of crime, etc, etc. But it has got such a spirit and a realness to the art and music that was very important to me in developing what I do. So going home is invigorating. It's great to see friends and be back in the thick of it and to get hip to what has been going on and to find all these records you can't find here. Going back to Detroit definitely replenishes the well of inspiration.''
Classically trained and with a taste for jazz, Chicoine is both saxophonist and record spinner, a composer unafraid to sample elements of someone else's songs and use them as stepping stones to his own tracks. In short, he likes to approach music from different angles. It's not unlike a Rubik's Cube: if he's stuck on one colour, he'll turn it around and try another
‘‘That is one great thing about what I do - and I'm thankful that I'm involved in music in all these different ways because it keeps it fresh to me and I'm constantly learning. If one thing gets too stale, I can go to a different aspect.
‘‘Without a doubt, I think my stuff is pretty eclectic and this album is no exception. It adds to that frenzy of all different things coming together to make a sound.''
A good example of that pick 'n' mix ethos is Sanctuary , the first single off Perfect Timing, which combines tinkling, ethereal keyboards, a four-on-the-floor groove, an upfront vocal delivery by Keenan and in-your-face stabs of horn. In lesser hands, it could have resulted in a sonic mess. That it retains a funky focus is testament to a production pedigree that emphasises attention to detail while allowing room for creative accidents.
Chicoine admits he does become fixated by the little things.
‘‘People come up to me and say, ‘dude, no-one is ever going to notice that; what are you still mixing this for? The song is done'. You get involved intimately with the music. Well, I'm going to hear it so I need to fix it. There is a lot of attention to detail, little things I do, intricacies. But that is sort of the back end of the process; the front end is the actual jamming, the experimenting.
‘‘A lot of those weird things you hear are the result of an accident; having the sampler in the wrong mode - ‘hey, that's a really cool sound, let's use that' - or Tyna doing something improvisational, trying to do something funny.
‘‘That is how I put my music together. You capture different things. You start needle-dropping on different records and, suddenly, that little thing might sound really interesting - even though that might be off a Neil Diamond record or whatever.''
Chicoine no longer lives in Wellington. He headed to Auckland in August last year to be closer to his four-year-old son, Manahi. He now resides in Sandringham, ‘‘not too close, but not too far from the city'', and is enjoying making new friends.
‘‘It's a great scene. I think it's a little less tight-knit than Wellington. If you make the effort, you can hang out with anybody; it's just that you have to make the effort, get out of the house and drive.''
And Chicoine understands it sometimes takes more than geography to inspire a change of view.
‘‘I think, in general, having kids lightens your soul a little bit. I think my older stuff, pre-Manahi, was more Detroit-influenced, was more about being a single guy. So there was a lot of that Detroit melancholy, a darkish vibe going on. I still like that sound and I still identify with it but, as you can hear on this album, a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek and that is kind of the point.
‘‘I think being a dad has steered me in that direction. I take music very seriously, but I don't always take the message so seriously. The point sometimes is to have fun with it.''
