PRODUCER PROFILE
“Cutting dubplates is expensive, so you have to really think about how good the track is. It makes you focus on the music more”
his sets sounded like he was playing live. We didn’t really have a dubplate culture here in Japan at that time, so that was something truly original to me.” From there, Goth-Trad explored ways to cut his own 10” exclusives, using his local studio Wax Acetate to cut vinyl exclusives, which is lighter, cheaper, sounds better and lasts longer than usual acetate dubplates. “There’s an interesting dubplate culture in Japan,” he says. “We have a healthy hip-hop scene here and a lot of those DJs cut dubplates, but they’re looking for rare grooves from old albums. It has that ‘vinyl sound’, which is good if you’re looking for something old school, but I’m making music through computers so I need something that sounds modern, rich and detailed.” “At first, I brought my engineer a few of my earlier releases and asked if he could cut some of the tracks. He couldn’t…” he goes on to say. “The mix was very loud with a wide-range and it sounded really heavy at first, but the engineer was into what I wanted to do so we worked together for around three months. To cut a dubplate, the process of taking the recording you have from a computer to a cutting head is very important. It has to be very pure, so he started upgrading some of
his equipment and the sound just kept on getting better and better. The engineer almost began to play his equipment like an instrument, constantly tweaking and fixing things, so after that I started to cut all my tunes as dubplates.” The techniques he uses to produce a track specifically for dubplates doesn’t differ too much than any other format. “You have to check the low frequencies,” he says on the cutting process. “The low frequencies have a much wider waveform so each track will be too close to the next one on the record. Apart from that, it’s not that much different”. Where the strengths lie in dubplates however is how it demands your full attention. “You need to work on your final mix before you can cut a dubplate, because otherwise it’s just wasting money,” he says. “It’s very easy to create music now, especially digital music. You finish your track then you put it on to Soundcloud. But cutting dubplates is expensive, so you have to really think about how good the track is. It makes you focus on the music more.” Today, when hours of music can be downloaded in an afternoon, limiting yourself to a single record bag is liberating, a technique of less is more that’s
refreshing now that a life of musical discovery can be condensed to a USB. “Before cutting dubplates I was playing CDs and building this huge collection of digital music,” he says.“ But most of the tracks I would never get time to play. By cutting dubplates I have to focus on each piece of music I’m playing. I need to think more carefully about how I would play a track, planning my set more acutely. That process is really good for me.” Goth-Trad is not a purist, mind. “To be honest, I don’t care whether the DJ’s play CDs or vinyl. If it’s good, it’s good,” he says, and Goth-Trad’s reputations have resonated through the loyal fanbase he’s built in his home city with Back To Chill, the long-running monthly showcase that began in 2006. His future projects as a solo artist are set to keep him busy throughout 2018, and as onethird of noisemakers EARTAKER his musical breadth goes beyond club walls. But it’s within those confines where Goth-Trad finds his natural habitat, and having recently celebrated 11 years of bass-rumbling nights he won’t be finding the light anytime soon. What’s your secret to longevity, I ask. “We have a huge sound system,” he replies, with a smirk on his face. January/February 2018
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