We speak to Scottish producer DFRNT about his 'difficult' second album.
Edinburgh’s deep-dub-dance maestro DFRNT is at a polar opposite to what usually passes for contemporary electronic music maker. His sound, for one, eschews any semblance of accessibility and functional kick; his profile is emphatically quiet; and his confidence in the future continues to waver. DFRNT, AKA 29-year-old Alex Cowles, is about to release second album Fading and with it his career has reached a critical crossroads. Here, Defected’s Ben Lovett finds out what makes him tick.
“I’ve been asked by a few people recently what comes after the new album” he opens, “but that really depends on how well the new album does. If it does really well then I’ll probably need to consider music full-time.”
Cowles, of course, currently works his daylight hours as lead designer and web developer for a British search engine marketing company. Rather perversely, he worries about just how big Fading might get and what could happen if he did decide to abandon the office. Frankly, he’s not convinced he’d want to.
“The prospect of becoming a full-time artist scares me” he confides. “I worry that if I get closer to my music and work with it every day then the romantic edge will be blunted. I don’t want to lose my enthusiasm for music because suddenly I’m concerned about making sure bills are paid and that I’ve got enough new material ready to keep me afloat. I like my current balance.
“Whenever I play out the first thing I ask other DJs is whether or not they’re full-time and, if so, if they enjoy it. A lot have quit jobs and progressed, which is encouraging, but as much as they enjoy it, they always say the remuneration isn’t fantastic. You have to be absolutely top of the tree to make the money stick.”
Interestingly, Fading is the result of a crowd-funding programme instigated by Cowles over a year ago. Does he feel any further pressure knowing that fans all over the world have contributed cash towards something they expect to fully deliver this summer? Have any of his ‘shareholders’ fed back to him yet?
“There was some pressure when I was putting the record together” he says, “but, more than that, I was buoyed up by the response I got to my original plea. I used the IndieGoGo website to set everything up and was expecting around $2,000 at best. I had a target of about $5,000 and was ready to put the rest in myself. In the end over $6,000 came in. It was pretty fantastic. I was excited by the idea of a community of people coming together in the cause of music. The reaction so far has been encouraging.”
If Cowles’ choice of title for his album again echoes those concerns he has about his place in the electronic universe – “my original title was Fading (A Futile Endeavour), I feel sometimes like my music might be fading into the background without anyone noticing” – then the album itself should do much to raise his standing and provide the strongest possible platform from which to ponder future steps. Fading is a deeper but far richer, and more engaging work than DFRNT’s 2009 debut long-player Metafiction. The subterranean dubstep of that earlier work has evolved into an expansive mood board of house, techno, dub and ambient influences. DFRNT is more wide-ranging and immersive than ever but more coherent too, more engaging and dare we say it more accessible. Fading plumbs cavernous new depths on tracks such as Prism and opener Silent Witness whilst dropping punchier, vocal-flecked delights like That’s Interesting and El Spirito.
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“There have been some really strong opinions for and against Fading so far” Cowles admits, “but the support for has been greater. The album came together as a bunch of tracks that I’d recorded rather than one unifying concept but I did spend a lot of time on mastering and getting the track listing right so it is meant to flow. The first few tracks are more recent and a good indication of where I’d like to go next but everything’s me.”
Does he, himself, feel it’s a step on from Metafiction?: “Totally. I’m still fond of the tracks on that record but they were recorded such a long time ago, over a year before the album eventually came out. Back then I had a lot to learn; I don’t really listen to Metafiction that much anymore. Making Fading was a much more comfortable experience. I was better able to express myself. I’m never going to make cheesy upfront music but Fading has danceable moments; it’s danceable music for patient people.”
It might surprise some that DFRNT’s earliest origins lie in full-on Nineties trance. It was trance that the teenage Cowles took too when his interest in dance was first piqued by a group of local charity workers visiting his high school. “They thought that dance music was as good a way as any to interest the kids in their work, so they came to our school with some decks and started offering DJ lessons” he reflects. “I remember my first ever vinyl mix was with two copies of It’s Like That by Run DMC [as remixed by Jason Nevins]. It was an amazing feeling. After that my friends and I got our own turntables and started buying lots of trance and hard house.”
At university in Dundee, Cowles soaked up drum & bass, funk, soul, jazz, electro and house: “I embraced everything. I started playing locally and then my friends and I grabbed a support slot to Mylo when he visited our uni. That led to our own uni night and then I was getting interested in producing.”
And what were deep Mr Cowles’ first forays into the studio? Outrageous mash-ups.... “I know, it’s pretty funny when you consider where I am now” he laughs, “but those big, infectious fusions of different records got me interested in production. I started to bring my own sounds in; I was influenced by electro and then dubstep but those genres started to compete for the most outrageous sound and it all got silly. Dubstep didn’t really fall on its face until 2010 but I’d already gone back to the earlier classic records for inspiration. That was in 2007.”
Cowles’ musical tastes deepened and deepened over the following four years, before DFRNT arrived. “Some people might find it hard to connect where I started and where I am now, particularly over such a short space of time, but you can hear elements of those early loves on Fading. My love of epic, euphoric builds comes from trance, for example. I’ve long been inspired by the work of crossover acts like Leftfield and Orbital too.”
Taking day-jobs out of the equation for the briefest of moments, as well as his new album, Cowles would love to develop his two record labels Echodub and Cut. The latter launched early last year as a channel for free releases (whereby listeners pay what they feel is appropriate for each single or EP) and has already secured thousands of followers.
“I tried a few free releases via Echodub and got such a good response that I thought there might be something in a separate label” he explains. “At the same time, I’d been tinkering with a random logo on my laptop whilst away skiing in the Alps and thought it the perfect front for this new channel. The two things just came together. There is, as we all know, an appetite for free music, and now Cut’s releases are going far and wide.” Not to mention the name of new young producers such as Bryn Thomas, Koloah and Roughquest.
Cowles will not, it seems, shed a tear if his own name doesn’t hit the farthest flung corners of the world: “I love making music and I’m of the opinion that if it that music is good then it will promote itself. I don’t mind giving interviews and DJing out but ultimately I’d like my productions to do the talking. Looking forward, I’m not sure what I’ll do with DFRNT, I might experiment with new aliases. At the same time, the DJing will probably take a backseat. If I could, I’d DJ behind a brick wall because it needs to be all about the music. Don’t get me wrong, we all want a little recognition for what we do but I’m not into celebrity; it ends up as a distraction.”
He seems to have the balance right. DFRNT has played everywhere from Belgium and Poland to San Francisco and Puerto Rico in recent times, and on the same bill as Julio Bashmore, Oneman and Dave Clarke. His discography, including cult EPs Forward Thinking (his 2008 debut), Saturation Point (2010) and Emotional Response (2011), Insight podcasts and Sitting Ovation blog have all earned him significant levels of interest but without cramping his style through sheer weight of expectation. DFRNT’s reputation is building but at a pace Cowles can get his head around, just about.
“It is easy to be a defeatist” he suggests, “but the music industry, like any creative industry today is tough and I need to think carefully about what I will be doing in the years ahead. It’s hard to see a point when I won’t be involved with music but, for now, I’ll monitor the reaction to Fading and make a call on where I go next.”
Geographically speaking, he’ll be living in the States come January: “It’s for a combination of personal, work and music reasons. My girlfriend is from Philadelphia and I want to ditch the long-distance relationship thing. I’m opening a New York office for my company so I can easily commute to see her from there, and New York has an emerging scene for the sort of deep, emotive music that I’m into. All of it is really exciting; the timing is perfect... I’m still working all the angles.”
The developments in New York sound particularly promising. Does Cowles see anything seismic on the horizon for the niche scene he’s involved with? “The majority of dance fans do still want tear out, rinse out tracks” he concludes. “But I believe there is a place for those deeper strands of electronic music. Our audience is relatively small but loyal and with the way electronic music is advancing who truly knows what is around the corner? The internet makes things easier to find, for starters, and therefore niche scenes will always have a chance to make their creativity known.”
Words: Ben Lovett
DFRNT’s new album Fading is released on Echodub (UK) on September 3.
