Lockah

Swirling synths in a variety of forms take on chameleon like qualities shaping Aberdeen’s brightest rising star Lockah, aka Tom Banks’ savagely inventive sound. Humming chugs of lofty bass marry with pitched vocal loops cascading into jungle-inspired beats. This menagerie of genres and concept sounds are then swirled together in a steaming pot of thick and chunky beats ready to elevate any mood.

The stalwart label head of emerging bass outfit, Tuff Wax, and playing a large part in the emerging scene in his hometown of Aberdeen, Banks is pushing more than just a new sound in 2013. Lockah’s music unearths new territories, blending an epic movie score quality with forward thinking production and a wildly creative style, landing him on labels like Mad Decent’s Jeffrees, Skrillex’s OWSLA, and most recently, on bass music trendsetting label, Donky Pitch.

One of the fascinating aspects of Banks’ music is his ability to elicit melodies out of heavy-handed synth, sparse techno beats and trembling glistens of effects, all of which create the most strangely fantastic pop ballads. Best Fit set out to find out where the young producer’s influences lie, what his new EP Only Built For Neon Nights is really about and if it’s possible to ever have too much synth.

Your bio says you’re the “Founder of TUFF WAX – music on MAD DECENT / JEFFREE’S / MISHKA NYC / DONKY PITCH / OWSLA / SCION AV / NATIONAL ANTHEM”, but who is Lockah?

I’m a hardworking producer with ambition and a bit of an entrepreneurial spirit. I’m 27, but I’ve lived the life of a 40-year-old. I’m based in Aberdeen, Scotland, where I’ve spent my whole life.

If you had to pick a food or a dish to describe your sound, what would you pick and why?

>Maybe a spicy taco, or a juicy punnet of strawberries. Anything with some mad flavour that you could eat with your hands. I try to keep my music accessible and colourful and fun.

Paul Lester over at the Guardian described your music, saying, “Much of the music seems designed to soundtrack significant sports events or historical battles.” Do you agree?

I’m not into sports or historical battles but I understand what the guy’s saying. I think it’s the love of brass samples or just those brassy, stabby synth sounds – plus I’ve been known to loop crowd noise under things at times so it may even be subliminal. When you can capture that fanfare type sound, I suppose it creates a kind of epic atmosphere if you’re in the right listening mindset.

I personally would have to agree, especially after spending some time with your Mishka release, Lockah – Please Lockah, Don’t Hurt ‘Em. It has this Billy Joel stadium feel to it. Where does that influence come from?

Yeah, that EP was pretty much an experiment in how huge I could go with my sound. The slightly discordant piano stabs are a jungle/rave thing for sure. I was into all that stuff as a child before I hit double figures. Where that interest sprung from, I’ve no idea. And with no friends, older siblings etc. into it, I grew out of it and into guitar music as I got into my teens. Back then though, I used to try and recreate the piano riffs on my toy casio keyboard, so I’m drawing on decades of experience here!

You’re great at creating melodies out of the most unexpected of sounds.

It’s something I’ve been doing since the moment I started producing, but unfortunately it seems to be regarded as a staple of identikit ‘trap’ production now…

When listening to Only Built 4 Neon Nites the first time, I thought, “This is the most epic of video game dance parties I will ever go to.” Where did this concept come from?

Well straight up, everyone picked up on the obvious nod to the Raekwon album title, Only Built For Cuban Linx, but not a lot of folks seemed to give any further thought to where I was coming from. That happens to be my favourite rap album ever, by the way. I had read this old XXL interview on the making of it, one of those fantastic articles where they get a shitload of different interviews then chop it up into a flowing commentary. If you read it, you can really get into the the mindset of the RZA back in those days. It was early, before the movie soundtracks and all that. Instead of just a record he helped Raekwon to make an incredible combination of a rap album, a cinematic soundtrack and even something with the vibe of an actual movie. I wanted to try and capture that same feeling, just simplified and shrunk down – so the main influence is Wu-Tang and classic Hollywood, not computer games as such.

What is Only Built 4 Neon Nites about?

In a real, personal and slightly boring sense it’s supposed to be a soundtrack to a midnight drive. If you live around Aberdeen, especially out in the middle of nowhere where I grew up, most people get around in cars cos of the shitty public transport. I’ve spent a fairly decent amount of time driving places in the middle of the night, often in the interest of seeing girls I suppose. Which kind of brings me into the more fantastical train of thought, that it’s a cinematic nod to movies like Drive, Akira, even Tron… call it Neo(n)-Noir, romance, whatever. The 5 tracks spell out the story – the intro leads into the beginning of the journey in ‘Young Neon Countach’, ‘Guards Red Carrera’ is supposed to sound like a struggle such as a fight or a lighting storm, the calm sets in halfway through ‘Let The Cool Air Breeze’ and sets us up nicely for a little rain ‘n’ romance on ‘Platinum Blonde’.

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I was obsessed with When U Stop Feeling Like A Weirdo & Become A Threat when it dropped. What’s changed from that release to Only Built 4 Neon Nites?

Well, when I listen back to When U Stop… I’m often really taken aback by the raw/lo-fi feel some of it had. That definitely wasn’t by design…I was trying to create the cleanest, sharpest production I could at the time! I’m not sure people really knew what to make of it – the press release even called it ‘undanceable’. Back then, some of my stuff had an almost UK Garage swing to it. Also I actually made those tracks in late 2011 – before the ‘trap’ movement as such, even though that production style had been creeping into everything that had influenced me up to that point. Tracks like Rustie’s ‘Tempered’, SX’s ‘Woo Riddim’ or Girl Unit’s ‘Wut’, the sound was there but the buzz-word and mania wasn’t – the UK has been using it in club productions for more than half a decade at least. I probably didn’t even know who Lex Lugor was back then, I just used to call that type of production ‘Rick Ross beats’! So in a way I reckon the unfocused influences and rawer production endeared it to people. With Please Lockah, I was so focused on tightening up the sound that I had to go the complete opposite way with the new EP. I’m not competing with anyone in making this sound big or loud. It’s a pop EP straight up, you have to compete with me on the melodies and feel instead.

I read you’re heavily influenced by southern rap, couple that with this new-age bass flip, almost jungle and juke’s love child, with hints of mainstream pop peeking through at every turn. Of course all of these elements give your music this infectious rap anthem quality. Yet you haven’t worked with many rappers, it’s been mostly samples.

The strange thing is I never really DJ’d Southern rap, East Coast always led the way in my record collection. But freestyle electro & miami bass got me hooked on the 808 and eventually there was no turning back. Early on though, when I used to mess about with MPCs and the like, my dream was really just to dig for samples on dusty records and make beats for rappers. It was only when I started checking out the LA beats, Brainfeeder and so forth pushing their sound, that I realised that ‘beats’ could stand on their own too. Since then I’ve done a couple of official rap remixes, so in a weird turn of events, shunning the idea of making beats for rappers has actually led me to work with a few.

Who would be your dream collaborator?

Without a doubt, it has to be Riff Raff. I probably drop at least 2-3 of his jams in every set.

Can there ever be too much synth?! What’s your take on using synth when it comes to your music?

In my experience, there unfortunately can and many a time I’ve had to do a synth channel ‘cull’ on a track that’s just got too busy. Synthesis is definitely the backbone of any of my productions. Drum programming I can take or leave, half the time I just knock together a drum machine loop in 5 minutes to keep a beat to the melody and only develop the percussive side of it later. To me, resampling recordings of other people’s synths is only useful for basic sounds and I prefer to work from scratch most of the time. That said, some sounds i’m in love with are just presets that have been modified slightly – it all depends on what’s going to work best to deliver the sound or melody i’m dreaming up.

What’s the music scene in Aberdeen like? How has living there influenced the type of music you make?

I think a lot of folks would agree that the music scene here is pretty poor. Places like Glasgow often host more acts that I’d love to see on a single midweek night than I’d get the chance to see in a month up in Aberdeen. In terms of getting to see the type of guests I’d be keen to check out, Aberdeen usually does very little for me. The main thing I’m interested in musically here is what myself and my friends are doing.

Do you play a lot of shows in Aberdeen, or around the UK? If so, are they live sets, or just DJ sets? What are your shows like?

I rarely play in Aberdeen to be honest, and my gigs seem to be about 50/50 UK and Europe-based at the moment. I started out DJing all-vinyl and nowadays it’s turntables and Serato. A live set would be so much fun but I’m gonna need some guidance from others on how to get started – I attempted it last year and just couldn’t get my head around it. I can be a bit of a moody DJ at times, not a great deal of smiling and dancing! The sets stay pretty far away from familiar and mainstream tracks, and are usually 50%-75% unreleased Lockah stuff or dubs from others. I like to sway between big hip-hop tracks and slow jams and usually end up moving pretty frantically through the songs towards the end of a set. I’m a big fan of pull ups, fast cuts and mucking about with doubles so nothing’s yet been able to tempt me away from turntables too long.

I read somewhere that your ethos is “If you want to do something, do it quickly and as well as you possibly can. Then do it again, but better.” So what’s next for Lockah?

That’s more like my advice for any producer starting out. It used to bother me knowing people who were making interesting music and sitting on it. Luckily most of the people I roll with are now confident about sharing their stuff, and usually it pays off! As for me, I’ve got a bunch of collaborative projects in the works, some of which are more finished than others, and I’m slowly amassing a few hours of material with the aim of turning the best bits into the debut LP.

What do you want the world to know about Lockah?

I’m out here and I’m going for it. With any luck, you’ll be hearing a lot more from me!