Home / Events / Machinedrum B2B Bianca Oblivion In The Round
Machinedrum Travis Stewart s journey to making 3FOR82 began fittingly on 3 4. For his 41st birthday on March 4th last year he ventured out to Joshua Tree National Park California to seek clarity and inspiration for what became his 11th studio album as Machinedrum 12 high intensity ruminative tracks that thread the needle between his past present and future selves. I ve been to Joshua Tree many times and I ve always felt a great sense of clarity every time I visit Stewart explains and I knew that I should at some point in my life go out there to work on something creatively. 3FOR82 builds on the vocalist centric genre blending songwriting of the last Machinedrum album 2020 s A View Of U and the thematic groundwork laid down on 2023 EP 4 TRAX dedicated to channel trax on IRC a 90s chat platform . Between drum bass hip hop jazz R B and juke dazzling beat switches and a singular ear for sonics Stewart weaves in a crew of collaborators. Jesse Boykins III the album s co executive producer and a close friend of Stewart leads with various contributions while a ritzy cast including Tinashe KU KA Duckwrth AKTHESAVIOR Mick Jenkins Ezri Taner lle Deniro Farrar Topaz Jones deem spencer aja monet ROZET Will Johnson and Ian Maciak rounds the record off. This rich prismatic approach to collaboration builds on the uptempo vocal manipulations that won Stewart acclaim in electronic communities notably on 2011 s breakout LP Room s and 2013 opus Vapor City. 3FOR82 s lead single ZOOM featuring Tinashe kicks off the campaign on March 4th the album is due for release on May 24th through Ninja Tune accompanied by a boutique printed zine co designed with visual artist and LuckyMe affiliate Joseph Durnan 124 World . Given that Ninja Tune was one of young Travis favourite labels this speaks to a mantra guiding the record: observing nostalgia through a contemporary lens. In the quiet vastness of Joshua Tree Machinedrum combed through old harddrives full of his late 90s beats: many of them were made on Impulse Tracker a rough freeware programme that lay untouched for the better part of a quarter century. That s really where I cut my teeth in electronic music making he remembers. Although he s been a committed Ableton Live user for years there s been a yearning for me to tap back into that older self the software is super limiting and there s a unique creativity that comes out of limitations. After finding a DOS emulator that would run Impulse Tracker he recorded himself playing and riffing off these beats to build 3FOR82 sample by sample he made original sound banks that could be fed into a dedicated library giving 3FOR82 a distinct tone. From there there was no going back Stewart smiles. It bridged the gap between my past and future self . This period included recording himself and his environment with a VHS camera then running the footage audio into the tracker creating a meta library of sounds. Solitude wasn t the only parameter Stewart set for the process of making 3FOR82. Time was a defining element of his creativity too. I went from that seed collecting phase into a pure experimentation and creation phase he says. I gave myself one month to start as many track ideas as possible: over that month I created around 45 different ideas then I decided which ones were the strongest and focused on them for the album. The ones that I gravitated to really just had these natural pockets for vocals. As much as possible on 3FOR82 Machinedrum brought each vocalist into the studio for face to face time and they d record conversations on his camera focused on a theme: If you could visit with your younger self what would you say to them? From there vocalists wrote lyrics to or as their teenage selves. Choice quotes are woven into the music as monologues or samples 3FOR82 s opener Oracle begins with reflections from aja monet on dancing alone. On lead single ZOOM Tinash narrates youthful lust on the dancefloor at one juncture in KILL U Taner lle s soothing tones reminds you that at times You re lost then you re found there s so much you achieve across U WANT KU KA tells herself there will be better days while on RISE ROZET riffs that she ll grow from the floor to the sky . The effect the theme has on 3FOR82 is tender and punchy tying these strands of R B pop jazz and drum bass together. With decades of work under his belt across various guises including Machinedrum ambient project Tstewart indispensable club rocket J E T S with Jimmy Edgar and Sepalcure with Praveen Sharma a collaborative outlook and practice is what charges Stewart. If you really pay attention vocals have always played an integral role in my songs since the beginning he says reflecting on his catalogue. Whether it s chopping them up like a ghostly sound in the background or whether it s a featured singer I ve always considered the voice an essential instrument in my work. For a futuristic artist it s prudent to ask: why look back? Growing up in rural North Carolina the teenage Travis Stewart discovered dance music not on dancefloors but through internet forums mp3 download sites production software channels and scrappy audiovisual ephemera. Because I was obsessed with music that was made for environments that I didn t grow up in I had an outsider perspective of what that was like and an appreciation for the bedroom listener aspect of it he says. By not initially hearing how DJs would interpret these tracks making music for both home and the club is key to my work. Now having spent years living in Berlin New York City and Los Angeles finding a middle ground between all those club and social influences has definitely inspired my music. In tribute to the importance of screen glow to his artistic development Machinedrum has lately been running monthly online beat battles called COMPO a twist on his experience competing with other young beatmakers way back when. The limiting factor of having these really small zip files of samples was a necessity because you couldn t share anything over a dial up modem that was bigger than 10 megabytes but what came out of that was this cool challenging aspect he says. With COMPO and the 3FOR82 sound library he s collaborating with my younger self taking these ideas that I wrote when I was so naive and giving them new life. There s a whole community that s formed around COMPO and the enthusiasm I ve seen from the community has been incredible. To tie one final bow around the project Stewart notes what the record has taught him a principle that chimed with the album s title. It took me 41 years to realise that I ve always been obsessed with polyrhythms and how three interacts with four and this was probably subconsciously influenced by my birthday! he laughs. I love rhythms that have interlocking three patterns over a 4 4 beat and I love the rule of threes because when things are presented in three parts your audience is more engaged. For 3FOR82 the creation process was divided into three parts: sound library and palette curation experimental creation and finalising. There lies an echo of the implied fourth: how Stewart s audience receives the splicing blending and reconfiguration of sounds voices temporal zones and oh so human memories that feeds into 3FOR82 a refinement of the the template that has made Travis Stewart such an enduring presence in 21st century electronic music and an extension of the range of what a Machinedrum album can be now and in the future. Bianca Oblivion Bianca Oblivion lives and breathes Los Angeles. Born and raised in the City of Angels the globe trotting genre hopping hard hustling artist who was recently named by Mixmag as one of 2023 s breakthrough DJs of the year and is also part of Beatport Next s class of of 2024 is unbound by dance music orthodoxy opting instead for an anything goes as long as it bangs approach that reflects the unique cultural palette of her hometown. Growing up Mexican in LA Bianca heard G funk blasting out of cars and cumbia coming out of the stereo at backyard BBQs and during her teen years she started spending her nights soaking up electro house and all sorts of heavy bass music most often in the city s vibrant underground club and warehouse rave scene. She s still raving today and as a DJ she s intent on connecting the dots between seemingly disparate sounds as likely to drop dancehall reggaeton hip hop R B or even a cheeky pop edit as she is to unleash a torrent of gut rumbling grime dubstep hardcore or some other bass heavy sound. Bianca is the rare selector who can tear the roof off just about anywhere and in the past few years she s showcased her skills not only at world renowned festivals like Bass Coast Glastonbury Fusion and Boomtown but also at iconic clubs like London s fabric and Barcelona s Razzmatazz. Still it s Warp Mode the LA party she throws alongside fellow bass fiends Star Eyes and AK Sports where she s most comfortable and not just behind the decks. Aside from providing a consistent platform for femme non binary queer and POC artists Warp Mode has become a beacon for low end freakers from Southern California and beyond which is why its unique brand of neon streaked mayhem was broadcast to the world via an unforgettable Boiler Room takeover in 2023. Away from the dancefloor Bianca also heads up Club Aerobics a label and monthly radio show that s been airing on NTS since 2017. And while she has a fantastic ear for other people s tunes she s also made plenty of bangers of her own flexing her production skills on releases for labels like N.A.A.F.I Magic City and Future Bounce. Tracks like Sinais Eski Rave and Selecta have been rinsed on both sides of the Atlantic and her song EZ 4 Me even landed in EA Sports FC 24 the latest installment of the newly rebranded FIFA video game series. DJ producer promoter Bianca Oblivion does it all spreading joy and always giving bassbins a serious workout. Keeping up with her is no easy task but anyone who s lucky enough to catch her would be well advised to sit back and let her go to work.
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