Live Jungle and Real Breaks! A Conversation with Progressive Overload

Introduction

Hi Nate, can you tell us a little about yourselves? 

The three of us came together to build this pack.  I have a background in jazz, but have been digging into electronic music for about a decade now, and Jungle/DnB in particular over the past five or so years.  I’ve always known Paolo as a fantastic drummer, going back 15 years since we started playing everything from jazz to afrobeat together in NYC.  Erik is the recording engineer on this pack. I’ve known him for the past 10 years, and he is a fantastic drummer in his own right.  Erik’s knowledge of drumming and engineering, as well as his studio stocked with vintage drums and microphones, was perfect for capturing the sounds of authentic drum breaks for this project.

You and Paolo play live breakbeat and drum and bass, using electronic and acoustic instruments, including live drums. How did this come about? 

Two reasons.

1. Inspiration. Fifteen years ago, Paolo introduced me to Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, and perhaps most importantly, Jojo Mayer.  We used to see Jojo play with his band Nerve every Monday at NuBlu on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  There was a certain spirit in NYC at that time, blending breakbeat with live jazz.  Other bands like Now vs Now, Beat Music, and Donny McCaslin (whose band backed up David Bowie on his last album, Blackstar) were exploring sounds in a similar vein in tiny basement clubs all over lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
2. Logistics. We shared a practice space in Brooklyn, and during that time, I started programming loops of the jazz tunes we were playing in Logic.  We recorded an album of jazz/rock fusion with some electronic elements in 2015, but putting on live gigs became nearly impossible with some of us living in and out of NYC, so we began playing the same music as a duo using Ableton to control the song structure on the fly, just as we would if we were performing with a 5-piece band.

Since then, we’ve tried duo to quartet formats—sometimes fully live, other times alongside sequencers like Ableton, Akai, and, of course, the Polyend Tracker.

About Amen

What will producers find useful about this pack?

Breaks first. When I start a project, the first thing I often do is have a break and a tempo in mind.  Here you have the breaks you need to create Jungle, DnB, IDM, Hip Hop, or anything else you like!  Throw them in a granular synth and make a texture out of it – be creative!

What sets it apart from other break packs?

 Three things:

1. Cleared & original. These are Paolo’s performances we recorded for this project, so you’re not dealing with unlicensed rips from old records. (Many third-party sets rely on breaks sampled from commercial releases; ours are recorded, cleared, and ready to use.)
2. Producer-centric variations. We created our own variations with producers in mind.  The Amen pattern is ingrained in people’s musical imagination, but why not use a high hat in place of a ride cymbal?  Why not change the snare out with a cross stick?  Why not use different snare drums and different cymbals to change the sonic character of the break?  We did all this, and it is all here for your own further exploration.
3. Clean and dirty edits, depending on your approach to production.  Some producers like to carefully craft their own breaks, adding in EQ, distortion, bit reduction, reverb, etc.  For people using this approach, they have a ‘clean’ break carefully captured on a dozen microphones, which they can shape as they please.  Other producers may want to simply load something up quickly and get to sequencing a tune they have in mind.  For these producers, the ‘dirty,’ ‘vintage,’ or ‘vinyl’ edits would be best.  These edits use a variety of tape saturation, reverb, etc, to copy the exact character of the original breaks.  That way, you can get cracking with minimal fiddling on the front end!

Tracker Tips

Nate, you also make fantastic gear tutorials, including some for Tracker. Any Tracker advice for using this pack?

Limit yourself. This may seem counterintuitive to some, but I would advise people to limit themselves.  The power of technology incentivizes people to drift aimlessly from sample to sample, break to break, or vst to vst, without much intentionality on how, what, or why you are actually trying to create.

Pick one break.  We’ve sliced these for you, but why not slice it yourself?  Get to know the break.  Make it your own.  The originators of this genre were forced to tediously chop samples on Akai samplers with no graphical interface.  They were forced to chop by ear.  Once you’ve spent half an hour chopping up a break like that, it becomes part of your imagination, and you are the creator.  Try putting those limits on yourself just as you start and see how intentionality returns to your creative process.

Just as a masterful jazz soloist carefully develops a motif to tell a story, only stretching his technical abilities when the music demands it, so should we develop motifs in break sequencing, only reaching for other breaks when the music calls for it.

If someone watches one of your tutorials to get started, which one would it be?

Start here: Photek techniques on Polyend Tracker (my take after watching Groovin in G’s research below).

Sometimes when I am feeling stuck in a creative rut, I will take a break and build out a few patterns focused on one type of effect at a time (reverse, velocity mod, gating, filtering, rolls, etc).  Once you’ve done that, I find the creative juices are flowing, and ideas flow much more easily.

See You Out There

We are not touring at the moment.  You can see us playing jazz and/or spinning some old school DnB here on the East Coast of America.  There is a small but dedicated DnB scene in Philadelphia, and we are working on putting together a DnB event that alternates live bands with DJs.

Progressive Overload YouTube
Progressive Overload Bandcamp
Amen: Vintage Breakbeat Palette