Arthur Hnatek: The Polyend Perc Idea
Artists
What's up
What’s up
Mirrorman on Bass Tools and Musical Evolution
Mirrorman is a DnB artist based on the south coast of the UK, known for receiving radio play on BBC 1 and being a fixture in the UK drum and bass scene. He recently created the powerful Bass Tools sample pack. Discover more about Mirrorman’s journey, influences, and creative process below.
Hi Mirrorman, great work on the samples, these sound amazing, the bass is terrifying, What were your influences in making these sounds?
Cheers! I’ve always liked my DnB dark and a bit scary. For inspiration I looked to moments like the beginning of Konflikt Messiah with that wall of fearsome bass noise that comes out of nowhere and creates such a feeling of awe and dread. I just wanted to try and set as much of a scene like that as possible with each bass sound.
Can you share some live shows, music, or raves that deeply inspired you when growing up? What got you into this music?
Growing up in the late 90s it was actually the later Logical Progression events at The End, Shepherd Bush Empire etc with Bukem, Blame and Conrad and DRS that I was mad for. I wasn’t too into the techstep sound at that time. I wasn’t actually for a long time after that.
What did you use to make the sounds? Are there any specific pieces of hardware or plugins you always end up using or studio techniques?
I really don’t use anything very unique or interesting. I’d love to say I have a big studio full of analogue and modular synths but I don’t. I used to have a lot more but now it’s just a few hardware synths that barely get any use. I used to have much more but it’s such a ballache firing it all up and I just don’t have the space for it all. It’s actually much more creatively freeing for me just working with a few soft synths and plugins like Serum, Phaseplant, etc and not having all the clutter to deal with. I’m a big fan of the Minimal Audio plugins like everyone seems to be.
Can you tell us a bit about your favourite releases?
I think my favourite release has to be my first EP on Guidance. I had worked for years to get to that level and it was kind of a dream come true for me to release alongside people like Ulterior Motive. James Submotive really guided me a lot with the production. Doing a collab with him has to be the high point of my short career so far.
Can you tell us one secret music production or sound design secret?
Try using unison when messing around with sine oscillator beat frequency :)
What are you working on at the moment music-wise? Did working on this pack inspire you to write more?
My time for production is very limited but I’m getting a collab or two going now as well as some of my own ideas. Working on the pack inspired me loads because I hadn’t set a whole chunk of time aside for years to work on just bass design and nothing else. Now I have a bunch of highly tweakable patches to use so I’m hoping to get the time to get something down soon!
