Architeq

I first discovered Architeq through the ever-reliable Boomkat, which aptly described his debut album 'Gold and Green' as a 'full-blown future fuck'. With 'Gold and Green', 23 year old Samuel Annand has created a heady collision of hip-hop, John Carpenter soundtracks, funk and dub, all crafted with good old fashioned musicianship.

It's an album that refreshingly eschews blokebeat bangers and contributes something much more significant in the process. Annand himself describes it as 'a slowburner' but in the context of a record that will likely stand the test of time this can be no bad thing.

We popped round to his flat in east London to have a nosey at his enviable instrument collection and discuss his meticulous working methods, as well as his amusingly laconic outlook on the art of dealing with musical criticism. We were also treated to an impromptu synthesizer demonstration. Not bad for an afternoon's work.

You've said you plan to wait 'til the end of 2010 to release your next album?

It's just the time it takes to make it really. With the last record we gave ourselves as much time as we needed really, just to get a lot of recordings done so I would have a lot of material to work with. It all kind of starts from jamming sessions basically- we go in and just do stuff, we're not like "we need to do a track at 90bpm" or anything, it's just brainstorming. We'll just put down loads of drums, loads of bass, stuff like that.

I want to leave such a long time so I can make a good record. I couldn't make one in a year. If I was to stick to a reasonably similar process it just wouldn't be ready in a year, unless I sit in my room that whole time, not doing gigs, stuff like this [interview]. I'd rather take my time. It's better like that, y'know, there's a lot happens to you in the space of a couple of years and it's better to let that all happen.

So you record extended jams?

Yeah, hours and hours of stuff [laughs], which I still have lots of, which is pretty handy for doing remixes. You can get away with using a few bars of a drum loop, putting it on a different type of tape to get a different sound or something....but really I like to get fresh sessions 'cos you always use the best stuff first. You can't use anything twice, y'know?

Do you do all that recording here?

Not here, no. While I've lived in London I've worked in a recording studio down in Hackney on Mare St, and all the recording was done there on downtime. But I'm not working there so much at the moment because next year I'm gonna move out of London, back up to Scotland again. It's so much easier to get projects on the go there because friends have room to do it, it's cheap and easier generally.