Dem Hunger

The contrast between our creative alter egos and our everyday selves always fascinates me. Take this Dem Hunger kid for example. His recent debut album 'Caveman Smack' contained nuggets of the sort of congealed madness that should not be approached in anything less than a sober state. He also writes emails in block capitals LIKE THIS and is obsessed with Shelley Duvall from 'The Shining'.

In person though Louis Johnstone is reassuringly sane, well mannered and entertaining company, as we were lucky enough (and relieved) to discover when he dropped by Work:Ethic HQ to show us some of his artwork and discuss his eccentric recording methods on the eve of an epic trip to Europe.

Did you do the artwork for your album?

Yeah.

How did you make it?

Just like all this stuff really [pointing at the assembled artwork he has placed on the floor]. I went through a lot of charity shops and found a lot of nice pictures in books that I liked...basically I put pastels over certain bits of the pictures, just adding little things, trying to do as little as possible. The one for the cover of 'Caveman Smack' was just a group of people praying and I just pastelised over their faces and stuff. None of it means anything [laughs], it's all about just doing stuff when you're bored. It's more about messing around with colours, I don't ever pretend to know what I'm doing, I just do it.

Tell us how you got started in music.

When I was 11 I wanted to learn the guitar so had little 15 minute lessons at senior school-

15 minutes?

15 minutes, yeah. Got you out of maths classes [laughs]. He'd say 'play this' and you'd play it and he'd say 'come back next week and play it back to me'. So you'd play the song next week and he'd say 'oh that was good', you've give him £20 and go home. I bought a little tape two-track, started messing about with that. I got into Godspeed You Black Emperor and Fugazi and all that. I started a band called Girls' Teeth, me and two guys who I met at sixth form college. We did a few gigs and put out a CDR but it didn't work out. And then I heard Ghostface, and I was like 'fuck....', I'd never heard hip-hop like that before, I always thought it was bullshit. That was about 6 years ago, I think it was 'Supreme Clientele' I heard first. And obviously getting into Ghostface you've got so much other stuff to find out- all the Wu Tang stuff, ODB, RZA, Raekwon, and then onto Stones Throw Records, and then to Madlib. And I found Madlib and saw pictures of people hitting on pads and that....I had a cheap drum kit but my dad started moaning about it so I saved up and bought one of those MPD things. I wanted an MPC but couldn't find any cheap.

The MPD is a controller, so what software are you using?

FruityLoops. I don't sequence anything though. I can't ever drop in or anything. So if I'm doing a ten minute track and I fuck up, I have to re-do the whole ten minute track again, 'cos I've never sequenced anything.

Why's that?

Just laziness really...I've never got into the habit of using sequencers, apart from using my little two-track.

So it's like live streaming of your various sounds?

Yeah, basically. So I'll try and do it all in one take, I'll have the loops and the drums...I don't ever do the drums on their own. It's hard sometimes, obviously if you're doing something that's tricky and you keep fucking up, you get to the point where you don't want to do it anymore. You might have a nice idea but you get rid of it 'cos you can't play it. I wanna get away from that MPD thing, I'd like to go back to just using tapes and stuff or reel to reel, but it's just so expensive.

Why's that?

It gets to the stage where you're using computers and...I don't really like learning about new software and stuff...I tend to get stagnant and I'll be doing the same things for a while. So I've got to the point where I kind of want to regress back, learn some stuff about analog equipment and things like that.

You mentioned the Madlib influence...

Yeah, big time. I think that's the guy that got me really into making that stuff. And through that I got into King Tubby and stuff, dub producers....and then you start making stuff that's covered in echo. You have stages don't you? So you're just making shit that's drenched in echo, but it's never proper echo, it's just some little bullshit Ableton crap. And I'm too lazy to download patches, so I was just putting loads of presets over each other, until I got bored.

Your album is pretty mental.

[Laughs] Dunno....you just make what you do, don't you? I've never liked making stuff that's too long. I guess I've got that from Madlib. With Madlib there'll be like, four tracks with one song, and at the end there'll be ten seconds of a beat that you'll never hear again. I guess I took it from that- I'd try and have 20 songs in one.