The Simonsound

Next time you're slumped in front of the idiot box, your mind in a Hollyoaks-addled stupor, try zoning out for a minute to consider the fine traditions of musicianship that went into making what we now know as 'incidental music'.

Once upon a time there were laboratories of boffins who worked tirelessly at the forefront of technological and musical innovation to provide us with music for television and radio, so-called 'library music', catalogued as it was by mood and tempo for quick usage by programme makers. Two men who know a lot about this subculture are Simon James and Matt Ford (known to many already as DJ Format), who, together as The Simounsound have pooled their considerable resources to craft an album called 'Reverse Engineering'. It's an album that pays homage to the rich experimentalism of their heroes of the golden era of library music, made with authentic technology and a sense of history. It's an endeavour which has been rewarded with acclaim from enthusiasts such as DJ Spinna and Gilles Peterson, who named them in his top ten of breakthrough acts in May.

'Reverse Engineering' was recorded at James' house in Brighton, in a room fittingly crammed with huge analogue synths, tape machines (more on them in our exclusive video) and vintage space age memorabilia. It's there that we met them to have a big geek out with their toys, discuss how the project came to life and the key to a successful collaboration. We even made an impromptu video....

Photos and video by Rob MacDougall.

How did this project come together originally?

Matt: Originally I was pursuing my DJ Format stuff and somehow got put in touch with the guy who worked for the company who owned the Chapell Recorded Music Library back catalogue, and he basically invited me to go down, go through the vaults for some sample source material.

That must've been amazing for you.

Matt: Unbelievable. There were some big names- that Danger Mouse, he'd been there already. This guy wanted to get different artists in making tracks sampling the Chapell back catalogue, and I started messing around with a couple of things and got a bit bored really, making tracks within the limitations of using samples. I'd known Si for a long time, he'd mixed a lot of my Format stuff and I just think at that time I was slightly looking for a different direction and things had started coming together for him, he was getting into all that synth stuff...it was just one of those weird things where the timing was just right. We got together to have a play around and it seemed like we pretty much wanted to do the same sort of stuff.

Simon: We had a phone conversation and it was the first time we'd discussed working on some material, and you were talking about Broadcast [on Warp Records], and separately we had both got into Broadcast and felt like we could do something really good along those lines.

Sounds like a starting reference point for you?

Matt: Well we wouldn't want to make it sound like we tried to make stuff like them but it was maybe a trigger point to realise 'ah, we're coming from the same place here'. 'Cos we both grew up with hip-hop and did hip-hop stuff together years ago, and then to find we'd both followed the same natural path of y'know, finding different music to inspire us....

Simon: Yeah, I'd gone off and got into more experimental electronic stuff and been making music for radio drama and features, and I'd always had in the back of my mind that one day combining Matt's beats with some of this weird electronics would be a great thing to do. And I think I'd even done some music and sent him a CD. I remembered you called me and said 'this is amazing, we should do this kind of stuff'. I think that was a turning point-

Matt: Yeah that was definitely a turning point. We got together originally to work on two songs that were supposed to be for my next Format album, which ended up being 'Moon Rocks' and another song that we scrapped. It was only when Si played me this other stuff on CD that I thought 'hang on, we've got all this material'....it just sort of felt like we could do a whole album of this stuff.

You said that when you went to the Chapell library you felt restricted by sampling, but as DJ Format your music had been very sample-heavy. Had you naturally outgrown that? And what was it you found restricting at that point?

Matt: Well, just the fact that with a sample you've only got what you've got. For example, if you're just making a straight hip-hop record that you want someone to rap on, it's fine for the loops to be quite repetitive- in a way, you want the music to be repetitive, a backing track for the rapper to do his thing and shine on. It wasn't that I'd outgrown it as such, it was just that I'd done a lot of stuff with rappers and I just wanted to do instrumental stuff. I'd hear something in a sample and think 'wouldn't it be great if it just did this or just did that'...We just really started playing stuff on synths and messing about recreated stuff.

Simon: I find it really frustrating working with samples. It's been great because tracks where it's worked, it's worked really well, you know the combination of samples and the sounds that we've played in from synths or whatever. In some ways it takes less musical talent to use samples but in other ways it can take so much longer to build a track out of samples because of that restriction. You're constantly trying to find bits of jigsaw that aren't meant to fit together. On the album this whole thing of mixing the two- of samples and stuff we've created- it is a direction that I personally want to move towards, less sample based.

What's your background Simon?

Simon: I've been making music since I left school in different guises which we don't need to go into [laugh]. I left music behind and starting doing radio production, doing music for dramas and features, but still focussing on sound design. That's something that's fed into the Simonsound- using sound effects, using strange other sounds that can be used in a musical way. My background has always been experimenting with sound really.