Welcome to the Eclectic Picks Interview, presented by Arpraxis.

THE ECLECTIC INTERVIEWS

We thought it’d be great fun to delve into the musical psyche of some of our favourite artists and get the low down on their influences, vision and more. Arpraxis virtually travels to sunnier places in search of rhythm, funk and groove, this week’s special guest, from Florida, is Dilemmachine

SOUNDING OUT WITH DILEMMACHINE

ARP: When I listen to your music there’s an insane wave of funk, groove, disco and dance that always hits me, what are your musical influences?

When I started making music under Dilemmachine, I was doing it as a duo with Nick Monaco. He and I were drawing inspiration from artists like Daft Punk and Justice, and a lot of disco house, French house, and what would eventually be called synthwave. After he departed to do his own solo music, I kept getting more interested in 80’s stylization, and my influences actually came from the stuff I’d heard as a kid as opposed to artists that were doing it today. Late 70’s through early 90’s Michael Jackson is the single most influential artist for me. Anybody who knew me as a kid would testify that I was a little obsessed.

ARP: I’ve looked around your Bandcamp and I rinsed ‘Remixes’. How on did you go about remixing Stevie Wonder, DJ Snake, Justin Bieber and Ace of Base to name but a few? What a feat.

Thanks. I think back then I was mostly just looking for good quality acapellas and when I found something I liked, I’d create some instrumentation to go behind it and see how it sounded. If I felt like it was working, I went with it.

ARP: What got you into making music and how long have you been doing it?

There was a guitar loaned to my family by my Aunt when I was probably a toddler. Eventually at age 10 or 11 I started taking some lessons and realized that just maybe I could be as cool as the older kids who had bands. The energy of watching someone perform live music was absolutely mesmerizing and I wanted to be the one creating that energy. So it was mostly punk, ska, indie rock, and metalcore bands from adolescence through early adulthood and then along the way I picked up an interest in creating electronic music when I was about 17 (I was born in 1984).

ARP: Your music is sound-tingling retro, authentic and so tightly produced, SSR Eyes gets me every time – what’s the Dilemmachine process of making a track?

Man, thanks for the kind words. The process can go a few different ways depending on whether I’m starting from a sample, or if I’m starting from a clean slate and aiming to produce something out of nothing. If it’s a sample-based melody, I like to chop it up and create new melodies from those chops. I used to take multiple songs and chop them to get a lot of variety. Then whenever I found a newly created melody I liked, it would give me goosebumps because it was like there was a hidden song waiting to be born out of the songs I chose to sample. If I’m focusing on something without samples, I’m usually starting with keyboard melodies followed by drum beats and basslines, or the other way around.

ARP: If any of our readers and artists were to ask to remix one of your tracks, would you have any parameters for them to stick to or would it be the rules are there are no rules?

In most cases I probably wouldn’t impose rules on somebody else’s remix since it’s supposed to be their own version of something. The only parameter would be to stay creative and think outside the box.

ARP: Do you dance when you’re making music? I’m asking for a friend.

Negative on that.

ARP: What tips might you have for artists making music in terms of sound design and production? I’m asking for another friend.

Don’t aim to sound like anybody else in particular and don’t aim to make “insert genre here” music. Personally, I’ve always found the music interesting when it’s something NEW or UNIQUE. I don’t find it interesting if it’s what everything else already sounds like. Regardless of what I think, you’ll have a much harder time standing out if you’re making something that’s already been made by many others.

ARP: Are there any current artists that you think have produced great music? What grabbed you about their music?

To be honest I don’t really listen to a ton of current music. However, I think one of the best producers in the world is Vaughn Oliver. His productions are so good that when he puts out a compilation of stuff he REJECTED or left unfinished, it’s still mindblowingly good. I also think Louis La Roche is very good. Everything he comes out with is stellar.

ARP: If you had a Time Machine that you could only use to change the course of music, would you use it and what for?

The first thing that comes to mind is the soundcloud era, circa 2009. It started out so promising and so exciting. I would post music on there for free download, include a few hashtags, and the followers just poured in. It could be originals, bootleg remixes, and it didn’t matter. This is literally the only time period I can recall when DMs and inquiries would be in my inbox all the time, and it all felt completely organic. There were no algorithms tinkering with your efforts as far as I know. Then one day, major labels started cracking down and forcing soundcloud to permanently take profiles down that may have had music containing samples. I got hit hard by this at a time when I posted remixes that would accumulate 1000 plays per day. Kygo had even found one of my remixes and was using it in his live sets. One day I woke up and my profile had been terminated. Everything was gone and since I didn’t have much of a presence on any other platform or even an email list, I had to start completely over. Time machine? Yes please, so I can go back and change this one outcome.

ARP: Do you do anything else music-related? Electricdesk?

Electric Desk Mastering is my business I started in 2022 after getting some formal training in audio mastering. I’m hopeful about the prospect of doing mastering for a living. I enjoy it so much and am always honoured when another musician asks me to be involved in bringing their music to a ready-to-publish state.

ARP: What tips might you have for artists when getting their pre-master ready?

When I master a song, I’ve found that the best end result always comes from a mix that already sounds as close to finished as possible before it gets to me. The less I have to do during the mastering stage, the more potential the track has. For example, when a mix with the goal of being “loud” already has a somewhat low crest factor (I.E. there isn’t a huge volume difference between the sustained low-level material and the transients and peaks) it means the track won’t require as much compression to control the transients when bringing the overall level of the track up. This is desirable because it means less destructive alteration of the mix, and thus less potential for transforming the mix into something it wasn’t originally intended to be.

That being said, here are a couple mixing tips to help you get a better end result:

I recommend mixing with no limiter and no master bus compressor. You’ll find that instead of turning things up when you feel they’re too low in the mix, it forces you to turn everything else down for risk of clipping.  Plus you’ll have a more accurate representation of where stuff sits in your mix with no limiting or compression masking things that may otherwise be too loud. Once you get comfortable with this method, then incorporate a master bus compressor and maybe a limiter after that, and go back and forth between the uncompressed and compressed to check how your mix sounds in both states.

I recommend finding a mix you think sounds good and using it as a reference when mixing down your own track. Throw it in the session and A/B back and forth, paying attention to how the frequencies of the kick and bass play off each other, how the midrange sounds, and how bright or warm the high end spectrum is.

ARP: What’s next for Dilemmachine?

I’m going to try to be more consistent in putting music out. “Pink Wig” released November 1st, and I have a cover remake of my Superstition remix scheduled for December 6th. After that, I have a few pieces of work to put out, one of which is a four song mini EP that plays as one continuous song with four distinct scenes or parts.

Dilemmachine’s music and mastering services can be found below. DM has offered a discount to FOTN readers, let him know you’ve read the inter

• Dilemmachine on Bandcamp
• Dilemmachine on Spotify
• electricdeskmastering

FOR NOW…THE END
Hold tight, we have more interviews lined up for you from the world of Drum and Bass, the mastering engineers who may well have polished your fave dance floor stompers from the 90s til now and funked up disco stereo speaker huggers.

Is there an artist, producer or music-related you’d like us to get in contact with to sound out? Let us know in the comments.