If you like your Liquid sweet, warm and rolling and containing 20+ years of DNB knowledge, allow us to Introduce to you Edinburgh's own Shudder! A veteran in the game that taught me more than a thing or two about Drum And Bass over the years, Shudder is a deep and liquid focused production pseudo-name for none other than Mr Dubwise Special Ed, longstanding resident of early 2000's Scottish events Pangea, Edinburgh's Split, South Korea's Bass Attack... the list goes on. 2 new tracks have gone live on the Shudder Soundcloud in the past few weeks so I had a quick catch up with the most Special one himself:
SVB: Easy bro, so how would you classify your style with regards yer output for Shudder and how do you find it differs to producing dubwise styles?
SHUDDER: I made my Shudder alias to put out more liquid style D&B. I thought it’d be better to put that out under a different name because I’d previously been making mostly dubwise stuff, starting off with bootleg remixes of reggae tunes.
Apart from the vibe of the songs there’s not much different production-wise between the two styles. I’m trying to make whole songs from the ground up these days - liquid, dubwise and anything else, whereas when I started out with the dubwise bootlegs it was more about high-passing a reggae tune and putting D&B drums and bass underneath!
SVB: Haha real talk man, we've all been there haha! So your first Shudder drop was way back in 2014, whats been happening with the project since?
SHUDDER: I’ve been making tunes on and off since 2014 and have a big library of almost-finished stuff, some of which will hopefully see the light of day soon!
SVB: Lets hope so man.. Right while were here and discussing production, have you got any secret production technique's to share with folks at the minute? You're using Ableton right?
SHUDDER: Yeah I am and actually my favourite secret production technique just now is using Ableton’s Preserve dropdown (in the Clip View > Sample) to shorten the decay time on sampled breaks - just switch the mode to Trans and lower the value to really tighten the sound of an old break. I learned that in a tutorial from somewhere recently and used it in my last few tunes.
SVB: Nice, will have to try that one, I always draw in my automation for decays!! Time savers are the key to unlocking that efficiency ;) Thanks for that one man, anyways before we go, tell us - whats next for Shudder?
SHUDDER: some more tunes dropping soon, looking forward to playing out when the current health crisis is over, and in the future a release or two would be lovely! Always wanted to hold a vinyl of one of my own songs in my hands, and I haven’t got there yet, but that would be a good day!
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