Resonate Artist Of The Week: Vagrant Real Estate & CLBRKS

We’re highlighting one of Scotland’s finest hip hop purveyors - Vagrant Real Estate. Aberdeen’s award winning producer has teamed up with CLBRKS. Their collaborative album ‘The Iceberg Theory’ drops tomorrow [9th September] and is packed with vivid imagery, lush gospel samples showcases CLRBKS impeccably distinctive flow.

Vagrant Real Estate is a producer and DJ who’s been backed by the likes of Complex UK, Ministry of Sound, DJ Mag and the BBC. He has self-released a number of projects with both local and international artists. Today we highlight his most recent independently funded and produced project "The Iceberg Theory" which has recently sold out on vinyl during pre-sale.
Crafted remotely through the last year between London and Aberdeen, The Iceberg Theory spans seven tracks where CLBRKS weaves stark confession with booze-soaked braggadocio. Following the concept of American writer Ernest Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory, he drops allusions to surface elements and allows the listener to interpret as he oscillates between cashmere vests, Greek mythology and The Chappelle Show, always leaving his underlying themes unspoken. The project features appearances from UK Hip Hop heavyweight Ramson Badbonez (High Focus Records) rising London-based stars Renelle 893 and Kish!, as well as Scottish MC Jackill, highlighting the cross-country collaboration of the album. Building on the wealth of references in the lyrics, renowned British visual artist & illustrator Emily Catherine (Your Old Droog, Mach Hommy) provided the painted artwork, pairing CLBRKS’ varied allusions with nods to Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights and The Ambassadors by Holbein.

CLBRKS & VAGRANT REAL ESTATE - STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN FLOW

For us, throughout this album, there is a superior level of production which is often hard to find in music and that credit is purely down to the skills of Vagrant Real Estate. His ability to layer complex syncopated beats, soulful samples all without detracting from CLBRKS flow is really quite masterful. Saying that, he showcases the complete opposite end of the spectrum demonstrating power in simplicity. Closing track 'Isn’t It Pretty To Think So’ almost brought us to tears. Strings, soothing saxophone, call & answer melodies, delicately picked guitar riffs - it’s nothing short of outstanding.

Of course this album is as much about CLBRKS as VRE. Preloaded with one of the most distinctive flows in the game, CLRBKS joined alternative British hip hop label Blah's ranks. He evokes such raw originality that he stands out from what can seem a congested marked as an MC. This was thanks in part to his early days, which saw him relocate from the UK to Tanzania at the age of 3, then on to Ghana and Uganda briefly, before returning to the UK shores in 2013. He's already achieved international acclaim which have sealed collaborations with Morriarchi, KIINA and of course Vagrant Real Estate.

You can pre-order the digital album exclusively on Bandcamp here.

Q&A: Yoker Moon

With 2022 comes Yoker Moon’s debut LP ‘Architect Of My Own _’ via the stellar Waxing Crescent Records. This week we caught up with him and asked about his brand new release ‘Architect…’ which finds Yoker Moon experimenting with generative techniques, finding beauty in audio degradation and conjuring whole new textures via granular processing. The album centres on themes of well-being and self-actualisation - playfully pitched as ‘healing and catharsis for (and from a) weird, wobbling soul(s)’.

You can check out the album here.

Live performance provides a platform for exploring the outer reaches of Yoker Moon’s sonic palette. Studio productions are re-contextualised to deliver new levels of bristling tension and release; and improvisations lead audiences to beguiling new territories.'

Yoker Moon presents a set of meditative journeys in synthesis, sequencing and fx, aiming to soothe the self via bubbling ambience or seeking release through noisy experimentation.

‘Recovering control of life following a prolonged period of poor mental health and off the back of a series of complex, even abusive relationships, ‘Architect Of My Own _’ is my resolve to be my own captain. Whether moving towards happiness, peace or chaos: ‘I’ll Be The Engine’, I’ll decide, I’m at the helm. It’s about finding yourself, or a prompt to remember you, to seek happiness as your own master, your own hot mess, or both. I hope this can be the soundtrack to similar journeys for others.’

Q&A with Yoker Moon

Your new release is out on Waxing Crescent Records, tell us more about that project and your success with getting the album signed?

“Sure, so Waxing Crescent Records operate mainly from Bandcamp, releasing on cassette and digital but know they're experimenting with formats too. They've built up a real track record as a source of amazing ambient, electronic, classical and experimental music and it's an honour to now be part of that legacy.

The signing of the record was really more a case of being commissioned to make it, with label owner Phil having sourced my past works and asking if I would like to make a record for them. There's an element of my character (working on it!) that needs that 'call to action', not to say I'm lazy or unmotivated, I never stop making sound or experimenting, but at least back then found it way easier to 'show up' for someone else than myself. Like 'oh yeah absolutely I could do that!'...there's a few things going on there, validation, clear goals, deadlines etc etc.”

The ambient progression through the album is like a meditative journey in synthesis, sequencing and fx. Can you tell us more about how you executed this process?

A few sessions into tracking ideas, setting up experiments for myself etc, I had a realisation that what I was doing was akin to meditating on a device(s).

Once I had sequences of notes, a sonic palette I was happy with, really setting up a wee world in which to get lost in, I would then do just that.

I'm a bit too close to it to know how this is perceived by the listener but what's maybe not all that clear is that the album is about 75% live performance, recording these sort of prepared improvisations, as opposed to standing back and arranging/composing. I say that as over and above tracking improvised performances, another cornerstone of the project was a dub-style approach to fx, sending elements or whole tracks through fx and tracking performances on those effect units. I was relatively meticulous about that: selecting and morphing takes. My comfort zone is normally to move at breakneck pace, I think it's related to wanting to remain excited and engaged about a given idea from start to end, but I learned to stand back, analyse and talk myself into recognising that to do true justice to a track I might need to get my hands dirty! Something else quite new to me was the concept of sequencing fx: that's to say, where a pedal has MIDI, I'd create patterns in these fx over time, or give them percentage chances to trigger or not - lots of fun! Finishing work on a given track, I'd stand back, and if I felt like I needed supporting elements then I would add them, or if I felt like I wanted to perceive more 'performance' or humanisation to complement the sequenced parts, I'd overdub some live-performed synths, keys, guitar etc.

The album centres on themes of well-being and self-actualisation - playfully pitched as ‘healing and catharsis for (and from a) weird, wobbling soul(s)’. What motivated to you to curate your project centred around these themes?

Two things really: firstly, driven by need, and secondly, just as themes or subjects close to my heart.

I say 'need' as around the time of the project being kickstarted in conversation with the label, I was in a bit of a mire personally...but an important one if that makes sense. Without getting too heavy, I'd found myself, in my mid-thirties, with no idea who the human I was looking at in the mirror was. A couple of decades of anxiety, perpetually finding myself in dysfunctional long-term relationships as an introvert all too willing to drop everything I cared about, to wave off red flags in the face of these big strong personalities...I'd found myself alone, had just had the big 'let's figure out who you are and what you're about' moment with myself and then the call to make the record come in. I firmly believe that recognising where something feels off, or doesn't fit in with your vision for yourself or life is a big first step to redirecting your future. What better aid than an album project to work through these weighty (but also fluffy) issues? Therapy aside!

I clocked myself creating sound worlds and bubbles...or providing myself with outlets for noise-making, based on need. To soothe or to feel out frustrations as I trucked along on my own journey. Although I wasn't intentionally designing music specifically to be relaxed to, or to soundtrack well-being 'moments' for others, the act of making what I wanted to make was crucial to my well-being. I know there's a funny distinction between those things that are probably their own podcast or Ted Talk but yeah, I do hope that wee worlds I created for myself can soundtrack similar journeys for others. A very ramblesome answer, sorry!

How long did this project take & from a producers point of view - how was your productivity through this project and what advice can you give other producers from your experience?

I tracked this project from roughly September 2021 until January 2022.

As I sorta touched on above, productivity was high, I like to move really fast and I created way too much music as I wanted that luxury of choice when it came to pulling together the final tracklisting. I wanted to be able to stand back and plan the journey myself and the listener would take.

I'll try and be concise and provide something novel in terms of advice to producers - there's already a lot of advice, youtube channels and courses out there!

I'll advocate for the following:

• give credit and respect to the funny wee ideas that stand out as vivid to you - does it make you feel anything strongly? make you laugh, even? lean into it.

• bin perfectionism (easier said than done I know) - when willfully creating a glorious mess via experimentation or improvisation, you will create moments that you wouldn't get to if designed, if you'd followed the advice of every single youtube video you'd ever watched, or if you only made what you thought people wanted. Those moments are doubtlessly better to have happened at all than to have been multitracked perfectly, through only the most high-end gear, perfectly to the clock of your DAW. What I'm trying to get at is that, for example, some of the ideas I'm most excited about all have these sort of negative connotations - maybe multiple instruments have had to be summed and recorded to mono, I've clipped the output here and there, there's a high signal-to-noise ratio, or I don't really know what the tempo is etc etc. Yes, you can set yourself up to more likely have successful experiments but at the end of the day cool audio is cool audio, it'll all end up in that form.

• sequencers might save your (creative) life - dive in

• sequence your fx

What is your go to plug-in?

That's a tough one! I'll cite two that went into the making of this particular record even if I'm kinda on a different wave now.

• Sequencing - MaxForLive Turing Machine: generates randomised notes to pattern lengths and tempo you dictate, with the super-power of being able to turn a big knob and 'lock in' repeating randomly generated patterns to your specifications

• Processing - Noise Engineering Ruina: a brutal distortion plug-in. I found that, slightly contrary, for soft, delicate, pretty sounds, parallel processing through a nasty distortion like this in small increments does a lot for adding sonic 'interest' and texture, bringing muted tones this 'kiss' of fizz.

Listen to the album here.