Inside The Track with Kito Jempere

APR 20, 03:38 PM

Kito Jempere drops his latest EP ‘I’m Saved’ on the revered Berlin imprint Room with a View, with two sumptuous tracks that really are delivered from Russia with love. Already finding their way into the sets of the likes of Jimpster, Atjazz, Nachtbraker and thatmanmonkz, both EP tracks offer something totally unique in their design and abstract form.

Title track ‘I’m Saved’ offers a hypnotically jazzy, afro beat infused disco workout, whilst ‘Jun’ takes the listener deep into the underground where all the quality house music lives and breathes. Russia is not always thought of as the home of deep house, but with the sound fast becming a global phenomenon, it’s great to see pockets of outstanding creativity popping up in unique locations.

Having recently become a father, the St Petersburg producer found a little time to chat exclusively with Traxsource about the creation of this stellar EP, from conception to release, as we went Inside The Track with Kito Jempere.

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Congratulations on your new ‘I’m Saved’ EP via the Room with a View label. How is it being received in your sets and how are other club DJs responding to it?

Hey, I personally played the track ‘Jun’ at the end of sets when people were kinda really into and they want to completely dive into sounds and feelings of music. ‘Jun’ is perfect at that point of the night, as I made it quite long and repetitive, but with each square comes something new. I played all melodies live and didn’t quantize anything so it has a pretty nice live flow which works well with crowds. I worked hard to mix the track with a 70’s/80’s musical feel. As for ‘I’m Saved’, I heard Nachtbraker has played it already and it works well for him. I’ve also had good feedback from Atjazz, Jimpster, thatmanmonkz, S3A, Red Rack’Em, Ranier Trüby and others who have already played and tested it.

What was the main inspiration behind the EP and what prompted the musical direction?

The whole EP was a really nice trip for me. It started when I lost all my previous projects via a crazy HD crash. May 2015 was pretty intense for me as my baby boy Theo was just born and I was completely into the family thing, so I forgot to save my projects on the computer. At the same time, I was about to go to play at the Southern Soul Festival in Montenegro and right before my flight my computer broke down. I decided to start again from scratch and saw the incident as gaining wisdom. I lost my entire sample collection and decided to make something completely new.

NOTE: Click the images for large versions

Production wise, what is it about the tracks that makes them work?

It was a nice challenge for me, as in the end I didn’t used my usual studio and my usual sound engineer Roman Urazov. I’ve worked with him on all my records before and we will continue doing that, also he playing as a part of my Kito Jempere Live Band. I mixed the tracks in December in a city called Naberejnie Chelny, out in the countryside, with a a genuine ‘room with a view’ that looked out onto an open forest. It was quite strange as I didn’t have my monitors or any subs etc. I used only my headphones and tracks were ‘pre-mixed’ when I was recording the instruments, as I always try to find the best balance when I record them. Also, I was in constant exchange at that moment with Phil Dairmount to make sure that the mixdowns were good. His guidance was very important and we developed an awesome relationship in the process. Having both recently being new fathers, all these factors added to the release having a very intimate feel.

Is there one machine, program or technique that characterizes your sound?

Generally, I love to use the Juno106, MPC1000 and with my sound guy, we love to work on Neve VR60 at D Gray Studio here in Saint Petersburg. I used some African vinyl samples and also some percussions from Japanese records. On top of that. I added some drums that I collected and some instruments that I played live. I also used one outstanding synth pack called “Samples from Mars’. As I had lost everything, I found them by chance and bought some tape recorded synths set from them. It sounded really awesome and worked perfectly for the record in my opinion.

What is the one piece of kit that you simply cannot do without?

I would say the Juno106, even though there’s no Juno106 in either of these tracks!

Any advice for your fans on how to make it in today’s fast paced game?

Do the right thing guys. Do it for yourself, don’t care too much about what other people think. Personally, I just record music when I want to hear something special, for myself initially. Don’t follow trends; just do your own thing. Why waste your time trying to be somebody else? Be yourself.

Respect the art.

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Producer's Monday (21)
Ralf GUM

Reverb

A dry mix will sound 1 dimensional and therefore reverb is essential to give room to a track. A basic rule is that sounds in the background would get more reverb than sounds in the forefront, however and with reverb I find it ok to break rules sometimes, as the possibilities with them are endless. Basically we could mix with 2 or 3 reverbs. One longer reverb (2-3 seconds) which is used on pretty much all sound and which I’d call the “main reverb”. Then one smaller room, which you'd use on drums, e.g. the snare. I find that small plates are nice on drums in general and work well to fuse drum & percussion sounds together. And you’d probably need a 3rd one, to use on vocals (or solos) only, maybe in combination with a bit of the other two reverbs, mainly the “main reverb”. These 3 reverbs will enable you to create some decent dimension in a mix already. However once getting deeper into the subject, there are countless more possibilities and for me actually the necessity of many more reverb sends and returns. First of all a “reverb” can be a combination of multiple reverbs together to achieve more density and/or a room-impression that suits the track. Don’t be scared using several different types and lengths of reverbs (plates, chambers, concert halls, etc) and combine them to use it as your one “main reverb”. In my opinion some reverbs, especially plug-ins, tend to become messy, if you run all your sounds thru one unit. So once I found my “main reverb” (which can be those several reverbs combined), I want to have it multiple times. And this for some reasons. The colour of a reverb is dependent on the sound source and you might want to EQ the reverb different for different sounds. You can tweak the colour of a reverb towards or contrasting it’s source. For example you have a sharp sound, but want his reverb to be unobtrusive nevertheless, you can take out sharp frequencies from his reverb only. This only can only be done if the reverb channel is exclusively for this sound. You might want to do the opposite on another sound and so forth. There’s another advantage using designated reverb sends on single sources: Once you mute the sound the reverb will be gone too, while reverb feed from the other sources, stays audible. Important sounds in my mix might all use the same “main reverb”, but often with differently EQ-ed reverb channels. Taking away bass or using a low cut on some of the reverb sends helps cleaning up the mix, but don’t overdo it. So we already need the “main reverb” several times on different reverb sends and returns. If something should stand out of the lot of instruments, I might give it an own different room, again probably combined with a bit of the main reverb. However you can use reverb for more. I like a balanced panorama in my mixes. If I pan a certain instrument to achieve panorama, I’d like to have a counterpart on the other side. Ideally this counterpart plays in a similar frequency spectrum and similar volume. But sometimes a composition does not include an instrument which can function as that counterpart. So if you (for example) work with only 1 synth sound and you don’t want to leave it in the centre of your mix, your stereo expander does not do what you want and there’s really nothing which can complement it on the other side of the stereo image, pan it hard nevertheless and use a small reverb / room which you fully pan to the other side. It can help you keeping some stereo balance. Advantage of several reverbs is furthermore that you now can compress reverbs on individual sources. Compression on reverbs works often great. Due to the individual reverb sends you‘re now able to compress only those reverbs where you do like the effect, e.g. only the vocal reverb or only on the reverbs of certain instruments. And you can do more: imagine a sidechain compressor feed by a drum pattern to achieve rhythmical patterns in the reverb tail. The possibilities are endless. Ideally we would do this with a bunch of Bricasti M7 Reverbs, the state of art studio reverb, but are not able to afford it. Use an Impulse Reverb with some good impulses loaded into it

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