Interview: Netsky’s Second Nature & Its Kiwi Connection

Belgian DJ/ drum and bass producer Netsky has just released Second Nature and so The 13th Floor calls.

The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to Netsky, who was in Turkey, four weeks ago, while we were still under level 2 lockdown. Now that Second Nature is finally here, let’s hear what Netsky has to say about it and the music video he made with Kiwi artist Montell2099.

Listen to the interview here:

 

Or read a transcription here:

M: When was the last time you were in New Zealand?

N: It was January-February. Not that long ago but it does feel long ago.

M: It feels like another world ago.

N: It does for sure. A lot of things have happened.

M: We’re going to talk about this film that’s coming out. You have an album coming out as well but first the film. The gentlemen that helps make the film, I think his name is Conner, was just here in my apartment a couple of weeks ago shooting something. Connor Mitchell.

N: No way! Was it for a music video?

M: No. So, tell me about the making of the film and how it came to be?

N: It’s a music video for a song I did with a Kiwi artist Montell2099, a good friend of mine. He actually grew up in a marae close to Auckland. The idea was to involve a little bit of Maori culture and showcase our love for the country. I’ve been coming to New Zealand for ten years straight now and every year I’ve kind of considered it a second home. It’s somewhere where I don’t just tour but always stick around longer than my management wants me too. I’ve always loved it, working on a song with a Kiwi artist gave me the idea it could be a good opportunity to make this song about New Zealand and the video about New Zealand and how we miss it as well.

M: So the film itself has lots of scenic shots and mountains and oceans and some dancing. How much input did you have on the actual film and how much was it people around you?

N: I’m going to be honest, it’s not the easiest thing to make a music video as you can imagine. I would normally be in the video. In the best scenario, I would be in the same country, which is a little bit tougher this year. But, hey, it’s one of many videos I hope to make in New Zealand in the future. I hope to come back and be there. I have to take my hat off to this lovely man who was in your apartment, Connor, who has amazing contacts with people that have been flying drones over beautiful scenery in New Zealand. We’ve used some stuff that has been pre-recorded but most of it was scenes and shots that we discussed. We found an amazing dancer who features in the video that wanted to do something close to contemporary and traditional dance and showcase a lot of emotions. I think it translates incredibly well. Again, I take my hat off to Connor for getting this together on distance and such short notice. We only started shooting three weeks before the video came out. Also because of the restrictions in the city. How is Auckland right now, is it at level 2 still?

M: We are at level two, we just moved down from 2.5 a few days ago. Fingers crossed that we will go down to level one shortly. We don’t know.

N: I cross my fingers for you too. Is the rest of the country is still in level one now?

M: Yes.

N: That’s something we will hopefully look forward too.

M: Just, for instance, today, apparently Australia chased some people out of their country and sent them back here so we had to put them in quarantine and one of them escaped out of a four-story window tying their bedsheets together. That’s not helping things.

N: Wow. So the rules are still the same when you enter the country you go into quarantine for 14 days, is that right? And I guess they do a test on arrival and a test after 14 days.

M: He was tested twice and he tested negative and he was on his ninth day so he wasn’t far always but I don’t know what people are thinking.

N: Woah. It shows how hard it must be to be in prison. A lot of people go crazy.

M: Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

N: No exactly.

M: So back to the film, one of the most striking features of it is this bare-chested dancer who is in front of the falls. Do you know anything about him and where he came from?

N: I forgot his name but it’s on my emails and again and I just trusted Connor because I couldn’t be there to be involved as much as I wanted to be. I’m glad he got the video together. It’s so cool because the last shot of the video is in front of the marae. It’s Montell’s grandparents so he was probably more involved than I was. He got to involve his family and I was really glad he could do that. There are a couple of friends in there too. We sent out a call for extras to get some familiar faces in there and Kara from George FM, for example, who I’ve known for years. I wanted her to be in there including some other George FM hosts, which is really cool.

M: Very good. You mentioned Montell and his grandparents are in it. How did you meet up with them and how did the two of you work together on this track?

N: Montell and I met three years go now. I was living in L.A. at the time and Montell and his manager made their first trip to L.A. to speak to some people in the music industry. They had big plans, and they still have them. I think its’ a little bit on hold for them right now. They came to L.A. and went to a restaurant called Laurel Hardware which is kind of a speakeasy restaurant. It looks like a hardware store and then you enter and it’s a beautiful cocktail bar with a patio. We had an incredible dinner together and we were just chatting. I’ve always been a fan of his music. I think when it comes to electronic music producers I’d like to think of myself as somebody that broadens up to a lot of different genres and tempos and influences. For Montell, it’s exactly the same. We met in L.A. and had a couple of studio sessions and every session we just created completely different music. It wasn’t what people expect from me. It was a cool project. We had all these ideas that were not channeled in any way. After a while, we stumbled upon a demo that he did. He sketched a drum and base song, which is the genre that I’m more known for. I absolutely loved it. Funnily enough, that’s the one song we didn’t get together to make. From all the demos that we started this is the one song that he sent over the Internet. So that’s not a beautiful romantic store about it, unfortunately, but we started working on this over the internet and I think in a matter of weeks we finished it and actually got to try out a very early version of the song last year on new years even at Rhythm and Vines when he was playing. I just saw it as an opportunity to come because I wasn’t playing that night but I just jumped on stage with him in front of 30,000 people and we played the song for the first time almost a year before it got released and the reaction was just amazing. It was a really cool journey.

M: What do you think connected with people that made them react so majorly just hearing it the first time?

N: I think there was a surprise effect. I’ve been lucky enough to have a big of a fan base in NZ and to have played Rhythm and Vines so many times now. The surprise helps. As well, I think it’s a beautiful song. Montell just created something cool and people like to connect with, especially New Zealanders. It was nice to bring it out and blast it and just play the whole track and not to think about label politics or management too much.

M: Just go for it.

N: Exactly, sometimes that’s the best way.

M: Before we start to talk about he album that’s coming out at the end of the month. You did a gig in January for 10 years of Netsky. Was that done in New Zealand? Something with the Sky Tower as well?

N: Yes that’s right. The sky tower was a year before. This year we did kind of a private show but it wasn’t like we were handpicking who was coming. It was just a low capacity. It was almost like we were doing a corona event – socially distance.

M: Ha! You are ahead of the game already.

N: We were getting ready.

M: I don’t know if you can tell but drum and bass isn’t my main passion in life so I’m not as knowledgeable as a lot of people are but I assume as in any musical genre it changes over the years and you’ve been doing it now for ten years, at least. When we get to Second Nature the album – how is it going to be different from what we heard from you earlier?

N: I called the album Second Nature because I have the exact same thing. I don’t think drum and bass is my only or main fashion. I’ve been exploring a lot of different music over the last couple of years and especially living in L.A. for a couple of years I love to work on music and other styles over there. So for me, Second Nature is coming back to my roots and going back to where my career and my project as Netsky started just over ten years ago in London – the heart of where drum and bass and jungle was created in the 90s. For me, this album is just a collection of influences from back in the say where I was a kid and I was just in my bedroom in my parent’s house. The album artwork is my dad and I and my dog back in the days standing on a mountain in the south of France. Around that time I was just discovering electronic music for the first time. Second Nature goes back to my roots and where it started for me taking influences from a genre that I’ve always loved.

M: I haven’t had a chance to listen to the album but I’ve got some notes that somebody sent me. I don’t know how accurate they are but speaking of roots, my understanding is you cover a few old tracks from the 70s from Denise Williams and Willie Hutch and people like that. So tell me about those?

N: I think the way I got into music, and I’m so glad you’re asking the questions like this because I’ve done a couple of interviews when nobody has ever mentioned any of those influences. They are the biggest ones. I think like any young kid I started playing drums and keys when I was 8 or 9 and I grew up with my dad’s record collection which was all 70s soul or Motown, some jazz like any young kid would I tried to rebel against what I was hearing at home. I wanted to show that I was into cool music, not into the music that my parents listened too. But I discovered that I have a big love for soul and jazz as well. I started by just listening to my Dad’s record collection and trying to sample some of the record s that he had and make it into a drum or bass or an electronic song. That’s really how I started getting into music production. The people you just mentioned I tried to do on this album its funny because ten years ago, not having any exposure it was a lot easier to just sample something and get away with it but it turns out to be a lot harder now. It’s so much fun to go through that way of working again and listen to songs that could fit into new codes into something that kids will dance to now. I’m not saying that people don’t dance to soul music anymore but I really like the approach to remixing some of my dad’s old favourites.  I think half of the album has a soulful influence.

M: Do you have to think about how your fans are going to reacts to it? Have you gotten any reaction from folks around you as to how this movement and style is going to affect what people think of you?

N: In a normal scenario you would try them out in clubs which is a little but harder this year. That’s what interesting about electronic music right now because a lot of these producers and DJs that have to do this in their studio. They can’t test music out or really make music for dance floors anymore. It’s more about making music that people just listen to as well. I think that shows on this album a little bit as well. I hope its music that people can dance to in their living room instead of just at a festival. Hopefully, I bring in a bit of an influence.

M: Definitely. I agree with you 100 percent. From what I have heard it’s something that bears listening too. You don’t feel like you have to be bouncing around or sitting in a club checking it out which is think widens your audience to some extent.

N: Hopefully. Absolutely.

M: There is a track on the album called Blend with rudimental. Can you tell me a little bit about that because I imagine people will want to know about it.

N: Yes, that’s the next single that’s coming out this Friday. It’s actually one of the fewer tracks doesn’t sample anything, but its got influence by a song by Justin Timberlake called Senorita which was a massive pop hit. It’s another Timbaland production that took a lot of influences from Spanish key just like that Spanish vibe. It’s a very London carnival track. We like to call it Blend – its a perfect title because it’s blending all these cultures together that I see when I go to carnivals which is just a celebration of black culture and music of all these different styles all blending and flowing together. This is a track I would imagine playing at a street carnival in London for sure.

M: When you quote about ‘world music’ it doesn’t get much worldy than what you’re doing. I’m in New Zealand, you’re in Turkey. You are originally from Belgium and were talking about music from Latin America, from London, from all over Europe. It’s just crazy. All bets are off.  Do you feel you can grab from anything and make it your own?

N: I guess so. I don’t think Spotify would genre-fy this as world music but it does take a little influence from that. It’s a song with a band called Rudimental who have been amazing at taking from certain influences from underground music genres like drum and bass but blending them in together with pop music and with life music as well. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a live show with them but they are so energetic. They’ve got 20 people on stage, a live brass section, live guitars its really about music and culture. It was perfect to do this song with them for sure.

M: Cool. Can you touch on one other track when the album comes out on the 30th? I have some of them written down but I have no idea how accurate they are so I will take it from you.

N:  Okay, I will choose the track? We can about the Roy Ayers song, Everybody Loves the Sunshine, which I think was one of the first tracks I have ever listened too. One of the first memories I remember is putting on the vinyl. It’s one of my all time favourites. It’s one of those tracks where I almost felt ashamed of touching it.

M: Well it could be considered sacrilegious but I’m sure it’s not.

N: Well it maybe it is! I hope I did it a little bit of justice because we can’t sample anymore, and when you do you’ve got to get approval from a lot of foundations when it comes to soul music because a lot of musicians have passed away and now it’s their families that own the rights. With this song we just created everything from the drums to the bass to that beautiful synth in the intro. It was so amazing recreating this. I listened to the song as I’ve never done before because I was really trying to get the timings of the cowbell, for example. It’s amazing because after this one day of working on it with my friends we really figured out that these guys must have been crazy, crazy stoned when they recorded it. It was all so off grid, off tempo, off key sometimes, and we really tried to recreate that. It goes against all laws of music and it was amazing to find out that a song can sound so good with everything by law going wrong. I think we tried to do that with the song as well by working off the grid and not listening to a metronome, just record it the way you would if you were lying in the grass looking at the clouds and you were under the influence of something because that’s what happened when they recorded this song. It’s impossible people were completely sober which is really cool.

M: It’s interesting that the way you have to work has changed over the years because of legal or financial reasons. You cant sample or sampling is more difficult than it used to be so you have to kind of resort to other methods. Do you find that handcuffing the way you work or is it just another challenge?

N: I don’t think it’s a restriction in anyway. If anything it gives you the challenge to recreate it and really dig deep into how music was made like that back in the 70s`and sometimes in the 60s. There’s another song on the album that I have forgotten the track name now because we had to change the name from ‘I don’t care what the people say’ which samples Zapp & Roger (Troutman) which we actually got permission to do that because that was one of the tracks where sometimes you try to recreate something and you spend a lot of time on that and then you listen back to the original and you’re miles away from it. It’s impossible to recreate because they were the king of toolbox. It was so hard to get a Zapp & Roger vocal the way they did it going through an amazing mixing desk probably recorded three times on very cheap tape and it means there are so many things that are very hard to recreate and it’s so cool because I’m such a fan of the musician’s songs that I’ve samples or recreated. It just fueled my love even more to know how intense and how hard it is to even try and recreate something that is closely sounding to that it was really nice.

M: You say recreate but your not really wanting to recreate because we’ve got the original already that we can listen too so it’s obviously your trying to build on what was already three. is that a difficult thing to do? To make it enough of your own?

N: Yeah sure.  When I say recreate its just the first phase. it’s important to recreate the sample as it was and then look at it as stems that you remix into something that carries my style or an electronic style. The first step is always recreating and then remixing.

M: When the album comes out at the end of the month have you got plans in place for how to promote it and get out there, and meet your fans and get feedback?

N: It’s obviously a little bit restricted in terms of playing it live and doing live shows around it right now but I’m patiently waiting it out. I’m here in turkey at my friend’s house which normally would be Airbnb to a lot of tourists and I’m sitting here making music with about seven street cats around me right now. I’m going to do some promo. It’s all going to be live streams and radio which is not boring but I got to admit I do miss seeing reactions and emotions in peoples faces, rather than looking at the comments section in Youtube.

M: And your guy Montell2099, are you going to do anything more with him?

N: I just did an interview with him on radio. I’d love to work more with him he’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever worked with and so down to earth and humble but incredibly talented. He just did this live stream at Piha beach with this beautiful sunset and they created a whole light show around him and it was all synchronised to the music. That with the black sand it was just beautiful, he is staying very creative and he’s doing a lot of stuff for the fans right now.

M: Sometimes the more restricted you are the more creative you can get, so you never know. I think having too many options can be a negative.

N: I couldn’t agree more. I’m glad you bring that up. It’s incredible how much it drives you to make something with the three synths you’ve got rather than the three hundred-sample library. It’s really true.