Raised on a strict Californian diet of sun, sea, surf and imported Japanese anime, Devon Hughes AKA Rhythm Droid ditched the comforts of the west-coast to immerse himself in the hyper-accelerated heart of Tokyo’s infamous creative hub: Harajuku. Tashed went on location to chat with the 29 year old producer…

—– RHYTHM DROID INTERVIEW —–

KYUSYU JANGARA 18:30

We met Devon early evening outside Harajuku station. Dressed in a bright pink sweatshirt and replete with gelled Mohawk he wasn’t exactly difficult to spot, and with bellies rumbling we followed him to ‘Kyusyu Jangara’ a local ramen joint he assured us was among Tokyo’s very best.

TASHED: First thing first, the Ramen is fantastic!

RHYTHM DROID: Haha no worries, people go crazy about this place so it was a no-brainer when you said you wanted Ramen…

TASHED: So, from one expatriate to another, what prompted your move from California to Tokyo? How have you had to readjust and what are the best things about your adopted homeland?

RHYTHM DROID: I used to be one of those “anime nerds” back in high school.  It all started when I was 12 and my best friend got me turned on to Dragon Ball comics.  Somehow from there this avalanche of obsession with anything Japanese carried me along for at least a decade.

So living in Japan had been my dream for about 11 years and it nicely dovetailed with my other dream of being a performing electronic musician.  The single most difficult thing out here in Tokyo is not a cultural or linguistic challenge, but one of a more practical nature.  The prices for basic necessities, food, and shelter are absurd.

If you don’t want to sell your soul to the man, give up your artistic ambitions, and become a machine, you automatically are opting for a pretty bohemian subsistence.  I hope I never get in some kind of medical emergency, cause that’d be the end of it.

TASHED: In their recent interview with Modern Fuss, the guys and girls from bunny. say they’ve never met another artist who ‘was so into music’. How do you manage to balance Rhythm Droid the music maker with Devon the wage slave?

RHYTHM DROID: Well, the situation is still pretty precarious even after a couple years.  I work part-time and just barely feel like I have enough energy to make music, and I pull in just enough to eat my fruits and veggies and stay reasonably healthy.

TASHED: What do you do for a living by the way?

RHYTHM DROID: Haha, I work for a kids’ English school.  I teach children English using expressive drama and theatre techniques.  Leaves me enough time for Rhythm Droid, but rarely enough energy…

FIVEG 19:30

After slurping down what remained of the soup, we hot-footed it to Devon’s personal Mecca – a vintage synthesiser and electronics store up an unassuming little staircase in the backstreets of Harajuku (check out their website here). Apparently every electronic musician worth his or her salt makes a point of stopping by this place when visiting Tokyo, and it wasn’t hard to see why as we roamed open-mouthed down aisle after aisle of incredible antique gear.

TASHED: Whoa, this place is pretty deep. Would you mind pointing out a few choice pieces of kit for us?

RHYTHM DROID: Sure thing, although this could go on for HOURS. First has to be the totally essential Roland TB-303 drum machine, which was pretty much responsible for the whole acid house sound. An original like this now retails for around 130,000 Yen (the equivalent of around 2000 SGD), although there are some cheaper clones available. Another classic drum machine here is the Linn LM-1, which was the first drum machine to use digital samples of acoustic drums. This is basically the sound of 1980’s Prince. Some of the synths they have here are fantastic too, like this 1975 ARP Odyssey. The sound of that is absolutely classic.

TASHED: To most people, a ‘live’ club performance is a lot of goggle-eyed staring at a mac screen… what is it that encouraged you to take the hardware route?

RHYTHM DROID: I’ve been playing all hardware for over ten years.  I play that way because..
a) I like to feel connected to my instruments and
b) because I think viewers can participate in that connection along with me.

For the past 2 or 3 years, after every gig I groan “that’s it, I’m switching to software.” The gear is cumbersome and inflexible and creatively limiting.  But for some reason I never get around to making the switch.

Soon, though, all the gear manufacturers will truly get the whole “live music = an actual, viewable performance” thing and start designing computer performance interfaces accordingly.  Akai, Novation, and some smaller indie gear designers like Livid are already hip to it.

I don’t want to bore you with live electronic music performance theory, so I’ll try not to ramble.  Anyway, no matter how perfectly designed these software-based-performance interfaces can become, I can see myself still always having at least one bit of classic hardware.

Part of the appeal of electronic music to me is the repurposing of classic electronic gear for new applications and new music…like, the TB-303 is the best example of that.  All the old Roland gear is just too much fun to perform with, I love it.  If time and money permit someday, I’d like to do a sideproject of 100% from-scratch improvised house/techno sets using primarily vintage gear.

TASHED: Explain your typical live set to us… in layman’s terms!

RHYTHM DROID: I use a Yamaha RS7000 sequencer to trigger patterns, leads, basslines, etc. from various boxes such as a Korg Radias synth and an analog monosynth.  Spitting out beats and sample cut-ups in sync with the Yamaha is the Korg Electribe ESX sampling drum machine.

Both the Yamaha and the Korg Electribe are excellent for live performance and real-time manipulation, build-ups, breakdowns, the elements of a dance track.  All sounds go into several channels of a DJ mixer which is connected to a Korg Kaoss Pad for looping, sampling, and effecting things on the fly.

I also use a mic to sing and mc a bit. Sort of wedged in the signal path is a dbx166XL compressor which is used to make the sound pump.  You know that track Newjack by Justice?  Their using the same effect to get that pumping and snapping…though that’s all done meticulously with software and I can’t do it with the setup I’ve got. Always jealous of that… haha.

TASHED: How do you see your live setup evolving in the future?

RHYTHM DROID: It’s going to get lighter and flatter and more colorful.  I will eventually run Ableton Live and at least one very visually appealing control surface, in an ideal world a large glass panel with kick-ass glowing moving graphics used as the actual performance controls.  I would like to employ a couple pieces of vintage Roland gear to go off into jam territory.  The mic will always stay but I’ll be doing more singing and vocal processing.

The reason why I will switch to Ableton Live is because I would like to worry about the live mixing and level balancing of each of my instruments and effects less and concentrate more on expressive performance like looping, layering, shuffling, cutting, remixing, keyboard soloing and all that.

TASHED: Like the best Detroit classics, your music is bright and uplifting without compromising on the toughness. Do you have this kind of sound in mind when you start work on a track, or does it just flow that way?

RHYTHM DROID: The sound is partially due to the limitations of gear that I use…and partially because that’s how I like dance music, bright and uplifting without compromising on toughness… so funny how you described it that way.

TASHED: Do you ever imaging yourself making darker stuff?

RHYTHM DROID: Yeah, particularly when I get a bit a bit better of a studio setup…I’d like to go back to an old love of mine…fast and hard London acid.

DOG 20:00

Next up was Dog, an underground (literally) boutique that now represents the vanguard of Harajuku street fashion. The owner Mika assured us that e very item in the store was hand customised and totally unique, and looking at mind-boggling array of studded wraparounds, Swarovski encrusted trainers and metallic jumpsuits, it wasn’t hard to believe.

TASHED: Music and fashion are heavily intertwined the world over, and nowhere does that seem to be more true than in Tokyo. How important is the aesthetics to you as a performer, or do you keep the music and the clothes separate to a degree?

RHYTHM DROID: If I wasn’t doing live electronic music, I’d definitely be a graphic designer, cinematographer, or VJ. Visual aesthetics are huge for me and I get very turned on by graphics, typography, cute fixie bikes, and creative fashion.  Clothing, in particular, is a form of expression that is very pure for me because I do it just for kicks and merely to supplement my performances.

I only became confident and creative in fashion after I’d lived here for quite some time.  There are some DJs out here who are highly fashion driven and come up with amazing head-to-toe concepts for every single gig.  That has inevitably rubbed off on me.  I got pretty dressed up at the last gig and I’m gonna sew some cool pants for an upcoming ustream performance.

As far as straight-up visuals and graphics are concerned, the truest ideal Rhythm Droid show would actually have massive, synchronized visuals.  I can guarantee that you will see that one day in the future with Rhythm Droid.  Sonic texture and visual texture have always been closely linked in my heart and mind and inspiration comes often as visual shapes, physical gestures, moving colors, and for now, that must be translated solely into music.  I deeply look forward to when I can start to multimediate (yeah, well it’s a word now) the live show.

TASHED: You’ve cited Harajuku fashion as a major influence on your sound. How do you translate the wild haircuts and clothes into lush techno jams?

RHYTHM DROID: You know, it’s the attitude itself toward fashion, vs. the visual content, that is more inspiring. I grew up in small town California where shorts and sandals was as dressed-up as anyone dare get.

Fashion meant scary skinny Scandinavian-types teetering down the catwalk in stilettos and draped with overpriced and impractical swathes of expensive fabric.  I held on very tightly to the local ethic that everything you wear must have a practical purpose.  Take for example glasses that aren’t really glasses…just clear lenses.

I used to hate that.  You’d never catch me dead wearing fake glasses.  But after having lived here and surrendered to the Harajuku thirst for bricolage and pure visualism, I now own quite a few pairs of fake glasses…albeit with the lenses popped out, that’s even better, cause you’re making no pretenses of intellectualism (like I do in interviews…).

Anyway, to get back on topic, I used to take electronic music much more seriously, you know, the Underground Resistance/Detroit/Jeff Mills kinda thing… but the stuff that the younger kids listen to here, this fidgety, bass new-rave sample-a-delic madness coupled with the same sensibility in fashion has encouraged me to disconnect with the intellectualism and reconnect with the “fun” side of things. Moreso than content it’s the Harajuku local ambience and ethic get me excited.

RHYTHM DROID HQ 21:00

Finally we headed back to Rhythm Droid HQ to sink a few beers and take a look at Devon’s home setup, which halso gave us ample time to discuss Daft Punk and Tron Legacy, before hitting the town to check out the Pitchoun 3rd Anniversary at La Fabrique.

TASHED: Pretty much everyone making synth-based electro music these days cites Daft Punk as a huge influence… do you think they changed the face of electronic music? If so, did it start with Homework or was it Discovery that really made the difference

RHYTHM DROID: Daft Punk absolutely changed the face of electronic music–not by going off into crazy experimental territory, but by taking the essence of timeless pop music and putting it into a club music context.

The inverse is also applicable.  To appeal to true-blue house music diehards as well as teeny-boppers and emo kids, you know, everyone basically, that’s mind-blowing.  They were at the right place, well into their career, at the right moment in history, and had the superhuman amount of talent and vision to make it all come together.

Neither album is what makes Daft Punk meaningful for me actually. It’s how they went and performed it that inspires me.  So many people were so deeply touched by, in one sense, two faceless guys pressing buttons and touching touch screens and turning a couple knobs.  Yeah, Orbital and others have done it before them…but Daft Punk just took their concept to the maximum possible level of expression.

TASHED: Speaking of which, are you looking forward to Tron Legacy?

RHYTHM DROID: For the music, yes, for the visuals and action, sadly no, for anything done in the spirit of the original TRON, yes.  The original is in my top 3 favorite films ever and it was SO ahead of its time.  The reason why it is such a meaningful film is one of the several reasons why it failed commercially–because it was over people’s heads, and hearts.

Nobody got the deeper messages and references.  With Tron Legacy, I just don’t have the confidence that a film with a connection to the original can retain Steven Lisberger’s spiritual/philosophical depth and make it through ‘development hell’ in order to maximise its commercial potential.

I mean, if it turns out to be another Matrix and really gets people thinking then great, but I really am not getting my hopes up.  Hollywood action films generally leave me feeling slightly abused and cognitively underestimated as a viewer.  I might be overly pessimistic on this, maybe it’ll be awesome.  Anyway, Daft Punk doing the soundtrack is a good sign though. Someone was thinking!

TASHED: Finally, what are Rhythm Droid’s aspirations? Where do you want to be in a few years with the music, and what is your main ambition?

RHYTHM DROID: It’s not too complicated.  The goal is to eat, live, start and support a family by performing electronic music.  I want to travel around and express myself through live performance, connect with partygoers, and together share moments of musical ecstasy.

– END OF RHYTHM DROID INTERVIEW –

Look out for an exclusive live mix from Rhythm Droid… coming soon on Tashed!

MP3 RHYTHM DROID – SUNRISE ON PLANET TOKYO ♥♥♥♥♥

MP3 RHYTHM DROID – MY NEON HEART ♥♥♥

MP3 RHYTHM DROID – VECTOR INTERLOCK

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