Dusk + Blackdown's discovered workflow: values → archetypes → jamming x vision → trax?

Keysound is 20 this year; Dusk + and I have been producing together for longer. Turns out I've started to notice there's some underlying patterns…

Workflow: over time maybe our music making follows an underlying pattern?

What if this is the workflow for how Dusk and I write music?

1. Influences & inspiration
2. Values
3. Archetypes (sometimes)
4. Jamming x vision
5. Tracks 

1/ Influences & inspiration

• We all have them, right? Some things you like, some you don't.

• What turns out is especially important seems to be the music you absorb teens to early 20s.

2/ Values: we find we return to these

Dusk + Blackdown productions tend to have some consistent core values:

• Black music is the source 

• The primary influence: then; today 

• Foundational: funk/swing & groove

• “Ruff with the smooth, as we do…” 

• Consistency v contrast

• Organic v inorganic 

• Drop v groove → find the balance point → Rollage

• Old v new

•  "FWD>>..."

• Nudge the form from within

• Working with patterns v impose constraints to break "rules" 

• Foundational influences; imperfect application

• "Searching for the humanity in the machines"

• Aka the “Ghosts of my life” aka "Hi Tech Soul"

• “What the mandem put aerials up for” - Elijah

• Let voices be heard; the stories be told. Margins Music.

• Build unity & community

3/ Archetypes: do our tracks fit into… common clusters?

Permutations of these values often translate into several distinct archetypes aka "you're making the same track over & over & ... that's ok?"

• The bleep roller

• The zap jam

• The kick jam

• The Planet is Red

• Bladerunner weightless

• Hypergrime

4/ jamming x vision

• Sometimes we imagine a track and try go write it - a vision

• Sometimes we just set off, try and see where we get to

• Sometimes we think it's just one of these, when in fact... it's often both more than we think

Discussions seeds aka things we think about

The following are always there in our music but rarely noticed or asked about...

Catching inspiration

• "Our productions tend to contain some consistent core values and often fit into several archetypes"
• "Gqom, amapiano, deep tech Afro house is the most vibrant Rollage continuum"
• "Running keysound v helping the artists express themselves in media v celebrating the label v interviewing for RA v making music has all fed off each other this year"
• “As DJs/producers/label - ‘giving audiences what they want’ & ‘nudging the music/culture/form forward’ are overlapping but non identical goals”

• "Lockdown changed the course of the label"

Making

• "Trax can be both imagined and found" 
• "Finite set of pattens… musicians use. Rubin rules - write - produce
• "Forcing constraints: (do not use X or adopt Y) has developed some of the most productive results. Cant fight influences but can bypass 

• "We use voices in our tracks a lot; this is intentional but overlooked"

Curating

• "The 8x EPs and 2x long form releases of the Rollage series are all pages in one story. Numbering them was a clue."
• "The rollage series is a 10+ year vision; a self contained world based on a now defunct assumption (tempo as constant), yet still unexplained nor fully explored"

• "You can segment Keysound's 550+ releases by a small number of common moods. The RollageLive series mirrors this."

Sharing

• "Video is the default unit of cultural currency; we are audio. Now what?"

• "Releasing (v curating, A&Ring, writing music etc): lost its joy for a bit. Aka JME has a point"