My Dry Wet Mess Interview: the live set is quite intense

Fine Grains records kick-start their event at the Shelter this weekend to bring a two floor bonanza of off kilter bass music, leftfield hip-hop and broken beast this weekend, with a live performance from none other than My Dry Wet Mess. We caught up with the Berlin based producer to find out what you could expect from his set this weekend

For those that might be unaware of who you are, can you describe your musical style and what you are about as a performer?

My music lays in between lots of different styles but I would say mainly the rhythmic structures come from RnB and UK garage. It's highly structured stuff though, usually made to be enjoyed as a story, perfect for a bus ride or a car trip I like to think.

For my live set I pretty much use material extracted from my tunes as well as unreleased bits, creating new songs from scratch that work nicely in a club environment. It's not a "club version" kinda thing at all but I definitely make sure that the live set is quite intense and open to tweaking, and that it sounds mad fresh to anyone who knows my music. The stuff you hear when I play live you won't find on the albums. 

What set-up do you utilize when playing live?

I use Live and an APC40. I wrote a Max / MSP patch to customize the behaviour of the APC so now it does what I want it to do. It's a fairly simple set-up but very flexible, I can play stuff live and build loops and stuff or just play out pre-made loops and tweak them lots. It's starting to feel more and more like an instrument and I feel like "composing" for it, which is definitely a good thing.

So you’re due to make your debut performance at the Fine Grains showcase later this month, but we understand your relationship stretches further with the label. Tell us about that.

I met Alex (Fine Grains promoter and label owner) in Barcelona exactly a year ago and we became friends and have been in contact on and off ever since. I thought it would be cool do to something together because you can see he puts lots of passion in the work on Fine Grains and that's the most important thing really. We have been talking about a release but nothing's been fixed yet. Hopefully soon. I’ve got new music ready.

What can people expect from you at the event?

A concert. Not a dj set of other people's tracks, not a dj set of my tracks.

As I said before, I make sure that the one hour I get when I play out is as intense as it can possibly be. I want it to feel like a live concert so I only play my music and it's all quite danceable and exclusive to the live set. Each time I have a show I work on my set and on my set up and try to improve it.

I am conscious of the limits of a laptop set compared to a live band but I know that if done right it can still be a memorable experience for the audience. It's a lot of work to find a good way to play live but it's definitely worth it.

Your album was released on Brainfeeder last year, were you satisfied overall with the way in which it was received by the public and the press?

I think most people who heard it liked it but it didn't get lots of reviews and press so lots of people missed it. It pisses me off a bit but it's all good, hopefully it'll prove itself to be a good album and people will find out about it in the future and it'll still sound fresh. 

Have you got any future plans production wise?

Well yeah, I have been working on lots of things. I have an EP ready as MDWM but no details on the release yet.

As well I have been working on a band project with two drummers and a viola player and that's been taking lots of my time. We are called Twice Four. Not sure what the plans are for that either but people can listen to a few demos here: https://soundcloud.com/twicefour

What other musicians are you feeling right now?

I am rarely up to date with stuff happening in music really but I'll tell you what I have been listening to heaps in the last couple of weeks:  Giuseppe Ielasi, Jonny Greenwood, Gold Panda, John Roberts, and John Talabot.

We understand your early influences was based a lot around hip-hop. Do you still follow the genre and if so do you agree that it’s in a very healthy state right now?

Not sure, I don't really follow I gotta say. I am stuck in 1996.

And finally what lies in the future for My Dry Wet Mess?

My EP "Laptop Lapdance" will be out at some point, hopefully more gigs... and when I feel like it, a new album. But this one I wanna approach in a radically different way then the ones before so it's gonna take me a while to figure out what to do.

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