BEAM 1.3/ ATLANTIQ

KAOS & METHOD ONE
Pushing Towards New Musical Consciousness
Words by Sophia Hanifah
Images by dMarie< & courtesy of Jason Leder

Radio V: How long have you been playing, both respectively or together?

Kaos: I started DJing in ‘91--Philadelphia. I got my first residency when I was 16 at Rainbow Playground which was at a club called the Casbah . . .

Method One: Wow, that’s going into way too much detail there guys.

Kaos: I don’t know.

RV: Tell it all.

Kaos: Well I initially stated DJing breakbeat house which eventually turned into drum & bass as it progressed over time. I’ve been playing with Jason about--when did we start really tag-teaming a lot? About 2-3 years ago?

Method One: Chris and I started making music together back in late ‘95 around September or October. Since about that point, occasionally we’ve spun together and we’ve really built that up recently.

RV: About 4 years, around this time. Awesome.

Method One: But pretty much I’ve been DJing since 1992 and I’ve been making music since 1991. That’s about it. I could tell you what street my first residency started on.

Kaos: [Laughs].

RV: But I can tell you don’t want to.

Method One: I probably can’t remember but basically we’ve both been spinning what was the forefather to this type of music for quite a long time now--7, 8 years or so.

RV: What have been your main influences?

Kaos: That’s a hard question. There’s so many influences for me.

Method One: How about what got you involved in playing this type of music?

Kaos: I used to breakdance. And I first started going to raves when I was 15 and I just wanted to be a DJ, so I bought turntables and practiced everyday after school.

Method One: As for me I got started DJing because when I went away to college I was an interned at a college radio station and this guy who was a British exchange student had all these great records and he pretty much inspired me to buy turntables and start buying records, doing about the same thing.

RV: Yeah, like breakbeat stuff.

Method One: Yes, exactly. At that point I was already into commercially-available techno and dance stuff and things like that, you know and a big 808 State fan. Once I was hanging out on this guy’s show and he was playing all of this underground British stuff that people had never even heard over here, I was just Wow, that’s so cool.

RV: How did you make the transition from how your sound was in the beginning?

Method One: Because the music evolved, we evolved along with it.

RV: Hopefully.

Kaos: [Laughs].

Method One: There’s really no special thing that says, "Hey, we’re going from this to this." It’s a sort of --

Kaos: Natural progression.

Method One: Exactly.

RV: What comes out in the selection that you make from what to listen to or . . .?

Method One: Well it’s like anything else. You hear something new that you like a lot, you start having what you’re doing cross the boards.

RV: Well for example, what labels did you spin when you started kind of a drum & bass style?

Kaos: Reinforced--the king--and Moving Shadow.

Method One: Suburban Base.

Kaos: Those three were pretty much the biggest ones and Good Looking followed shortly after that.

Method One: A few years anyway.

Kaos: Well . . . 1992.

Method One: Yeah but none of us had it until ‘95 because they didn’t sell records here . . . I don’t think I ever even heard of Good Looking Records until 1993, 1994 or so because they weren’t available here.

RV: What about what you spin now? I’m sure it’s a lot of those same labels but you probably also drop a lot of your own.

Method One: We do try to play a bunch of our own stuff. Pretty much most of the things we play nowadays are something that either Good Looking Records or one of their subsidiary labels [supports]. The type of stuff we do, the atmospheric drum & bass, there really are very, very few labels nowadays that support it. That type of music’s impossible to spin but Good Looking or sub-labels have taken control over a majority of the music that’s coming out because everyone else is making tech-step

RV: And that’s where people would look to to send their stuff.

Method One: Exactly.

Kaos: That’s what we’ve been doing. When did we start sending stuff out--‘96?

Method One: We’ve been doing it for a while.

RV: When you play out . . . there’s this whole dubplate dilemma that’s been bandied about and I was wondering do you drop older tracks into your set?

Kaos: Oh of course.

Method One: All the time.

Kaos: Yeah.

Method One: It’s really hard not to, especially since we have an advantage that the type of music we play is not being played out by the majority of drum & bass DJs, so that we could play a song that’s a few months old, a year old, even two years old and we’ll sound fresh to the people we’re playing it to.

Kaos: Another thing is, the style of music we play has much more longevity than a lot of the other styles like jump-up or tech step, just because music is music. And when there’s musical elements to a track, you don’t get bored as quickly as you do when you just hear this bass that’s just growling at you. Once you’ve heard the pattern 50 or 60 times, you’re sick of it. But musical elements on the other hand, you can maybe even not like them when you first hear them and then it’ll grow on you or there’s some tracks you never get bored of them, they’re so good.

Method One: I would say probably yes, but definitely for me I think it has a little bit more longevity for no other reason than you don’t hear it a lot. Things that you hear all the time are pretty much, by definition, not going to have as much longevity.

Method One: It all depends on the music but it’s the sort of thing where a lot of the real anthems of the harder styles that all these DJs are playing--you get sick or it after a while because how many times can you hear one song over and over and over again?

Kaos: Especially in one night. Let’s say you go to a party and there’s 4 DJs playing . . . they all play this certain track. Yeah, that’s cool, I mean it just came out, everyone wants to play it but how many times can you hear it in one night? Or even, if you go out to a party for 3 weeks in a row, you hear the same track 12 times in 3 weeks.

Method One: It probably wouldn’t. For us that wouldn’t be too much of a problem because we try to play as much of our own stuff as possible. And most of that is pretty much limited to us and a few select people across the country, so . . .

Kaos: Right. And plus, like there was this party in Buffalo where it was a small atmospheric drum & bass party with Seba, DJ Casper from Chicago, DJ Cable from Buffalo and myself and Jason. And it was funny because there were only a few tracks that were played more than once because even within atmospheric stuff, the different DJs--they have likes and dislikes and they have their own opinions. And it’s not as like, "Oh my God! This is the new tune, I have to play this," as it is with the tech step.

Method One: I think also, the fact that because of what the atmospheric people are trying conscientiously to play different records so when they get to it doesn’t sound like the same thing. But a lot of it, you mentioned dubplates before, it does make a big difference that you do have dubplates and you do have records that you can play that you don’t really have to worry about other people playing during the night, so it helps.

Method One: We both come from the same town in New Jersey.

Kaos: Went to the same high school.

Method One: I was introduced to him one day because . . . we were into the same type of music so it just went on from there.

Kaos: There’s a guy named Jamie Meyerson who graduated two years before me and I was friends with him through a friend and he was friends with Jason. It was sort of like a friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing.

Method One: When we’re working together . . . we’ve done it for so long that we’re comfortable with each other’s working habits. One person will do some work while the other person is maybe doing something else and then switch back and forth and bounce ideas off one another.

Kaos: Often we’ll work together at the same time but there’s limitations to how much of that can be done because there’s only one computer and what have you.

Method One: All the time.

Kaos: Yeah.

Method One: We probably over-discuss things like that. We’re always looking for better methods of doing what we need to do in the studio and easier ways of accomplishing our goals. So it’s always a continual process as far as always learning things, always trying new things and always trying to push the music forward.

Kaos: Using the most of the equipment that we have.

Method One: We have a computer, sampler, synthesizers--basic stuff. It’s a pretty good home studio. I’ve been making music since ‘91, so we have a decent sized studio with . . .

Kaos: Bits and bobs.

Method One: Exactly.

Kaos: I don’t think we have anything extraordinary that gives us a super advantage or anything.

Method One: With any music the most important thing is learning to use the gear that you have. That’s more important than having the most gear as far as in amounting.

Kaos: Of course.

Method One: A lot of times we’ll have ideas that sound pretty good at the time. At second glance those ideas turn out not so good after all.

Kaos: Or let’s say you feel the track has the potential to be very special and let’s say one element of it is just okay. We might sit there and work on the element over and over until we think that it’s up to the standard of the rest of the track.

Method One: We’re pretty hard on ourselves. We really aren’t easily satisfied. There’s a lot of things that we’ve done that were perfectly good songs or perfectly good ideas that compared to where we wanted to be with them, they didn’t stand up.

Method One: Could be. I mean we’ve had times where we’ve been working on songs and they’ve been almost done and we’ll get an idea and basically turn into a completely new song altogether.

Kaos: It’s just a little tune that we’re doing. We just started it the other day so it’s not that done yet.

Method One: Pretty much we’re just trying to work as far as we can, see what we have. There are certain things that we need to get released and there are a lot of people asking us for our tunes so we’re trying to get busy and write as many of them as possible.

Kaos: Without losing any quality.

Method One: Of course, that goes without saying.

Method One: There’s nothing really that we’d do differently regarding signing to a label. It’s pretty much a straightforward thing where they bought a song and they just signed that particular song. I would probably do things a little bit differently as far as getting the song prepared.

Kaos: Right.

Method One: Because when we were recording that song, we went through some difficulties in the studio and some --

Kaos: -- Miscommunication. [Laughs].

Method One: Miscommunication. Crazy deadlines. Basically the only thing I would do differently is try to have that whole progress a bit more organized but that’s really our responsibility and doesn’t have anything to do with the label.

Method One: Basically we make music and we spin music. We have a love for this type of music and we’re doing our part to try to push it as far as possible.

Kaos: Right.

Method One: We’re just hard workers, that’s about it.

Kaos: Yeah. [Chuckling].

Kaos: Just so you know, our website is www.atlantiq.com . . .

Kaos: You can listen to our tracks online--real audio. There’s other information about us; you can check it out if you want.

Kaos: Bye-bye.