Recently nominated for best producers at this year's Breakspoll, Kmag catches up with Australian breakbeat duo Karton to talk about their debut album, For All Seasons. It's a unique and vocal journey across a wide platform of bass-driven genres...

Tell us more about the album, it has a strong vocal emphasis to it...

We have worked with vocalists in the past on a couple of releases but we did make a deliberate choice with the album to work a lot more with vocalists. We had access to some very talented people and thought that it would be a bit of a waste not to use them and the album was the perfect format for those tunes.

For example with the track Musical Chairs featuring Chris Clucas we had laid down that vocal and just knew that we could do something different with it. We knew that we wanted the album to have tunes on it that weren't just aimed at the dancefloor with a constant beat and nothing to layer over it and this seemed like the perfect chance to do something that really pulled the album into a different space.

We wanted to appeal to both underground music lovers and the mainstream crowd as much as we could without losing any cohesion across the whole album. I think in terms of whom it's catered towards - we basically wrote an album that we wanted to listen to, something that covered all the music we were excited by at the time we were writing it, and the vocals compliment the tracks very well. We wanted the album to appeal to people regardless of their mood or circumstance, we wanted to touch on as many styles and ideas as we could without having it result in being an in cohesive mess.

We have also had some great feedback from the album's first single All You Need [download this track for free here]. I think the people that have known about us prior to the album are interested to hear something different from us and for those who are just discovering our stuff this seems to be a good way in.

Talk us through some of your favourite tracks and the album's creation...

Well, it was a long process. A couple of years ago we started putting together some tunes that were meant to be a part of an album rather than just regular single releases. We slowly worked on these tunes in-between the tunes and remixes we were putting out for about a year and a half then we made a decision to spend a solid six months just finishing the album.

During this process a number of tunes dropped off the final playlist, a couple of new ones came together at the very end and some were completely re-written a couple of times as we went. The stand out tracks for us seem to be continually changing, usually our favourite tune is the one we have most recently completed. That being said, we both seem to come back to And Then There Were Two as one we are both really proud of.  

Were there any artists in particular that had a big impact on the sound of this album?

Oh so many, way too many to mention. We were listening to a lot of indie rock while putting this together, and lots of drum & bass. We get inspired to write music by listening to other music but it's pretty rare that we hear something that will have a direct impact on our own sound, rather it just inspires us to work more.

We always mix things up, especially in our DJ sets. We have had the most success in breaks but our interest range spans across the whole spectrum of bass driven music be it breaks, dubstep, drum & bass or anything else. We have had some nice stuff said about us from the likes of the Freestylers, Joe Ransom and the Plump DJs which means we are making great music. That being said, we are so isolated from where the scene is and have only had very brief interaction with these  guys (if we have had any at all) it doesn't really have a major impact on what we are doing. I think we are always more impressed by the tunes that the big guns write rather than what they have to say about our tunes.   
 
Tell us about the label Sound of Habib who are releasing the album...

Sound of Habib is a breaks label based in Sweden, we hooked up with them years ago when the label owner did a remix of a tune we released on Sound Not Scene. We sent him a couple of things we were working on and it just grew from there. They have been really supportive of us and we are grateful to be working with such a strong and well run label.

We have had other releases on other breaks labels and a couple of 4/4 tunes as well in the past. We have actually started working on some new material for release after the album, either as singles or as the basis for the second album. We are pushing more into other genres but will still be putting out breaks tunes. We are hoping to get back to Europe and the UK early next year to do some shows as well.

Words: James Barclay

 

Download Karton's guest mix

 

Karton Mix August 2010 (138 Mb) by Karton

 

Tracklisting

1. Breakzhead - Disposis (Aggressiveness and Factor Funk Remix)
2. Afghan Headspin - MSG (Karton Remix)
3. Lupo - Surprise Me (Karton Remix)
4. Elite Force - Law Of Life (Access Denied Remix)
5. Pyramid - Rain
6. DaVIP - Ignition
7. Karton - We Bleed Dub VIP
8. Karton - All You Need VIP
9. Nero - Innocence
10. Shock One - Adachigaharas Theme
11. We Bang - Smash The Floor
12. High Rankin feat. Pie - Soundboy
13. Benga - Stop Watching
14. Mars and KillReal - Gorilla Box
15. The Qemists feat. Jenna G - Hurt Less (Riskotheque Remix)
16. Rusko - Hold On (Subfocus Remix)
17. Dan Le Sac & Scroobius Pip - Sick Tonight (Doctor P Remix)
18. Professor Green feat. Lily Allen - Just Be Good To Green (Camo & Krooked Remix)
19. Netsky - Iron Heart
20. Karton - And Then There Were Two

• Karton

Related Links:

• Karton - For All Seasons LP Preview
• Top New Breaks Releases
• Breakspoll Awards Return
• Rave Generator: Thump
• Introducing: Retroid

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