Irish producer Polska first came to prominence around ten years ago as part of Dublin's Bassbin crew. He's released a mixture of downtempo and drum & bass on labels like Inperspective, Counter Intelligence and Breakin since 2002 and his debut album, Skeptic, came out on Make:Shift in 2006. The follow-up to this, 2nd Rate, is out on Subtle Audio on August 2nd so we spoke to Polska to discover more about him and his work...

Tell us about your musical background... do you play any instruments or have you had any musical training?

I haven't had any formal musical training. I learned how to play the drums myself and also how to work a studio set-up, though I got some help from friends on that side of things.

I started off using a program called Fast-tracker which was a basic sequencer but it did exactly what I wanted and it was good for making beats. I've moved onto Renoise since then.

In the future I'd like to get the drums into the studio and start sampling some live drumming. I haven't had a chance to do that just yet but it would be an interesting progression from my usual sampling of jazz drummers and obscure recordings!

What is your earliest memory of a piece of music you heard that you remember really liking?

The Beatles - haha! I was a rocker at one stage but even then I was really into it for the drums. Reinforced Records releases were exactly what I liked about music. 4hero, early Paradox & Noise (aka Nucleus) stuff too. Ninja Tunes releases as well – I was mainly into the jazz stuff they were putting out. I'm even listening to a lot of bands at the moment actually. I'm into a broad range of music really.

What was your first gig?

It was playing support for Klute at one of the Bassbin nights. It was good, but Klute didn't play what I was expecting! Haha. I was really into the Casual Bodies album he released around that time but he didn't play stuff like that at all – tore it up!

You're different to most D&B artists / DJs in the sense that you don't just play the big tunes or obvious 'dancefloor smashers', you seem come from a different angle, would you agree?

Well, I try to anyway. It's probably a little bit selfish, but when I play out I try to fit in as much music as I can that I would like to listen to myself – breakbeat driven stuff. At the same time you don't want to scare people off – haha! But yeah, that's why I was always fascinated by Reinforced Records / Dego's stuff and all that, they always came up with some amazing beats.

Tell us about your affiliation with the Bassbin crew... were you inspired by the association with other DJs / artists ?

It was great time – the weekly nights were running in Switch and we all played there. Then we'd all be in the studio on Parnell Street in Dublin: myself, Rohan, Naphta, Zero Tolerance and Kenny & Keevo (Accident & Emergency). I had been working on some stuff at home at that stage but the set-up was much better in the Parnell Street studio, where they had hardware samplers and a big mixing desk and all that. I learned a bit from working on tunes there. Then, as the software improved, I was able to do everything on my own computer at home.

What was your first release on vinyl?

It was the Are You Dim EP on Kin Recordings sometime in 2002, a five-track downtempo thing. My first D&B release was the Swept EP on Inperspective a year or two later.

Tell us about your first album release and how it was received...

It was called Skeptic and came out on a Canadian label called Make:Shift Records. It was a mix of D&B and downtempo stuff. It got a good bit of attention and positive feedback and I think it helped to get my music out to a wider audience.

Tell us about your association with Subtle Audio and how the current album project came about...

Yeah, that was a long exercise in patience for Code who runs the label! I had trouble with my computer, it was pretty old and on its last legs and it chewed up a lot of files and it took ages to recover them. Even then, a lot of stuff was missing so we had to piece together the album from old demo CDs that I had sent him years ago and whatever was recoverable from my computer.

In the end we had everything we needed and we actually had enough tracks for a 2xCD release! Originally we were just planning one CD with a mixture of drum & bass and downtempo tracks but in the end we decided to have a CD for each style - I think it works better that way.

Are you working on new material?

I've been working on a few things recently. It has been quite a while since I worked on music. It was a bit demoralising when the computer packed in. Not only did I lose a lot of tracks I was working on but I lost samples and sounds I had collected over a long time that I might never find again. But yeah, I'm working on some new stuff. I'm hoping to do some remixes in the near future. I really liked Naphta's last album Democracy.Now, so I'll have to ask him about remixing something from that!

What's your relationship with the modern D&B scene? Do you still check out new releases?

As I mentioned earlier, I have been listening to bands more often in the last year or two. I have been on SoundCloud recently listening to some new D&B stuff too though. There were some bits I liked. My favourite D&B artist in the last few years has been Fanu.

What are your future plans ? Do you have any ambition to create a live Polska show, it seems quite possible as your music has quite a 'live' sound...

There would be a lot of work involved, but yeah it's something I've thought about. I'm a bit cornered at the moment because I don't have the separate parts from my old tunes as they've been lost. But, once I get some new stuff finished I might look into it!

 

Polska and Con - Bad For You by knowledge

 

Polska - "2nd Rate" D&B CD :: SUBTLE003CD1 - Out Now! by subtleaudiorecordings

 

Polska - "2nd Rate" Exclusive vinyl tracks :: SUBTLE014 - Out Now! by subtleaudiorecordings

 

• Polska
,
• Subtle Audio

Related Links:

• Podcast 11
• Issue 92
• Promoter Profile: Spectrum
• Macc & dgoHn - Some Shit Saaink Preview
• 67 (Nov 2004)

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