Features

Sabre

Sabre has steadily risen through the ranks of the drum & bass scene since his first single in 2002. His forthcoming debut album A Wandering Journal will cement his reputation as a producer to be reckoned with in electronic music. The culmination of his evolution towards a more minimal and experimental outlook, A Wandering Journal is an ambitious concept project that demands to be heard. Sabre gives us the inside info...

Tell us about how you got the idea for A Wandering Journal in the first place...

I always wanted to make a debut album that revolved around the concept of a written in stone storyline or set of artistic pictures or photographs or some kind of real life depiction that ended up having a soundtrack built around it.

So, in this case, the narrative that sits underneath the whole project is kind of assimilated from various books I've read over the years. Some fiction and non-fiction like a book called The Art of Shen Ku by a guy called Zeek, it's subtitled the Survivors Guide To The Galaxy. It's a one stop reference book to what to do in a post-apocalyptic world and it's quite playful in the way that it's explained but it raised all these questions in my head about survivalism and being out of your comfort zone.

Using that as a theme I wrote a narrative, created a story book pictorially, created a tone in my head and then after that I went off and created the music. So the idea to set this tale in this lonely post-apocalyptic world is a long standing theme in my head.

So it's like a soundtrack to an imaginary film...

Yes, there is no film but there are photographs that go along with it and the idea is that when you listen to it as a whole you get a sense of being somewhere apart from where you are at the moment.

I think dance music succeeds incredibly in making people feel reassured in the here and now of where they are but it can quite often fail to provoke an experience outside of that environment. Make your mind wander and have daydreams, do that kind of thing.

I wanted to make an album that provoked that kind of reaction. I wanted to describe another environment altogether and I could have done something quite space age as drum & bass lends itself to doing something space age and futuristic but that's been embodied in music for a long time.

I wanted to do something about here and now but not here and now London, just somewhere else in the world. A kind of removed reality that's conceivable and actual and happens to people but isn't the club environment.

The concept originally started off in my head when I was considering starting a label a few years ago and I wanted to start doing concept albums that revolved around going to a photographer and asking them for a body of work, maybe 15 - 20 photographs and then going off and commissioning various people to write tracks that were inspired by the photographs.

I got right to the edge of commissioning those tracks and I spoke to a couple of photographers but then Kasra approached me about doing an album and I thought I could do it all myself. Then the opportunity came for me to go to faraway lands and so I did the photography myself too.

It's all been quite an organic process and I don't think I would have wanted it any other way. I think letting the music do the talking is all well and good but I wanted a very strong image in people's heads and I think to articulate that it was necessary to be very bold with the visual outlook as well.

It sounds like you're keen on embracing multimedia...

Yes, I'm really interested in what the future holds in terms of assimilating video, pictures and sound. I don't know what is the ideal forum for this, whether the dance music albums market is the best forum to bring these things together and to create a product or whether the nightclub environment is the best place.

Every forum there is I want to explore it anyway. I'm getting a bit fatigued with the skill sets I've been using the past couple of years as well. As a DJ and as a producer I want to do something a bit more ambitious and I think it would be foolish not to take advantage of some of the new technology out there. It's baby steps at the moment though.

Would you like to bring it into your performance?

The performance thing is difficult because to take a performance that you've rehearsed privately to a public arena is dictated by promoters and their desire and technical ability to facilitate your show. This is not the sort of show I could do out of a DJ booth in a corner of a cellar like club. I need to work on that and make sure that I develop something that I can actually go out and tour effectively but yeah, that is the future.

Tell us about the track order, that must have been something you planned carefully...

The tracks all coincide with a section in the narrative so there are points in the story where the subject, without revealing too much about what it's actually about, is going through a lot of trauma and a dangerous environment and there's a track called Peril to articulate the sense of emotion he's going through at that point in time.

There are also points where he's come across instances of real natural beauty and he's kind of overwhelmed by it and there's music to describe his emotions at that point. So the track order, or at least the feel of the tracks, was dictated before anything went down in the studio. I knew what emotions needed to happen when, I had all those ideas sorted out, it was just a case of going back and making the music that facilitated that rollercoaster.

Could you see yourself making short films one day?

I've been watching a lot of short films lately and getting into a lot of animators, VJs and installation artists. I'm big fan Novak, UVA and the Graffiti Research Lab.

There are loads of really interesting people out there doing incredible stuff. There's a DVD called Cinema 16 featuring 16 short films that has just been released and there's a really good Ridley Scott film on there and it's given me so many ideas but when you don't have an outlet it's hard to know what the purpose of a project is.

It's great to be able to make something for the sake of making something but I find a lot of my motivation comes from knowing there is an end goal to it all. So I need to realise that end goal before I start.

What about soundtracks?

Doing a soundtrack got me into wanting to do this album. I got called in about three years ago to help do a soundtrack on a film called Black Water Transit for Capitol Films, and the experience and having to make music to go along with a motion picture was incredible.

It really sent my mind in different directions and the freedom of not having to worry about drops and 16 bars and all these conventions that I had subconsciously let take over my musical outlook. That really freed me from a lot of those shackles and if it hadn't of been for that then I wouldn't have wanted to do this album at this point in time. It's something I'd love to do again.

It's a very different album but there's a real sense of anticipation about its release, are you surprised?

I'm relatively surprised because so far we've put so little information out there. Kasra and I have been talking with people at shows and explaining to them what this album is about and the amount of effort that I've put into this thing and how Kasra as a label owner has put his knowledge behind it and those conversations seem to have spread across the grapevine and that's before we've released any of the content.

I'm really glad it's come round to this because doing something conceptual like this, it's very easy to come across as pretentious, I'm really worried about seeming like I want to do something that's punching above my weight. But at the same time I think I've struck the balance just right and I think people are going to see it for what it is and not either turn their nose up at it or go, you know what, they haven't quite pulled it off. Which was a worry, I didn't know if that was going to be the case up until the last month or two but in that period I've had enough nods from enough people to know that we're on the right path.

Electronic music seems quite open-minded again so the timing of the album is good...

There's definitely a real openness in music just now. Since about late 2008 it's felt like how it was around 1993 - 1995 when there were albums out by Orbital, Leftfield, Goldie, The Chemical Brothers and The Prodigy. They were all talked about in the same sense, as electronic music, they weren't subdivided into their own individual fields and it feels a bit like that at the moment.

Anything that is forward thinking and electronic gets grouped together on that premise not on the basis of that it's of a certain bpm or uses a certain range of instruments. We've now gone back to dancefloor and experimental, which is a great state of play because it got so skewed for so long. Now there's a much more healthy balance and it feels like the right time to put something out like this.

We wanted it to come out about six months ago but I kept wanting to change the content and I was being very fussy about things and wanting to make sure it was just right, that extra time has been very beneficial and I think it's going to come out in a year full of good albums that are going to be clustered together and be thought of as a batch or a movement of new sound.

Is there going to be a live tour?

It's unlikely to happen. My first priority when I tour this album is to give people a sense of musically what direction my sound is going now as it's quite different to what I've been doing. I've jumped between different camps quite a lot over the last couple of years, I just want to project a more settled outlook musically before I bring something new to the arena.

When I do something new like live or with the visuals I want it to be spot on, I don't want to have to be worried about how it will be perceived or if it's of good enough standard, I want to be absolutely sure in my own mind that what I'm doing is rehearsed, tight and impressive before I actually release it to the world and if that involves taking a bit of extra time then so be it.

You only get one chance to do these things and first impressions count for so much...

Absolutely, and it's the same thing with the album, you only get one debut and so I wanted to make sure that my debut was something that projected the sense that I am a pensive individual, I don't necessarily want to sit there and be absorbed by the here and now. If I want to go away and do a dancefloor album in the future then I can do that because it won't be my debut. That's fine but the debut had to be right and it's exactly the same with the live show, the debut has to be right.

Done any remixes recently?

I've been getting a bit backed up with the remixes I'm due to do for people like Phil Source and Kryptic Minds. Unfortunately it's the same issue of me being a control freak with my album and how that has delayed everything and had a knock on effect. When the album is out and the tour is over I'm going to sit down get through them.

Any plans to start a label of your own?

I feel really hurt by the starting a label process, because I got right to the eleventh hour. I'd saved a lot of money and armed myself with as much wisdom as I could about the music industry and then the financial crisis happened and the electronic music industry's response as a whole to piracy hasn't been that coherent, I don't think anyone has come up with a business model for the future.

I'd love to start a label, I'm good at A&R, I have helped so many people come through and find their spot on labels and I'd love to be able to do that for myself and my own label but I wonder if I've missed my window of opportunity. I think I'd prefer to devote my efforts to doing live stuff and perhaps building a collective of live performers around me, that's not dissimilar.

Sabre - A Wandering Journal by Critical Music

Sabre - Have It Your Way Feat Alix Perez by Critical Music

Sabre - Havens Verge by Critical Music

Words: Colin Steven

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