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Bec Paton, broken beat brat

Published on 12/07/05
by matt

Bec Paton doesn’t have management. She’s never put out a press release, and even struggles to promote herself in interviews. Still she’s one of Canberra’s best loved DJs and since moving to Sydney has rapidly moved up the ranks to play several high profile gigs (Cockatoo Island, Wired for Sound) as well as picking up a couple of residencies.

I first met Bec 3 years ago. I had just breezed in from Sydney and was struggling to find my feet in a new city. As I worked out who was who in Canberra, I kept seeing her name on flyers and posters. Every time she played it would be a different set, from house to slamming drum’n’bass.

Since then, her musical knowledge and technical wizardry behind the turntables (and increasingly CD players) has matured, to the point where now rather than playing a multitude of different sounds in discrete sets, she is now able to blend them all into an intoxicating rhythm.

She’s a phenomenonally hard worker. At the same time as DJing, she studied full time (first as an engineer, and later degrees in graphic design and economics in parallel at UC and ANU respectively), worked flat out as a tax agent. A true renaissance woman of the noughties then. Now she’s designing covers for books.

I interviewed her last year for the Canberra Times (don’t bother looking there, it’s hard to see why they bother with the site! It was also published in 3D World), check a favourite tracks rundown at Cyclic Defrost too. But here’s the transcript, I think it was interesting enough to put online.

Why’d you get into music?

BP: Always a been a music head. Like I played classical piano as a young girl. And I was just discovering electronic and deciding it was cool after thinking it was incredibly heinous and was living with a guy who had two belt-driven decks and they were awful, but I just got caught up in it all I guess through him. But since then the more I learn the more I love it, because your perception of what’s out there is shifting and expanding, it just gets better and better.

What keeps you going?

BP: I don’t know, I really don’t. it’s cool like in the public sphere, like I’d always listen to music there’s nothing that could stop that, but probably the only thing that keeps me going, playing in front of people is when you see people just react in an amazing way to what you’re playing, like you’re sharing all these sounds with them and you’re putting them in a new context for them by the way you superimpose the sounds. And you know when someone gets switched on as a result of that, comes up raves, hands in the air, that’s cool.

For such a small city, Canberra has a lot of people doing interesting stuff (and they’re good at what they do).

BP: It’s got a high education level, so people are a little more switched on. But also the place is incredibly sterile, especially in its design and I think to humanise everything, it needs, like people make that themselves, people need to make their own culture and because it’s relatively isolated, I mean Sydney’s fairly close, but you have to make an effort to go there, you’re always working in a vacuum, so stuff that comes out of here is innovative and is fresh, because it’s created fairly much from scratch.

How has DJing affected the way you listen to music?

BP: Playing records does change the way you listen to music in a sense. Because you go what can I do with this. Whereas you’re not just absorbing for your own sake, you’re actually like how can I do something cool with this to communicate it to other people and I’d be really sad to not have that anymore. Because it has been rewarding. I’m scared about that and not finding a job down there! But I’m also excited because I’m comfortable here and I need to be put out of my element, I want to be surprised, shocked and feel a little nervous every now and then.

You never describe music by genre or style, it’s always colour or movement. Rather than just listening, how do you approach records?

BP: Any track, no matter how stunning it is, there’s always something you’d want to change or add, and you do it in the mix. It is musical collage. You go I’m going to take this bassline and rip it in with this crazy synth line coming out of this track, or I’m going to use the texture of this track, but fill it out with the melody of this or the sentiment of this. Tracks have different feels, so you go this is the kind of emotional space you’re in with this, but we can shift it just slightly and it just puts a whole different tweak on everything, so it’s really about recognising where each track’s coming from, how it feels, also the musical elements that you can use and pick up on and do stuff with and yeah.

How do you do that?

BP: I just dissect it. I’ll be listening to a track and first do the really scientific, the beat structure’s like this, the key change’s going like this it’s got a transition to a bridge section that does this and is different to this bit. But then I’ll think, it’s got a wistful feeling as though you’re wandering through a park in autumn or it makes me feel like I’m in a dirty dingy underground club with red lighting and smoke in the air.

As well there’ll be a pure overall feeling to any track, it’s like if you’ve got two fabrics sitting next to each other and you touch one and you touch the other it’s kind of like that overall kind of thing. So all those different parts and you can pick out which parts you want to interact with the next track or whatever sample you’re messing about with.

You seem to be all about colours and texture, the cover art rather than the name of the artist or the label, and especially ornate, layered sounds?

BP: Yeah totally. Like I’ll pick up on artists if I totally admire them and I want to seek out more, but otherwise I don’t really care who wrote it, because it’s a personal thing, it’s not about me saying oh you’re so great, it’s about me going cool this is this experience for me and these other people.

I get bored really easily. I can get caught up in an aesthetic, especially with house music, like if it’s incredibly dubbed out and the beats are really solid with the pure house feel, yeah I can get caught up in that. But most of the time I like to have variation and change and something a bit interesting happening that you weren’t quite expecting. Also like it when people push the sounds they’ve chosen instead of the default sound libraries and normal electronic music instruments, actually going and sampling a gamelan from Indonesia and doing something with that, and making it into something new. That’s exciting, and that’s cool.

Tell me when you first realised there was something special about music?

BP: Probably the first time that I actually gave it credit as a true legitimate form of music and creative expression, was at a Sabotage party up at Heaven. Up until then all I’d heard was trance, which I’d never liked, found it really jarring and full on and kind of ugly in its synthetic-ness. I’d heard funky house, it was cool, inoffensive, bit of a beat you could have a bit of a wiggle. Other than that I hadn’t really been exposed to much else. Went to this tweakin party and it was all sort of chunky tech house. It was ken cloud and simon Caldwell actually, yeah I heard all the sounds kind of sifting past me and I was having kind of an animal reaction to it. Like it was resonant on some level, I just went hang on, I can see a possibility for this to be awesome stuff. That’s when I really started actually going out and going so what else is there.

Before I was really into bands, I mean I still am. The thing about electronic music is that anyone can be involved as long as they’ve got an idea. You don’t need a whole band to make something amazing and it’s so accessible now, like if you’ve got a pc you can do anything, so for the first time you don’t need musical training you’ve just got to have the ear and a really good idea and the patience to make it. That’s awesome, that’s the first time in history, that I’m aware of, that people can so easily express their ideas and so fluently express them, it’s empowering.

Before the blues, people felt the same way, and then the blues really revolutionised things, just sitting there with a guitar and singing. Things have changed again in the last little while where you really need to make CDs and produce, etc.

BP: You can make something that sounds like there might be 20 musicians jamming if you want to and it’s your idea. Whereas if you were actually to orchestrate that , everyone would have their own interpretation even if you gave them the exact music to play they’d put their own timbre and spin on it. That’s great, but there’s something really lovely about you going this is my world, this is what I wish was real, and brnging that out. The Ammoncontact album is like that. He’s just gone this is my concept and made it, it’s so fresh because before hearing it you would expect that was possible.

Big faith no more fan, beastie boys. Sepultura. I was into metal, it was pretty dark stuff, bordering on industrial a lot of it, but also stuff like, I love Primus – les claypool is the best bass player I’ve ever heard, I love that stuff. Also I was really into local bands as well, we were really lucky at that point in time, we had some really fantastic local bands like Befuddle and Three. Three were really the best. That’s Ben Green, who lives in Melbourne now, and is part of High Pass Filter. That stuff is really fresh, it’s got a hip hop edge bringing electronic edge in and even folk and rock sentiments. It’s a mish mash of sound, but he brings it together in a really cool way.

They sound like comparisons to the music you’re playing now. Obviously the music is made differently but fundamentally the ways of describing it sound similar.

BP: I think a lot of musicians and electronic producers kind of go I’m going to make a track in this genre, in this style, and it’s almost like a synthesis problem where they’ve gotta get the right sound, gotta put it together with the right song structure. Whereas I’m more interested in stuff that’s like OK so previous to this here’s what’s gone down, maybe we can take elements of this and that and make something new. It’s like the art world, it’s constantly evolving according to what people have been exposed to and filtered in their own way, and the new materials and things that are available to them.

What do you think of Canberra at the moment?

BP: It’s so commercialised now. I think the sense of community has really suffered. If you go back two to four years ago, the way things worked was that the artists initiated most of the things that happened. So bands or DJs would say, we’ll get our mates and put on a night. Whereas now promoters actually orchestrate a lot of it, and because they’re not musicians, cause they want to make their money back, it’s become commercialised and things are branded really strongly and it’s been almost reduced to a consumer choice. What will I consume tonight. Rather than based on the experience.

How do you reconcile your commercial possibilities as a designer/economics grad with your creative aims as a musician/DJ?

BP: With music I pretty much let it all go, I don’t need to be the biggest most famous DJ in the world. I’m happy to play and share my music with people on the terms that that happens. But at the same time that’s not the way it works at all. You do have to make the effort to project yourself with an image and everything, you have to be consistent. The way you get gigs in this town isn’t by playing really well, it’s by talking to people and going ‘Yeah, you should get me for your night’which I find really strange because I think if I was a promoter I’d just pick the coolest music that was out there rather than thinking ‘oh this person has talked to me and they really want the gig’ so I find it all a bit confusing and I’m not very good at dealing with it all, but I guess to some extent I am managing somehow and I’m not sure how. That’s the thing I’m worst at. I have big ethical issues with the way things work, I just don’t understand how it can be like that. Music’s good or it’s not. I don’t see how you can just pick people on the basis that they seem nice or they bought you a beer or something.

There’s a serious amount of people who really dig music, and listen to music and seek it out. Most people just want background music, something with a beat, something with a beat to dance to, something they recognise so they can sing along to it, it’s a totally different world to the one I’m operating in. I’m not anti-popular music at all. If it’s great, that’s fantastic. But at the same time, I can’t imagine wanting to get the latest compilation of ‘What’s hot now’ because that’ll do.

There’s two different purposes for music. There’s really soulful, fulfilling human interaction experience. But then there’s also this is an entertainment experience that I’ll consume and it’s not that important to me so I am willing to let other people decide what I am going to listen to.
It’s so emotive, you can hear a track that you haven’t heard for five years, but you’ll remember exactly where you were when you heard it last, how you felt, your state of mind at the time, you might even get a waft of the smell that was on the wind that day. It’s emotive stuff. My record collection is more like a photo album than my photo albums, because I have such better recall of what was going on at that time from that than I would from looking at a photo.

Bec Paton – Broken Beat Brat (hosted by Southern Steppa)

Bec Paton – Mixed for ITM (hosted by inthemix.com.au)

Bec’s current top 10:

Tipper – Ruck (Just Music)
Luke Vibert – Gwithian (Planet Mu)
Bruno Pronsato – Live in Cascadia (Orac)
Si Begg – Muchacha (Noodles)
Idjut Boys – Easy Amigo (Bearfunk)
I:Cube – Tokyo Uno (Versatile)
Stephen Robinson – Lord Lucan is Still Missing (12 Apostles)
Funkstorung – AP1105 (!K7)
Slope – Want’Choo Longa (Sonar Kollectiv)
Tomboy – Player, Playon (Gomma)

If you’re in Sydney you can catch Bec playing Saturdays at @Newtown and at plenty of other nights around town including the upcoming Amnesty fundraisers in Canberra and Sydney. at various parties around town.

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