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Mix in motion
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These days, nobody can escape the remix treatment. All our musical heroes are getting either mashed up, blended, edited, layered, filtered, chopped or simply screwed. Once in a while, though, they thankfully get the sweet and tender kisses and caresses that they truly deserve, and in the case of Toronto-based trio Keys N Krates, it’s lovemaking in its purest form. Made up of DJ Jr. Flo, keyboardist Matisse and drummer Adam Tune, this group is set to bridge all gaps, as long as it works. Mirror: How did you guys come up with this formula? Jr. Flo: The concept was really simple—we wanted to take other people’s music and reinterpret it with real live energy. Matisse and myself are both fans of DJ shows, electronic shows and live bands, so we wanted to bridge all of them into one. We wanted to capture the energy of different aspects of live music in one performance. M: When did this desire transform into forming a band? JF: I was working at a DJing school for a while and Matisse came in one day. We hooked up his keyboard and when I started dropping drum loops, he would play over them. Then I would cut up the drums and chop in a capellas, and it really started going somewhere. We realized that we needed a drummer and Tune had been playing with Matisse for years, so once he came into the picture, we soon realized that the possibilities were endless. M: Have you considered adding a bassist to your line-up? JF: We’ve been playing with a few bassists that we love working with and hopefully it could develop into having a bassist as part of the project, but we don’t wanna force it because a lot of our tracks don’t necessarily need bass on them. Matisse works with two keyboards and a lot of times he can compensate. We’ve also toyed with the idea of using an MPC to trigger live bass sounds and layer them. M: Are there other musicians you’d like to bring into the project? JF: There are tons of musicians we’d like to bring into the mix, especially horn players. We do a lot of stuff with horns so it would be awesome to have someone like Maceo Parker to play with. But one important thing to understand is that we are not a jam band. As much as we have a lot of live energy and live feel, we don’t just take an a capella and start jamming. We take time to plan out everything and make sure that it rocks and it’s entertaining for everybody. M: How do you guys decide on the songs that are remix-worthy? JF: Well, we definitely butt heads and disagree on stuff, but when we keep something, there’s usually no convincing to do. There are also songs that we start with, thinking, “This is gonna be so hot,” but after a while, there’s nowhere to go with it. We have to be realistic with the tools that we have at the moment, in the same way that early rap producers had certain limitations in creating hip hop music. M: Any tracks we can expect to be remixed at the show? JF: We don’t like to give away the show before going on stage but you can definitely expect a party! WITH TRUSPIN, MAYSR AND |
