Production lines

by JACK OATMON

New York’s Travis Stewart is an innovative engine of digital R&B reinvention and pop experimentation. He runs the NYC record label Normrex and produces under several aliases, including electro/rap/glitch cross-pollination act Machinedrum, as well as the brooding, up-tempo bassline house project Neonblack. His instrumental influences and eclectic approach mark him as a songwriter of sorts in a world of hook-constructing dance-beat producers, lending a certain melodic depth to his solo tracks and collaborations with folks like Yo! Majesty, Theophilus London and others of that ilk.

Mirror: How did you get into producing?

Travis Stewart: It all depends on what your definition of producing is. I’ve always come from a musician’s standpoint. I grew up playing piano, guitar and various other instruments. I grew in a small town in North Carolina where I didn’t really know that many people who were into the same music I was getting into in middle school. Like industrial, Aphex Twin, stuff like that. I played in some bands, but I discovered that it was becoming a necessity to do things more and more on my own. The closest way of doing that was writing and recording on a computer. As I did that, I started learning all these different things I could do with that. That was when I was about 13. I’ve actually been using the same software I started on then up until now, Impulse Tracker.

M: And how did things evolve from there to what you’re doing now as an adult in New York?

TS: I didn’t, even then, consider myself a producer. It was only at the point where I started working with this guy Clyde from Cyne—it was with him and Addiquit that I really started understanding what the role of a producer was, when you’re trying to collaborate with other artists and make a song, rather than just instrumental electronic music. Understanding all those different angles of what production really is. It was really when I started working with vocals that I started considering myself a producer.

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