Download the mix here
First of all, for everyone not already aware, can you briefly introduce
yourself...
Hey, hey! My name's Jon. I'm a 20
year-old producer based in Adelaide, which is down south in Australia, and I
make music under the name of Strict Face.
There seems to be a handful of producers doing exciting things with
grime in Australia at the moment, producers like yourself, Arctic, Juzlo and
Dellity. Do you know each other outside of music? Are there any collaborations
on the cards?
Yeah, there's some
fuck-off-amazing music being made in Australia by those guys and dudes like Dro
Carey at the moment! The grime scene in each of our states is a bit small, but
it's definitely getting the attention it deserves now, especially with Arctic
and Juzlo. I'm really hoping the four of us get to link up at some point this
year... I might be flying over to Melbourne some time to link up with Arctic.
Dellity's over in Essex at the moment, but when he gets back, someone should
definitely get the four of us in a room with some decks and a good soundsystem.
I know Juzlo and Arctic have done a track together, which is absolutely mental!
Arctic and I have just started off on a four-way collaboration with Dellity and
Juzlo as well, which is slowly getting off the ground. I'm really looking
forward to how it turns out; it'll be an interesting one.
Talking of collaborations, a video was uploaded recently featuring a
track you produced with Rabit. How did that come about?
That came about shortly after
Rabit and I started chatting. It's pretty straightforward, really: I sent him a
couple of loops, which he absolutely murked the first time round. We sent 'em
back and forth a little bit, but halfway through the process the project file
got corrupted, which was a bit of a shame. It actually sounds good in its
current (and permanent) state though, I will say.
How long have you been involved in music? What made you start producing?
I think
I've been producing for about ten years now... close to about eleven years, I'd
say. I've been making stuff under the Strict Face name for three years,
though... there are a few older aliases floating about if your detective skills
are A+.
When I first started making
music, I suppose it was a case of general boredom while living in the
Philippines at the time combined with the itch to see how easy it was to make
rap beats, since I was listening to a lot of East Coast hip-hop. The only software
I had on me at the time was an old version of Fruity Loops and Audacity: a
little primitive, but it got work done.
As for the Strict Face stuff, a lot of it was inspired by the "club"
stuff I'd stumbled upon during high-school (i.e. some of the early Wiley/Dizzee
stuff, the Night Slugs discography, a lot of the American UK funky-inspired
stuff), though I was a total outsider to that kind of environment. To a small
degree, I still am an outsider to it, really. I haven't heard much of it played
in my city outside of the radio station I've done shows at.
When I listen to a lot of your music (tracks like Mylar Swamp and Grey
Saviours) one thing that is very noticeable is the space in your tracks. Does
that come from a particular musical influence?
I'd
understand if someone thought the usage of space comes from dubstep, but I
didn't really 'get' into dubstep until a couple of years ago! I think the
'space' mostly stems from listening to a lot of avant-garde music and dub
reggae when I was young. Stuff like Steve Reich, Arvo Part and Alvin Lucier's
'I Am Sitting in a Room' definitely changed my perspective towards music,
especially with how stark and stripped-back the music (or sounds) can be. I
guess it ties in with a lot of the King Tubby and Lee Scratch Perry records I'd
listened to religiously during those years as well... those reverb sections are
deadly on their own.
As for musical influences,
there's a fair few... apart from the obvious stuff and what I've mentioned
previously, there's stuff like synth-pop, field recordings, weird stripped-back
Chicago ghetto house (i.e. the Dance Mania discography), "quiet
storm" R&B and boogie, some of the weirder industrial/post-punk in the
80s (i.e. This Heat, Zoviet France)... it kind of depends on what tracks of
mine anyone gets to hear, but a lot of it's pretty influential to the stuff I
make.
What should people expect from you in the near future?
I've just wrapped up a couple of
remixes which should be out at some point this year: one of them's for Tony
Phorse, who's an absolute boss, and another one's for Yung Nation, a rap duo
outta Dallas. An EP or two is slowly in the works, though I can't say much more
than that at the moment. There are heaps of collaborations in the pipeline as
well... I should chase 'em up, actually. I recently unearthed a couple of
projects I thought I'd lost forever + revisited projects I'd made early last
year which were scrapped as well, and they still sounded really good to me, so
"Birthday Riddims III" will probably be a tiny bit larger this year.
I've been really happy with the 'styles' I've dabbled in throughout the last
year, the 'dystopian/cold' stuff and the 'astral/romantic' music... fuck,
that'll reflect badly on me. But yeah, those two worlds will probably co-exist
a lot more solidly this year..
Sounds good! Tell me about the mix you've recorded. Is it the sort of
set you'd play in a club or a more conceptual mix?
It's pretty straightforward...
there's some dubs from friends of mine and stuff I've been feeling lately
thrown in there. It'd probably be along the lines of a usual club set from me,
but I say that mainly because I never get to play out much in my town... if I
pulled this stuff out at peak time, it would probably clear the floor, haha.
Thanks for the interview, any shout outs?
No problem, man! Umm, I dunno...
shout-out to anyone who's ever given a shit about my music, I guess?
Tracklist: