Detroit veteran 2Lanes talks to us about his Diamond Rain EP, Skepta, DJ Rashad, finding inspiration and more.
Growing up in a musical family, 2Lanes connections to the Detroit music scene started long before his love affair with electronic music began. Coming from a musical family meant that he grew up around musicians and tried his hand(s) – and feet – at drumming (he was taught by Patti Labelle’s drummer).
Despite the musical prestige of the motor city however, his love affair with electronic music truly began when he moved to New York. It was there that he discovered the vibrancy of UK music via online blogs and eventually rubbed shoulders with the likes of DJ Rashad, DJ Spin, Skepta and others.
Whether it was from the active nightlife scene, seeing amazing DJs every other night, or commentating on the strangeness of the city with his peers, New York changed 2Lanes and gave him the bug in a big way.
Currently residing in Detroit, 2Lanes has stayed busy perfecting his craft and immersing himself further and further into the Detroit scene. Whilst he is praised for embodying the sound of Detroit, as he explains in this interview, he has his net cast far further than that.
I guess we’ll start at the beginning. Tell me about your early life. How did you become interested in music? When did this journey begin?
I come from a pretty musical family. My dad was a guitarist and his grandfather played guitar. My grandma played piano; and her late husband played in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He played clarinet, Barnie Rosen was his name. Then there was my mom’s cousin Tino. He was in popular Detroit band called The Howling Diablos.
Tino had a recording studio in the back room of my dad’s office building which was on the edge of the city, and he would record his own band as well as many other scuzzy garage rock bands from the city. I would go there and see my dad and his friends practice and see these bands recording.
That was my intro to a lot of music. I actually grew up playing drums. I could keep a beat and play with little bands and whatnot, and it was fun and all, but I wasn’t like, amazing. And then, when I got into electronic music, I could start to make the rhythms in my head that I wasn’t technically able to do with my hands and feet because I wasn’t like some jazz prodigy drummer.
When I was at college, I was really into reading about UK music. Especially the big Dubstep artists like Mount Kimbie and James Blake. They were like the big, press darlings at the time. I would read about them and then watch a Boiler Room from one of them and then find out about more artists in the UK. At that time, I was gravitating towards a lot of UK music.
I remember ordering old school jungle tapes off eBay and just listening to them on my cassette player then progressing to other UK genres like funky, two-step, garage and shit like that. I think UK music is always extremely forward thinking and pioneering in everything they do as far as synthesis, sound design, and drum programming. Especially drum programming, and vocal chops. Vocal chops are huge in EDM, but they’ve been a thing since the Early 2000’s garage stuff.
You see it in other genres too. A lot of the bigger rap producers in America all at one point in the early 2000s spent time in London and a lot of them speak of their influences there. Ive even seen a Timberland interview where he talks about this crazy, funky, fast music. He may have been listening to Two step or something, I don’t know.
Yeah, the reason why the UK is like that is because it’s like so multicultural, especially in the cities. It’s made the scene here really diverse. The UK scene as a whole has developed so much, and it has received a lot more recognition since it got more into the global music mainstream thanks to artists like Skepta, Giggs, Jorja Smith, etc.
Oh, sorry to interrupt, but a long time ago when I lived in New York, I deejayed for Skepta on a radio show, this is like this is like right before ‘That’s Not Me’ came out. I was with some friends who were in this rap group at the time and they were involved with XL Records. I think they got hooked up with Skepta and he came through the radio show. I had this little shitty DJ controller and a Preditah EP, I swear to God! I loaded it in because they wanted to start free styling and ciphering and stuff.
It blows my mind to this day; he still follows me on Twitter.
It’s crazy because people didn’t really know about grime music at the time in America, and that crew that I’m always super inspired by Fade to Mind and Night Slugs (who are also from the UK) were over in America lot playing those sounds.
I was living in New York at the time and I remember going to the Skepta show, it was at the Knitting Factory, which is a smaller venue in Brooklyn, which is funny as he probably would never play something that small anymore.
There were like 15 people there. Me, my other friends, DJ Rashad and DJ spin were there, which was also crazy, and then like a bunch of British guys with BBK shirts on.
You were talking about your family and how they were a lot of musicians in it. Did you have any formal training, or did you learn in a more off the cuff, DIY fashion?
I took drum lessons, and my drum teacher was really cool. He played for artist like Patti LaBelle, who’s a big soul singer from Detroit, and other huge soul artists. I took little college classes here and there on producing, and I think in high school I took a piano course, but it didn’t really stick with me.
I first found out about how far you could go with electronic music production when I lived in New York around 2012 to 2014. I got introduced to like hardware, desktop synthesizers, groove boxes and stuff.
I got my first few pieces out there, all of which I’ve sold and moved on from now, but I enjoyed learning. I was always kind of intimidated by computers and software. I remember having a cracked version of Ableton and I was so intimidated by it.
It’s a lot when you first open it up.
Yeah, there’s like, a million things you can do. I still am to some degree, but I’m much more focused now. My workflow has changed completely, especially with the album.
Diamond Rain was like a huge transitional moment for me because I started out making stuff fully live. I would take all my hardware and just record a stereo track of a bunch of drum machines and synths, sync them together and have them playing through a mixer, but With Diamond Rain, I wanted to break away from old habits. I really wanted it to be slick. Some of the earlier stuff I made where I would be recording all my hardware at once would end up muddy in the mix or something.
Doing it that way was fun, but after a while I felt like I wanted more control, and I started to see the track in more of a full view.
I started tracking stuff out individually and then making stuff within the computer. A lot of Diamond Rain is made with external sound sources that are sequenced and processed in Ableton. To me it’s like a hybrid studio setup.
I’m always trying to achieve the perfect hybrid studio, which is when I can sequence stuff out on external machines and then have them tracked into Ableton individually to do it whatever I want with. and I can just as easily.
That workflow really suits me because I can play around with Dub techniques and still maintain a live feel during the creation process.
Aside from all that stuff though, it’s ultimately about producing with intention, and having an idea of the type of music that you want to sit down and make.
You mentioned that you stayed in New York for College. Do you feel like your experiences there shaped your trajectory in music? Was New York where you really caught the bug?
100%! I went to College in Michigan at the University of Michigan, which is kind of the classic, big football American University.
Whilst I was there, I was reading blogs about the classic dubstep stuff, and then when I moved out to New York, I was living in Brooklyn and kind of dove headfirst into the club music club scene there.
That’s when I really got the bug. I remember early on in my time in New York, Hurricane Sandy happened. I lived by this venue and one of the first shows I saw there was widely unattended because of the hurricane. It was Zombie with DJ Rashad and DJ Manny, I think back-to-back.
I was a big fan of like early Zombie stuff and I was reading about footwork at the time too. Footwork was just kind of bubbling up in the lofty sphere of music journalism back then, even though it had already been in Chicago for some time, and those artists were pioneering it and took the torch from the Jit and Chew house people before them.
I was reading about DJ Rashad, and when I saw him DJ, man. I never saw DJing like that. It really showed me the art of DJing because those guys were very much like, oh, if we want to, we could play 2 hours of our own music that we made yesterday, you know?
I think I saw DJ Rashad 12 times in New York that year. His album Doublecup represents for me like the perfect dance album. You can listen to every song on its own it’s that dynamic, but it’s also so perfectly mixable.
Some people who aren’t attuned to dance music may listen to a dance record and be like, oh, what’s going on? Nothing’s changed for 5 minutes, but people who listen to this music all the time, get it!
His music, and that album specifically, is so dynamic in that sense. It’s very produced and slick, and he would play those tracks next to the rawest, broken down, essential footwork and it was so cool to see.
Everything about him just blew my mind. He would talk to anyone, smile, and say hi, you know? He was like someone from another planet to an extent. The way he interacted with everyone around him was so beautiful.
Let’s talk about Diamond Rain. You mentioned some of the technical aspects when it came to production, but can you explain the conceptual inspiration behind the behind the EP?
A lot of it was kind of just me going into gut feelings. Especially the two or three tracks like Bootcut Chords. I love big chord stabs like that. I was messing with some preamp I got from a friend and just running a synth through tha. The title track, ‘Diamond Rain’ had a similar motive. I love those big bases that push you around.
I’m a very visual person, I studied film in college, and I tend to get these weird made-up scenes in my head, visual moments that I try to soundtrack if that makes sense?
It’s about creating a space and environment with the music whilst keeping an organic feel. It’s like, how do I use all this cold machinery to make something warm and inviting? It’s a big concept for me.
Like unabashedly being myself, in a way, like, for example, the last track mind print with my friend Jonah Gray on guitar, he was in that group overtone series that we released a record at the end of last year.
I like to have fun when making music, laughing, joking, that sort of stuff. Those are some of my most fond memories. I draw a lot of inspiration from memories of when I was raving back in New York, and when I first moved to Detroit. Hanging out with my friend John FM, we would go out to parties regularly. I remember there was like a three-month long stint of us going to raves like every weekend, getting breakfast at 7:00 in the morning and just seeing stuff, seeing everything, and just laughing or expressing our anger at the world and the things we didn’t like about it.
Just being in the city was inspirational too. You go out and you drive around the city and you see real shit and then have to process it. Those kinds of younger, innocent moments seeing the world in the context of the rave, and within the context of that community, processing it, putting your thoughts into the music, and sharing that with people. A lot of my music was made like that.
I like the visual concept. I feel I that I am similar in this respect. I’m sure there’s a word for it, you know, people who can visualize sound.
Yeah, Synesthesia. I don’t necessarily have that though. For me it’s like I would be driving around the city and there’s like an old, beautiful art deco building, crumbling with trees growing out of it. I can hear that, you know. I can hear what that sounds like. I can hear what a rave would sound like in that space.
Hearing stories is also something that inspires me. Stories of old raves, from an older generation. I have a friend and he was in an influential noise group in Detroit. He had lived here for a very long time and we’d just be driving around and he would say, oh, I went to a party there, and it’s like a derelict abandoned building. It’s pretty cool. I would always try to imagine what those parties sounded like.
I draw inspiration from friends too. I was just in Toronto with my friend Evan, his stage name is Emissive. He worked in professional studios and its crazy how fast he is at taking a sketch or jam and arranging it into something blew my mind.
Cindy aka Ciel, a big DJ out of Toronto, was in Detroit recently and we were making music with my good friend Ryan Spencer. Cindy was very adamant and said we’re not just going to jam for hours on end, we’re going to leave with a finished product. At one point she turned to Ryan and said set your timer for an hour, we’re going to have this track arranged out.
That really blew my mind as far as workflow because it’s so easy to make a million sketches, but how do you make the Sistine Chapel painting? How do you go from sketch to painting?
A lot of that came from those few sessions with Cindy when she was out here. It really changed everything for me. I wish I had that when making Diamond Rain, I would have finished it quicker.
It’s interesting that you brought up talk about collaborations. You did the Standing Waves project with JONAH BASEBALL, who you mentioned earlier. That record is quite different to Diamond Rain. Why was that?
The Overtones series came from the lock down in America, and Jonah would just come over and we would record all day together. Jonah Baseball is one of the most musical people I know. He comes from a very musical family; my grandmother knows who his dad is. His dad’s kind of a famous clarinet player from the klezmer world. Klezmer is like Jewish jazz, and his dad is a famous klezmer clarinet player.
He’s a wildly musical person. You could put any record on, and he could just start playing keys to it. He’s a Fabolous producer too. Unbelievably fast with Ableton. He would send me beats that he made in his bed on his laptop.
I always reach out to Jonah whenever ive made a drum beat or a cool bassline and in like 20 minutes he’ll put 10 melodic elements in to match it.
The fact is that many records in dance music history were not just solely one person, they were collaborative projects. People have their friends come do key lines, vocals, and spoken word and stuff. You can always learn something new from working with others.
Ryan Spencer and I are working on a lot of music also. He comes from a band background, and he is amazing in the studio. We immediately sat down and started pushing music out, and he is very good at knowing when to stop and move onto the next thing and not waste time adding effects, etc. Seeing different workflows like that really opens your eyes and changes the way you work.
This is going to sound cheeky, but I’ve been reading like a Steely Dan biography and Steely Dan’s big selling point was that they used the best studio musicians in their recording sessions, and they would go have sessions with like eight different guitarists to find the right guitar solo for a song. I was kind of inspired by that.
I love talking with musicians and describing what I’m looking for and seeing how they react, trusting in their technical ability with your conceptual description and seeing what it gets you. It’s always a fruitful and rewarding experience for me.
Finally, you mentioned this record that you made before the latest one that’s coming out. Can you tell us more about it?
Yeah, it’s called the Sid Ranger Redux. It’s by a label called Psychic Relief. They put out another record by Olive Tonic recently who is an amazing producer out of New York. I’m really excited about the project. The record features, in my opinion, some of my most raw and personal music I’ve released. The last track features a stand-up bass performance by a friend of mine who passed away. I had known him for a very long time, since grade school, and it’s an honor to have him on the record.
I feel as though this next record shows a different side to me. It’s sonically different. I’m very, very excited for people to hear it.
I’m playing Movement Festival in Detroit which I’m very excited for. I have a recently released recording from my set at Sustain Festival which I’m super happy about. I have another record on my own label that I’m working on. It’s a big crazy vocal track that I’ve been teasing out in sets and given to a few other DJs. It’s gotten a good response so far.
Purchase Diamond Rain here.
Pre-order Sid Ranger Redux here.
Follow 2Lanes here.