Volume 20 – mixed by Abby Lee Tee
For the most observant of our long-time readers the name Abby Lee Tee might ring a bell. The Austrian producer hailing from the city of Linz has been making beats for a couple of years and most recently released an album title “By accident” with guest spots by Mieux, Affine-signed Wandl and Ritornell-collaborator Mimu Merz. What follows is an interview with the man, spiced up with snippets from his new record and lastly his guestmix.
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First of all, can you start by introducing yourself?
I'm a musician (producer & DJ) living in Linz, a tiny town in Austria, despite being the country's third-biggest city. Beside any kind of sound, records and odd instruments, I'm also in love with silence, visual arts, books, my cats & otters.
I always like to ask about two key moments: do you remember the first time that you responded to music and when was it clear to get involved in makingmusic?
One of my first memories concerning music is my mum listening to Santana's Black Magic Woman. Also, my older brother used to listen to some nice jazz records back then. Later on I got in touch with hip hop, mainly through skateboarding, radio and music television. Soon after I bought my first turntables and became part of the hip hop group Hinterland, leading from there to music production and a growing interest in other genres.
Tell us about an ordinary day in your hometown, Linz. What’s the city like?
As it's not the biggest city (about 200k inhabitants), there's not too much distraction, which makes it a good place to work for me. But for it's size, Linz also got a remarkably big (independent) art scene, nearly everyone knows each other after some years of living here and you see a lot of different people (from different genres) collaborating with each other. While you can enjoy the river Danube's beaches and the woods just minutes away from the centre, it's also only a short hop of a bit more than an hour by train to vienna. And I still find interesting music at the local (second-hand) record stores.
You run a night called “the future sound”, how did this come up and who’s playing at your parties?
Starting point was a night called “The Future Sound of Vienna” in 2010 with Dorian Concept. After that my friend F!no and I teamed up to continue cultivating this kind of sound with a monthly club night, which we've been doing for more than 5 years now, hosting artists such as Prefuse 73, Dimlite, Jeremy Ellis, Shigeto, Nosaj Thing, Floating Points, Flako an Julian Sartorius.
Your album “by accident” was just released. Tell us about the process and what it’s about.
While working on the album for the last 1.5 years I bought and tried to work with a lot of acoustic instruments. Besides, I've always been into field recordings. After using at least a couple of samples back in the days, I'm now completely stuck into using my own sounds only. The title “by accident” also refers to the more or less randomly layered field recordings, building the foundation of most of the tracks. Also, I'm pretty happy about the lovely collaborations with Wandl, Mimu, Mieux and GC (the latter being responsible for mix and mastering), plus the perfectly fitting visual concept (artwork, video, A/V-show) by System Jaquelinde!
And what’s next in music, is there any new work coming up?
Besides gigs and guestmixes, I'm back into making remixes , but really looking forward to use all the sounds I recorded during the last months preparing the release. And there's a “by accident” remix-album in the making.
Lastly, tell us about the mix you recorded.
It's a pretty wild mixture of stuff which inspired me while producing “by accident”, focusing on the more ambient and weird kind of records.
Subscribe (iTunes)
02. Kutin / Kindlinger / Kubisch / Godoy - Introspection
03. Sun Ra - Atlantis
04. Brainticket - Era Of Technology
05. Shaolin Afronauts - Abyssinian Suite Part 1
06. Slow Riffs - Gong Bath
07. Jar Moff - Commercial Mouth
08. Tim Hecker & Daniel Lopatin - Instrumental Tourist
09. Toju Kae - Buscheli
10. Mischmeister M - My Brain Is Mashed Eggs
11. Julian Sartorius - Huli
12. Abby Lee Tee - Efeu
13. LV - Quick Return
14. Holden - Self-playing Schmaltz
15. Flako - Gone (reprise)
16. White Noise - Love Without Sound
17. Dimlite - Zoo In Fluttering Red Pt. 1
18. Tim Hecker - Amps, Drugs, Harmonium
19. LV - Carillon
20. Ages - Chances (Abby Lee Tee Remix)
21. Zanshin - Esmeralda The Swift
22. Downliners Sekt - Hors Phase
23. Rolf Liebermann - Les Echanges
24. E.S.T. - Contorted
25. Sculpture - Unhitch Your Program
26. Soft Machine - Out-bloody-rageous
27. Fred Jüssi - Lahemaa Lindude Hääli
28. David Fanshawe - Tarka The Otter O.S.T.
29. Yatha Bhuta Jazz Combo - Untitled (Afrojazz)
30. Stereokonzert Der Vogelstimmen - ?
31. Alfred Klapper - Hirschbrunft
32. Dimlite - Stromausfall (interlude)
33. Electric Egypt - Kundalini
34. Prefuse 73 - The Last
You can stream the full Abby Lee Tee album on his Bandcamp page, find more of his music on SoundCloud, and if you want to stay up-to-date, follow him on Twitter or Facebook.