Figure Talks About New Album, Monsters, and Dubstep In An Exclusive Interview
On March 6th, Figure played at Belmont to a packed crowd of bass heads and dedicated fans. I met with Figure beforehand at his hotel to talk about his upcoming album, work ethic, favourite places to play live, and more. Below is the entire conversation that unfolded as a result, so check out what we had to say.
CNL: You have a new album on its way that is going to be released track by track through Soundcloud. The concept behind this album is to show a new side of your music that people might not suspect. Can you tell me any descriptions about upcoming tracks that differ from your usual heavier style?
Figure: Well all the tracks are heavy, but they are more melodic than usual. It’s very space and video game inspired, more songs will be similar to “Destiny Awaits”. It’s sci-fi video game stuff, which is a lot of fun to make.
Figure: There are some tracks that always stood out to me, like Doctor P’s “Tetris”. It catches someone’s attention when it has a nostalgic vibe. I just started working with 8bit stuff that I cross over with my own sound. I wasn’t trying to start a theme, but it kind of just happened so I’m going to go with it.
Figure: When you remix something that everyone knows, but keep an original part and keep the theme, people find a way to relate to it.
CNL: Are you looking to release tracks all year long or do you have a definite point in the future you plan to have the full album released by?
Figure: I don’t have an actual date or anything, but it’s definitely going to be after the summer. I’m really loose with it right now because I’m sitting on all the tracks. I could put it out tomorrow because I’m 95% done, but there are still some things that I personally need to do first.
Figure:The next single is suppose to be out, but I decided to wait to put a hip-hop bootleg out. I haven’t put something like my NWA remix out in a while. There is five new tracks on the new album that take a similar baseline like the “Fuck The Police” remix.
Figure: I’m enjoying the freedom of being able to release it myself, so I decide when it’s for sale or when it’s free. I’m releasing all the tracks for free, but I’m also selling just so they go through the distribution and appear on Spotify. I decide the dates and I also make the artwork, such as my tracks “We Are Ready” and “Destiny Awaits” already.
CNL: Wait, so did you create the video for “Destiny Awaits?”
Figure: Yeah, that’s what I play during my Terrorvision Tour now too. I will upload the videos onto Youtube instead of having them just sit as a square on my computer. I’ll just put the title over the video so people don’t think it’s an “actual” music video. Every single release will have a video like that.
CNL: Your first Monsters Volume took only a few days total to produce, while the previous years have been becoming more cinematic and longer. Do you now plan ahead a while in advance for each Halloween’s Monster series?
Figure: Yeah, all the other volumes took way longer than I thought they would. I think after Vol. 3 was when I realized I could makes interludes, outros, and extra content. I begun working with Universal Studios at that time too.
Figure: I want it to be more of a story, like an actual album now. It’s hard to tie in one monster song with another monster song and act like they go together, but at the same tone with the proper interludes, it can flow together. I’m about to start on this year’s volume, but I’m also finishing this current album.
Figure: I’m going to be doing something different this year because I have been putting so much effort into the last ones. No one actually looks at them as albums, they just assume their compilations. People don’t realize that every year I’m putting a full album out.This year I’m taking it back and doing just a few tracks, but also taking all of the Monsters material and making a box set.
CNL: Do you think you’ll receive any negative feedback from your fans?
Figure: People might wonder why so few tracks, but as long as they can hear the inspiration from my first volume then I think they’ll get it. It’s also going to be accompanied with a ton of remixes. It will be all the originals, all the VIP’s I play in sets, there is like 50 songs total.
CNL: Do you have a completely different mindset that you move into before starting your Monsters series?
Figure: Oh yeah, it’s a compltely different mindset. I’m always in the spirit, but the closer Halloween gets the more horror movies are always playing in the house. It just starts happening, I can tell when we’re getting closer to that time of the year.
Photo credit: MANNY
CNL: Are you still producing a majority of your music on the road with headphones or have you been gradually moving back into the physical studio? On a sidenote: Which headphones do you use?
Figure: I still make most music through headphones, but I have I studio back at my house that I run stuff through. I play so much on tour that I hear the songs in venues and what it’s really created for. I have a man-cave back at my studio with a big TV, a coach, a bar, all my video games. I can just play shit loud there and catch the vibe.
Figure: Headphone wise I use Audio-Technia 150s. I always jump back and forth between that and my Bose noise-cancelling pair. Whatever I have with me I use and I always adjust it accordingly for the next time I’ll hear it.
CNL: Is that really valuable then to be able to hear your music on different sound systems?
Figure: Yes, especially seeing people’s reactions. I sometimes don’t care if it doesn’t go off, but some tracks I’m like this is the banger and it has to go off otherwise I’ll change it.
Photo credit: MANNY
CNL: What do you like most about having a different musician edit, rework, and arrange the sounds you create?
Figure: You hear ideas that they have and you think I would have never done that. It’s amazing, some of my friends will chop up my already finished songs and it will sound way better than the original. They have a new way of looking at it, but they won’t think it sounds better because they’re used to my original.
Figure: When you collaborate you learn different dynamics and new perspectives. You grow by seeing how people do things and pulling elements from that for yourself.
CNL: When you collaborate with other artists, are you often meeting in person or are you working solely online in interactions now?
Figure: Everything is online now. There is no face-to-face collabs anymore, but I like that more. The few times I tried to work with people, it didn’t work. I work best by myself because people will lean over me being like “no,no,no,no, do this.” I think I was in the zone until you me fucked up, so just let me finish what I was doing.
Figure: I need to get to my one hundred percent, before I let someone else touch it. When you collaborate over the Internet, you always get your one hundred percent.
CNL: Has this changed how musicians communicate on a personal level? Does your creativity feel static or constant when exchanging ideas through a medium like email?
Figure: I’ve never felt that it’s static at any point. When you agree to paint a painting with someone you’re not going to like every stroke, but it goes together and that’s how the agreement came up.
Figure: A really good example is a track I made recently with Two Fold, titled “Traptor”. We were in a coffee store in Miami and nothing really came out of the session. At the end I was like, I’ll send you the session, you send me the session. I did what I wanted to and felt done. He sent it right back with this crazy melody and made parts I was stuck on. I don’t play it in my set, but he does and people really like it.
Figure: A lot of collaborations will start with someone finishing a song, not being satisfied, and giving it away to inspire someone to fill in the blanks. It’s almost part of a slate, where it has me in it, but I’m not going to finish it. The other artist will come back and hear all these new things that you can’t.
CNL: Is it almost a plateau or a producers-block where you need help then with your music for a collaboration?
Figure: Yeah exactly. I’ll not know where to go, but I’ll know there is somewhere to take it. Electronic music is an avant-garde way to create something, there is no real creative route. You have to operate with all these systems and make these things with a computer that isn’t a creative process. You’re developing sounds to eventually get to a song.
Figure: It’s not traditional creativeness that you would find with a band. Pink Floyd would just get weird as hell because they could just play music off the fly. With production, you have to make the sounds to get weird. How much of your weirdness do you loose when you have to think about how to make music sound weird?
Photo credit: MANNY
CNL: Who is an upcoming artist you recommend our readers keeping an eye on?
Figure: I really like Midnight Tyrannosaurus right now. He reminds me of what lacked in bass music when Monsters Vol. 1 came out. That offbeat ADD changing tempo didn’t really exist then, but he is triple fold that now. He just put out a 25 track album out for free a few months ago. He’s really creative and I’m influenced by him a lot.
CNL: It seems that bass producers avoid using the term ‘dubstep’ now to describe their music. Do you think this term is too pigeonholed in the mainstream consciousness?
Figure: I think the more you say dubstep the less gigs you get. If you say you just make heavy bass music, someone will actually have to look into you to understand. I’ll still say dubstep because everyone has gotten away from it so much.
Figure: It would be cool if people classified music by tempos. You’d have to explain how this new 128 is fucking crazy. You have to say a genre to identify what you do at one point though.
CNL: Should genres have any flexibility in what is considered and what is rejected? How could new genres and styles emerge from a method like genre labelling?
Figure: There is not that many genres that could pop out, it’s just refreshing old things that come back. So many people are asking if you’re on the bass house now because people feel it’s cool to be making new sounds.
Figure: I think the only people that really use those labels are kids that don’t know what they’re doing yet. When an artist is so developed they don’t have to label their work. When musicians are up and coming they love to throw labels of what it is, so hopefully someone knows where to throw them if they get caught. At a certain point though, once you’re good enough at sculpting your own sound, people don’t say they make this or that.
CNL: SERIES OF QUICK QUESTIONS.
CNL: Last show attended, but did not perform at?
Figure: Two nights ago D-Styles and The Gaslamp Killer played in Los Angeles. Before that was an Aesop Rock show in Chicago.
CNL: Smallest crowd you’ve played in front of?
Figure: Five people maybe? It was this year in my hometown.
Photo credit: MANNY
CNL: Your three top favourite cities to DJ a more experimental and wilder set?
Figure: Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles.
CNL: Who would you want to collaborate with from another genre entirely?
Figure: Hans Zimmer or someone who could make soundtracks. Someone who knows sound design finds production an ease.
CNL: Favourite remix you’ve heard of your own music?
Figure: I like the remix Midnight Tyrannosaurus did of “Werewolf”. He also made a remix to “Aliens”, but no one has heard that yet.
CNL: The best remix you’ve made of another artist?
Figure: I just made a new remix for Liquid Stranger that I like a lot.
CNL: Weirdest place you’ve been recognized as Figure?
Figure: Jimmy John’s, it’s like Subway, but simpler. They do something with their sauces that make it as bad as a big mac.
CNL: First thing you do in a hotel room?
Figure: Poop or wash my face.
CNL: The basic 5 things you do on your phone in the morning?
Figure: Email, Twitter, Facebook, look at the pictures I took last night, and make sure I didn’t actually text anyone the wrong thing.
Photo credit: MANNY
CNL: APOCALYPTIC SERIES OF QUESTIONS.
CNL: Preferred gun of choice?
Figure: An AR-15. I have one at home.
CNL: Melee weapon of choice?
Figure: A well made axe. Like a carbon fibre handle axe, something that you know won’t break.
CNL: Where would you pick as a stronghold?
Figure:A really well made tall building because you have the stairwell that you can destroy. A concrete building that could be blocked off multiple ways. Or a massive underground bomb shelter.
CNL: Ideal group size to travel with?
Figure: Three people, you want one person to stay up, but what if you can’t trust that person. Then you have an extra person to stay on watch.
CNL: Companion comes back sick with unknown infection from the woods. There is no obvious bite. Shoot, starve, or spare?
Figure: You don’t kill him, but you go your separate ways. I will spare him, but not stay with me. I’d tell him to fuck off.
CNL: Your biggest weakness in the abandoned supermarket?
Figure: Whiskey.
CNL: Would you constantly be moving or find somewhere to defend?
Figure: If the apocalypse lasted a long time and you could tell it was done, I would probably just kill myself. When you go to sleep, how bad are your nightmares? How could you sleep? There is no sanity, everything sucks, everyone you know is dead, the people you’re with you don’t know. After watching my friends get ripped apart, I’d just be done.
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