Pearson Sound: FWD Thinking

One of the UK’s undisputed standout producers, David Kennedy aka Pearson Sound is someone you can count on to smash it at Field Day 2011…

Whether spearheading his record label, Hessle Audio, one of the country’s most exciting and influential dance imprints, or evolving and expanding his sonic vistas in the studio, Pearson Sound has become a name intertwined with innovation, as one of the leaders of the new school of young UK producers taking club music into previously unchartered waters.

Tom Lea of FACT magazine caught up with Pearson Sound to freedom, field recordings and getting inspired by “total tear-outs” at FWD>>

It would’ve been late ’08/early ’09 that you started using the Pearson name..
“Yeah, some people think I started it really recently but it was around that time. At first I started it because I wanted to see how people would react when they didn’t know who was behind the tunes. And it’s not like it was top secret, but most people genuinely didn’t know who Pearson was when these tunes started appearing – it was good. Eventually it transpired it was me, I mean I wasn’t trying too hard to keep it anonymous, I think if you do that you just have to tell no one, really [laughs]. There’s no point being anonymous and being casual about it.”

Was there any element of freedom in using a new name?
“Freedom, hmm, yeah there was… Though I don’t know if it was so much that people thought Rama sounded a certain way, musically or whatever, it was more just fun really. Though retrospectively people have applied some element of sonic differentiation between the two names, which was never my intention but it’s quite nice, sometimes to see how people interpret it… like, ‘that’s the housey name!’, and it’s like ‘well, I did do a drum’n’bass tune as it…’ But it’s fine, that’s what music journalists do.”

To get an idea about timeframe, when you started the Pearson work… which for me, you might disagree, is kind of when you hit third gear as a producer, were you based in France?
“Yeah, I went to France as part of my degree, from September 2008 to Summer 2009… so you know, I was in very different surroundings – I had friends there, I met people, but it was quite an isolating experience, being away from London, away from Leeds. It was really good to be away, and I had a lot of free time… I think I had 12 hours of teaching a week, and I was getting paid for that, plus the odd DJ gig, so that was when I made a lot of the stuff that came out in 2009.”

Do you still do a lot of field recording?
“Yeah, yeah. Well the first track of the Fabric CD, it’s called ‘Hawker’ because it’s recorded in Singapore, in one of those hawker centres? They’re nuts, they’re incredibly packed and vibrant. Well, it’s either Indonesia or Singapore… I really  should know that. But yeah, I love [field recording], it’s fun sometimes.

“When I got back from France, I lived with my parents for a while; they’ve got a big house in Dorset where I could go up to the roof and make as much noise as I wanted. Harry [Midland, fellow producer] came down, and we spent a lot of time making tunes… going back and forth, like ‘that’s great!’, that’s shit!’ [laughs]. I’m trying to think what we wrote there. That’s the thing about all the stuff I released this year, a lot of it is old, it’s scary in a way. A lot of the tunes from the Ramadanman EP I wrote in France, ‘Bleeper’ I wrote in 2008 maybe. But then ‘Don’t Change For Me’ would’ve been November 2009, the Swamp[81] stuff I wrote early 2010. ‘Glut’ was Summer 2009, ‘Tempest’ is older than that…”

Something that always strikes me about your discography, is that you can see how it progresses over time…
“I think you can trace it back. There was [also] the housier period, the whole dubstep-techno thing… I mean I didn’t move away from it because it wasn’t trendy anymore, but it was like ‘I’ve already made enough tunes like ‘Humber’, I don’t want to make anymore. I’ve done it, I quite like it, so why make more when I can just explore a bit?’ But a lot of the stuff like ‘Tumble’, and ‘Bleeper’, well I haven’t really spoken about this much before… But I was playing FWD>> quite a lot at that period, and it was a strange time for me; I think it was a strange time for dubstep. I’d play FWD>>, and people would be playing total tear-out.”

Was this when it was on a Friday night?
“I can’t remember really. But I was playing it a lot, and it’s like… of all the nights that you shouldn’t have to compromise your sound, it’s FWD>> surely? You’ve got the club, you’ve got the system… I had a couple of bad experiences there, but generally, I found that a very creative, experimental time for us. It was partly Untold to be honest, he started it to be honest, with his [Gonna Work Out Fine] EP.”

Yeah, he kind of kicked the doors down…
“Yeah… it was like, just try doing it, you know? It might work. I don’t think anyone else would’ve dreamed of doing the stuff he did on that EP. So it’s not that it became a competition, but there was an element of who could be weirder…”

And still have the place go off…
“Yeah, I remember when Joe… Joe dubstep, or Joe Hessle or whatever you call him, one time at FWD>> he just ran up and pulled up ‘Bleeper’. I mean you just wouldn’t have thought to pull it up [until then]. So the EP came out of that period, I suppose. And then I started getting more into the breaks-y side of things, which led to ‘Grab Somebody’, which sort of moved into ‘Glut’, which moved into ‘Work Them’. So I do see it as a narrative, not necessarily a deliberate one, but you can see the progression. I do see what you mean, about making a few tunes at one period with a lot of the same sounds. It’s kind of both – kind of a narrative, but also…”

Well the drums seem to be the constant. They maybe define those individual periods of your work…
“I’ve got a feeling it’s the fact that when I get some new drums sounds I just rinse them [laughs] it’s all about the palette of sounds. A lot of what I’ve been making recently, it’s quite bashy, kind of New York house, and I think it’s to do with using drum sounds from that period. Then my earlier stuff, which is a lot more tribal and percussive, it’s because I got given a pack of, you know, world samples [laughs]. It’s a practical thing, I’ve got some new sounds, I wanted to use them, and it just so happened they were all percussive. Whereas last year, I got a lot of drum machine samples, and I ended up using them a lot. I don’t really think about it too much.”

It’s probably for the best.
“Yeah, it’d send you a bit loopy I think.”

How has running Hessle Audio changed over the years?
“Well we went for a meeting with our distributor the other day, kind of a road trip. And it just really made us think how fortunate we are – starting something from our bedrooms, putting out a few 12”s, and next thing you know we’re releasing our 20th single, planning quite a substantial project, and people are buying our releases religiously, and raving about them. It’s very humbling, in that respect.

“I think our quality control has gone up over the years, not in terms of feeling pressure, but maybe being a bit more militant in terms of what we don’t release. I think there’s a big danger of just releasing filler, or releasing for the sake of releasing, and we’re keen to avoid that; quite consciously, in fact. I think too many labels do that. The way we release stuff has already been very natural, the Elgato tunes for instance, we had for a very long time. In fact it was me that took about a year to be convinced by them.

“I’d rather not make blind promises; I’d rather surprise people. If you come out and announce your six 12”s for the year, by the time the last one’s out after the inevitable delays people will be like ‘oh, this is old now’. We only announce stuff when we’ve got the test presses back, that way we know for certain when it’ll be in shops. It works better for everyone… it goes back to what we were saying about mystery, you know? People don’t really know what’s coming next on Hessle, it’s not a question of us being arsey or secretive, it’s just not making empty promises. Especially in music, when so much can go wrong. I think it’s best to keep your cards close to your chest.”