We had met Deco years before while he was doing his thing in Atlanta, and had kept in contact with him over the years about all sorts of music and media related ideas. A couple years later we reconnected in Los Angeles with the Slow Roast Records project in it’s early stages of preparation. With out much hesitation at all, we fired up the kitchen and got to work! We thought it would be of some interest to our readers to do a little Q & A with one of the guys that helped us develop the web and media side of Slow Roast, as well as catch up with some of the other projects Deco has been working on as of late.
The main reason all of us here at Slow Roast initially contacted you to help us with the site had a lot to do with your colorful history as both a web developer as and your involvement in the music world. Give us the rundown on how you started out and what led you down the road to some of the projects you’ve been involved with over the years.
I’ve sort of floated between the worlds of music and technology for the better part of the past decade. On the technology side, I started learning the basics of programming and the ropes of Photoshop and things like that in about 1995 when I was about 14. At the time there wasn’t much of an outlet for young people who were into computers, so I ended up attending a lot of 2600 meetings in my hometown of Atlanta. It’s billed as a hacker meet-up but all types of people ended up there. The connection between technology and music was already really strong in the mid-90s, so a lot of the people I knew through 2600 were also the same people I went out to music events with. We’d go to raves, punk shows, hip-hop events, anything that resonated with us really. When I got into college I started DJing and worked at my school’s radio station, WRAS Atlanta. While I was working there I realized that finding a way to make a living with music was something I had to do, so I’ve been finding ways to blend my technology skills with my love of music ever since.
On the music side, I’ve done about every job there is in radio aside from climbing transmitter towers, I’ve spent many years as a promoter doing drum & bass events in Atlanta with 404Audio and working for Insomniac in LA on shows like Electric Daisy Carnival. My current music focus is Deceast, a record label I started that caters to the deeper side of bass music at all tempos. On the technology side, I’ve worked at several start-ups and interactive agencies over the years with a lot of freelancing mixed in when I don’t have a full-time gig. I mostly work on the web, although there’s a ton of awesome stuff happening in the mobile world right now.
We all learned a lot picking you’re brain during the development stages of slowroastrecs.com. Its obvious you’ve spent a lot of time (so have we!) trying to figure out exactly whats important to our potential fans. What would you say are some key areas that artists should focus on when it comes to making a good impression on the web. Give us all some pointers!
I think there are three aspects of a web presence artists should pay attention to: content, aesthetics, and technology. Your content should be the best you can possibly make it, don’t put out half-finished ideas whether it’s a song going on your album or a paragraph going on your website. Your aesthetics should have a consistent vibe, ideally with the music forming the foundation and the logo, colors, website, writing style, and visual look being built on top of the music. Lastly, well-applied technology will make your good aesthetics great, so make sure the people creating your website or your iPhone app are talented designers and engineers.
Over the past couple years you’ve been developing you’re own record label Deceast, tell us a bit about what influenced you to start the label and how its taken shape.
Having a label is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time but I haven’t been in a good position to start one until recently. About a year ago I set up Deceast as a website to host all of the DJ mixes I had done over the years, then started posting other content in more of a blog format, and it just sort of carried on from there. I started getting sent a lot of really great music that I wasn’t hearing many other people supporting, so the label was a natural evolution. The first release came out in November (Bro Safari – “Amazon Rock” b/w Mayhem & Section 8 – “Miles In The Sky”) and I’m in the process of lining up the next two or three releases to come out at the beginning of 2011. I’ll also be distributing free releases from the website periodically, the first one just came out last week – it’s a 3 track EP of instrumental hip-hop by myself called “Thoughts of the Past”.
Musically and aesthetically what makes Deceast unique?
I think the music on Deceast is going to end up as a pretty eclectic catalog of genres and sub-genres that are connected by a consistent vibe in the music. I’m into all types of what you could loosely call bass music, whether it’s dubstep, drum & bass, hip-hop, house, or anything else that has a solid low end. The consistency is in the feel of the music I’m putting out: I’m not too concerned about what genre it happens to fit into as long as it has some depth and soul. The visual aesthetic of the label is clean and organic, both of which are pretty common separately but I enjoy coming up with ways to blend the two.
Obviously your involvement in the music world has had a major influence on your artistic vision for the label. I’m interested in how perhaps your background in web development (and other related areas) has effected the direction you are planning to take with Deceast.
My technology background has definitely made my job as a label owner easier. Now that the music industry is essentially digital, having a good grasp of technology makes the day to day label work a lot easier. Whether it’s running the Deceast site or planning online marketing for the upcoming releases, it definitely helps that I’ve already done a lot of this for other people in a professional capacity.
What else is in the works? Plans for the future? Is there any web or music projects we should keep an eye out for? (plug some links if u can)
Another gift from Deco, the Deceast Mix Series! Our favorite so far, #002 features a 57 minute downtempo / hip-hop mix from the man himself, including some of his own production.
