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What’s going on with RWINA in the near future?
SRC has the “Goin Out” EP out April 26.
Noah D with My Vitamin Pillbox Nikes/The Love out in early May.
Terror Danjah’s Reinforced EP is out at the end of May.
There is also a label night here in Holland with Starkey on May 14.
Any plans for an LP — either an artist LP or a label comp — or is that totally against what RWINA is for?
There are some plans for a double pack EP with Taz and some other Rwina signees. There is no hurry or a deadline. He is sending me tunes and when we see an EP in the tunes, we’ll go for it. I’m not against it; it has this strange vibe to it, to call a bunch of tunes an album. I’m seeing albums getting dropped every week, in my opinion they are just a collection of tunes, which is good. Maybe on a later stadium when I’m a lot deeper in my releases. As far as for a label compilation, yes I’ll do one in the near future.
RWINA009: Terror Danjah’s “Reinforced” out in June
Do you ever see RWINA radically branching out from its current sound?
I cannot tell that.
Continuing on that note, do you feel as if ‘dubstep’ is only improving or is on its way out as a genre?
I’ve never thought about that, I mean not for a year or two now. I think ‘bass-heavy music’ is only improving as a genre. The possibilities in producing and sound design are rising every day. I stay with that instead of worrying about whether it is going to survive or not, it’s just music.
Any reason why you don’t release your own tracks on RWINA? They seem worthy enough and would fit in well with the rest of the catalogue.
Thanks a lot. Maybe I’ll consider it in the future. The tunes I finished now are for another label. [Namely two releases, including the wonderful “Neon Swagga” on Subway later this year]
Finally, what’s your personal favorite RWINA release and why?
All of them. Each one has a story behind it of how it shaped up or restarted the whole thing, which TP was fucked, and so on. You can’t decide as a parent which child is your favorite — yes, I got the cliché flex.
RWINA002: Taz Buckfaster – “Inside Job” / “Kingston Bridge”
Taz mixes neon starbursts and high-pitched melodies with harsh LFO on “Inside Job” — here is where we see the current RWINA sound start to take shape — while “Kingston Bridge” is Buckfaster’s glorious take on reggae. See also RWINA004, with Taz refining his sound down to a science and boosting it in all the right places.
RWINA003: Playdoe – “Freeze Step” (Starkey Remix) / “Front Seat”
Playdoe brings an acid-washed hip-hop anthem, given a delightfully weird remix by Starkey, throwing in a UK Funky beat, pulling pins out of the melody so it sags and bends in odd directions, and adds all sorts of bleeps and cartoonish synths.
RWINA005: Starkey – “Rain City” / “Beatingz”
By my money, the best thing Starkey has released yet — and that’s including his forthcoming LP. I’ll let my colleague Sam Olson preach the gospel: “It floats in interstellar synth wash, the whole dizzying swell sounding like the soundtrack to a robot romance, one standing forlorn and rusting in the rain as the other glides off into the darkness. “Beatingz” on the flip is all one glorious build, pulling together mangled threads and insistent beats. Layers of synth stack up higher and higher before the wheels come off and it skids downhill, throwing up sparks in this filthy, guttural groove. Turned up loud, it feels like it could crush your skull to powder. Taken together, the two tracks see Starkey moving in a bolder direction, bringing more structural elegance and more emotion into his tracks to undeniably stellar effect.”
All RWINA releases are available for streaming at myspace.com/rwinarecords.
