After what has been an extensive hiatus, fans will be ecstatic to hear that distinctive producers and avocado enthusiasts Mr. Bill and Ryanosaurus have returned with a brand new full length album entitled Scribble under their alias of Electrocado. With the three-year long wait for its release having come to an end, this anticipated LP is nothing short of spectacular, aptly highlighting each producer’s proficiency and skill with production, as well as encompassing each of their individual musical styles.
Renowned for their unique and eccentric blend of genres, Scribble is an artful, and glitch-abundant compilation of eleven diversified tracks, which includes some collaborative tunes with Morgan Agren, FM Radio Gods, and Circuit Bent. With the duo having teased a handful of tracks off of this album in past weeks, hearing the complete project will be undoubtedly satisfying for Electrocado fans.
We were fortunate to have had the opportunity to ask Mr. Bill and Ryanosaurus (colloquially known as Ryan Whare) a few questions about this album and their collective musical project, to which we have received some insightful answers. Check out the interview below, and be sure to support and download Scribble via Bandcamp.
1. First off, how did you two meet and decide to start making music together? Did a mutual appreciation for avocados have anything to do with it?
Bill: “We met at a doof (basically a psy-trance party/festival) in NSW called Dimensions Of Sound in 2008. Actually, yeah there was an initial appreciation of avocados, we both had some avocados that we brought to the party to stay nourished, and decided in the morning to have a little avocado and chip picnic… After that we hung out a few times post party because, we both used Ableton and didn’t really know too many people using it at the time, so decided to write some music together and it went pretty well, so we decided to keep collaborating and it pretty quickly turned into a side-project for both of us.”
Ryan: “Yeah we met at a party in 08 and a couple of weeks later again at a mutual friends house. In 2008 I didn’t know people writing computer music and was stoked to have a buddy to write tunes with. Bill and I were at similar places with learning Ableton so it was a good place to meet. After the first ‘Avolectrocado’ track from that day, we kept writing tunes and played a lot of parties together.”
2. There was a fairly lengthy hiatus between your previous releases, and your forthcoming album, Scribble. Did each of your musical styles evolve during that time, and how would you say it affected the overall sound of this LP?
Bill: “Yeah, I think the hiatus was mostly due to us just not really putting too much attention into the project. Electrocado for us (or me at least) has just become something I like to work on when I’m passionate about it, definitely not like the Mr. Bill project where I definitely enjoy forcing things out a little harder. I’d say between the last release and this one, both our musical styles have definitely evolved a lot (for better or worse…) and undoubtedly our production has improved a ton!”
Ryan: “It’s definitely been a long time between releases. Musical inspirations come in cycles and if I focus on any one thing for too long it becomes super boring and uninspiring. We have always tried to have a pretty organic approach to all aspect of the Electrocado project and just let it evolve with us without aiming for anything in particular. I guess this means when other things are going on in our lives or we feel like focussing on something else musically, the project slows right down. Over those years we still have a good chunk of music to show. For Scribble, I think we had a folder of about 40 ideas or half done tunes to choose from for the album and finish up.
I’d say the hiatus has changed the way we work a bit, we have both definitely trained our brains towards the directions we have been focussing on the last few years (production aesthetic, mix theory, musicality, arrangement, etc). Even though our solo projects are pushing different things and catering to pretty different markets these days, we still have fairly similar core influences and ideas about how to make interesting music.
So maybe it maybe makes working together more challenging to balance and compromise our ideas, but I think it’s a good thing in the end to help us evolve and push the project in different ways.”
3. How did you come up with the title of this release?
Bill: “I actually don’t remember, although I do know that we were originally going to release an EP called Scribble, and that was just going to be the two last tracks on this release (Scribble & Spiralz with Morgan Agren), and then I think we were going to take the more banging 4/4 tracks off the album and make another EP out of those, then another EP would be made from the more whacky glitch-hop influenced tunes, but then we decided it’d probably be cooler to just make it an album, and the name Scribble just carried over from that I guess.”
Ryan: “I think Bill came up with the name Scribble for a chill tune we wrote. After we decided to release an EP then album, we though the name seemed like a good fit for the release as well as the track being a standout from the album.”
4. There are a handful of collaborative tunes on this album. Is there a certain track that you guys particularly enjoyed working on?
Bill: “Working with Morgan Agren on Spiralz & Scribble was really awesome, he’s definitely an amazing musician and very respected, so we were really stoked about that. The collab with FM Radio Gods was also really fun, and of course, working with Circuit Bent is always a pleasure, even though this particular collab was via massive correspondence both geographically, and time-wise. As for a favorite tune to work on, I think I enjoyed working on either Chained or Plinky Plonk the most from this release.”
Ryan: “It was great having Morgan Agren play some drums for our chill tracks, Scribble I think is my favourite. My other picks to work on were probably Baited and Plinky Plonk.”
5. How do you guys divide up the work when producing new tracks, or do you both work on every aspect together?
Bill: “We just do whatever really. Sometimes, I’ll bring a new idea to the table, other times Ryan will, then we just put it in a shared Dropbox folder, then work on the ideas in our own time. So maybe I’ll put an idea in there and Ryan will work on it 3 months later and add a new section or something, then maybe a few months later I’ll work on it again, and eventually it shapes up to be a tune. I kind of think this way of working is interesting in its own way, because it allows the tunes to mature a lot with our tastes as they’re being written, rather than being temporary time-stamps of our feelings which is something I feel like the Mr. Bill project doesn’t have so much.”
Ryan: “For a long time Bill and I had a rule that we would work on tracks together in the same room. When we got much busier with our individual projects and started living in different cities, we weren’t writing much new music so decided to move the whole project to a shared dropbox folder. We don’t have any particular guidelines for writing together now, sometimes we both work on a our own versions of a tune at the same then mix them together. Sometime we slowly work on the one project at different times and let it evolve over a long period. Like Circadoian Rhythms, which was the first tune we wrote after we released the Hass Effect and have been continually revising since 2011, only to be released on Scribble now. Like Bill said, I also think being open to genre or stylistic influences over a long time period helps shape our projects into a more diverse outcome.”
6. Can you tell us a little bit about anything else Electrocado has planned for the future?
Bill: ” I think we’re going to try playing a few more shows, as well as just work on more music. We still have a bunch “B-sides” (for lack of a better term) that didn’t make it onto the album, mostly because they just weren’t ready, which I think we still want to finish, so that’s definitely on the cards. Other than that, as always I think we’re just going to freestyle it and hope for the best with this new release in the imminent future.”
Ryan: “No huge plans at the moment, just writing new tunes for the project and seeing what the future brings. We will hopefully tour again soon with this new album too which will be great, it’s been a long time since we’ve played together.”
Connect with Electrocado
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https://twitter.com/electrocado
https://soundcloud.com/electrocado