I first heard of Mofomatronix when Jackmaster (the guy who runs the Dress2Sweat record label, Numbers club night and many, many more things) played me some of their tracks when he came to play my night. He tore it up that night but that is a different story.
I was really impressed by the production style they displayed and looked them up online to discover they are a couple of producers and dj's operating from Montreal. They run the Turbo Crunk night in Montreal and Toronto with their pals Megasoid, Blingmod and Lunice and also the Many Brain blog.
They took some time out from making crazy beats to answer some questions for me and you.
EB: What is and was the club scene like where you guys grew up? Did your night start because you were following suit from other hip hop nights or were you starting from scratch with it?
MFMTRNX: The club scene is Montreal is similar to most other big cities nowadays. The serato-DJ plays the same artist remixed by the same producer at the same horrible bitrate, and that phenomenon is very much present here. However there is a subculture of interesting club nights with considerable draw that have been around and were popping hard by the time we got our first monthly going proper dumb. The like minded homies would be Ghislain Poirier and his infamous Bounce Le Gros nights, Khiasma and his Baile MTL super-eclectic parties, and of course the Megasoid dudes. So as much as we weren't exactly following suit with the club scene of the city, it'd be a lie to claim ownership on what we did or say we started from scratch, as it was a select few monthly parties all individually pushing more diverse interesting sounds that made it good for everyone.
EB: How is your sound recieved in Montreal and Toronto where you run your nights?
MFMTRNX: To our surprise, our "thing" has been accepted as a legit club sound. whether pushing obscure Hyphy tracks, the latest Atlante club anthems, our own sounds or those of our friends and peers around the world like Lazer Sword, we've always been amazed at how it has not only kept clubs popping, but has often dragged people out to dancefloors. Curiously enough this has happened a few times when we were playing on bills alongside techno/electro DJs, and a few hours at 130bpm, we'd come on and play what is even to us at times the weirdest club music imaginable, people got to the dancefloor and really "get it". It's great.
EB: Are there any local mcs that you work with or plan to work with in the near future? (I ask because there are loads of mcs here but the dj scene is so far from the mc scene that the two rarely mix and when they do there are differences due to djs being more geeky about what they listen to and mcs having a hard time grasping where they fit in the hip hop food chain)
MFMTRNX: The thing is, there aren't many MCs in Montreal (at least since Giovanni Marks moved!), and truthfully we haven't really looked. However we have a few people in Chicago, LA, Texas and San Fransisco that we are supposed to work with in the near future. Hopefully we can hook up with some UK peoples as well. Though that's definitely a good point about producers and MCs often being on different wavelenghts, the scope of our beats covers many grounds and we have our secret stash of straight up rap beats that we could possibly throw at an MC, get the acapella back and flip it from there.
EB: Which producers have inspired you so far past and present?
MFMTRNX: Kraftwerk, Traxamillion, Bangladesh, Pinch, Droop-E, The Neptunes, Timbaland, etc. Anything from a banging strip club Collipark Snap beat from the southern States to a solid german Ellen Allien techno tune will inspire us tremendously.
EB: Have you thought about taking that leap and making uptempo music using the same production style? I mean that Common tune is at 120bpm and the Ne-Yo tune is even faster.
MFMTRNX: We don't force any tempo on our tracks and just come up with a melody and see at what speed it would work, otherwise with remixes we'll start from a rap we really like and work around its tempo. We have a few 110+ tracks, and I believe our set goes up to 120bpm right now, but then you gotta do something with it... like make all the verses 60bpm, some polyrhythms, fuck with the dancefloor a tiny bit. Fast bpms give us headaches. And for what it's worth it's not entirely unusual for rap or hip hop to reach those speeds whether full on or half time. My Love and Gossip Folk are both 120bpm.
But essentially if you're going in that bpm range, I bloody hope it's just a vicious transition towards 65bpm hahaha.
There you have it, bass heavy hip hop that works for the dancefloor, check the remixes from them and their fam.
Nas - Made You Look (Mofomatronix Remix)
Kinfolk - So Krisy (Mofomatronix Remix)
Busta Rhymes - Whoo Hah (Lunice Remix)
There are loads more delights to be sampled over at the Many Brain blog so get on it.
Also Mofomatronix are playing at The Ballers Social Club night, in Glasgow, at The Ivy with Rustie and Eclair on Saturday the 8th of August.
