Apeshit For 8Bit : An Interview With Cuth
Nestled in amongst Brighton’s rainbows and endless coffee shops, is veteran resident and long time button basher extraordinaire, Tom aka Cuth. With Sample based beats and heavy use of analogue synths, he’s known for creating a unique sonic canvas for rappers like King Kashmere, Frankie Stew and Shabaam Sahdeeq. His constantly evolving styles have, over the years, found their way on a long list of impressive record labels, including House Shoes owned Street Corner music and the UK’s largest hip-hop label High Focus Records. After making the final of SkiBeats SmackPack challenge and the World Tournament 2 Beat Battle representing team SP, Cuth has proved that he’s one to always keep an eye on as his long music journey shows no sign of using the brakes.
Introduce yourself in your own words…
I'm Cuth AKA Tom. I make beats and stuff. I collect records, bits of old hardware and synths, star wars figures, comics and nerdy things like that. I'm also a qualified Architect for my day job.
How long have you been making music?
I've been making music (or at least trying to) since the early 2000s, about the same time I started collecting records. My first ever beats were made on a Playstation 2 with Music Generator 2 - I dread to think what they sound like now. I probably have a minidisc or two with some exports on them somewhere, but thankfully I haven't seen or heard those for a long time. I moved on from there to FL Studio, which I think was still Fruity Loops at the time, alongside Cool Edit Pro 2 (which I still use quite a lot) and that's where I started to get a better grasp of how sample based music goes together. I probably got half way competent at marking beats in 2007 and that's when a few started getting on projects etc.
What’s the best sample you’ve ever found?
I've found quite a lot of samples that other people have used over the years. Some of them really obscure ones, but I don't want to grass anyone up. Can't think of a best one off the top of my head, but a few years ago I stumbled across the sample 9th Wonder used on Little Brother's 'The Way You Do It' Thats one of my favourite beats ever and I'd been looking for the bluegrass/ folk record it sampled for years, one of those hilariously naff records that has heat on it. I knew at some point I'd stumble across one. Managed to grab one from a bargain bin in a small town record shop.
Your favourite sample ever used in a track?
I've got loads of really good/ rare/ desirable records and things like that, and it's fun gathering those together and hunting for them, but what I love the most are the things you find super cheap, or that just pop up in unexpected places. That's the joy of digging for me. Being on holiday or something and popping into a charity shop, antiques shop or a car boot sale somewhere unusual and scooping up some low key heat. Especially the ones where the record looks terrible, but has some fire on it. Again, it's tricky to pick a favourite, but one that pops to mind is when I found a stack of absolutely battered, sleeveless Bollywood singles at a car boot sale a few years ago and the first one I chucked on the turntable I ended up using for a track off the last Adam and Cuth LP (on the track 'Transformers Two'). That record cost me about 20p or something, found in a random car boot sale amongst a load of random bric-a-brac, so scratched and abused that I couldn't even read what the song was called, but it became the basis of one of the lead singles for the project. That's the stuff that get's me excited about looking for records and sampling.
Favourite Producers and most inspiring artist ?
Favourite producer is really tough. Early RZA, Madlib, Pete Rock, 9th Wonder, Just Blaze, Premier, Dilla, Dre - at one point or other along the way they've all had a massive influence on me in terms of approach, sonics, technique etc.
Who are you listening to at the moment?
I'm listening to quite a lot of synth based stuff at the moment. I'm trying to get better at actually playing music and programming patches and that kind of stuff, so I'm absorbing myself in that kind of retro/futurism synth music space. MNDSGN, Dabrye, Devon who and people like that really.
Can you give us a run through of the equipment list you have in your studio?
I'm working a lot with the Roland SP series at the moment, experimenting with different work flows using a combination of the 202, 303, 404 and the 404mk2. Sometimes bouncing things and mixing in the PC, sometimes just staying in the box. I bought an MPC One, but I haven't really got comfortable with the workflow on that yet. I've got an old Akai S20 that sounds pretty beefy, some pre-amps and effect pedals. Aside from that I'm using a bunch of synths, trying to come up with ways of adding to and elaborating samples and even making stuff without samples, but making it sound like it has been sampled still. Mostly cheap synths really, my favourites at the moment are the Behringer Poly D (clone minimoog) and the Deepmind 6 (Like a knock-off Juno) I'm trying to avoid the financial trap of high end synths!
What is your favourite piece of kit to use in your studio?
The SP-303 I think. It changed the way I approach making music when I got it, it looks super cool and it sounds crunchy as hell. The 404mk2 massively supersedes it for actually making beats, but there's something about the 303 that always draws me back to it. If a bit of gear makes me want to make music I think that's the most important thing.
Do you enjoy the challenges of having limitations with the equipment you use ?
100% Thats what got me into the Roland SP series in the first place. Even when I was making things solely in FL Studio I would always use it in a really weird/ basic way to keep some limitations on the work flow. It's part of the reason I'm struggling with the MPC One. You almost have too many options on there, it's overwhelming. I like music equipment that is fun to use, that makes me want to use it and that allows me to just work without overthinking things or getting lost in the process.
How and where do you get your samples from usually ?
Records, cassettes, CDs, from obscure corners of the internet, Youtube sometimes - but I do try to avoid anything with more than a few thousand plays otherwise there's a chance it has been sampled a million times that week. I've sampled from the radio before, I've sampled Bollywood and horror movie soundtracks straight from DVDs before. Anywhere is fair game really. I used to care about sampling from vinyl only and all that stuff, but that's just snobbery really. I don't really like to sample things that have been used a lot, or that are recognisable, but the older I get the more I realise that it's what you do with the sample that makes it interesting. Over the years I have gotten better at flipping samples, so I care a lot less about people recognising sample sources than I used to.
Where do you get your drum samples from ? Sampled ? Or from sample packs?
A bit of everything really, but more and more I'm using drums from sample packs and then processing them with the samplers to make them a bit more unique and put my own little sonic twist on them.
What is your starting point for making a track ?
Pretty much always the sample. Even if I'm trying to play stuff from scratch, I'll record a few little bits in a set key or something and then sample and chop them up. Once I have a vibe going I'll try and emphasise and enhance it with drums, bass and other layers.
Could you run through your usual signal chain ?
It really varies, I try and mix up the work flows a lot as it can lead to little creative surprises and stop me getting too comfortable with one formula. I normally sample into one of the SPs depending on how I want to 'colour' the sample, they all have different levels of grit to them. I'll normally mess around with the pitch or timestretch or something to add a bit of texture to the sample too, again the sampler I pick will impact how dirty or clean this is. Then I'll chop the samples and build a basic sequence. I'll either do that in one of the SPs (normally the mk2 these days), or the MPC One if I'm feeling brave, or in FL Studio if I want to have more mixing control/ am likely to add in loads of layers. Then I just keep building up loops really. Making variations and layers and then arranging them into a basic song structure. I tend to mix everything into the sp-303 with the vinyl sim as a master bus compressor effectively.
Do you mix straight out from hardware sampler or finish your tracks in a DAW?
A bit of both. Sometimes i mute layers on the SP and then export basic stems out into FL Studio, almost like a 4 track, so I can do final mix tweaks. Other times I just mix as much as I can in the mk2, sometimes I just make resampled beats on the 303 and only mix as I go, baking each layer in as it's added. It really depends on how raw I want the beat to sound in the end. I favour emotion and vibe over technical perfection, but the beats still need to thump when they're finished.
What is your preferred DAW to use?
I use Cubase for recording and mixing vocals and finished tracks, if I'm making proper songs with actual raps on them, but I wouldn't know how to make a beat in there. FL Studio is the only bit of software I'm comfortable to make beats on.
What are your top 5 Vst’s ?
I just use the shit basic ones normally, stock reverbs, delays etc. The main character work on sounds is done with hardware normally, either on the SPs or in effects pedals. If I'm locked into just being on a laptop or something I'd use Decimort for bit crushing, I got that RX950 for a kind of fake Akai S950 sound to fatten up drums etc if I don't have the SPs to hand. I had a few tape saturators, but the last one I used has stopped working. Some old waves bits for tidying up - Multiband compressor, limiter etc. I'm not much of a sound engineer to be honest, that's something I should get better at. I still use 32 bit software too, so my plugin game is pretty weak.
What is your favourite production tip or trick ?
It took me an embarrassingly long time to get my head around basic EQ and mixing principles. I.e carving out space for all the different elements of a beat to sit together well. I probably have loads to learn still, but that was one of the best things I have learnt through the years via trial and error - make sure you have a plan for the finished beat as you're adding in your layers. Simple things really, like taking lows out of snares if they're not adding to the character of the snare. SImplifying the eq range of hats so they don't take space away from the samples etc. I normally take most of the lows out of the samples first so there's space for a kick drum to cut through, then EQ drum samples so that they hit hard and then EQ the bass around these frequency ranges so that this gives room for the kick drums. Really simple stuff, but makes a world of difference.
What’s your go to reference track or album ?
Madvillainy for that lofi filth, Dre's 2001 for crystal clear sonics. Probably others, but they're the ones I find myself listening to and thinking 'how do I get this to sound a bit more like that'.
Which part of the music creation process do you enjoy the most ?
I've got two kids now and work quite a tiring job, so I tend to make beats in small 2 hour windows while the kids are in bed. Normally twice a week, more if I'm very lucky. I've come to really like this as a working constraint as it encourages me to just make something quickly and without too much overthinking or pre-thought. I always have some samples ear marked and to hand so I can just jump straight in. If for some reason I can't find anything quickly that I want to work with, I'll start noodling on the synths. That's the bit I like the most really, just making something new, smashing out a quick idea, falling into that flow state and then just trusting the process to see what happens. If it doesn't come together it can be a bit frustrating, but I can just stop and come back to it another time, but more often than not the beat comes out pretty decent. I think I'd just do that forever even if no one ever heard what I was making to be honest, it's like therapy! I do also really enjoy digging for records. I'm always looking for places that might be selling records, the weirder and more random the place the better. I want to find things I haven't seen before, or things for cheap that the shop just doesn't know about. Flicking through a big pile of records looking for something that might be gold is one of my favourite ways to relax (whilst also still feeling kind of productive too).
A lot of people reading this will be wanting to get in to making beats. Do you have any advice for them ?
Just make lots of beats. There isn't really a shortcut. Some people will get to a point where their beats are very good faster than others, but sooner or later you'll get good. I feel like it took me quite a while to get good at it, or to find my own 'sound'. But yeah, just keep at it. Keep making beats and keep trying to push yourself to improve on certain aspects as you go. Nothing teaches you like practice. I've been making beats for 20 years+ now and every time I make one I learn a little something or get slightly better at one technique or other.
Cuth has a track included on the last Bake Sale Vol. 10 compilation.
And on the Wake N' Bake Vol. 2 cassette compilation.
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