REZZ breaks down new track ‘Can You See Me’ and gives studio tour
The Canadian producer breaks down the creative process behind the title track of her upcoming March record ‘Can You See Me’?
REZZ onstage at Brooklyn Mirage on June 21, 2019. Image: Zachary Mazur/Getty Images
Future bass producer REZZ has given fans a glimpse into her red-lit creative lair in Toronto, where she makes her music.
From the depths of her converted shed studio, with Medusa’s decapitated head overseeing the process, the Canadian DJ unravels how she created her new track Can You See Me? in a new clip posted to YouTube.
In terms of equipment, REZZ’s mixing station is stripped-back, with eight-and-a-half-inch JBL studio monitors, a Focusrite Scarlet Solo sound card, and Sol Republic headphones. She’s also working on Ableton Live. It’s a setup she calls “minimal,” but it is clearly effective.
She starts the track breakdown with the drums: “The drums in my opinion have a very industrial feel, which is sort of the vibe that I’m going for this project,” she explains. “For the clap and the snare… there’s two layers. It gives it that punch, and then the layer underneath has this sort of reverb. [It makes an] atmospheric sounding snare clap.”
FabFilter’s Saturn saturation plugin also helped REZZ fine-tune the track’s drums. “I use a preset on it called Basic Saturator,” she explains. “It makes the kick sound fatter, and there’s a slight distortion to it.” As she plays the drum track, you can hear the ‘fat’ quality – it feels impossibly atmospheric, like an ominous wasteland.
As REZZ explains, the key ingredient when constructing Can You See Me?’s haunting sound was layering. Much like the drumming tracks, the vocal tracks are also layered to heighten the unsettling, twisted sensation of the track.
After playing a set of whispered vocals in isolation, REZZ explains “I felt like I needed some atmosphere, some reverb, so I created a different version to layer it.” The multiple vocal layers vary from light, ghostly whispers, to frazzled, scratchy howls of “Can you hear me?”. The contrasting whispers and more frantic vocals add an unnerving quality to the track, an undercurrent of panic.
“I’m not really notorious for using any of my own vocals on my tracks,” REZZ goes on to explain. “This is what I consider to be the first debut of my vocals on a track. and I’m actually super stoked about how it sounded!”
Pitching down and twisting previous sounds used on the track served as the finishing touch. With industrial samples, and rehashing previous drum samples, amping up the BPM to 156 for the climax, the track is a whirl of disorienting mental horror. At times throughout the creation process, REZZ admits she was thinking “am I literally all right or should I be in the psych ward?”
While REZZ is incredibly DIY-minded, she’s a lover of presets. In her eyes, they help artists create their own sounds, giving them a foundation to build upon. “This is a Serum preset – there’s nothing wrong with using presets, I like to use a preset and then I like to edit it afterwards, sort of make it my own,” she says.
REZZ is always ensuring tracks are wholeheartedly ‘her own’, taking a hands-on approach to her mixing. “I always mix as I go,” she asserts. “The only time I ever get someone else to mix or master my tracks is if it’s a collaboration with someone and I trust their judgement, like deadmau5… He’s such a genius with mixing and mastering. I just, like, let him do it.”
The track comes as the second taste of REZZ’s 14th March release, Can You See Me?. Considering REZZ has said the record is set to be her “heaviest yet”, we’re sure the record will have many other treats in store.
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