“When you first start, you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I want another artist to see all the shit I have on my master chain’”: Rezz on approaching collaborations
“But the thing is, when you’ve produced music for a long time, you realise that there actually are no rules.”
Image: Emma McIntyre / Getty Images
From deadmau5 to NGHTMRE to Subtronics, 28-year-old dark bass maestro Rezz is no stranger to collaborations.
However, even she gets “insecure” when first starting out, as she reveals in a new interview with MusicTech.
“When you first start, you think there are things that you’re potentially doing wrong, and you’re insecure about that,” Rezz says. “You’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know if I want another artist to see all the shit that I have on my master chain’. But the thing is, when you’ve produced music for a long time, you realise that there actually are no rules.”
“Some people’s project files are absolutely insane. Some people’s mixdowns aren’t the best, from a technical standpoint. But it doesn’t matter at all. Because the song idea still came across.”
That said, going into sessions with a “blank canvas” is a big no-no for the producer-DJ, who admits she isn’t “comfortable” with “going into the studio from scratch with someone”
Recounting the making of 2021’s Hypnocurrency with her mentor and close friend deadmau5, Rezz explains: “With Hypnocurrency, I started it by myself in my house then took the track’s skeleton to Joel’s [deadmau5], then Joel left his touch, finished mixing and mastering it and made it sound tighter. So when I was actually in Joel’s studio, it wasn’t like I was going in and turning the billions of knobs on his studio synths.”
The same goes for the musician’s recent collaboration with Virtual Riot: “I worked in Joel’s studio recently with Virtual Riot. We were working on a song in his studio but, really, all we did was plug our laptop into Joel’s sound system. So once again, it’s not like we’re going in, using Joel’s millions of dollars worth of analogue gear,” says Rezz.
She adds: “I don’t want to go into a studio with someone with a blank canvas. That kind of freaks me out. Virtual Riot had sent me an idea, so we already had a direction. And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s easy, because I already know what I’m going to do.’”
