Dub Asylum is one of those undercover New Zealand artists who keeps dropping great music and doesn’t seem to shout too loud about it, it bubbles away and gets the respect it deserves from the beat community. After the release of his Ba Ba Boom! Digi-EP in August 2008 Peter McLennan got the nudge from some of his DJ friends to put out some vinyl which I’m glad to say he’s just done with a tasty little 7″ of the title track with a special dustep/afrobeat remix on the flip from Oogun.

Despite New Zealand producing some amazing music from it’s beat culture very few artists actually release their music on vinyl simply because of the financial commitment needed to produce it and the difficulty in getting overseas distribution for a physical product, the local market is simply too small to make it viable for most artists. I think it requires a huge amount of passion and a little insanity to release your own vinyl in NZ and for me it really places the artists who do it in their own league. Maybe it’s because I’m a huge vinyl fan or maybe it’s because I’m an even bigger fan of beat culture and the artists involved that I made sure I headed down to the release party to grab my copy and ask Peter a few questions about this tasty little limited press 7″:

J – So it’s 10 years since the first Dub Asylum release, has your approach to making music changed over the years?
P – No – some of my gear has got as little bit flasher, but its still the same basic building blocks – loops, drums, samples ,guitars, keys. It may have changed in terms of being influenced by what I listen to, I guess.

J – Where does the inspiration come from for your eclectic approach to music production?
P – My previous band, the Hallelujah Picassos, were noted for our eclectic approach, mashing up genres with reckless abandon, and that’s carried on to my own work as Dub Asylum. I’ve never really been a genre purist.

Ba ba boom! by dubasylum

J- It’s great to see BA BA BOOM make it on to vinyl, what was your motivation behind that?
P – When I released my digital 5 song “Ba Ba Boom”EP in August last year, the title track was the tune on the EP that all my DJ mates said they really liked, and they all kept asking me “when is that tune coming out on vinyl?” Light goes off in my head – hey, I could probably release this on vinyl and my mates would buy it. Hence this lovely little seven inch single. And it just sounds better on vinyl.

J – You are obviously a vinyl collector, why do you think that vinyl has never really gone away as a format?
P – Mainly because Djs kept buying it, and more recently, the iPod generation have started discovering vinyl too. A vinyl collection looks way cooler than an MP3 collection. You store that on an external hard drive. Ever seen anyone get excited over a hard drive? Thought not.

J – Most collectors have a few “holy grail” items in their collection, what are yours?
P – Ah, don’t really have any. Rather proud of my collection of Eric B and Rakim 12s.

J – You’ve also been writing your blog for 6 years now, what kind of impact has it had on your profile as a musician?
P – Well, I started blogging when I stopped doing freelance music journalism as a part time gig – I started doing that when I was at art school, mainly interviewing film makers and actors (as I worked in film and video at art school), and then shifted to interviewing musicians, partly for selfish reasons – they’d be people I’d want to meet anyway and talk music with. I gave up writing about other musicians to concentrate on my own music. I have no idea if my blog has any influence on my profile as a musician, but I enjoy it, and I know I have a small but knowledgable readership.

Come figure me out by dubasylum

J – As a local DJ you’ve been heavily involved in the Auckland beat scene through BaseFM, what do you think about the local scene for independent producers and artists?
P – It’s probably the healthiest it’s ever been, with numerous producers getting international recognition and releases – see Julien Dyne and Electric Wire Hustle both being featured on radio shows from Benji B and Gilles Peterson.

J – What are your plans for Dub Asylum for 2010? Will we see an album coming out?
P – I’ve got another vinyl single planned, then the album later in the year, with some digital exclusives too, and I want to shoot a few music videos for the album. Also got a dub-techno project called Kilodee on the way, and remaster project for my old band Hallelujah Picassos. I’m also writing a book.

J – Just wondered of you could maybe run us through the process for getting the vinyl sorted at Vinyl Factory.
P – There’s no pressing plant in NZ, so the closest ones are in Australia. Vinyl Factory promise to turn around vinyl in 15 working days – they get their stampers done at Abbey Road, which is very cool. It’s just a matter of mastering the songs for vinyl – Vinyl Factory will help with the tech specs – sending them the files and filling in the order form – then they invoice you, you pay 50% deposit, they start production. Three weeks later, you get test pressings, then you approve em, pay the balance, they ship them to you. Boom – lovely little 45s!

I chose to work with Vinyl Factory as I’d heard the pressings they’d done for Kiw label Round Trip Mars, which have a delightful amount of bass on them – esp the Unitone Hifi tunes, which are killer. The end result blew me away, and several Djs who heard it also notcied how much better the songs sounded on vinyl, compared to the MP3s I’d sent them.

Free download
Jump and Twist by dubasylum

You can check out Peter’s music over at the Dub Asylum site and make sure you check out his dubdotdash blog for all the freshest pop culture and dub vibes.