"Calibre is the first exclusively Irish drum n bass artist, born and bred in Belfast. Calibre was drawn to music at an early age and started playing the violin as a 13 year old, and joined various Irish bands, obviously with a classical influence. He was a pupil at one of Belfasts hardest schools where he was picked on and bullied when he went in with his violin. Consequently, the violin had to go. Drums became his second passion.. Around the age of 15 Calibre got hold of a cheap Bontempi keyboard and began recording short sections. He also had an old bass guitar and a few effects pedals, and using a combination of these and his keyboard, he was coming up with short compositions.
From the age of 16 he started playing in bands, anything from jazz, to punk, to rock anything to keep him in music. None of the bands were particularly successful, but Calibres taste for creating music was becoming stronger. After the last band split up, he was given a basic eight-track studio and a good keyboard this was around the first time he experienced electronic music, most of it coming from the early Detroit techno and house, but mostly with an ambient nature. He cites his inspiration around that time being Kenny Larkin, Carl Craig, Juan Atkins, the Orb to name a few this was around 1992. It was actually his older brother who introduced Calibre to drum n bass / jungle, which initially he found too beaty couldnt follow the pattern, as at that point he preferred four to the floor drumbeats from the US house style. His earliest positive memories of jungle / drum n bass include early Reinforced tracks, Omni trio and Goldies Terminator.
Sean OKeefes Helicopter tune on Moving Shadow made a big impact on Calibre. It was around this time in 1995 that he got his first workstation but still had no sequencer, so he resorted to making tracks live on his eight-track. These were his first experiments into drum n bass, and very soon he realised hed discovered his passion. Everything he made was obviously without a sequencer, and he played everything live onto the eight-track, but it was so tight that to this day, people dont realise this was totally live. Its probably coming from a poor background that makes Calibre feel that he had to make do with whatever he had, and being a perfectionist, he struggled to make music without the right equipment. He never let this become a stumbling block and feels that he mastered every stage of the production process, never let lack of equipment limit him. Thus, as he got new equipment, it always brought a totally new dimension to his sound.
Around the same time, Calibre was at Belfast University of Ulster on a Fine Art course, but studying sound work. He became enthused with the writings of John Cage, and Cages analogy of the sampler and how all the sounds in the environment become music, and how you can make any sound into music by filtering it through a sampler. Musique Concrete, the title of his upcoming album, relates to the history of the sampler.
Calibres whole approach to music is one of an artist. He is highly creative and buzzes with nervous tension only to release it in the studio. His musical output is prolific and wide-ranging in style etc. His style cannot be categorised, like a post-modern siphon taking in the various influences around him and throwing it back out. Other influences in his listening include a lot of dub, Lee Perry, King Tubbies, Little Roy, and hip hop including NWA, soul & funk including Donald Byrd, all the Blue Note stuff, Aretha Franklin and various Latin influences including Santana and Nino Puente.
Essentially Calibre loves the freedom of music even to the point of using his own voice on several of his tunes something he finds deeply embarrassing! His final equipment to the puzzle was a pair of turntables, which, through experimenting with mixing, released a fresh input of sound and style as he tried to incorporate the feeling of a mix into his music.
Calibres whole approach to his music is one of surprise and naivety, almost shocked that people like his music. He can only put his creativity down to the slow process he followed through his life, from classical music to the bands, from simplicity to complexity, in his mind always wanting to enhance sound quality. But all in all his head is full of music and the future looks bright."
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proper soulfull
mrfundah 3 years ago 4
yup yup yup :)
giokraljina 3 years ago