"It’s been a busy couple of years for Volume as they head for their
second birthday celebrations. As one of the first nights to bring
dubstep to Scotland their pioneering penchant for pushing new music has
been a welcome education for the capital’s club kids. Inevitably, the
dubstep sound started to change, courting elements of techno, house,
hip hop and electronica, as new producers set upon it with their own
arsenal of interpretation, unleashing the genre’s true potential.
Currently riding this wave of audio contortion are Akira Kiteshi, a
Scottish production outfit whose menacing, glitchy, electro epic
‘Pinball’ has been picked up by N-type, Flying Lotus and Mary-Anne
Hobbs among others. ‘I just bashed “Pinball” together in about
two days as a B-side filler,’ explains Tommy Forrest, the man behind
the name. ‘N-Type heard it and got in touch asking if he could cut a
plate of it. I think that was a huge help in getting the track heard by
a lot of people.’ The track’s popularity may have been a surprise, but
Forrest has certainly put in the ground work, ‘I started off
experimenting with sampling, trackers and building my own synths. I
like taking ideas that I’ve written for different genres of music and
trying to fuse them together into something new.’ It’s a formula well
suited to the current landscape, a point not missed on Forrest:
‘Dubstep is going through some amazing changes at the moment, so
hopefully I’ll take influences from all of them and make something that
has the Akira Kiteshi sound."
The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Fri 24 Apr
Source: The List, Ritchie Meldrum