We premiere a remix of Ivaylo’s Lifter from PsychoFreud while we talk to Anders Figenschow about AI, Drum n Bass in Norway and a little history
Norwegian Drum n Bass and Jungle has always had much more success outside of Norway. Even at times when places like the UK are in the midst of a revival, Norway has only enjoyed slight increases in interest, with most of the fanfare for the Norwegian scene happening outside its borders. At the height of the genre’s popularity back in the late nineties to the early 2000’s, Drum and Bass and Jungle DJs were in-demand, and some of the world’s best were home-grown Norwegian talents.
PsychoFreud was one of those DJs and he became one of Norway’s biggest exports in Drum and Bass during that time. A demanding touring schedule and releases for some of the genre’s pre-eminent and prestigious labels saw his star rise in regions like eastern Europe. Sought after and rarely taking a break PsychoFreud became a household name in the international scene, but after 15 years he changed course and took his life into a different direction.
After years of touring on the international circuit where he’s played places like Romania over 20 times, he resigned himself to a quiet life, focussing on a career outside of music and his family.” My daughter is 16,” says Anders Figenschow (aka PsychoFreud) over a telephone call, ”so it’s still a few years, and until then, I’m gonna stay at home and make sure the family is ok.”
While at home however music has remained a constant in his life, and he continues to produce tracks and remixes under various aliases and projects including Gunmen with Tony Anthem, King Kanakas and of course PsychoFreud. On the rare occasion when he does make it to a DJ booth these days, he’ll adopt the familiar PsychoFreud to play the odd set for a friend abroad or at home, including a regular appearance at Jaeger’s Drum and Bass and Jungle night with Bigup, but for the time being he is content in dedicating his time to the recorded work.
His latest is part of a remix package for the next release on Lab Cleaning Jams, with Anders providing two very distinct remixes for the project under two different aliases. While his King Kanakas Funk and Disco side project was the obvious choice for Ivaylo’s progressive House original, it’s the PsychoFreud remix that we get to premiere today as he takes the original into a rollicking uptempo Drum and Bass track infused with some dancehall vocals.
“That was sort of a challenge,” explains Anders, “because making a drum n bass remix out of a house-y disco track is difficult, because of the speed difference.” Going from circa 120 beats per minute into 176, very little of the original track remains and even what’s there has been totally reworked for the context. The bassline is the only constant between the two as the “main-driver“ in PsychoFreud’s adaptation of the original. It pedals through a broken amen break while a vocal honours the artist behind the original track in a simulacra of Jamaican MC toast.
Making a “vocal version” was the biggest challenge of the remix according to Anders. In the past he might have turned to a singer, but on this occasion he took it upon himself, but it’s still not his voice you hear. “You can tell,” he says through what I can glean is a smile on the other end of the telephone call. “Since I started making Drum and Bass, in the mid-nineties, I’ve always worked with singers,” he starts to explain. “Lately it is easier since I can use AI to do them for me.”
Avoiding the cost and unpredictability of the human mood, Anders has turned more and more to AI in his productions and it’s been used to uncanny realism across his two remixes for this release. “This way I make sure I’m happy with it,” he says of his use of AI generated vocals. He stops short at letting AI dictate the lyrics, suggesting “it would very quickly sound bad,” if it were left up to the machines. Anders writes the lyrics including his shout-out to Ivaylo, using the new technology as “a complimentary thing,” to the rest of his production
You couldn’t tell until somebody told you, and even then it’s still hard to not put a human face behind those vocals. Furthermore, his use of AI in his sampling techniques for this track is completely indiscernible. ”It’s much easier now to generate parts and use that as samples,” he says, because of all the “legal aspects” that make actual sampling so difficult today.
Anders knows about those sampling headaches all too well, since he cut his teeth in Hip Hop in the nineties back during a time when sampling still lived in that ambiguous grey area between stealing and repurposing. As a member and the producer for Oslo’s Most Wanted, a notorious rap ensemble long since disbanded, he would learn his eventual musical trade. “I wasn’t very good,” he humbly suggests, “ but I could sample things and loop something.” His time with Oslo’s Most Wanted was short lived however and his time with the group was clouded in turmoil. It’s “a long story, for another type of interview,” he concedes. “It was a very dramatic time and there was lots of violence involved,” and after a few albums in quick succession Anders moved onto the next thing which was Drum and Bass and adopted the pseudonym, Psycofreud.
In the late nineties PsychoFreud’s music was picked up by the “quality” Drum and Bass label Knowledge and Wisdom and this is what, according to Anders, really “kicked off my music story.” He would spend the next fifteen years touring all over the world, playing in a different country every weekend. Fusing Reggae, Dancehall and Jungle in energetic Drum and Bass constructions, his style has always been distinctive. Listening to an early release like “Selassie I,” all those ingredients we find on the Lifter remix, including the vocals, are already present.
“It’s the same sound I’ve always” made, suggests Anders, and even with AI, it’s still concurrent. I wonder if his sound would have adapted to the newer audiences and clubs had he still been playing out, but besides the “natural evolution of music” he doesn’t think so. He goes as far as to suggest that he considered the quality of his sound was “never the best” compared to something like Tony Anthem or Serial Killaz. “I just care about what the bass sounds like and what the vocals are doing. I’m more of a producer than a sound technician. I don’t care.”
Although PsychoFreud enjoyed much success outside of Norway, the small scene back home couldn’t accommodate anything like the scene in eastern Europe. “It’s impossible for a country like Norway to catch up,” suggests Anders in a rhetoric that I’ve heard from the likes of Teebee and Bigup in previous interviews too.
“In eastern Europe people come into the clubs when they are 15. In those countries they expose a younger audience to that music. While in Norway it’s impossible, because they don’t let people into clubs under 20. And they don’t play it on the radio. What we call underground is big over there. Same with the UK.“
I consider whether he would have made the move into a 9-5 career and family life, had the scene been healthier here, but it’s not like Psychofrued or any other of the aliases or projects that Anders are involved in are on hiatus. Just last year he and Tony released “So Mi Like It / Messed Up” as Gunmen on Dutch label Rasta Vibez while besides this remix for Ivaylo, PsychoFreud is readily busy on soundcloud.
In one of the latest posts, he’s on a Hip-Hop tip, and during the course of our Hip Hop discussions he does say; “I really want to make a new album and finish off something.” No doubt it would feature some AI technology, at the very least at a sampling level, and whether or not he’ll get back into playing across the world, we’ll have to wait and see when his daughter is all grown up. He’ll surely be making a turn again at Bigup either way and for now we have this remix to keep us company.