Busy with making tunes, managing his new label BUILD and touring all the way around the world, our good friend Baobinga who played at KIEVBASS, Nov 2009, found several minutes to answer our questions for KIEVBASS.com

KIEVBASS: Introduce yourself in several sentences for those who might be not familiar with you yet.

BAOBINGA: Hello, I’m Baobinga, aka Sam to my Mum. I’m a full time music-type person: I write, produce and DJ electronic music of all kinds.

KB: Tell us about your music and cultural background. What made you become YOU? (music, books, movies, comics, subcultures, etc.)

B: When I was a baby, I used to pull out the pots and pans and make little drum kits for myself and play them with chopsticks. Then before I was a teenager, I got obsessed with synths – I used to drag my Mum into all the music shops whenever we went shopping in town and made her ogle the latest keyboards with me – I can still remember the first time I saw a Korg M1, that’s the kind of obsessive I was. I grew up in a small village in East Yorkshire, but once a week, the local radio would get one of the main techno shows syndicated; co-incidentally this was on the same night my Mum was normally out for a course, so I could turn off the lights, turn the stereo up and lie on the floor in the dark, getting lost in the loops. Jungle filtered it’s way into my life, and once I realised you could use any sound at all in your music, suddenly Placebo sounded a bit one-dimensional.

KB: Your favorite gig of the year so far?

B: 2010′s best gigs have probably been in Paris for the Shake Dat Ass crew at Nouveau Casino (which is a sick club), and then this Wednesday just gone for Rewind in Budapest – I always love playing there, pure vibes – shouts to Palotai!

KB: Favorite tune of the year so far?

B: Obviously, ‘Tron’ is ridiculous… ‘Police Ar Come’ by Rossi B & Luca ft Killa P… But those I’d had for a while so they don’t feel like ‘this years’ tunes in a way. My current favourite dub is probably the Marcus Visionary mix of Tayo ft Pupajim ‘Vampayaa’. Love it.

KB: What does your studio setup looks like atm?

B: Right now, it looks like a Macbook Pro. But under the bed are my synths and samplers etc. and as of next week, me and Ed will have proper studio space set up, so we can buss out the Super BassStation, the DX11, the MC202 etc. :)

KB: What projects are you currently working on? Plans for the near future?

B: The main focus for me this year is to make sure my label Build grows properly. The next release is in full flow – should have it on Soundcloud this week – me and Ginz with ‘The Good Stank’, with me and Cosmin TRG doing a tune called ‘I Get Ruff’ on the flip. Also doing a lot of work with Ginz. building some next hip-hop beats… And there’s various other projects, but keeping them somewhat on the low-down for now :)

KB: What producers are you rating/inspired by atm?

B: Well, the only producer who I consistently buy multiple tunes of is probably DJ Godfather… But I’m not sure he particularly inspires me, other than to jump up and down like a specialist behind the decks, so I’d probably say that I think what Redlight (aka Clipz) is doing is really exciting, and Guido always approaches things differently too.

KB: What’s your current DJ-top 10?

B: I hate doing Top 10s… But some 12s I’ve bought recently include Calibre ‘Steptoe’, B Flecha ‘Ceja De Carnival’ (technically that’s a 10″ but who’s counting), and some bits and bobs on Deep Medi.

KB: What’s your current home/iPod listening top 10?

B: Man I am going through such a heavy RnB vibe at the moment – The Dream and D’Angelo have got me through a lot of long journeys recently! Other than that I am also properly feeling my deep and miserable music – I bought Tricky ‘Pre Millenium Tension’ again recently, Low ‘Trust’… And always, always the Pixies.

KB: Where do you get your inspiration / motivation from?

B: On an immediate level, I do really enjoy making music, or at least the initial process of coming up with ideas and developing them – the tedious part of turning them into finished songs can be a bit of a ball ache though. My motivation comes from the need to feed myself and pay the rent – nothing like hunger to keep a man working! Inspiration comes from all sorts of stuff, but for dance music, it’s mostly just a case of working with drums and seeing what vibe comes from there – get the drums right and the rest will follow, usually.

KB: Did your life turned out to be what you expected from it? If not the music, what could you dedicate your life to?

B: You make it sound like my life is over! I’ve had some great experiences working in music, and some times of real stress and darkness – but that’s life. If I didn’t do music, I’m not sure what I’d do, but I’d quite like it to have a regular salary and not involve dealing with flaky people on a regular basis!

KB: Do you do any other job except the music? If yes, would you like your music to be the only and enough income?

B: Me and Ed (aka I.D.) started the bassmusicblog.com site – to be fair, as it has grown it has become more of Ed’s baby, but it is still a joint effort in terms of the overall vision and direction we are taking it in. We have been able to grow the blog to the point where we can sell advertising space to relevant entities – labels, clubs etc. – so that will hopefully bring in some income which we can reinvest, possibly into projects such as events, merchandise etc.

But no I don’t have another job – I make music and I DJ.

KB: Would you like to do some commercial production? If yes, what kind of music/sound design/etc. could it be?

B: Yes most definitely. I really feel that the music I am making with Ginz has commercial potential, and I would love to be able to work with some great singers, building songs around our beats.

KB: What are your impressions from your KIEVBASS gig and Ukraine itself?

B: I had a great time in Kiev – shout to all the homies, particularly Valta and Minikin, but also Anna and Alina, who took time out to show me round the town and were generally lovely :)

Kiev looks like a beautiful city -although in November it was slightly great if I am 100% truthful – but it really felt like there was a lot of cynicism towards the leadership, and particularly the failure of the Orange Revolution to deliver any kind of change or halt the corruption.

Overall though, I am massively proud to have been a part of Kievbass – everything about the organisation is quality, from the flyer design to the booking policy (who would have though that Neil Landstrumm has a devoted following in the Ukraine???) to the hospitality shown while I was over. Big respects!

Some of BAOBINGA’s links:

www.bassmusicblog.com
twitter.com/baobinga
myspace.com/baobinga
booking: saleem@tfabookings.com

!!! check HIGHLY RECOMMENDED album by I.D. & Baobinga and buy it on your own price:

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