Ikonika breaks down how they created Details

Reflecting on one of their most recent tracks, ‘Details’, the Hyperdub and Balamii mainstay reflects on incorporating their own vocals, translating the song into a live setting, and perfecting the production process with the help of Ableton Push 3.

In one of Ikonika’s latest releases on Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990’s enduringly influential Night Slugs label, a soulful vocal line appears over a moody, heads-down, amapiano groove. Rather than cutting a sample from an existing record in the vein of many dance music producers, the floating singing comes from Ikonika’s own voice – a recently added form of expression for the London-based artist.

“Keep me coming/ Keep me coming back” they sing on Details. Offering a dreamy antidote to the sub-bass heavy, spacious instrumental, singing over their own productions has given Ikonika a fresh tool to push themselves creatively.

Constantly experimenting is something they have done throughout their discography over the past decade and a half – both through making music and bringing it into live settings – but working with Ableton Push 3 has opened up new avenues for the artist to play. With its standalone capability, connectivity to external instruments and effects, and 64 MPE-capable pads, working with the instrument on Details allowed them to push themselves further out of their comfort zone, and create a live set that is more intuitive and computer free.

Thomas Glendinning, who runs the music production website ELPHNT, caught up with the artist to discuss the process in detail.

Before we dive in to Details, can you tell us a bit about your music and what brought you to this point?

I’ve been releasing music since 2008. My first release was a 12-inch single that came out on Hyperdub during the dubstep years – or when dubstep was dying and progressing into more colourful things. I came through that sound. Grime, as well, was very influential at that time. 

I’ve released four albums over the years – a library album and three studio albums, as well as dozens of EPs and singles. I’ve produced dubstep, UK funky and garage, then, as I’ve got more and more influenced by South African music, a lot of qqom, amapiano, Afro tech, Afro house. That’s where I’m at right now: keeping it under this UK bass umbrella and keeping a raw, ‘London’ sound, but incorporating all these influences and singing as well.

How has the gear you’ve used to make music changed over the years? And how has it influenced the music you’ve made?

I’m very into 80s synths. When I started making money from music, that’s all I wanted to get my hands on – drum machines, those kind of sounds. I built up a collection, and then I had a child and my studio became their bedroom, so I had to downsize. During that time I was very much in the box in Ableton Live. Now I’m in a permanent space and slowly bringing back the synths.

Even when I was using hardware, it was always finding a balance between modern techniques and using old-school stuff. I’m more into modern sounds now, but I still go to a lot of classic, synth-sounding stuff. And for me, it’s about workflow these days. I don’t spend much time in the studio, so I need things to be streamlined and work nicely.

So it’s more of a modern workflow, but with vintage sounds?

Exactly. That’s where I’m at right now.

Let’s talk about Details – can you talk us through the process of making that track? 

What I wanted to execute with Details was a pop song, but using club dynamics. It’s kind of sexy and cute, but when the bass drops there’s just this rush of log drum and sub bass. That bass and the drums are very hard, but the vocals and synths are soft and there’s loads of plucky guitar sounds. A lot of it is built very simply – little blocks at a time.

That’s my workflow: finding one or two notes then building and building with different sounds. The tune has gone through so many iterations and I wanted to be patient with it. I’m not so into mass-produced beats and this idea of having to make ten beats a day, so I wanted to be very intentional with every single sound that I put into it and to spend a lot of time shaping it.

​​What about the process of recording your own vocals?

It’s very new for me, and it’s something that came out of lockdown. I was in a different studio space that was a bit more regulated, so we had to work by ourselves and I couldn’t get any [vocalists] to come through. I was just staring at these mics – in this particular studio, we had really nice mics – and I felt like they were being wasted.

I was listening to a lot of amapiano at the time and I kept hearing, especially from UK producers, a lot of amapiano samples. But it didn’t feel genuine if I was going to use them. I think everybody had the same sample pack at the time and I wanted to have my own. 

Then it just got out of hand. I started singing and felt like my voice sounded quite nice on the tunes – I’ve got this really warm, very low voice that made sense with my synths, which could be quite bright and up there in the frequency range. 

When you’re not very used to engineering vocals, it felt like I had to learn a whole new skill. I’m actually very grateful for that because, as a producer, you want to learn everything. You want to be able to do it all. That was another thing to tick off to become this undeniable artist where I can have control, be 100 percent creative in my own work and not really need to rely on getting guest vocalists in. I don’t need to rely on an engineer to come and record my voice. I can just do everything myself. 

What did you consider when thinking about performing the track live?

I didn’t want to be basic with it, or for it to purely be stems and me just launching clips from the original. I wanted to change the drums up, so I’ve got a Drum Rack in the beginning and each time I’d perform the song, the drums would be different. With the Push, I wanted to use the MPE capabilities, so I was like ‘OK, maybe I can use it for the outro and switch it up at the end and have this really dynamic, powerful ending’. I realised I could use things like Follow Actions with the Scenes and automate what needs to be automated and still be able to do what I can live.

I was also using Performer, just to mess around with some effects. Even with the log drum, I’m manipulating that a little bit to give it a live feel. 

When you say Performer – that’s a device in Ableton Live that you’ve then mapped controls to, like a control hub?

Yeah, so instead of fiddling about trying to find where your sends and returns are, in Performer you can just have it all laid out. It’s a shortcut to have your effects in one place. 

That’s a really good encapsulation of what a live performance can be with something like the Push, where you were using all these different features. You were playing and sequencing Drum Racks, triggering stuff in the Session View, controlling effects, but then at the same time trying to find ways to simplify it – like using Performer, using Follow Actions to keep it manageable. You’re also running your microphone directly into the Push. How are you approaching the vocals from a live performance perspective?

The vocal in the performance is a little bit different to the actual track. I was trying to find more ways of using my voice within a song. There’s a lot of reverb – I love reverb with vocals that have got long decay, so it tails off and brings another texture to the performance. The original vocal is hiding in there too. Even when I’m doing my live shows, I like the vocal to be there, not only as a guide, but when I’m doing my live vocals I need it to almost harmonise and feel like a stack.

I’m very influenced by Phil Collins’ voice. I feel like I have this similarity with him because he started off as a drummer and I started off as a drummer, and then he started doing vocals. I read somewhere that he wasn’t confident about his voice, so he tried to hide it as much as possible. I did that at the beginning. What I found with using a Chorus is that it just made a very unnatural, wide sound on my voice. So that’s in there, and that’s in, like, all of my vocal tunes. 

I don’t like that kind of idea of ‘you should be treating vocals naturally’. It’s not a piano, your voice. You could manipulate it in any way you want, so why not put a Chorus on your voice? There are no real rules to it. 

Performing on a Push Standalone, there’s no computer involved. In doing that, you had to translate the original session – which presumably had a bunch of different plugins, sounds, synths and instruments on it, even maybe on your vocals – into completely native Ableton devices so that it could run on Push. How did you find that process? 

That was surprisingly easy. The things that couldn’t be translated straight to Push I would just flatten into audio. That was a nice limitation to have. I’m thinking about CPU all the time, and it’s quite a big project. 

The drums I resampled and put in a Drum Rack, and the bass is playing MIDI because I have an Ableton device already that’s emulating the log drum. MPE was also very easy. I made sure to set the scale on Push as well because I knew I wanted to play something live, but I’m not actually a pianist or classically trained, so it was great to have that scale switched on so that I could make a mistake. I love using that feature when I’m producing because it’s a totally different way of making my melodies. I don’t have to sit and think about it. It’s very intuitive.

​​You had gotten the Push for the first time for this particular project, so that was quite new to you. Did it influence how you thought about both your workflow in production, and playing live?

When I use the Push for production, I try not to look at the screen, which allows me to use my ears more. I feel like I’m touching the sounds, which is a nice thing – before, I’d just be clicking on a mouse, staring at a screen. That’s helped me with my production a lot.

I also find new synths and drums I wouldn’t usually use. It gets me out of my comfort zone a little bit. Even when I’m arranging now, when it’s time to go to the arrangement view, I’m playing it live. I’m launching clips live. That allows me to not think about 8 bars or 16 bars. I can just feel the music and make a change whenever I feel like it and when it feels right.

Before I got the Push, I wasn’t really thinking about the live element or how I was going to take this track to the stage. But now that I’ve got it, when I’m producing, I think about the live performance as well. Everything is organised in my Session View a lot neater.

What’s up next for you music-wise?

I’m going to disappear for a while because I want to make a long project. I want to use the Push a lot more and incorporate that into my live shows. I’ve realised that the studio is modular – you don’t have to be sat at a desk, you don’t have to be looking at a screen, you can take the studio wherever you like. I want to take the Push out to the park. It’s got a sound card so I can plug in the mic and record my vocals outside, because who says you need a vocal booth for anything? I like that idea: thinking about the studio as modular. You can take it anywhere and record sounds. I’ll be thinking about that while I’m making this new project.