Guignol Dangereux : from Bhajis Loops to the studio

What is your music background?

The bass guitar... that's my background. I've been playing in bands for all my teens and for a big part of my twenties... mostly iggy-poppish beer-driven rock bands. I've started getting into electronic music later, during a first stage just mixing techno and bigbeat at raves, then I've started producing techno music too... I think it was 1999 or 2000, all I had was 2 electribes, a Boss 202 Dr.Sample and a four-track tape recorder. I got my first computer in 2001 after seeing that Propellerhead software, ReBirth... I never thought of buying a computer before, never felt the need of it.

And what is your set-up, now?

At the moment my set-up is 80% software based, I use mostly Reason plugged into Tracktion, plus two or three VSTis. I still use hardware when playing live (actually... 3 or 4 times a year), but just a synth and a drum machine. "Less is more".

Where and when have you heard of Bhajis Loops?

Well, a friend of mine told me about the possibility of making music on Palm computers... I didn't even know exactly what a Palm computer was, I thought they were some kind of organizers for managers and nerds hehe... I got hooked by the idea of total portability and did some research on the matter, and reading the reviews and the features Bhajis seemed the best choice, and still does.

How do you work with Bhajis Loops?

For the kind of techno I'm into, one of the most important things is the quality of single sound, so I tend to use Bhajis as a MIDI composing environment, then I export the MIDI file in the studio and I go on working on the track and applying the sounds. I'm not saying that the quality of the samples in Bhajis is bad, it's just too hard for me to monitor the output using only the sound capability of my Palm. I know it can be done, I've listened to great tracks by the users from the Chocopoolp website... I'm just too lazy, and exporting the MIDI file is quicker. I've never used Bhajis on stage and I'm not planning to do it at the moment (I prefer to avoid computers at all when playing live) but it is fully integrated in my composition process.

What is your favourite feature?

Midi export!

Thanks for this interview! More of Guignol Dangereux's music is available here

 

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