LAYERS: Opening Isaac Delusion’s “Transistors”

Each week on LAYERS, we ask an artist to break one of their tracks down into its stems and reveal how they created each sound, shedding light on every nuance of the production. This week: Isaac Delusion.

[Sample]

Last year when we finished our first EP ‘Midnight Sun’, Loic and I went to his flat in Brittany for a week, fronting the beach, in order to work on new songs. At this time we didn’t know at all what direction Isaac Delusion would take because the first EP was mostly his creation except for the track ‘Midnight Sun’ that we made together. We had already made a few demos together years ago but nothing really serious. So we started working right away on stuff we had and as he was seeing me sampling tracks he asked me how to do it. I showed him the process and as an exemple, loaded one of the tracks I had sampled and sliced for this purpose. He started messing with the keyboard and the pitch wheel like a kid discovering a new toy and after 30 seconds made this: (starting at 0:12)

[Drum]
I turned at him and said: « wait wait, play that again ! » And that was it, I knew we had a song. So he recorded it and I told him: « this is so hip hop we’re gonna make a hip hop song » So I quickly made a rhythm:

[Droplet]
That was just the kick, snare and hi hat at the time but the idea was there. For a rap song we could’ve just let the sample running over and over – and that was probably what I wanted to do – but I’m not the singer and Loic wanted verses so we made some using diferent slices of the same sample and I later made the bridge wich is on the first 12 seconds of the sample because I wanted it to sound as much hip hop as it could. I made a rhythm on the verses like water drops, highly inspired by ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’ to slow down from the heavier rhythm on the chorus.

[Bass]
Then I added it on the choruses from the second or third to make them evolve and play with the weak times as well as the shaker and percussions so they all answer to eacher other and bubble together. Then, considering the mellow mood of the sample I needed a groovy bass, something flowing (Loic went to sleep at one point of the night but i just couldn’t, this sample was obsessing me)

[Vocals]
After that we worked on the structure, he wrote the lyrics and recorded the voice using his question/answer trick by playing with his diferent voice octave.

[Rhode]
And we had a demo, we worked on other songs, Loic got the sample fever and created the ones of ‘Supernova’ and ‘Purple Sky’, we worked on them and came back with all those demos after one week. In my opinion that’s the real starting point of Isaac Delusion as it is now and its the creative process. Once we were back in Paris I made the Rhodes line to follow the sample and make the song flow even more.