Ninja Tune's Raffertie Is Slowing His Roll

Photo credit: Josh Shinner

Raffertie (né Benjamin Stefanski) is a fantastically versatile musician and an absolute sweetheart. I wish you could have heard his perfectly prim, exceptionally British way of pronouncing conservatory—"conserve-a-tree"—when asked about his prestigious education at the Birmingham Conservatoire (yes, it's actually called a conservatoire). The twenty-something Ninja Tune recording artist has been pressing records since dubstep's early days in London, and earlier this month released his first-full length album, Sleep of Reason. With this first extended body of work, Raffertie pursues a moody, emotional palette, shying away from the build-it-up-and-drop-it approach that caught our ears back in 2007. It is an album full of his own sparse rhythms and reverb-soaked serenading, like James Blake without the frilly vocal gymnastics.

And you can still see Raffertie's hardcore side peaking through the cloud of digital R&B—sparks of twitchy drums, body-shaking low end, and dissonant synths that keep the album from floating away. I got Raffertie on the phone last week to grill him about his new album, and he had just stepped off of a train from London. He was sitting in his childhood bedroom on the Southern coast of England, where we talked about composing for chamber ensembles, building sound installations in college, and putting out AlunaGeorge's first record before the duo was a worldwide pop phenomenon.

You were on a train earlier?
Yes, I was on my way down from London to my parents' house on the South Coast of England.

Is that where you are now?
Yes. I'm back with them now for the weekend. It's by the seaside. I've got a friend's wedding tomorrow.

Are you sitting in your childhood bed right now with all of the Power Ranger blankets?
I am actually sitting in my old room, which is funny. It's changed quite a bit—it's now a guest bedroom. So it's got lovely white walls and it's very clean.

No more Sex Pistols posters?
No, no. I wasn't a particularly big posters kind of kid. I think my room was quite bare a lot of the time. There was just a lot of musical instruments dotted around, some CDs, a computer.

Are you gonna spin Top 40 records at your friend's wedding tomorrow?
No, no, I'm having a day off. I was asked provisionally but I managed to get out of it in the end [Laughs].

Well done. That's a long gig, you know.
It would have been a good five or six hours of playing, I think.

Do you think you've got enough R&B and disco to rock a wedding party?
Probably, but I really didn't want to bring it all down with me. So I just about managed to save myself the hard work.

Anyway, I really enjoyed your new album.
Thank you!

What's funny is the first thing I heard from you was a real hardcore 12" called "Pumping Like Reeboks." When they sent me your album I was like this is the same Raffertie? Can you talk about the transition you made into Sleep of Reason?
The music that I started out making was intended for clubs. It was quite upfront and it was noisy. But for my first extended body of work as Raffertie, I wanted it to be something a little more introspective, something a bit deeper, more emotional. Some people really like the new direction and some people don't see how I've arrived there from where I started, and perhaps that makes it seem a little bit confused. I suppose it's important to emphasize that, as this is my first album, I'm still forming an identity for Raffertie, and that identity will change over time.

You do a lot of singing on Sleep of Reason. Is this a new thing for you?
When working on the early demos I found myself humming them out, singing a lot of toplines, and I originally wanted a lot of different vocalists to feature on the album. I started drawing up big lists of people that I wanted to work with, and I started thinking about getting together a live set, and the idea of getting all those people in one place—it seemed like a logistical nightmare. I decided to focus on using my own voice more, whether that was going to be in a textural way or more as a lead vocal presence. Gradually it evolved so that my voice was more at the forefront and there were more song-based structures, and it took a little while to work out how exactly my voice sat within my production. And of course to an extent the production had to change in order to suit my voice.

Do you consider yourself a singer?
I was in choir at music college, but I'd never sung solo before. So I don't particularly consider myself a singer. It felt more genuine coming from me, rather than having lots of different people feature on the record. And it saved me having to explain to a lot of people what the record was about, and trying to convey that through someone else's words. It just felt like it should come from me, in whatever form.

So you have a more studied musical background right? Tell me about what your time at the Birmingham Conservatoire. What was your focus?
I studied classical and contemporary composition, and when I first went in I was writing a lot of orchestral pieces, and working with chamber ensembles. They were fairly traditional pieces, and they developed that area of my writing. Then alongside that I started playing about with electronics. I'd done a couple of things with electronics before I went to music college but it was very much shooting in the dark, not really knowing what I was doing. Whilst I was at the conservatory I decided to try and learn a little bit more about them in detail, and I started doing lots of pieces that crossed over that whole live musician/live electronics boundary.

I also did quite a few sound installations using found sounds. I set up an invisible bird cage which had lots of speakers around the room that created the effect of the bird fluttering around the room. You stood in the middle of it and it was quite low-lit, so it was purely an aural experience.

That's it. I'm quitting VICE and going back to art school. How much did you bring of that education to your new album?
Well I always really want the technical side of things to be as intuitive as possible. I don't want to think about what I should be doing at a certain point—I want it to come naturally. The more I worked with it the more intuitive it became.

Is this album the first thing you will have released on Ninja Tune?
I did two EPs with them. One was called the Visual Acuity EP, which was in a hype, club aesthetic following the "Pumping Like Reeboks" single. Then there was the Mass Appeal EP which was a little bit more downtempo. It was right about the time of the Mass Appeal EP that I started thinking seriously about using my voice as a main focus of the album and it took a little time to work all that out. This album will be the first encounter with Raffertie for a lot of people, so it's it'll be interesting for them to look back on where I've come from.

You've released a few records Planet Mu as well. Do you feel like you had people within those labels who were guiding you or encouraging you to explore a specific path?
Early on it was quite uninhibited. Those initial releases got picked up because they were online, or because I was sending them to DJs, and someone came back to me and said they liked it and wanted to release it. I was just making stuff and people seemed to like it. But then as I've been working with Ninja Tune, there's been a lot more feedback from the label, pushing me to be better, to up my production standards and that's been one of the biggest things I've come away from in this whole process. I feel like I'm a better writer. I feel like I'm more assured of everything and I think that's because I was pushed to do more and get more out of my work.

Can we talk about your own label, Super? I read that you discovered AlunaGeorge. Did you put out AlunaGeorge's first official release?
Yeah. Before we started working with them, we'd seen a couple of shows that they'd done and we'd heard a few early demos. They did a free single on Super; I think it was called "Body Music"—the same name as their new album, Body Music—and that was fantastic. They sent over "You Know You Like It," and we instantly loved it and decided to put that out. George, the producer, brought that first track into my studio and we did the final mixdown for it, then we put it out. One thing went from another and it naturally seemed to pick up, and here we are two years later and they're doing fantastically.

They're basically pop stars huh?
Yeah, it's incredible. And they really deserve it. They're lovely people and they make fantastic music.

I was thinking about AlunaGeorge and the state of UK pop right now. We're starting to get crossover dance music acts like Disclosure and Rudimental who are hitting the charts even in the States. We're seeing something of a UK garage revival, don't you think?
All of that stuff is rife here on the radio. Disclosure and Rudimental are massive. I suppose it was two or three years the radio stations picked up on this sound that was dubstep—although it has since moved beyond dubstep. It's nice that some of that music has made it through. Unfortunately I think with some music, the more popular it gets, the more it gets involved with sales and major label budgets and everything else it can become a bit diluted from what the original intention was. But, there are some artists who manage to hang onto their integrity and still make fantastic music. And the thing is, if it sells, it kind of speaks for itself. They're clearly doing something right.

In that same vein there's a buzz around electronic bands who perform live. Do you have a live set?
I do have a live set and it's just about ready to be taken on the road. We've been doing a few test shows, just little things around London to get it ready, and the last couple of shows have sounded really strong. Our setup is very simple: It's basically me singing, playing guitars and keyboards, then I've got a drummer who's playing a mixture of live kit and triggered samples. Because the album is so stripped down, we've managed to get most of the elements completely live which is great. I think that live touring is really important. You can go and see DJs play—and I still love DJing now and then—but it's quite a different thing. Fans want to hear the album. They want to see what you bring to that music in a live setting. So, yeah, I think it's a means to connect with your fans.