Studio Masters: Breach

Ben Westbeech, AKA Breach, is one of those artists that is able to captivate underground and mainstream audiences alike. His track, “The Click”, a collaboration with Dark Sky, has satisfied YouTube electronic music aficionados, clocking in at almost 50,000 plays, while his latest single, “Jack”, saddled up to household status, reaching number 9 on the UK chart.

Originating from London, Breach relocated to Amsterdam, where he now lives in a two-bedroom apartment, which also doubles up as his studio. We sat down with him to have a quick chat about his equipment, moving to Amsterdam, and his hit single, “Jack”.

Noisey: How’s it having a studio that doubles up as a bedroom?
Breach: Back in London I had a proper, real studio. But it was dark, lacked fresh oxygen and didn’t have any windows. Now I have my own roof terrace, it’s great.

Why did you move to Amsterdam?
I’ve always wanted to live here. I fell in love with the city. For example, it’s great to live so close to an airport. In London, I had to travel a lot to get to the airport. There were traffic jams all the time, it’s awful. In Amsterdam, I’m at the airport in twenty minutes. It’s fucking quicker to get to London airport by plane from Amsterdam, than by train in London itself. It’s nuts.

I hear that, London traffic is intense.

Besides that, this city is just so wonderful. It breathes so much more tranquility than hectic,stressful London. A lot of good friends of mine, like DJ Cinnaman live here. The music scene is great, there’s so much going on and a it’s really fertile ground for house and techno. There’s a lot of good record shops, as well.

So, tell me a little bit about your hardware.

The upper one is a Neve 1073 DPA. I use this one as a preamp and for vocals. I’ll run all of my instruments through this one. It has a really warm sound and lots of body, which gives colour to vocals. It’s a recording classic. Beneath that, you’ll see a Slate Pro Audio Dragon. This is a mono compressor. I use it mostly to run my vocals through. It’s pretty much like the U Audio 1176LN. The limiter on it is pretty nice. The one with the big letters on it is the Fatso Jr. This is probably the compressor I use most. I use it a lot on my drums. It adds a lot of warmth and has lots of different settings which I like to use. At the bottom there’s a custom made D-LA2A. This is a really special one. When you buy this one, like a regular version, it’s mono. I got this one made custom, so it has a stereo channel for the same price. Really great stuff.

I’m using an ARP Quartet vintage analogue synthesizer. This one has amazing string sounds. Portishead and Massive Attack have both used this model. But, mine's a really old one from the late 70s. I bought The Juno-60 below about four or five years ago and since then it's been my favourite synth.

This is a 50’s military microphone the Germans used. As you can see, it’s painted. People tell me they’ve never seen one like this before, it’s very rare. I bought it eight years ago but it’s still my favourite. I pretty much record everything with this. It’s amazing really. I made "Jack’" with pretty much all the stuff in this room.

Let’s talk about "Jack". What’s the story behind that track?

I was having Vietnamese food with Claude VonStroke (label boss of Dirtybird, MM). I told him that I'd made this really big, Dirtybird-like track, called "Let’s Get Hot". He listened to it, loved it, and signed me. Then he asked me: “can you make one that's even more sleazier and even more sexual”. The next day I had a dream where the vocals of "Jack" came to me. I recorded them, but let it rest for four days. Then I wrote the rest of the music. In ten days the track was done.

There are a lot of great remixes of "Jack" already, including cuts by Eats Everything and by Route 94. Will they ever see the light of day?

No man, they’ll never get a release. See, we come from a jungle kind of background. People love to have those tracks but it’s even better if you can’t own them, you know what I mean? If only a small group of DJ’s have these dubplates, you can’t hear them anywhere except from these rare, magical moments in a club. You can’t download them from Zippyshare. That’s why people have to come to the club, to hear those rare records.

A Dutch guy made some kind of viral parody of "Jack". Have you seen it?

No, I haven’t seen it yet.

*opens video*

Oh no, what’s this? It’s hilarious! It’s such a big production; they’ve really put some effort into this. Is this for real? This is the first time I’ve seen it. I don’t mind that someone made this. They really hired models and stuff, right? It’s great, really. I hope someone’s making big money from this!

Haha, it's for real. Thanks Ben!

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Etienne De Crecy

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