Second Storey Makes Dancefloor Beats for Strung Out Cyborgs

"I always look for sounds and rhythmic structures that interest me and sound a bit different, so perhaps a lot of the time they are non standard or unconventional," says Alec Storey, the brains and hands behind Second Storey and the engrossing new album Double Divide, released on London club Fabric's in-house label Houndstooth. "I like to keep the dancefloor moving, so it's about striking a balance between the head and the feet."

The album kicks off with winners like "Reserved" and "Combustion Hallmark," tracks that show off Storey's aesthetic pristinely. They're dense, dark, and mechanical, prone to favoring complicated rhythms and subtle melodies. The tones utilized are unique - It's a big part of the Second Storey game plan. "I used a lot of resampling with two and sometimes three tier manipulation of the sounds," Storey explains. "Sometimes I started with a synth part, with automation and effects added, then resampled it and used the sampler to manipulate it further using looping and extra pitch envelopes before resampling that, turning it into audio for further edit. I like working in this way, as once you resample the sounds with edits and effects as part of the audio it takes on a very different quality when you use the sampler. The effects themselves become much more integral to the sound itself as opposed to being an addition."

The Houndstooth label has been developing a roster of high-brow dance-adjacent music with a penchant for the bleepy-bloopy. Labelmates Akkord and Throwing Snow have released top-notch records this year that are vastly different from one another. "Rob Booth [Houndstooth A&R] has such a wide and varied taste in music, his Electronic Explorations podcast is testament to that," says Storey. "Houndstooth wants to challenge the listener, keep them on their toes. I think it's good that they release music more than just techno or house. The label could look diverse to some, but it definitely has a common thread running through all the artists."

"I'm currently working on the live set as we speak," Storey goes on. "I did a lot of live sets under my previous Al Tourettes alias, so it will be a similar set up. I use Ableton coupled with several midi controllers, an Elektron Machine Drum and a Roland SPD-SX electronic drum pad for live drum input. I'm focusing on building new rhythms using the drum pad live before performing real time edits in Ableton, along with lots of synth tweaks. Eventually I would like to include my whole V-drums kit, but for now i'm working on a more portable set up. The set will be more geared towards the dance floor with lots of new jams and adaptations of the tracks on the album so i'm really looking forward to getting it done so i can perform it live."

Alec Storey just released an EP with longtime friend Appleblim on the seminal Belgian experimentechno label R&S under the name ALSO. At times, it's more immediately palatable for dancefloors than the tracks on Double Divide, but maintains the dense and moody aesthetic that Storey seems so akin to. Storey, on the project: "We've been working together for many years now on remixes and back to back DJ sets's, so it was a natural progression to blend our musical ideas. The project originally started as a live set we tailor made to perform at We Love…Space in Ibiza a couple of years back and just grew from there. R&S records output has been a big influence on both of us so were chuffed to bits to be releasing music on one of our all time favourite labels."

Find Second Storey and/or ALSO on FB // Soundcloud
Find Houndstooth on FB // Soundcloud

Jemayel Khawaja is THUMP's Managing Editor - @JemayelK