My Mate Rival Consoles Makes Smart Electronic Music

I’ve known Ryan L.West, AKA producer Rival Consoles, for years now. We used to work in a crappy department store in Leicester together while he was studying something music-related and I was learning how to draw. Now look at us, both living and working in London, like the modern day Bloomsbury Set, forging massively successful creative careers and redefining the cultural landscape. Or something.

Ryan’s always had a lot of skills. Like, actual skills, such as playing the piano and other intellectual stuff that people are impressed by when they see him doing it. So I thought I'd sit down with the electronic wizard to ask him how his proper skills were faring for him in The Big Smoke.

Noisey: Remember when we used to work a boring-ass job together, selling rugs, getting covered in fake hair? What are your fondest memories of that?

Rival Consoles: I have a lot of good memories of that. The job was a piece of shit, but it was fun ‘cos you could talk crap for hours with your mates. One of my favourite memories was when I asked this totally mental guy how big the universe was, and he answered with "as big as a slab".

Profound. Then you left me for university. What did you study, again?

Music technology and Innovation. That’s right—"innovation".

Wow. And there's nothing more innovative than computer music. How many "real" instruments can you play?

Guitar, drums and a little piano and violin.

How’s learning the violin? Humbling?

Oh, it’s fucking hard. I mean, stupidly hard. There are a lot of people who say it isn't—they're usually genius, four-year-old Chinese kids—but it really does require a lot of discipline and focus, and my life is made up almost exclusively of messing around, so it's kind of tricky. I think we live in an age where people, more than ever, want to be good at something without thousands of hours of learning, so that's why it's humbling, because you realize there are no short cuts.

True. Right, help me out here. I’ve known you for about six years and I still don’t know what genre your music is.

Rival Consoles is very synth-heavy with a lot of house routes and what I would call electronica. It’s very pattern-heavy, so lots of sequences of notes being layered and being cut up around house drums.

So, it’s just ‘electronic’? Not IDM, or any of those other acronymic electronic genres?

I mean, if something is good, it's always "intelligent" to a certain degree. Unless people mean truly intelligent music making, which I'd say we should leave for names like Wagner and Schoenberg. I guess it came from the fact that people like Autechre were making music that was so mind-boggling that it was more about the intellectual quality of the music, as opposed to, say, Daft Punk, which you can react to with less intellect. I really think it's harder and more rewarding to make music that's less intellectual but still amazing. It seems purer and more instinctive to me.

What about Skrillex?

He’s good at what he does, but I’m not that interested. I mean, it has no soul, really. It sounds very superficial to me; he sticks to a very functional build, break and drop formula.

Fair enough. Lastly, you spend a lot of time experimenting – what’s the idea behind these improvisation videos?

Well, I think improvisation is one of the best ways to achieve music that's more instinctive and not as polished, plus you end up doing things you would never do if you just sat down and tried to make music. It's about the journey; creating a long stream of ideas—some good, some bad—and hopefully some inspiring moments, which you can build on.

I decided to start filming them because I found it really interesting to see what stuff works on video. Sometimes you're just in a zone and aren't really aware of the music, like a listener might be. I upload them because it's good for me to see what stuff works and, for everyone else, it's an insight into how I work.

Check out more from Rival Consoles here and catch him playing at The Waiting Rooms in London, on 21st September.

Follow Sam on Twitter @sptsam, or look at all the pretty drawings on his website: www.samtaylorillustrator.com.