With March of the Fallen and Sirens of Silence released today, we caught up with Cabeabel to talk about the instincts behind his orchestral drum and bass, working with live musicians, and the visual world he creates around his music.

You describe March of the Fallen and Sirens of Silence as particularly representative of your orchestral and atmospheric side. What ideas started each track, and where did they take different directions?

For March of the Fallen, I actually started with the drums. I was aiming for an old-school Amen feel, but with a bit more energy and a slightly different sound. At the same time, I was experimenting with some Bulgarian female choir samples, which I really love because they give me this kind of Elvish, fantasy-movie feeling that I’m very much into. At some point, I started combining the two ideas, and I built the orchestral and cinematic elements around them to push that fantasy atmosphere further.

Sirens of Silence took a different route. I originally started working on a remix of another track, but as I kept experimenting and exploring, it moved further and further away from the original. Once I added the choirs, it really became something completely different, and I realized it was its own track. So I decided to go for a separate release. The remix is still coming, though.

So, I never really know where a track will end up when I start a project. Both of these tracks are good examples of that, and they arrived there in very different ways.

You want orchestral instruments to be central to the music rather than sit behind it. How does that affect the way you write the drums and bass around them?

It actually works both ways. Sometimes I begin with the drums and add bass, and then build the orchestral elements around them. In that case, the rhythm and feel of the drums influence how I write the orchestral parts. When I start with an orchestral idea, for example a violin section or a choir, I approach the drums differently and let the rhythm of the orchestral elements influence the drum patterns.

I think the important thing for me is that the orchestral elements are not just there to sit in the background and create atmosphere. I often want them to be an active part that either stands out or at least interacts with the drums or the bass elements over the course of the track.

You’ve worked with opera singers, cellists, pianists, and didgeridoo players. Was there a session where a musician brought something you hadn’t anticipated and changed the direction of the track?

Yes, definitely. In some projects, I have a very clear vision of what I want, and I direct the performance until it fits that idea. But I am generally very open to suggestions from the musicians I work with, and their input can definitely change the direction of a track. Usually, it doesn’t take the track completely away from the original idea, but it can add something I hadn’t thought of myself.

I’m not musically trained, and I do pretty much everything by ear, so working with trained musicians has been a great learning experience for me. They can bring ideas around melodic variations or arrangements that I might not have considered. I value that exchange very much, and some of those suggestions have made tracks significantly better.

Your background includes a doctorate in natural sciences. Do any habits from research carry into your studio work, and how do you recognise when an idea needs instinct rather than more analysis?

I would say that most of my productions are actually driven by instinct and my personal emotional response. In some ways, the scientific side of me can even get in the way. I can sometimes become too focused on technical settings or start following what I think should work in theory instead of simply listening to what sounds good. That can actually lead to a worse mix, so I’ve learned that I need to trust my ears and feel more.

Where my scientific background, especially in physics, does help is in understanding some of the technical sides of production. I still find it fascinating how different sound-processing tools work and the clever thinking behind some of them.

My background in neuroscience probably influences the creative side as well. For example, creating a little surprise, what you could call a prediction error. If you get the balance right, that violation of expectation can create a stronger emotional response and sometimes even feel rewarding. The breakcore genre is pretty much based on this concept. Sometimes I also try setting up a listener to pay attention to a particular sound or distract from it. Whether all this actually works in practice is another question, though.

You mentioned that Marusha encouraged you to release music, with your early releases appearing on Club Arrest Music. What helped you make that jump from producing privately to putting your work out?

I think what really made the difference was hearing from someone who had been in the business for so long that my productions had potential. Without that encouragement, I probably wouldn’t have considered releasing my music.

Having the opportunity to release my first tracks on her label, Club Arrest Music, definitely helped me make the jump from producing privately to taking it more seriously and putting my music out there.

Another very good friend of mine from Stockholm, who has been producing techno since the early 1990s, also played an important role. He introduced me to some of the technical aspects of production and helped me understand what equipment and tools I needed to get my tracks to a level where they sounded somewhat reasonable.

So, I think it was really a combination of having people around me who believed in my music, encouraged me to release, and helped me figure out the technical side of things.

You singled out B-Complex as one of your favourite producers. What is it about her writing that stays with you, and has it changed how you approach melody in your own tracks?

I can’t really pinpoint one specific thing. It’s more the overall atmosphere, the sounds and the drum patterns that fascinate me about B-Complex. Her arrangements are often quite unusual, and she is not afraid to take risks in her productions. There is also often a sense of playfulness, good energy, and a kind of fantasy-cinematic feeling in her music that I really like.

I’m sure there are influences I’ve taken from her, but I couldn’t point to one specific technique or idea and say “I got this from B-Complex.” I think it’s more about the mindset of being willing to experiment and not necessarily following the obvious path.

Your connection with Enduser in Stockholm led to Endzeit and Spiral. How did you work together on those tracks, and what did the collaboration ask of you that your solo productions don’t?

The two tracks actually developed in quite different ways, but in both cases we brought different ideas and approaches to the music, which I think complemented each other well.

We worked in a few different ways. We sat together in his studio in Stockholm, worked remotely, especially after my move to Amsterdam, or bounced projects back and forth, making our edits. I think what made it work so well was that we have quite a similar way of thinking, which made communication easy. I also felt we approach certain production elements in a similar way. All of that made the collaboration very smooth.

I think the main difference compared with working on my own is that you have to give up some control and trust the other person. When you work alone, you ultimately decide everything. In a collaboration, you have to be open to something you might have done differently, and find a version that works for both of you. With Enduser, that came very naturally though. It was great fun. I really loved the outcome, and I would definitely do it again.

You make your own release artwork and treat the visual and musical work as parts of the same project. How do the two develop together, and can you pick a release that shows that relationship particularly well?

I usually create my visual art independently from my music. But my personality and experiences shape both, so there’s still a connection between them. I often have a visual association with a track, and I’ll go through my existing artworks to find something that I feel fits the music. Sometimes, an artwork fits perfectly, and I do not change a thing. If I feel something is missing, I’ll alter it until I feel it represents the track properly.

March of the Fallen is probably a good example of that art-music connection. The cover started with a photograph I took in Amsterdam of a fallen or heavily leaning tree. It looked almost like a bridge leading into a different world, and I found that really beautiful. I then added the mystical figures to the image to represent what I imagined when I saw it. So the artwork and the music basically came from the same imaginative space.

Another good example is the cover art for Extinction. This started with making a liquid acrylic painting that I then photographed and shaped with height-mapping and other effects. This one did not need any modification and was a perfect fit for the track from the start.

Your project with Willem Blokker takes The Wellerman into drum and bass. What did you want to preserve from the original song, and what needed rethinking to make it work on a dancefloor?

The idea was to make a fresh DnB reinterpretation of the classic sea shanty, while keeping the recognizable vocal theme that makes the original so memorable.

The main challenge was finding the balance between keeping that familiar character and transforming it into something that works as a DnB track. We did not want to simply put a DnB beat underneath the original song. Quite a lot of the arrangement, melodic variations, and production had to be rethought around the vocals.

Willem contributed a lot of great ideas during the process. Some of his suggestions led to changes that improved the track considerably. So, this is another good example of how a collaboration can take a track further than where I initially imagined it.

The track will come soon on Liquid Brilliants.

You’re stranded on a desert island with a turntable, a generator, and one record. Which record are you taking, and why?

First of all, Desert Island is actually the name of the track I was originally remixing when the project eventually turned into Sirens of Silence, as I mentioned earlier.

Anyway, back to the question: This is tough! I think it would come down to two records. One would be Mobb Deep - Shook Ones, one of my all-time favourite rap songs. It just never gets old. The other would be B-Complex - Girl with Flower. I think it is a masterpiece, was a bit ahead of its time, and I have a lot of good memories associated with it. So I hope I have enough time to decide between the two while the boat is sinking.

Our thanks to Cabeabel for taking us inside the instincts, collaborators, and visual world behind March of the Fallen and Sirens of Silence. Both tracks are released on 8 October.

Photo: Happy Kihlgren, Stockholm.