BOSS OF
THE “T 032 SOUTH
Atlanta’s Distal has just changed the game with his debut album, ‘Civilization’. Drawing on Dirty South hip-hop, his past as a happy hardcore DJ, old school house and that “cowbell ping”, he’s making something genuinely new, inspired by his Southern USA surroundings…
Words: CLAIRE HUGHES pics: IAN FLANNERY
he thing I’m worried about is that people are going to listen to the album, notice that there’s the 808 cowbell sound on pretty much every track and think, he’s from Atlanta, he’s from the South, he
likes banging on cowbells, wearing dungarees and has snaggle teeth,” says Distal, aka 28-year-old producer Michael Rathburn. “The thing is, there’s just something about that cowbell ping that’s just special. It’s on all the old Trax Records stuff: in lots of early electro, early house and hip-hop.” Distal starts tapping away at his computer to produce the 808 cowbell noise, the signature acid house sound that you’d recognize from tracks such as ‘Boss Of The South’ and ‘Amphibian’ that he’s put out through labels including Tectonic, Grizzly, Seclusiasis and Fortified Audio. He grins as he presses a button and delivers the ‘ping’. Then giggles as he does it again, and again.
The thing about Distal’s new album, ‘Civilization’, while it is littered with the very retro 808 cowbell noise, is that there’s nothing old or fusty about it. Out now on Tectonic Records, it fluctuates between tempos, moods, rhythms and with the eclecticism of a person whose mind isn’t at rest, or focused on one sound alone. From the popping 808 cowbell on ‘The Sun’ to the stripped-down, dancehall-style ‘Rattlesnake’
and the Balearic-sounding ‘She Wears Pearls’, the LP is impossible to pin down. The musicality in his tunes stretches beyond the breakneck rhythms and quickfire 808 assaults that he’s known for. “I wanted all the tunes on the album to sound very organic and human,” says Distal. “For me, ‘Temple Altar’ is what it sounds like when people are kneeling at an altar. ‘Gorilla’ sounds like you’re being chased through the forest like a gorilla. It sounds weird, but that’s kind of how I see music.”
THREE SIX MAFIA Distal grew up in Atlanta, and has lived all over the
city: with his parents in a posher, more suburban enclave and, on his own, in the rougher parts, the “more ghetto” bits of the city. He grew up listening to myriad music styles; from rap, to hardcore, to techno, to house. The thing he says he always felt about music, is that it’s only interesting when it’s never really quite pin-downable as one thing or another. He thinks real quality music is never as simple as that. That’s why, for his debut album, you can hear influences that flit from juke, to footwork, to rap, techno, house and dubstep. “The Three 6 Mafia were a rap group that were huge when I was in middle school and I remember really getting into their stuff,” he says. “The thing that got me most was that some of their music, I thought, sounded a bit like old techno. It was deep and dark, and the sub would take over. I remember hearing their album ‘Smoked Out, Loced
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Out’ and hearing the 808 on that. It was my first exposure to it, which is funny when you think about it.” Distal sampled the title track ‘Smoked Out, Loced Out’ on one of his early productions, ‘Zeus De Drop’ that came out on his own Embassy Records in late 2010. Before that, not many people this side of the Atlantic were aware of Distal’s music. When that gangsta techno tune dropped, things changed. “That’s probably the only really hard, American- sounding tune I’ve done,” says Distal. “It was a fun track, really. It had enough sub, room and bass to bridge the gap between dubstep and techno a bit, I felt. But really it was just something to play in clubs.”
In Atlanta, the two “best clubs” — 529 and the East Side Lounge — host mainly dubstep nights. According to Distal, that’s THE underground sound of Atlanta. Local producers such as Richard Devine and Treasure Fingers hang out at those venues, he says. Distal has DJed at both in the past. But, when it comes to playing tunes, Distal is as hard to pin down as he is with his production style. “I’m really into house and techno right now,” he says. “There’s this duo called Nguzunguzu from LA who recently put out an EP on Fade To Mind [Night Slugs’ US offshoot label, run by Kingdom], and I’ve been playing that a lot.” Distal’s into them, he says, because of the weird samples they use. “They have this tune called ‘Wake Sleep’ that samples a waterfall and some bells,” he says. “It’s so weird-
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