MACHINE-DRUM

And collaborate on this album Machinedrum did — with his younger self as well as with a cadre of other preeminent current talent. Stewart claims that 3FOR82 is the most “feature-heavy” album he’s done. In the creation of the record, Stewart drew inspiration from his early work with Jesse Boykins III and Theophilus London, working on each track in-studio as opposed to virtually or through acapellas. In 3FOR82,  Stewart began by filming each collaborator, asking them: “If you were able to be in the room with your younger self right now, what would you say to them? What would you do with them? What words of wisdom would you give them? I would start recording and get their live reaction[s].” He reminisces: “Every single artist that I worked with had a different answer, which mostly led to how their lyrics were inspired. I would say, of anything out of any album that I've ever done, this is the most lyrically connected, where all the songs are kind of answers to that question.” 

Despite the artist’s repute for myopic attention to frenetic, glitchy detail, Stewart actively avoids worrying about technical frills while creating-a safeguard against getting “lost in the sauce,” he advises. “You forget that feeling you should be getting from listening to a piece of work if you're a little too technical,” he says. That indescribable feeling — that nuclear bond that envelops the creator and their listening community in an eternal two-step — upholsters every part of Machinedrum’s creative process, including his choice in software. After using an Impulse Tracker for 10-12 years, Stewart switched to Ableton Live in 2008 — his love for the software reminds him of his love for the tracker community of his youth. Back in the day,“You [could] see how everybody else use[d] these sounds that were circulated [in the community],” he says. Now, Max for Live has a similar communal usage, identifiable samples and sounds leaving fingerprints across the music industry. Despite hearing the same sound samples crop up in various songs, Stewart enjoys the low barrier of entry to production these days. “At the end of the day, whatever your tools are, it all comes down to the person behind it,” he says.

Such is why Stewart is all for democratization of music software (and pro-musicians union, to boot): If everyone had access to production software; if everyone used the same sounds and adhered to the same creative regimen and listened to the same music — there would still be plentiful opportunities for artistic singularity. A good producer can spend hours on a project and thousands of dollars on plugins, but a great producer has an “awareness of how far away [they’re] getting from an original idea.” Stewart gestures to his chest — towards his own rhythmic timekeeper, that arbiter of biology and life and death. 

 “The mind is there to act and execute it, but really — the feeling, the emotions, the deepness of a song and how other people relate to it that really all comes from the heart. It’s a very in-your-chest feeling… you have to look outside of yourself, and then look back at yourself and be like:  Would I fuck with this? Would I be into this music?... There's no wrong or right way to do things. You could have a studio full of gear. You can have just a little laptop and headphones. As long as you follow your excitement and check in with yourself, I think you're gonna be good.”