Exist – Lookin’ At Blue (Atjazz & Karizma Production)

A collaboration between the mighty Karizma and magnificent Atjazz. “Lookin’ At Blue” will be released on 22^nd September.

In the Studio: Karizma—The Baltimore Bass Guru Talks Building Drums and Drama

• Words: Michael Byrne
• Photo: Pete Moss

Wham City and club music aside, Baltimore is still a place where you can roll up to a red light and hear deep house thumping from a car window, or find a “House Music Lives” sticker plastered on an alley door. Before club music, house was the dance music of the city—and its old-school residents remember it fondly. Right as Baltimore club exploded into the world’s DJ crates, Karizma (a.k.a. Chris Clayton) got into the studio with the Basement Boys team of DJ Spen and Teddy Douglas, and learned how to make house music. After a baffling amount of remix work, and a well-received leap into solo production, Karizma is keeping the house music faith alive. On a stifling early-Summer day in Baltimore, we caught up with the producer and DJ on a brief stop back in his hometown to talk about learning from the masters.

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XLR8R: What are some of the biggest things you learned from working in the studio with the Basement Boys?
Karizma: How to structure a song. And, from Spen, I learned engineering and the technical aspects of the studio. It’s a big part of everything I do now. Unruly [Records] was different—[I] pretty much made the Baltimore [club] tracks and that was it. This was a whole different meal. I learned song structure, how to make drama in a song, how to make something happen when there is nothin’ happening with voices and stuff. I don’t think I would be half of what I am without that experience.

Why did you move from making club music to house tracks?
It was what I wanted to do with music anyway. I had this Baltimore record that was nine minutes long—the longest club record ever. It took a year for anyone to play it. They was just used to three- or four-minute songs playing the same thing over and over. I used to tell the DJ, ‘You gotta play for at least five or six minutes. It does different things.’ When I saw that happenin’, that they didn’t want to let the song do anything, that’s when I became discouraged and decided to move on. I thought the music should always grow and develop into something else. Moving to the Basement Boys was a breath of fresh of air. I was constantly doing remixes, constantly doing something different drumwise—which doesn’t apply to Baltimore club. I never used the same drums at Basement Boys, and that was something I promised I would never do.
Karizma – “Drumz Nightmare”

When you hear a track, what tells you whether or not it’s something you can work with as a remix?
If I think I can take it a different way, or it’s a good song—hopefully both. If I just hear, like, a chant in the song I think I can work with. Or, the third thing is just something completely different that would give me a challenge. How can I make it way different than what it was, hopefully to make it a better track? I always try to throw different things into the circle so people don’t become bored with what I do.

Where do you start in the studio?
[It] depends. Sometimes the [Ensoniq] ASR-10, because that’s what I use for drums. For years, that’s all I used. I never even used to use computers in my stuff. I was just too scared. I like the sound, the dirtiness of the stuff that’s analog. I kind of do a little bit of both now—call it digi-log. I take stuff from the ASR or the MPC and then dump it into Logic. The majority of the time, it starts out with my drums. And then keys or synth.

Why did you decide it was cool to start using a computer?
It just seemed like the right move. Some of my friends were just killing it on Logic. I used to use a PC, which is really cheap and you can get everything cracked—but it’s not the most stable thing. Viruses come, and then you lost your song. 95% of my friends use Logic and a Mac, so that’s how I ended up making the move. [Live], I still use [Pioneer] CDJs. I still don’t have enough trust in the computer.

What piece of gear do you covet?
An original Moog synthesizer. I wish I had one of those.

What production technique or style are you just sick of hearing?
Right now, I guess a lot of the big-room stuff I really don’t like because it’s just all the same and there’s nothing different. Like, you can expect that 16 or 32 bars will be filtered down and come back up. When I can figure a record out two or three minutes in, those are the types of records I can’t stand. I like records that take me somewhere else or throw me [for] a loop. Predictability in a track is what turns me off the most.

“As an artist, I never wanted to be boxed in, and just make house, or just make hip-hop. So I always told myself that as soon as I blossomed into my own thing that I would never just stay to one type of music. I just wanted to do whatever I was feeling at the time. So it’s not a surprise to hear a hip-hop track from me. I always wanted it that way. Artists and DJs shouldn’t be limited to just the genre that they play.”

Such opinions come from the one and only, Karizma, who craftly uses 3 CDJs and others mixing garage classic house, techy jazz house, broken beats, hip hope etc. (boarderless of music) making live beats on the spot as if using music instruments; his such highly influential DJ-ing style has touched many of listeners worldwide, and now as known as a CDJ master honored by the dons of underground music scene, Karizma is finally doing a Pioneer DJ Presents Karizma Japan Tour this fall.

The highlight of this tour must be to witness Karizma share marvelous DJ techniques mastering special features of the Pioneer products, CDJ 2000 and DJM 2000.

The tour kicks in from Thursday, September 16th having Karizma join Dommune, a live streaming site and studio with several cameras capturing the equipment, hands, faces, and ambiance; the mixed result with an impressive set of filters, making for an experience that always feels like it should be released on DVD as is, for a DJ mix show, and will appear in several favorite spots for the fans in Japan during 12 days of this tour.

The man that continues to excel to another level, Karizma. We can expect to see him prove himself as a veteran DJ/CDJ Master, and this tour will definitely be another history for our music culture and industry. Don’t miss it!