JamesMcDonald Can you explain the concept behind Rosser Electronics, and the ‘coflein’ you’ve immersed yourself in?

Rhod Thomas I started a part time degree in Music Technology with the University of St Davids in Swansea. They have a studio at the old BBC building in Swansea. It’s a building with a definite vibe; Dylan Thomas recorded radio plays there, it got bombed during WW2 and has a huge recording room that can sprinkle a lovely dusting of reverb on the drums. I was reading up on the building on Coflein, which is a huge online database of historic buildings in Wales and the word essentially means ‘Memory Line‘.

The site referred to a company that worked out of the building in the late 60s and built desks for Rockfield (maybe the desks used for Rush’s ‘A Farewell to Kings‘. I spoke to someone who said one of the desks ended up in a skip). I then found online a load of PDFs of an old studio engineering magazine (a bit like ‘Sound on Sound’) – the article on the company in one issue detailed the contract they won to fit out Nato’s HQ internal communications system.

The first Rosser record is a document of my obsession with that building. I’d end up recording there alone mostly and the whole Rosser thing with Nato in the middle of a cold war just sent me in a particular direction.

The whole period when making that first recording was almost like deja vu. It’s a record haunted by the building and the people who worked in it and walked its corridors.

JamesMcDonald If you met someone who had worked at Rosser Electronics, what would you ask them?

Rhod Thomas What happened to the missing consoles?! Some ended up in Rockfield but where did they go after that? Perhaps they are still out there…

JamesMcDonald The record is wonderfully eclectic – you cite Madlib, Vincent Gallo, Brazilian samba and the Radiophonic Workshop as influences – how did you actually go about writing these tracks?

Rhod Thomas I was listening to loads of ‘The Elephant Man’s Bones’ by the Alchemist and Roc Marciano – it’s got this wicked ‘crime jazz’ feel to it, very dry, dusty drums and the slight feeling of dread. That record and post rock stuff from the late 90s (first Aeriel M record, early Tortoise) was the mood board. I’d record late at night and just set an 8 bar loop of some old drum samples and just play on top for an hour or so, then revisit the loops and treat them like a forensic scene, pick up passages where I’d hit upon a riff or mood, sample that then use that as a foundation for the tracks.

I think now I understand that I don’t really understand my process in writing music. The only thing that really made sense in terms of the how I’d describe the process is in the film ‘Crumb’, about the American cartoonist Robert Crumb. From what I remember it goes along the lines of – ‘real inspiration comes from the subconscious mind’. It has to go as directly as possible from the subconscious to the hand, the pen, the brush, the blank surface, the paper, the canvas.

I have to work at it, I never really wait for the best time to make music. I’ll just sit and work at it and get hypnotised and the best stuff is when the subconscious slowly grabs your shoulder and gently asks you to hold the beer.

It’s a blessing and a curse to work alone like this. I still can’t completely disappear up my own arse, I have to go over the long passages and try and edit the ‘movie’ to keep the movement progressing forwards. The arrangements are the most important thing even more so than the technical things like mixing. You can’t mix your way out of a bad arrangement as I have learned many times to my peril.

“It’s an obsession and probably a very unhealthy one. I don’t sleep well, I am constantly thinking about it, refining it, driving it around in the car, overthinking it, underthinking it and generally being haunted by it. Apart from that, it’s mostly fun.” – Rhod Thomas

JamesMcDonald There are plenty of lovely live drums – and bongos – on the record, do you consider yourself a percussionist first and foremost? And what do you take from playing other instruments that you perhaps cannot get from drums alone?

Rhod Thomas I’m definitely a drummer first and foremost. The rhythm and pace of a track is where I usually gravitate towards when I listen to music. Especially on this first Rosser recording I got into scouring YouTube and Reddit for drum breaks from old records. Lots of stuff like David Axlerod, The Beat Butcha. I then tried to copy the beats on my own kit and tried to mimic the sounds too. Very dry, lots of tea towels! The bongos are sampled; they give it a cool space age lounge party vibe which is nice.

When it comes to playing other instruments, I take only what I need. I get by using the same tricks I learned when I was 16/17, it’s all wrong. I put my thumb on the thickest guitar string and I’ll mess with the tunings. I also used my son’s ¾ guitar a lot on the recordings, it’s cheap sounding but has a cool twang to it. We also found an old Korg analog synth in a skip and used that to add more wonkines.

JamesMcDonald Where were these drums recorded? They’re beautifully captured…

Rhod Thomas The drums were recorded in the old BBC building, I had a whole day there and geeked out with some very nice mics. It’s rare to get that total freedom to just pig out so I made the most of it. Drums, although my fave thing to play, are a complete pain in the arse. No one likes lugging them around, they’re too loud to play all the time at home and recording them just right takes too long for when you need to get home for the school run… but against all the odds I persevered and got them nice. I also made a drum sample pack using all the recordings.

JamesMcDonald Are there any moments on this record that you’re particularly proud of? And any happy accidents that came out well in the mix?

Rhod Thomas Probably the ‘popcorn’ disco bit in the middle of ‘James (Pond)’. I got a cool synth called the Microfreak which can be reliably random. I just randomly hit a bunch of notes, put an arpeggiator on and let it play itself over a tinny disco beat and it just nailed a very nice weird groove. I could never have ‘planned’ it, if I did it would have been ‘better’ but worse off.

JamesMcDonald You’ve done everything on this record yourself, from the instrumentation to the recording, the mixing and mastering – are there elements of the process you prefer more than others, or is it the craft as a whole you enjoy?

Rhod Thomas It’s an obsession and probably a very unhealthy one. I don’t sleep well, I am constantly thinking about it, refining it, driving it around in the car, overthinking it, underthinking it and generally being haunted by it. Apart from that, it’s mostly fun.

JamesMcDonald And what have you learned from this process? Did any of these lessons carry through to the next record?

Rhod Thomas All I learned is that making music the way I do is a blessing and a curse. I probably need to get out of my own way and play with other people again more but at the same time why not just try and make exactly what’s in your head?! Perhaps sharing in the making of music is ultimately the greater good, where you do make compromises to reach a goal as a team. Perhaps it’s not your perfect record, but does anyone give a toss??

JamesMcDonald How did you manage to produce two records in such quick succession?

Rhod Thomas Songs for the second recording were being hashed out for the first one but just didn’t fit or needed more time to develop. The original idea was to make it like a mixtape with 30 odd one minute bursts. I do like those things but I am old school to the point that I like a song to properly get nice and ripe.

I think nowadays there’s no point to just ‘drop’ everything online. I used to think that was cool but I have changed my opinion. There’s just a face melting amount of ‘stuff’ that’s trying to grab your attention. As much as I worked on this, in the grand scheme no one’s really heard it, which is a bit mental but at the same time perfectly expected and normal. I just don’t want to give away all my ideas willy nilly anymore.

“All songs need something, it’s up to you to find it. Speeding it up 15 times the original speed usually works, as does a shaker.” – Rhod Thomas

JamesMcDonald This record perhaps has more conventional ‘songs’ on it, was that a conscious decision?

Rhod Thomas Defo wanted to have ‘songs’ on the second one, yeah. There’s no strong concept as there was on the first, I just had songs I really liked that I wanted to finish properly and put out.

Lyrically it’s personal to myself – ‘Kat and Jenny’ is about how talented my son is, he makes ‘phonk’ beats on FL Studio. It’s very distorted, noisy electronic music. It’s about being proud of that. It’s a total Ride rip off for me but I got into the DADGAD tuning (think it’s that sequence?!)

‘Making Waves’ is about a story taken from a book called ‘Nam’ by Mark Baker. Ian Mckaye recommended it in an interview years ago. The book is a collection of real life stories from American soldiers who lived through the war. It takes no sides, it just provides their accounts. One account is of a hard ass Sargeant who makes life hell for some soldiers who won’t dig out and drain mortar holes that have filled with rainwater (the fear being it will attract mosquitoes).

No matter where we are in the world and in whatever situation we have to deal with people and they have to deal with us. I took a leaf out of that Jeff Tweedy book ‘How to Write One Song’ and would read books to find words, phrases and ideas to help me with lyrics. The language in the Nam book just landed with me, the rhythm of the words fit the music.

JamesMcDonald ‘Moving To Cowpunk’ is a single! In this day and age! Did you consider a physical release? Is that even viable anymore?

Rhod Thomas I’d 100 percent love to do a physical release of my music. I’d ideally see how it fares streaming just to make it financially viable, but in terms of how to get the streaming numbers increasing I am all ears! Granted I’m not playing live yet so that will always be an issue in terms of word of mouth and making it grow naturally…

In terms of a social media presence I sway from trying to use it to thinking that perhaps I’m not that engaging in terms of how I present myself online. There is a part of me that thinks Instagram is at its peak and we’re about to see the last end of level boss die though. I can imagine all their servers all shaking with steam coming out of them. It can no longer hold all the drum videos, synth videos, hot music take videos, and how to use sidechain compression videos.

JamesMcDonald ‘Horse’ is beautiful, especially for an old ‘crew head like myself as I feel it echoes some of the calmer moments in ‘Bill Carson’ or ‘Quiet… it is Dead’… and ‘Making Waves’ is a bit of a tearjerker too… where am I going with this? Well, I suppose, what moments on this record are you most pleased with?

Rhod Thomas Right now it’s ‘Horse‘ and a song called ‘Last Pose’. ‘Horse‘ is an anomaly, it’s like pastoral dub folktronica techno. It’s very long but to me it never feels boring or stagnant. There’s lots of marginal gains happening through the song. Like these tiny little changes happening before you, it’s always moving without needing to resort to 15 different sections. I still listen to it in the car.

‘Last Pose’ started off as some slow synth goth number but as soon as I sped it up it felt right. It’s an example of how you should never write a song off until you find what it needs. All songs need something, it’s up to you to find it. Speeding it up 15 times the original speed usually works, as does a shaker.

JamesMcDonald Do you remember what you were listening to at the time of recording, or at least, where you drew inspiration from when writing this one?

Rhod Thomas I got into some of the new wave of ‘shoegazey’ American stuff like They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Duster (not new but new to me), Dummy and loads of stuff that just seemed to float around on YouTube. I still find loads of cool new things there. It’s like one of my favourite record shops now.

JamesMcDonald Any pearls of wisdom you can pass onto budding home recordists?

Rhod Thomas

● FIRST IDEA/BEST IDEA
● SATURATION
● EVEN IF THE TRACK IS MOSTLY CUT AND PASTED TOGETHER PLAY ONE THING UNEDIITED IN ONE TAKE (BASSLINE, GUITAR)
● DON’T RUSH BUT DON’T TAKE TOO LONG NEITHER
● RECORD REAL THINGS AND DROP THEM INTO THE MIX
● YOU CAN’T MIX A BAD ARRANGEMENT BETTER
● GOOD ARRANGEMENT IS BETTER THAN A GOOD MIX

JamesMcDonald Can you talk more about how you use sampling in your work as it’s been a prominent feature of many of the projects you’ve been involved in. What do you enjoy about working with samples?

Rhod Thomas ‘Hope You Find Some Shine’ was just a bass line with some slo core drums on top, very morose, very serious. I got so sick of it I had to shake it up and try and make ‘funny’ without it being ‘quirky’ or ‘zany’. If I laugh at my music I feel like I have captured something that brings out a reaction. Funny music sometimes gets a bad rep but to me it can be funny without being comedy music. It’s like watching James Brown in Zaire in 1974, it’s not a comedy, he’s not taking the piss, I’m laughing because it’s making me extremely happy.

I went down a rabbit hole of watching ‘Red Dead Redemption’ walkthrough videos on YouTube because for whatever stupid reason I wanted the album to have a very very loose western concept, but more like ‘The Oregon Trail’. I found the gold prospector samples and they fit the timing perfectly. It’s a musical without the need to ‘sing’ or have a vocal line. The rhythm of the words sat so nice.

I like sampling as it’s like messing with time. A drummer playing on an old song gets sampled years after the fact they played the song on a random day back in 1972 or whatever. All of a sudden you’re talking to the past, they are ‘alive’ again. I also like the fact that using samples opens you up to more accidents. You’re never sure how something you’ve sampled will re-color the song or shift the angle to give the song a new feeling. I also like it because old drum kits sound lush.

JamesMcDonald Finally, what’s next for Rosser Electronics?

Rhod Thomas I’m making an EP now am two songs in. Thanks to my family for putting up with this music stuff which still doesn’t pay!