JBravo
Up next for the sixth installment on Mixmasters Red is the international collective Physical Education. The group, founded in London by Luke Scheybeler and David Phillips, are now based in Barcelona, London, Paris and Prague. A fascinating project consisting of artists with true musicianship. It’s a real pleasure to have such exciting artists on the Mixmasters imprint.
The release was a standout submission in the Mixmasters ‘Get Signed Music’ competition, using the vocals of genre-defying singer-songwriter Murdocco. The Uruguayan artist was on a Mixmasters marketing retreat in the summer of 2022, taking the chance to work in the legendary Ibizan Metrica Studios recording her own original Spanish vocals.
“I had the urge to write my own song in Spanish. Danny took me to Metrica Studios in Ibiza where we recorded the vocals. Then Physical Education did their magic, they did an amazing job at developing my idea and producing the track.” – Murdocco
Using the vocals in the competition, Physical Education wrote the track and recorded it at Physical Education’s “Mountain House” studio in Northern Catalonia in the Pyrenees, creating an atmospheric, latin-flavoured, deep house epic. Latin percussion parts were recorded in New York City. Flamenco guitar was recorded in Tel Aviv, Israel. The flute was recorded in London. A demonstration of music transcending borders and bringing different artistic cultures together in one special record.
Murdocco was inspired by the idea of living in the present moment, in the now. That special moment when you look someone in the eyes and fall in love at first sight. It’s about being present in the moment; a moment you don’t want to end. That’s why “Quiero más” is central to the lyrics.
The end result is a deep soulful house record that takes you on a journey, the story of two people meeting, dancing and falling in love when their eyes meet across the dance-floor. A 12-minute latin epic you won’t want to end.
Physical Education featuring Murdocco ‘El Momento’ is out on Friday 23rd June, 2023.
We caught up with Physical Education for a quick chat, check it below!
INTERVIEW:
Hello, Physical Education and Murdocco welcome to the Music is 4 Lovers community and thank you for joining us – For those who may not know much about you, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Physical Education (Luke): I’m Luke, I’m a musician, producer, studio-owner and designer. Originally from the UK but based in Northern Catalonia in the Pyrenees where I own Mountain House studios and run a design practice.
Physical Education (Dave): I’m Dave I’m a pianist, producer and music technologist, and I’ve been working on music with Luke since the 90s when we were teenagers growing up in the UK. Our music is very influenced by soul and jazz and it tends to be on the deeper side of house, although we make quite a lot of different stuff. We’re influenced by a lot of the classic US stuff, early Nu Groove, early Strictly Rhythm, those sort of labels.
Murdocco: Hi I am Murdocco, a singer-songwriter from Uruguay, based in London and BCN. I like telling stories through my music, I produce most of my work and lately I have been collaborating with talented producers/djs on dance/house tracks. My productions are a combination of live instruments and electronica.
How did the record come about?
Physical Education (Luke): I’m a member of the Mixmasters Production community based in Ibiza that’s run by Danny Savage and this was a competition entry for their monthly mix competitions.
Physical Education (Dave): I live in Prague but happened to be over in Spain at Luke’s place for a studio session. We’d planned to work on something else. But he had this little musical idea and Mariana’s vocals and so we decided to change our plan and work on the competition entry.
Murdocco: I wrote El Momento with the intention of making an acapella for producers to work on. Then Danny from MixMasters decided to organize a bootcamp+competition where hundreds of producers were given my vocals to make a track out of it. There were hundreds of amazing tracks submitted, really good developments of my idea…it’s very interesting when producers work from an acapella as a starting point, making up the instrumental. When the team had to choose the winner track, I thought it was going to be very difficult but actually, Physical Education’s track really stood out because of their fine particular production style.
What was the inspiration behind this record?
Murdocco: I was inspired by all those nights out when you are dancing and having a real good time and suddenly across the floor, someone really calls your attention and you instinctively start dancing together and maybe you fall in love. Also I wanted to send out a message that resonates: to live the Moment, to be present in the Now. To me dancing in a club or at a good party can be a very healing experience. I forget all of my troubles, you may interact with strangers, you smile and the music is so good when you experience it collectively. So I was inspired by these experiences, by those songs that when you hear them resonate with a message. I wanted to express all this with a few words in Spanish.
Physical Education (Luke): Well, I guess it was Murdocco’s vocal really, she’s from Uruguay and on this track she sings in Spanish, I moved to Spain about four years ago and we built a studio called Mountain House up here in the Pyrenees outside Girona. And because of the vocal we just wanted to make a kind of sort of really obviously Balearic, Ibiza, summer record.
Physical Education (Dave): It was funny because it was actually absolutely freezing when we were making it. It was November or early December. We were in puffer jackets and beanies in the studio, yeah. Sitting there shivvering making this real summery, latin deep house track.
Physical Education (Luke): Sometimes that sort of contrast is quite interesting creatively though. To be painting a picture of a fantasy of somewhere that you’re not. Your imagination can be stronger in a way.
Anyway, we drew lots of inspiration from lots of different places. Living on the mountain in the middle of nowhere in a forest, there’s loads of animal noises. Loads of crickets and birds and wild boar, even eagles screeching.
Musically, I’d already created this soundscape based on a deep beautiful DX7 pad, one of the Aphex Twin patches, and some cicadas is over the top. And it was just a lovely synaesthetic thing, really rich. Sonically it was influenced by Alone, Don Carlos, which is such a beautifully textured and atmospheric track, but with different chords.
So I was like, right, I’ll use that instrumentation and my own chord sequence. So we had this stabby thing that was I guess a bit Kerri Chandler, Mr. Fingers sort of deep house, sevenths and ninth chords, the cicadas and Mariana’s vocals and we built from there.
Physical Education (Dave): That Afro Medusa Pasilda track and that Negrocan Cada Vez Grant Nelson Remix were also things we listened to to get into the latin vibe. And we also listened to an album by the flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela.
What was the process in making this record?
Physical Education (Luke): We had the pad soundscape, and I’d also downloaded a load of dodgy multitracks, like Bee Gees and Madonna and Chic and stuff, and so we built the demo using percussion from one, the timbales from another and built the rhythmic elements over the top of the soundscape. We knew we would have to redo them eventually if we won, but we were just trying to make it sound as good as possible for the competition entry and we only really had a couple of days in the studio to do it.
From there the arrangement came together pretty fast, we wanted a long percussive intro and then a break into ethereal space, and then after that it’s just a question of keeping the interest going, making sure transitions are really natural and maintain interest and to highlight Mariana’s vocal.
Physical Education (Dave): After we’d won we knew we have to rewrite and re-record all the sampled parts, so we contacted the drummer Daniel Sadownick in NYC, who is an amazing latin percussionist, worked with like Steely Dan and loads of amazing artists, and we also worked with the Isreali flamenco guitarist Eyal Heller and they both did an amazing job rewriting and rerecording the parts. And so we basically reconstructed the whole track. Luke swapped out all the softsynths for hardware versions, Juno 6, TX816 pads, TX817 bass a bit of Waldorf Wave stuff in there somewhere.
Murdocco: I used an instrumental I had in my laptop and sang over it, and the melody and lyrics came straight to mind, visualizing having a great time dancing and falling in love. We then went to Metrica Studios in Ibiza and recorded the vocals, later on was the competition, then Physical Education did their magic and all of the production. I love how the idea evolved with them into what the track is now, its latin vibe, the percussion and guitars…make it a fun and uplifting track with romance and beach vibes, perfect for the summer!
What are your earliest memories of dance music and how did you guys get into making electronic music?
Physical Education (Dave):
So, at the time I was just massively, massively into Prince and for me, probably the earliest memories of dance music would be something on the news around illegal raves.
The first actual dance music purchase that I made was as a result of a schoolmate playing something on his on his Walkman, which turned out to be the Paradox Brothers Jailbreak track, and it just did everything for me, was a breakbeat style track, but I don’t know for some reason it just connected with me.
Physical Education (Luke): That was like 1989, right?
Physical Education (Dave): But yeah, that was kind of towards the back end of 89. And then I literally think two weeks later, I snuck into the club, The Barn in Braintree and that was the end of it.
Physical Education (Luke): That was where Mr. C from the Shamen was the MC, right?
Physical Education (Dave): Yeah, I mean, it was like that was a hangout you know, that was the Colchester lot and the Prodigy and Mr. C and those guys were locals.
Physical Education (Luke): I guess you got into the rave scene probably about a year earlier than me. I didn’t actually start going to raves until around summer 1990, Energy I think it was. I was into the Detroit techno stuff, like 87–88 though. I was also very into like, American soul music, especially the electronic stuff, like all the Jam & Lewis records, Alexander O’Neal, SOS Band, that 80s American funk soul shit.
Physical Education (Dave): Yeah, so I guess you came at it through soul music. We were listening to the “Electro” electro tapes. They had a bit of attitude going on.
Physical Education (Luke): People forget how close hip hop and house were. I mean, they effectively evolved from sort of the same place, that funk, soul, disco thing.
Another big influence was the British synth pop types. Eurythmics, Human League, Gary Numan and also Jean Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, Harold Faltermeyer and all that European epic synth stuff.
Physical Education (Luke): My first, firsthand memory of raves, I was probably about 14, I remember being at a motorway service station, we’d stopped off for a sausage roll or something, and I saw, written onto the toilet door “acid house, tonight” and a smiley face and a mobile phone number. And that was when mobile phone numbers were quite rare, you know?
And can remember just having the deepest sense of what we’d now call fomo. But obviously I couldn’t go, I was on my way back from my grandparent’s with my mum and dad.
Murdocco: I’d always go dancing in Uruguay but when I moved to London, the clubs here are at another level, the underground clubs, the raves, the fun glamorous gay clubs…. It is culture, it’s a community, it’s a spiritual experience where you feel so free… I love it ! Studying at Point Blank was also life changing, it changed my musical style, I studied production, composition, sound engineering, those were happy days! That was a turning point musically for me.
What do you guys like to do when you’re not making music in the studio?
Physical Education (Dave): I basically spend most of my time hanging off walls. I like to climb. It’s something that in many ways, mirrors a lot of what I get out of music strangely. I see a lot of parallels there. I feel like climbing is actually a very creative process for me. There’s something that draws me draws me to kind of problem solving and, also rhythm as well. Again, the things that I like, I like about music.
Physical Education (Luke): Music for me is my escape, because I have a career in design and sportswear and branding and stuff. And I use music as a kind of way of relaxing. That is my parallel creative outlet.
But to really turn off I love walking in the mountains. Mountains are really my favorite places. I grew up in East Anglia, which is the flattest place in the UK. But actually, I’ve always been drawn to mountains and that’s why I moved to the Pyrenees.
Murdocco: I love being by the sea, hanging out with friends, walking in nature, good food … .simple things in life make me happy!
What has been your favourite moment in your music career so far?
Physical Education (Luke): I’ve got to answer for both of us here and say that probably our most memorable moment was getting our first first record signed in 1993. We drove down from Cambridge to meet the label owners in Elephant and Castle. Accidentally locked the keys in the car, had the meeting, signed two tracks, went back to the car, waited in the Elephant pub for the RAC, then finally drove back and got caught in a mental blizzard on the M11.
A few weeks later I heard the track at the Ministry of Sound, which was I guess the highlight. We were still teenagers.
Murdocco: The last concert I did with my previous band was unforgettable, I have had chicken pox and I almost died of it. It took me a long time to heal, but then I was back on track. We did a final concert, we filled up the venue, it was such a good concert, I loved it. I was back, strong and healthy, singing my heart out, it was a great feeling.
Any music exclusives you can share with us?
Physical Education (Luke): We’re working with Lee Coffey on his Househeads London Label, which is smashing it right now, their Perfect Beat nights are selling out in London. We have a very deep Gospel influenced track coming out with him next month.
We’re also working with Simon and Erik at SoSure Records in the UK. We have three tracks coming out with them. Really deep and very jazzy stuff.
Physical Education (Dave): And finally we have another one coming out with Danny and the guys on Mixmasters, but we can’t tell you anything about that yet.
Murdocco: I have a few original tracks coming out that I wrote citing the pandemic and then some collabs with very cool dj/ producers that are soon to be released, so I am really excited about these : )
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us today – we hope to see you at a show very soon 🙂
Artists: Physical Education, Murdocco
Title: El Momento
Label: Mixmasters Red
Release Date: 2023-06-16
– jbravo
Juany Bravo
Managing Editor
jbravo@musicis4lovers.com
