The convergence of two major, established forces in music has rarely resulted in anything less than a disaster. Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson’ s brief partnership ended with the theft of the Beatles catalog and decades of resentment. The Best of Both Worlds and Unfinished Business, the two mediocre LPs born out of the R. Kelly/Jay-Z collaboration, proved that their business together should have been finished before it even began. As Two Fingers, electronic juggernauts Amon Tobin and Joe ‘Doubleclick’ Chapman seek to break the curse of musical matches seemingly made in heaven. From the sinister yet gorgeous sound of their hip-hop-tinged debut, the two revered producers have undeniably succeeded in doing so. Doubleclick took some time out with URB to discuss working with Amon Tobin, their taste for hip-hop, and how they appreciate their project’ s vaguely sexually suggestive name.
What You Know (featuring Sway).mp3 – Two Fingers
URB: How did your musical partnership come about? How does the dynamic between the two of you work?
We realized when we met a decade ago that we had common interests in jungle and the kind of beats Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and the Neptunes were making. We’re big fans of that technology-driven sound in U.S. hip-hop and R&B. Two Fingers is both a recording act and a production unit, and we’re going to make tracks for as many acts as we can. As UK producers, we bring a lot of unusual influences which we think make us stand out, and we’ve already caught the attention of some U.S. MCs who appreciate that difference.
It’s also a strength that we can work together or independently, and between us we have developed an identifiable Two Fingers style. We wrote the LP while we were both living in Montreal, but now Amon’s moved to the States and I’m back in the UK at the moment so we can broaden the scope of our work.
How did you choose the name Two Fingers? What were the other ideas you kicked around before you decided on this moniker?
As any musician knows, picking a name is an unrewarding exercise in being disappointed by Google! I can’t remember all the names we went through.
We settled on Two Fingers because of a number of things. It describes us as a duo, and it’s nicely ambiguous so it can mean different things to different people. Some people might hear it as a completely abstract name with no meaning. British people might immediately think of the offensive gesture, but people elsewhere might think of the ‘V’ peace sign. Maybe a paleontologist would think of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Best of all though, the name makes girls giggle.
You collaborated with one another on 2003’s ‘Ownage,’ featured on Amon’s Verbal Remixes and Collaborations. When did you decide that you wanted to expand your work together into a full length album? What made you realize that this synergy could be sustained throughout an entire LP?
Amon and I kept in touch after he left Brighton for Montreal years ago, and before he left we had talked about collaborating again. Two Fingers is something that grew out of transatlantic phone conversations. I remember when Amon told me about what he wanted us to do; he talked about it as ‘modern hip-hop but with a sound like slowed-down jungle’. He sent me a couple of things he’d made, and they were perfect – I couldn’t say no to being a part of this.
We knew we could sustain it over a whole LP because we’re very arrogant men. And we were right, Goddamn it.
How does Two Fingers differ musically from your respective solo projects?
Making Two Fingers tracks involves a different kind of discipline to the music we’ve made before. We have to rein in our natural tendencies to put detail all over the tunes, like we did with our purely instrumental work. We are producing for our vocalists, which means we work for them and therefore the spotlight should be on them; we don’t want our music fighting their voices. In other ways we have more freedom than we did pre-Two Fingers; once you’re thinking in terms of making looser, more spacious beats you’re able to do all kinds of things with the other musical elements that wouldn’t normally be possible.
What pieces of art, musical or otherwise, influenced and inspired the making of the album?
It depends what you define as art. Computer games are definitely a part of it – many late night production sessions would culminate in a 5 A.M. session on the Xbox 360. Movies have been a huge influence on us, both for the visual side and the sound design, although it’s hard to fully sink into a film sometimes when you’ve got a special department in your brain that’s analyzing every little noise.
As people who hunt beats, we’re used to long days trawling music shops for any rhythmic elements we can use. If you do it properly, you end up with a collection of music from all over the world, much of which you would never have heard otherwise. We’ve also soaked up a lot of influence over the years from UKG, grime, and dubstep.
The major musical inspiration is D&B though. That dedication to cleaning, twisting, and processing sounds in D&B is our ace in the hole. There’s a competitive urge that fuels D&B which has its parallels in hip-hop, to push the music further and make something that’s hard to follow, and we are constantly mindful of that. We could never make tracks that just tick away in the background. Every one is something bold.
The album is difficult to categorize in terms of musical genre. What section of the record store do you think it would best fit into?
Hip-hop. In the way we think of hip-hop, this is unquestionably a hip-hop LP. We’re not stupid though – we know that other people would find a lot to question about that categorization. Everyone wants to tell you what hip-hop is or isn’t, and in particular, everyone’s got an idea of what the phrase ‘real hip-hop’ means. It’s about history or it’s about right now, it’s about skills or it’s about sounding nice, it’s for the clubs or it’s for your mind, money’s either beautiful or it’s vulgar. Everyone’s right, and everyone’s wrong. We don’t ignore that argument, but we wouldn’t make the music the way we do unless we’d decided to distance ourselves from that issue long ago.
Your music is very visual, very evocative of specific imagery. How does the sound of Two Fingers look like to you?
If I could see it, Two Fingers would be something massive in an inky darkness, half mechanical and half alive. Karol Lasia, the artist responsible for our record sleeves, has done a great job of creating a visual theme for the LP.
MC Sway, Ms. Jade, and Ce’ Cile contribute vocals to the project. What does each vocalist bring to the Two Fingers record? How did you decide who would be featured on which track?
Sway is a massive talent, and many of the tracks were written with him specifically in mind. A lot of these tunes are deceptively fast, and only the best of UK MCs would really have the experience of rhyming at the necessary pace.
We knew we wanted female voices too because we could hear in our heads that it would make a great balance: the solid, growling sound of our music with the pitch and smoothness of female voices. I loved Ms. Jade’s Girl Interrupted LP, so it was a personal honor when we went to Philadelphia to record her for our record. Amon and Jeff from Ninja Tune tracked down Ce’Cile for ‘Bad Girl’, another highlight of the LP.
What other MCs excite you? Who would you like to hear on a Two Fingers track in the future?
If I’m being invited to fantasize here, then I immediately think of Spank Rock, Phat Kat, Clipse. It’s a tricky question though, because there are so many MCs whose work we love but who wouldn’t necessarily fit on a Two Fingers track.
If we could pick absolutely anybody and it would just magically happen, give us Busta Rhymes! When we’re writing the music we like to check how a vocal sounds with it by sticking an acapella over the top, and something lovely happens every time with a Busta vocal.
Who would you like to remix Two Fingers? Who would Two Fingers like to remix?
We’re not just out to produce and remix MCs – we want to produce singers too. It might raise some eyebrows, but we would honestly love to remix someone like Brandy.
As for who could remix us, the ideal people who could take what we’ve done and really augment it would be producers from D&B.
Loading ...
Leave A Comment!