Roots Manuva - Inspired to make Xio patches
01-01-2009
hen MOBO winner and Mercury Music Prize nominee Rodney Smith, aka Roots Manuva, got his new Novation Xio, he was completely blown away and even decided to program a new bank of sounds for it…
“That keyboard is so powerful, I’m not allowed to use it because it keeps disturbing everyone!”, says Rodney Smith, the man behind Roots Manuva, about his beloved Novation Xio. “I’ve made some weird music on it. It’s seriously powerful stuff man. I don’t think I’ll be allowed to use it in concert because it’s so damn powerful!”
We’re pretty sure he likes it then, and if anyone knows about good sounds, it’s Rodney. He’s been making music as Roots Manuva for over a decade, and in that time he’s put British hip hop on the map. In 1998 he won a MOBO award for best hip hop act after releasing his mesmerising debut album Brand New Second Hand. His profile then went through the roof and he featured on Leftfield’s Rhythm & Stealth album before producing Run Come Save Me, his second album, which has sold well in excess of 100,000 copies. From that came the track Witness, which was voted best hip hop track of all time by Hip Hop Connection magazine.
Throughout his career, Rodney has pushed the boundaries in music. He freely admits to spending too much time experimenting and picking up useful pieces of gear to help him in his search for the perfect sound. So when his new Novation Xio arrived, he decided to push it to its limits and soon became so attuned to it that he decided to program his own sounds…
“I’ve had it for about three or four months,” he says. “I’ve never had this amount of time to muck around and get to know a machine. I programmed a few bass sounds, a few strings and a few synthy sounds. How would you describe them?… kind of novelty, quirky sounds. I didn’t try to do much like a real violin or a real guitar or anything, apart from some strings. I mainly programmed nice little synth sounds, dubby synth sounds.”
“Every frequency on that machine is absolutely killer. It’s like, Jesus, man! I am using it at Alaska Studios in Waterloo and when I’m doing bass or top end I can shake the whole building. It’s louder than anything else there! It’s got a lovely sound. I didn’t realise how different one keyboard could be from other keyboards, but whoever put it together really knew what they were doing. It doesn’t need to be mixed at all – you just need to level it and that’s it. You don’t need to put loads of compression on it or anything, it’s just a nice sound on it right way.”
Despite all of his success and once stating that Awfully Deep, his third Roots album, would be his last, Rodney still has as much ambition as ever both in and out of music…
“It’s nice to be recognised as a pioneer for UK hip hop but there’s a massive world out there that hasn’t heard of me and I’ve got to make more records, I’ve got to do more touring – and other things besides music like set up my own production company – to make an impact worldwide.”
So we can expect a lot more from Rodney, Roots and his Novation Xio…
Rodney’s sounds feature on the latest Xio release and the latest Roots Manuva album, Alternately Deep, which is out now.
