Interview: Beatgeeks chat to DJ Lubertz

22 April 2011

Interview: Beatgeeks chat to DJ Lubertz

Nottingham production duo Beat Geeks have been steadily building their name recently, working extensively with Wariko and featuring on a Dot Rotten track in collaboration with The Camden Roundhouse and grime blogger Hyperfrank. Our contributor DJ Lubertz caught up with them to see what’s popping...

Who you are and how did you come up with your music name?

Bless G! We’re a production team Nottingham called BeatGeeks and we specialise in grime, even though we are versatile. We came up with the name BeatGeeks because when it comes to making music we actually turn into full on geeks, and were producing beats so we thought “yeah Beat Geeks”.

I caught up with you guys at the Urban Development’s ‘Producer and DJ special’ Industry Takeover seminar in January. What were your thoughts on music production seminars and do you believe there is enough coverage for music producers?

Yeah shouts outs to Urban Development; we think that Industry Takeover is definitely a good look - these seminars give emerging producers, artists, managers etc. the chance to gain inside information about the industry, and it gives you the chance to network with relevant people. This is definitely important for us living all the way in Nottz! With man like Logan Sama being on the panel it was great because he is a DJ who we look up to and respect so we definitely appreciated getting advice from him. Hearing from man like Bless Beatz who has gone through certain channels, it gives us an insight in what to expect in the future.

This year we’ve seen the new project that Hyperfrank and Camden Roundhouse are putting out called Volume Control. How did you guys become the first to get involved?

Yea, definitely gotta send a big shout to Hyperfrank and The Roundhouse. She hollered us and told us about the project she was doing, and that she wanted some producers involved who’s names ain’t out there as much yet. We thought this was a good opportunity and we submitted our instrumental which was called ‘Nightmare’.

Also, a big big shout out to everyone who voted for us, we managed to win the competition and that’s how the Dot Rotten track ‘Thunder’ came about. Remember you can check that out on Youtube, or check www.hyperfrank.co.uk to keep up with what’s going off at Volume Control.

BeatGeeks have a different grime sound, so what are your processes when it comes to making a beat?

When we are in the studio it’s more of a spontaneous thing, we will just go with the vibe and let the music carry us. Also we both come from different musical backgrounds. One of us comes from the bashment/jungle/garage to grime route where the other comes from Soul/R’n’B/Hip Hop to Grime.

What's in the pipeline for this year?

We’ve just dropped a mixtape with Wariko and Z Dot called Puddin ‘N’ Treacle which was hosted by Cameraman Sketch. You can download that from www.beatgeeks.co.uk for free. Look out for Wariko’s album Natural Born Poet which will be out in late April - we produced all of that. We also have a instrumental E.P which is also coming out very soon, and another E.P with Wariko which we produced alongside Skitz Beatz. We’re gonna be shooting a few videos to some tracks off the mixtape and album.

What is your studio set up?

The studio at this present moment is based at Sycamore Centre in Stanns in Nottingham. BeatGeeks are religiously Mac users and the program we favor using is Logic Pro 9. We sometimes use the MPC as a sequencer instead of Logic but not often. We both have setups at our yards as well, with one of us having the Triton and the other having a Fantom, mixing the two sounds together.

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