Man Outdoors is the solo electronic music project of Arron Cobbett, A Lincolnshire born multimedia artist now living in Retford. We had a quick chat with him as he was attending one of our audio-visual nights.
VJC : Thank you for doing this.
MO : No Problem.
VJC : What got you into the local VJ scene?
MO : I've been into film making for years, music making just as many, always liked cutting videos to beats so finding out there were people around me who pretty much did the same I mean, I just had to get involved.
VJC : You tend to make more lo-fi and ambient music for these events, what draws you to that style?
MO : Oh man, I spent years making and playing noise music, it's textures and stuff like that. For me it's a less brutal form of noise music, sonic exploration and all that. I also like creepy visuals and music, big into horror films and shorts on YouTube.
VJC : It shows *laughs* we can spot you in the group always clad in black.
MO : *laughs* don't mean to look so dark and moody or anything like that, I just own a lot of black shirts and jeans, don't do brands and logos on shirts much I just tend to buy like 3 basic black shirts and a set of black jeans from Tesco's, then I'm good for a few months.
VJC : You're working on a new album, what can we expected to hear on this new release?
MO : Nothing I've made for the VJ shows really, been experimenting more with beat driven music for this new release. I used to make music under the name ACK!!! till I got sick of that project, very elastic like IDM music, really wanted to do something in between that and the ambient stuff I'm doing now.
VJC : Have you got a name for this album yet?
MO : I'm going with Lugubrious because again I like the sad boy, moody dark stuff.
VJC : What do you use to make you're music?
MO : Largely Albeton live, absolutely adore that software. A lot of my melodies and drum loops are recorded from my Electribes, the EA1 and ES1, recorded into Ableton and then chopped up and all the effects added. Usually it's just the stock effects, can't be arsed with installing VST's at the moment. Gotta mention Audiomulch too, used that for live generative ambient stuff. Great for processing live sounds but I think that software is pretty much dead in the water so I'm not getting too attached to it.
VJC : And what do you prefer to use? Hardware or Software?
MO : I love both, Software is great because all you need is a fairly decent laptop and mines pretty OK, some shit acer laptop I got free with my iPhone 4 but it works well enough. Its an entire studio with all the synths and effects I want but there is something about a real hardware synth, analog or digital that just brings some magic. Like my mate Colby says, you can get lost in presets looking for a particular sound in software but when you got a synth in front of you, you're forced to make a sound most of the time and I really need that in my life.
VJC : What do you use for your live setup when playing the VJ nights?
MO : My Tascam 4 track, a bunch of multi fx pedals I get cheap of eBay, a cheap zoom drum machine I blagged of some fella in Lincoln and some old Casio synths. I will run the keyboard and drum machines into the 4 track inputs but will feed back the FX send with the pedals so not only do you get the synths going through the effects but it feeds back on itself for some distortion, old noise music tricks but everything isn't cranked up to deafening volumes, it's an art turning the knobs of the pedals delicately so you don't fill the room with screeching feedback. Been lucky so far.
VJC : I'll finish off by letting you say something, anything. Promote an album, an artist or other piece of media.
MO : Oh man, I've already mentioned Lugubrious...uh...I'll...seeing how this is a Retford mag I'll apologize for my behavior at the recent beer fest *laughs*
VJC : I didn't attend, could you explain?
MO : I got totally ripped on dirty cider, stole a bunch of the glasses which are at my mums house now from other patrons tables and broke some in the KFC trying to order food. My dad got pretty ripped too *laughs* I managed to find my way home through the back fields to Hallcroft and passed out on my mums sofa in the conservatory.
VJC : Ah well *laughs* you didn't start any fights so that's a good change for the area.
MO : True that, on the bright side I woke up hung over to hell and pumped out like 2 tracks the next morning between puking in a plant pot, I dunno the stress and pain just get's me motivated, I think I might be a bit sadistic.
VJC : *Laughs* I don't doubt that some people thrive better in chaos than others, but anyways. Thank you for doing this little interview with me.
MO : Oh no, thank you.
You can find Arrons music and video work on his websites.
