Pále // The Fat! Club Mix 046

Manchester based Pále, aka Leo Marcus, has made some serious waves this year, delicately blending spacious melodies with pounding low end to produce consistently forward thinking house music.

After dropping his superb Why’d You Even Say? EP on Fat! Records back in January, along with the brilliant Silverstair on Four40 and his ridiculously huge remix of Mak & Pasteman’s Jungle Juice Pále has not only showcased his impressive variety but also genuinely established himself as one of the most exciting youngsters around at the moment.

In anticipation of the release of his brilliant Catacombs EP on Fat! Records, which has already picked up support from the likes of Homework, Claude Vonstroke and Hackman, Pále put together this wicked mix for us, plus we caught up with the man himself for a chat about his influences, moving to London, and his dream party…

For the uninitiated, who is Pále?

Pále is the first proper alias I set up to produce music under. I used to do some bits and bobs and put them on Soundcloud but it was never really that serious. I started Pále about 18 months ago from my bedroom with a few old keyboards, a guitar and my laptop.

Is there any deeper meaning to the name Pále?

Not at all. When I came up with the idea I just thought it was a nice sounding name. To be honest it was a big mistake to ever put an accent in my name, makes it very hard for people to google you. I’m happy to ride with it now but it does put me in some unfortunate situations, especially with MCs.

Haha! Tell us a bit about your Fat! Club mix…

The mix is a big jumble of some old favourites of mine, new tracks from some of my favourite producers, a few new tracks and wips from me and a couple little edits I’ve been doing. Pretty similar to the stuff I’d put in a set in a club, I don’t like riding with one sound all night.

How did you first get into electronic music and DJing?

I’ve played a few different instruments since I started learning cello when I was around 6, but what really set me off was my mum bringing home a copy of Dance eJay 2 she found at her work. I’d come home everyday from school and jump straight on the computer to make these weird crappy trance tracks. At the same time I was using a 4-track Tascam tape recorder to capture the weird little ambient guitar and drum tracks that I was making. Then when I first discovered Garageband about 4 years ago I left the eJay loops and pre-sets behind and starting bringing the guitar and ambient sounds into electronic music production. Logic came fairly naturally from there and I’ve been using that for about 2 years now.

Who have been your biggest influences?

M83 have been a huge influence on me since I started recording any kind of music. Their first few albums have a big impact on the way that I shape and steer my tracks to their climactic stages. The Weeknd is probably the most influential artist for me overall though, both as a vocalist and a team of producers. There’s not a single moment in those three mix-tapes that I can fault.

Your next release, the Catacombs EP is due out on Fat! Records on 22nd October, can you talk us through the tracks on the EP?

All three tracks started coming together in early summer, just as I had finished my exams. I had to really push production aside for a couple of months whilst I revised so these tracks came from a bunch of ideas that had built up. Orchidea was probably the first to be finished. It mainly came from cutting up a little vocal sample I recorded off my phone when I was in a coffee bar in Venice. I’d never normally start a track with a vocal, but everything just followed from there. Tracks normally take me a few weeks to complete but Orchidea was nearly done in a day. Oak Music came from experimenting a lot with a couple of Reaktor ensembles and me picking up the guitar more than I normally do. I love using guitar in electronic music but when its misplaced it can sound absolutely awful, so I’m always really careful when I use it. Catacombs felt appropriate to be the title track as its probably the ‘biggest’ sounding, but that was never really the aim with this release. I wanted to make an EP that covered a huge range of texture and sound, thats why the tracks have so many different sections. For my next release I’ll probably be rolling out something thats a bit more structured and DJ friendly, but this time round it seemed a shame to tighten up the ideas I had just so I could be sure it would work well on a dancefloor.

What do the next 12 months have in store for you? I understand you’re moving to London soon…?

Just moved down on Saturday. Probably going to be here till September next year and then I think I’m off to Brighton for uni. I can keep the bills at bay with bits of music on the side and gigs but I’m mostly looking forward to involving myself more in the scene and getting a lot more music out there. There’s a lot of good music emerging back home in Manchester but its nice to have a change of scenery. I’ve got the basement of a big terrace so I’m slowly getting that fixed up into a little studio. At the moment though I’m pretty much working out of my bed, which isn’t so productive as you can imagine.

What are the most memorable DJ sets you’ve ever seen/heard?

I saw Daphni/Caribou at Warehouse Project the other week. That was easily one of my favourites. Apparently someone measured the temperature in there and it was hitting 39° at some points. It was an absolute sweatbox but I’ve never heard so much good music in one night. Also saw DJ Q the night before when I was playing upstairs at Joshua Brooks. His set was a lot of fun, definitely got to catch him down here.

What records labels are you most into at the moment?

I’m really enjoying whats coming from French labels at the moment. ClekClekBoom, Marble and Sound Pellegrino all sound great. I find the output of these much more listenable than some of the big current UK labels. Lots of good stuff from over the Atlantic too, really into Friends Of Friends and Vase at the moment.

What 3 tracks sum you up best?

I take it this means tracks from other artists? Pretty difficult question really! There’s a track at the end of the last Patrick Watson album which seems to really connect with me. Its instrumental unlike the rest of the album and has this weird particularly dream-like sound which really reminds me of the original music composed for Donnie Darko. I’m not saying I’m a weird and dream-like person or anything but its the sort of music that seems to really strike with your thoughts and memories. There’s a track by Ólafur Arnalds from his Living Rooms Songs collection called Near Light which really connects with me also, definitely worth watching the live recording on Youtube. Lots of bits from the new Flying Lotus album that are striking me hard as well, me Yesterday//Corded in particular. I used to play a lot of bass guitar and when the bassline comes in on the second half it brings back a lot of memories from a few years ago.

Wow, great selection. And finally if you could put on your dream party, who would play, where would it be, and would there be a theme?

This is like the ultimate daydreamer question! I always thought it’d be cool to have a load of floating rafts in a big bay. All the rafts would have little soundsystems on and bars but the music would be quite mellow. You could swim from one to another and hear a little jazz trio on one, a house DJ on another and so on till it gets dark and you’ve heard music from all over the world. If any promoters want to capitalise on that idea then go ahead but make sure you send me a ticket.

http://soundcloud.com/thisispale // http://www.facebook.com/thisispale // http://twitter.com/thisispale