Producer Batu has made a studio for aspiring musicians

In the last year, creativity and the subcultures which spring from it have been impacted in ways beyond measure. Dr. Martens Presents is supporting artists to help them overcome the challenges they are facing at a time when it is needed most.

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With new waves of coronavirus underway across Europe, life remains on hold – for now. THE FACE has teamed up with Dr. Martens Presents for multi-part series Collective Creativity. This time around, we hear from Batu, a DJ and producer from Bristol who, with the help of Dr. Martens Presents, has set up First Light Studios. He introduces THE FACE to two boundary-pushing creatives, graphic designer Guillaume de Ubéda and Lizzy Ellis.

Producer and DJ Batu is known to friends and family as Omar McCutcheon. Growing up in Oxfordshire, McCutcheon was an only child. He knew that he wanted to be a musician from a young age: Music is entwined with all my earliest memories,” he explains. My family generally are really, really into music. They’re not necessarily musicians, but they were really into music.” From dub to punk, music was a constant in his parent’s household. As a teen, McCutcheon became part of the then emerging Dubstep scene, quietly building knowledge from dub​step​fo​rum​.com and broadcasting from his bedroom as Streamizm.

It was in this online landscape that McCutcheon met Bristol-based producer Lurka, who advised him to follow in his own footsteps by applying to the music production course at Bath Spa University where Omar McCutcheon went on to meet producers Bruce and Ploy – friendships which unfurled into a house share in Bristol, a label and a club night.

Timedance grew out of the roots of the city, binding Bristol’s soundsystem culture with disruptive dance music which brought together a new underground scene based on open-minded values and mutual respect. In the five years that followed, Batu rose to prominence as one of the most respected selectors in the scene, taking his tunes everywhere from Boiler Room to Dekmantal.

But as Omar McCutcheon was on the up, with plans to curate a new festival in South Wales underway, the pandemic hit. The metal shutters clattered down on nightclubs around Europe and across the world. The dance was over, for the foreseeable future. So when Dr. Martens Presents got in touch to see how they could help, McCutcheon had the perfect idea.

I’ve been thinking for a while about how in Bristol – where there’s just so much music and creativity – that we’re slightly lacking in music studios or facilities that are participating in the community,” McCutcheon says. So I felt like there was space for something that was basically more aimed at the community, just purely for the benefit of different parts of the music community in Bristol.”

The city’s music studios are largely privately-owned, which as McCutcheon points out, means that they do not necessarily reflect the needs of the communities that they serve. So together with Dr. Martens Presents and a group of collaborators in the Bristol scene, McCutcheon set about creating an accessible studio in the heart of Bristol, offering free sessions to musicians of all genres who don’t have access to their own space, as well as mentoring and DJ and production workshops.

You can grab yourself a spot at First Light Studios in the Trinity Centre, a multi-purpose arts hub in a former police station, the same location where Batu held early Timedance events. In McCutcheon’s vision, the studio will become a community hub where artists can learn, develop and collaborate.

Listen now: Batu on Bristols open minded music scene

I think there’s a lot of cross-pollination of ideas because it’s a relatively small city,” McCutcheon says. Bristol is known for its DIY attitude. People like to do stuff themselves,” McCutcheon says, pointing to Bristol’s musical legacy; the dub influence, which goes through from jungle to dubstep to trip hop, the Caribbean influence, of sound system culture. I think what Bristol was really good at is constantly being open to new people and new ideas,” McCutcheon concludes. And musically, everyone here is really open, so there’s always fresh energy and fresh creativity.”

Guillaume de Ubéda

@guillaume_de_ubeda

Introduce yourself and tell us what you do in your own words.

My name is Guillaume de Ubéda, I’m a French multidisciplinary artist and I’ve been living and working in Bristol since 2013. I’m mostly a graphic designer working for the underground dance music scene. I used to design gig posters when gigs were still a thing but with lockdown and everything that has been happening this past year, my activity is now more centered around another aspect of my work which is designing records. I also paint, do murals for venues, design logos, make music videos, produce music under the alias Deep Nalström and I co-host a radio show called No Regrets on Noods Radio.

Tell us when and how you met Batu.

Everybody kind of knows each other in the Bristol scene so it’s hard to remember when

you met someone precisely but we’ve known each other for quite a few years now. Batu is mostly a friend of my girlfriend Danielle and we have many friends in common. I do remember the first time I saw him play though, it was in a sweaty room at Freerotation, it was pretty intense and definitely one of the highlights of the festival for me.

How have you collaborated with Batu so far?

Batu is quite supportive of people around him and he will always try and collaborate with you if there’s an opportunity. In 2017, he asked me to do the design for his Murmur EP on Timedance. I’ve also done some illustration work to accompany an interview of him in a local Bristol independent magazine. The past two or three years, Batu’s been working with Butt Studio for the Timedance designs – I’m really admirative of the work they’ve been doing together and I hope it’s gonna carry on, even if it means I probably won’t ever design a Timedance record again! The First Light Studios mural at Trinity Center is our last collaboration in date and probably the most visually striking so far.

Tell us about the mural you’ve made for First Light Studios.

My designs are usually monochrome and have a kind of raw photocopy-like aesthetic, it allows me to work on a very large scale without worrying about image quality loss. For this mural, Batu and myself ended up deciding to go for something multicoloured to contrast with the black and white room, and bring a bit of colour to the studio. The artwork plays with different layers and scales, with vaporous elements as well as more geometrical ones morphing and blending into each other. On one hand, the geometrical elements can be seen as a reference to the mathematical structures in music and its repetitive nature. It can also be interpreted as a nod to the visual vocabulary of music softwares in which music elements are represented by blocks, lines and cubes. On the other hand the vaporous, and sometimes liquid, elements refer to the more intangible aspects of music and the almost magical nature of the music creation process. That being said, when I design a piece like this I try to leave it as open as possible so anyone can create their own interpretation.

What does collective creativity mean to you?

To me, it means bringing together individuals with different sensibilities and different visions to work together and create something that goes beyond what any of them could have created on their own. I’m used to work on my own a lot and although I do think it can be important to follow your own intuitions as an artist and sometime discard other people’s point of views to bring your own vision to life, it’s also a necessity to remain open to collaboration, be ready to work with people who have different approaches and explore new ways of creating that you wouldn’t have necessarily considered in the first place.

Finally, what does the future of music look like in Bristol?

It’s a hard one, Bristol has many different scenes and each year brings new surprises and new talents. There’s a huge variety in terms of music being released and all these different scenes are being brought together by entities like Noods Radio, Idle Hands or Dirtytalk’s new venue Strange Brew creating new connections. It feels like everybody is either an artist, a music producer, a DJ or a record label or venue owner, everyone is involved in their own right in the scene, it’s always bubbling and it never ceases to amaze me. So I don’t know what the future of music will look like in Bristol but I’m not worried at all, I know it will keep surprising us.

Listen now: Batu on Giu

Lizzy Ellis

Tell us who you are and what you do…

I’m Lizzy Ellis and I do various kinds of music stuff. If I had to summarise, I’d say I’m a giant music fan that likes to help people explore and express their own creativity through music.

Primarily, I’m now Head of Development at Saffron, an initiative which aims to level the gender imbalance in the music tech industry. Our work strives to improve access to music production, sound engineering and DJing for women and non-binary people, through education and community building. The DJ course we run (Mix Nights) began as a side project which we all did while we had other full time jobs. I worked in artist management for 10 years with acts like Photek, Kelis and Bonobo, which was amazing, but gradually I felt myself being pulled more towards dedicating my energy further into improving things for women in electronic music and music tech.

Mix Nights is a non-profit initiative working with women and non-binary people in Bristol to develop DJ skills. Why is this work important to you?

Electronic music and club culture is a massive part of my life and it has always been beyond frustrating to me to see such a narrow demographic of people represented in the upper echelons of these spaces. Mix Nights was born because we (Mix Nights co-founders Danielle, Em Williams, Daisy Moon and Saffron’s originator, Laura Lewis-Paul) found that between us we had skill sets that could combine to provide an accessible entry point for women and non-binary people in to DJing.

Our long-term goal has always been to help tip the balance for gender representation among professional DJs, but it’s equally important for us to help build our course participants’ confidence and comfort to feel like they can take equal ownership in club and electronic music spaces. Even though it’s not necessarily about building the next superstar DJ, it’s definitely a buzz to see past course graduates go on to flourish – take a look at Vanessa Maria, J Oh Zee, Glade Marie and Laani.

Tell us when and how you met Batu.

Batu and I first met in 2012 at Dimensions festival in Croatia. I remember it quite clearly actually. My partner Rob – Pinch – had told me about this new unknown producer who’d sent him some amazing demos, so I thought I’d come along to meet him too. I was struck by how sweet and humble Omar was during that initial chat. It’s been wicked to see how he has risen up over the past nine years, carving out his own space and leading a new generation that is both visionary and inclusive. And he’s still as sweet and humble as he was back then.

Tell us how you’ll be working with Batu in the future, with the help of DMs Presents…

We’re currently plotting some open decks” workshops with the help of DMs Presents, to introduce young folks, especially girls, to DJing. We’re looking forward to getting into the studio space that Batu and the team have been busy refurbishing for the Making Tracks project at Trinity Bristol. Trinity is an iconic space here and we’ve done some bits of work with Making Tracks over the years, so we know that a new studio space built especially for them has been much needed.

What does collective creativity mean to you?

Pooling resources and knowledge. Collaboration. Listening to and learning from those with different lived experiences. Leaving the door open for the youngers. Creating accessibility. Holding each other to account. Not letting stale ideas and scenes stagnate. Music and art in general is much more interesting when people from all backgrounds are able to use it as an outlet for expression.

Finally, what does the future of music look like in Bristol?

Who knows! I feel that at this point, genre and sound-wise, it could go in any direction. Once clubs and venues start opening up again it will be really interesting to see after over a year of lockdown what kind of energies people will be seeking out and offering up, what nights will people be putting on and going to? What sounds will we be more hungry for? There is an opportunity here for evolution, in more ways than one.

Listen now: Batu on Lizzy

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