Babe Rainbow’s high-profile experiments
As a musician and concert promoter Cameron Reed is a community-minded individual hosting the annual Music Waste festival every summer and Labour Day’s Victory Square Block Party. On the phone he’s jovial and humble cracking jokes with a self-effacing honesty. It’s the type of well-mannered kindness that you wouldn’t expect if you’d heard the doom-ridden post-dubstep of his electronic alter ego Babe Rainbow.
Reed insists that the project stems from a long-standing desire to evoke moods rather than write songs. “When I played in my old weirdo punk band Hot Loins I was always attracted to the dronier tracks that created a mood rather than the angular punk ones” he explains. “For a while I’ve been wanting to do something like that.”
He was able to explore this desire when he spent a few months without a job and a freshly burned copy of Ableton Live. “It’s easy to make music when you don’t have anything to do and it’s free and you don’t have to have a jam space. You can just do it at home” he recalls. “I just got in the habit of trying to figure out this program every day for a couple of hours. Then when I started making this music I had in my head for a while it was more incentive to keep trying at it.”
Reed posted his initial tracks for free download on Tumblr and other corners of the Internet. Reed had no qualms about putting his music out there for free particularly due to the fact that he was so new at it. “I’ve never conceived this as a project that’s deserving of anything” he admits. “There may be guys and girls that have been making electronic music for years and maybe they feel like they’re owed something because they’ve been working on it for so long. But I just started working on this as an experiment and I still am to this day technically.”
Within months he gained some clout on bigger taste-making blogs which in turn caught the attention of world-renowned electronic imprint Warp Records. The label which has worked with everyone from Aphex Twin and Squarepusher to recent records from Grizzly Bear and Brian Eno compiled these recordings on the Shaved EP earlier this year.
Despite the perceived expectations that could come with such a large record label Reed insists that their relationship is entirely laid-back. “From the very beginning they were very encouraging about me experimenting” he explains. “They were telling me to try to make a house song or try to make a dancehall song but put my own twist on it. I think they recognized that the music they were putting out was all an experiment. They’re really encouraging of me experimenting and free-forming it. I honestly couldn’t be happier working with a label with such notoriety and them being so open to it.”
For his latest Babe Rainbow material Reed’s explorations have finally connected with his life-long love of rap music. He recently dropped a series of chopped and screwed mixtapes slowing down and messing with source material from Mobb Deep to Outkast. His next proper releases will follow a similar pattern though they’ll be made up of his own compositions. “Although I’m not chopping and screwing my original production tracks a lot of them are sort of the same pace and have the same slow sludgy feel” he explains. “I’m doing traditional hip-hop beats and breaks but at 70 bpm.”
Earlier this year Reed’s career reached a new height with a DJ slot beside Animal Collective CFCF and Oneohtrix Point Never at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. The performance was the first of many upcoming Babe Rainbow shows including a scheduled appearance at SXSW 2011. As he starts to resemble a true career musician however Reed keeps his intuitive sense of discovery intact. “I literally just learned about hot keys in Ableton Live the other day and it blew my mind.”
