Catching Up With: Andy of Archipelago Soundsystem

Has it really been almost five years since we co-released (vanilla) Archipelago’s Rettousyugi? Time has flown that’s for sure. So much so that we felt it was time to catch up with Andy – now of Archipelago Soundsystem – and find out what he’s been up to. Boy, has he been busy!

First up, could you tell us something about yourself?

Hi, I’m Andy Archipelago Soundsystem. I’m a producer based in Osaka, where I run a label called finestylewest. I also put on the finestylewesteca (label showcase) and finefridays / Saturdays / Tuesdays / your choice of day of the week series of events.

Musically I mainly make speed goth, which is really just a combination of garage (NY garage, 2-step, bumpy, Niche, all subgenres really), Valencian Ruta Destroy progressive stuff and then Kyoto breaks. Really just dark, fast, elegant, rhythmically intense stuff.

I mainly release on local labels here in Kansai (the Osaka/Kyoto/Kobe region of Japan) so have got a couple of EPs and compilation appearances under my belt with NC4K) in Kyoto and then my own releases on finestylewest.

What inspires you to make music?

I think I’m very rhythmically minded, always beat-boxing or humming to myself or whatever whenever I’m walking anywhere so… Dunno it’s almost a second nature sort of thing, if I *don’t* do it then I tend to go a bit funny upstairs.

So there’s the therapeutic or meditative side but the local scene here has started to get a lot of international attention recently (a Bandcamp Daily piece on NC4K and a feature on cafe la siesta -8bitedition!!!- where I put on events in the Japan Times) and that’s a tremendous motivation.

There’s a lot of people (NC4K, 85acid, ARKUDA LABEL, Selva Sounds) doing a lot of interesting things and whilst we may hover around our own core styles of garage, techno, jungle and electro or whatever everyone’s really open to what everyone else is doing so everyone is constantly bouncing ideas off of each other. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Since you last spoke with AnalogueTrash you’ve gone from vanilla Archipelago to Archipelago Soundsystem – what was the motivation behind that?

I’d burnt myself out after Rettousyugi and got fed up with having to write with a singer in mind so to mark a new start, and because initially I was focused on making music you could perform purely on hardware like Ceephax or Pete Cannon do, Archipelago turned into Archipelago Soundsystem.

But it’s a continuation, I still play Archipelago tracks live and the core theme from the start – psychogeography, a sense of adventure and never knowing where exactly you’ll end up – still pops up quite a lot within the Soundsystem tracks and furthermore manifests itself in how I run my label and recruit remixers.

What’s the inspiration behind finestylewest?

I met Idaten at an event in Otohatoba in Kobe and was gobsmacked at how good he was. He’d put the track Technical circuit up on his Soundcloud and when I heard it I sent him a message saying “listen do three more tracks like this, I’ll remix one of them and we’ll do a proper release, this is too good just to be thrown up on your Soundcloud where no-one will ever listen it”. We got a mate of his to do the artwork and the release was received a lot better than I’d ever dreamt, we got a lot of support.

I think around the time of the Kohta release the penny finally dropped as to what the label should be: it’s an artist support service, in the sense that I only put records out by people who are active in the Kansai region. And then the art is done by artists here, videos by video people here… So it’s a for the locals by the locals sort of thing. On each release I try to get someone with a similar mindset from outside of Japan involved on the remix front, just to build bridges and hopefully get the word out though! But really, it’s a local thing, now more than ever I think local scenes are really important on so many different levels.

You’re something of a global nomad. Has living in such diverse cultures filtered into how you make music and how it sounds?

Was! Past tense was! I wish to apologise to all readers and all inhabitants of Planet Earth for that matter for my miserable carbon footprint in the tensies or whatever the last decade was called.

But definitely with Speed goth dub’z 1.0… Things like True electronics came about because I was sorting out my own history, having grown up in Spain in the nineties and where for the longest time progressive house and trance was seen as a punchline. Where it’s not, it’s people’s personal history and memories and you’ve got to be respectful of that fact.

With the garage approach I don’t think I could have made this record without having met HarleyLikesMusic from when I lived in Manchester, he turned me onto Sheffield bassline in the first place… Or a mate from New York from university who was the son of Haitian émigrés and he let me rip his entire Haitian konpa collection and melodically that’s very present on things like Wikkid man riddim.

And then of course my current circumstances here in Japan. But I think with this release there was a lot of reckoning with my own past and reconciling of my own personal identities and experiences.

Now it’s more exploring what’s local to myself, trying to discover new connections within my own city. That’s a universe unto itself and very fortunately I keep finding new things to fall in love with in Osaka all the time.

If you could work with any other artist or producer, who would it be?

I’d like to do another Boris Becker album at some point. I’ve not picked up a guitar in a decade so think it would be fun to work within different genre parameters and conventions like that again.

I try to be quite hands-on with the label, so I do a lot of work with the producers tidying up their arrangements and things like that and then of course going to a lot of exhibitions to meet visual artists to put nice packages together. I’m very much contented with that.

What song is guaranteed to get you up and dancing?

Oof, how to go about even answering this one – let’s consult my recent YouTube and SoundCloud histories and see what comes up:

Nothing Left To Lose – Everything But The Girl
Por qué – Cetu Javu
Future Realities Part I – Dave Wallace
Alternative theme to the Gay Man’s Guide to Safe Sex – Coil
Bring on the Night (radio mix) – Spanic
Maracas Beach – Origination

What’s up next for you and the label?

The next release on the label will most likely be tsumasaki but in the meantime I’ve got a busy February with the first finestylewesteca, loads of Osaka dates and then a Kanto (Greater Tokyo) tour in March. With my own stuff and all going to plan there’ll be a single out on ARKUDA LABEL in May and then come summertime there’ll be an ambient jungle/hardcore/drum’n’bass release on Selva Sounds.

The ARKUDA one is in the bag and it’s just getting the remixes back and having it mastered and the Selva one I’m making good progress with the writing and mixing, it’s just a question of six plus however many more tracks at this point.

Be sure to catch up with Archipelago Soundsystem on Instagram and Twitter, while news on finestylewest’s release schedule can be found right here.