Lawrence a.k.a. Random (ID)

Lawrence a.k.a Random is one of the busier DJ/Producer in Indonesia. Currently he has 3 projects active with his drum’n’bass projects under the name Random, electro/house under Lawrence Philip and his electronic band EGRV. One of the true pioneer in Indonesian Dance Music, Lawrence or Random was one of the early DJ in Indonesia to dabbled in production. His first release dated back to 1999 under now defunct LA based drum’n’bass label Jungle Voodoo. 12 years later, Lawrence still going strong and has broaden his musical taste by producing anything from hardcore drum’n’bass to current Indonesian pop hits! He has produced for many talents including indie heroes Kripik Peudeus, United By Haircuts and Yacko to Indonesian pop stars such as Aura Kasih, Vicky Shu and Dewi Sandra. In 2009, he was rewarded as Producer of The Year at REDMA and a year later was declared as Drum’n’bass DJ and Live PA of the year. He was also nominated in multiple categories throughout many awards show in the past 12 years.

As a long-time user of Kuassa, we interviewed him a bit about his love to Drum ‘n Bass, his different take on Kratos Maximizer, and his view about computer music.

Firstly, tell us a bit about you, when and how you start producing music, and describe your notable music projects? Lawrence Philip also known as Random and I’m a DJ/producer.  I started dabbling in production back in 1998 using lowly sample based DAW Acid PRO 1. I said lowly because at that time there are no plug-ins support. If you don’t want to use pre-existing samples then you have to use real instrument and sample them. I got started because my crew at the time runs an online drum n bass magazine. The folks at Sonic Foundry sent us 5 license of Acid PRO to us for both review and trying them out. That’s how I got started. 

What kind of music that you are producing recently, and what is the specific bits that makes you fall in love to that genre? and how Kuassa’s diverse range of users can take those bits as a reference for their music? I produced all kind of music but my true love is drum & bass. I love challenge and I always find  d&b to be technically challenging. I feel that drum &  bass constantly push the limit of what the technology allows. Prior to the arrival of dubstep,  d&b was probably at the forefront of computer music,  something that could only be achieved using your PC/Mac. Your old analog gears will not cut it. If you think about it,  all that are considered trendy sounds today,  we’ve done them in D&b five years ago at least. That’s why I love D&b.  I think it’s good to be able to look outside the usual music you write.  You don’t have to write different genres but you can always take something positive from different genre and possibly incorporate them to your music.

Is music your full-time profession or is it a side project? how to manage between your daily work and your music projects? how you committed yourself to keep the creativity, the tracks to flowing out? Most of my income came from music but not from production though. I work at a record label and in there I have to handle online promotion,  designs and also some of the music production. Making music for work is a whole different world with personal project.  Occasionally it’s tough to stay creative but there’s no specific method on how I maintain them.  I just go with the  flow.  When the well is dry,  I will not force my self to work On that project. Take a break and get back to it later with fresher perspective seems to work well for me. Unless deadline is lurking of course. Usually when under pressure I tend to get thing done more.

How you guys make money and distribute your music? Nothing special here, we signed up with a digital music aggregator and they distribute all our music to all digital stores. Then we do our best promo effort and hope for the best..  No were never gonna get rich from digital label. The one that make the most money are the digital stores. They get 50% of the sales income then we have to split our 50% with the distributor. Then that 30% we have left have to be split with cost of promotion and the artists will be left with 10 – 20% of the sales earning. It’s an unfair system be honest. We don’t do it for money though. We do it because we love drum &  bass.

What is your favorite DAW? How is your production workflow? please share it to our readers I usually composed in Ableton Live then after I’m satisfied,  I export all tracks into audio and move my project to Logic Pro X. The reason I export to audio is to prevent me from changing things again. Audio force you to commit. By this stage we have  95% of the music done and the only change that will happen is in tone and color during the mixing stage. Without that audio track export, I’d never get anything done.  I’ll constantly tinker with them.