Bromide Dub (Kerry Adams), recently described as “Menacing Funk”, is the slow burner, having spent nearly 20 years now mastering his production and DJing skills, he now unleashes his live show. With releases via multiple alias on labels from Germany, Poland and the US through to New Zealand, Kerry has recently started managing Next Essence – a German Tech-House label with a pedigree background (from the same people who bought you Plastic City) as well as forming his own label Boom-Tish to release tracks from some of his other monikers – Unity Gain and The Filterbrats.
Fusing the latest technology with traditional hardware, Bromide Dub’s show is a live improvisation of audio loops, sequencers and sounds. Programming synths and patterns on stage, for an electronica artist who refuses to resort to traditional methods of playing, this is as live as it gets.
Each show is guaranteed to be unique, as the equipment is intentionally selected and put together requiring large amounts of human interaction to keep it progressing. Man playing the machines. Semi-Modular Synthesis and only the most basic of pre-preparation, means that the audience bears witness to a performance that can never again be the same.
Kerry started producing music in 1990, using an Amiga and ProTracker, a very simple program that only allowed four sounds to be played back together at any one time. From these very simple beginnings, Kerry became truly addicted to the technology that made this style of music possible, and has since been on a journey to find the ultimate way to express his ideals. Since then, he has worked for and represented nearly every major pro-audio range in New Zealand – from importing to retailing, helping countless musicians and DJs get started and progress along their own journeys into the music.
All this time, he has been
slowly pottering away in the background, working on finding his own sound, and the results of this work have found themselves everywhere from local radio, through to worldwide release on all the major gaming consoles. Many people have already heard his work; they just don’t know it yet.
Kerry runs a mastering studio, helping finish off some of the country’s top producers tracks, giving them the final polish and approval before they go off to release, and is pretty unique in being able to claim personally writing, mixing, mastering and cutting a release to vinyl, all a single day. In his ‘spare’ time – Kerry runs the Technical Sessions, inviting top producers and DJs to come and talk about what they do, as he continues on his quest to find and share information on his passion, producing a playing out electronic music. Many weekends you will find him hiding in the corners of a dark club – making sure the sound system is running at optimum, ensuring that the sound is as good as it can.
The Bromide Dub project, be it in live or DJ form, is a showcase of the latest technology and methods, being fused with a stripped back, no-nonsense ethos towards the dance floor. When he plays, it is business time.
The current live set-up is based around (surprise) Ableton running on a PC. However, in this case, it is primarily feeding the hardware midi loops, and acting as a large scale mixing environment being controlled by the VCM600 – essentially, consider it a big digital desk, and a sequencer.
In his words -
“Drums are off the MachineDrum. I like the idea of being able to individually mute the kick, snare, hats on so on individually, rather than being tied into loops. Also, this means I can change the release on the kick, for example, or tune the hi-hats live. Supplementing these core drums, are occasional percussion loops inside of Ableton.
Ableton is feeding midi lines out to a Nord Lead 2x, a Dave Smith Evolver and a Doepfer Dark Energy. These switch duties from bass to lead to pads depending on the tune.
All this is feed into Ableton via a RME Fireface – and mixed down with control from the Vestax VCM600. This means I can have a pile of effects available to me (the computer isnt worrying about any ‘instruments’) and also me to output a finalised audio stream.”
Here is a video that explains the setup (although, it changes every week)
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