It is hard to distinguish yourself in Drum N Bass.  There is so much DnB out there that getting lost in the crowd is always a danger.  Evol Intent has beaten the odds.  Not only have Evol Intent's three members; The Enemy, Knick and Gigantor; collaborated with some of the best in the industry (notably, Dieselboy), they make Drum n Bass records that grab my attention and make me say "Oh ya...that's cool!" in stead of "Uh-huh...DnB..." And so this month, it is an honor to have The Enemy take time out to answer a few questions about Evol’s production process and gear for us.

DC: Can you give us a quick run-down of the hardware and software you use most?

TE: I don't use much hardware, as far as synths and samplers go. I mostly just use a PC with dual [video] monitors, Mackie HR824 [audio] monitors, a MOTU soundcard, Mackie mixer and a small army of MIDI controllers.

I work a little differently depending on the project I'm on.  For solo work I am a big fan of Cubase SX and Native Instruments. I use Kontakt as my primary sampler and love Reaktor, Absynth and FM7 for synths. The main effects are used are just Waves compressors, limiters, EQs, reverb, and a few other VSTs like Antares Tube or PSP Vintage Warmer.

For audio editing and modifying sounds I usually just use [Sony] Sound Forge and do a lot of manual cutting/pasting/layering/pitching/etc. tricks.

On Evol Intent tunes we sequence and write in [Propellerhead] Reason for it's cross-platform and self-containing capabilities.  Once an Evol Intent tune is 'finished' we'll ReWire Reason into Logic and a Mackie [32 channel, 8 bus recording console] and do the mix-down there. Gigantor also has a great analog tape machine that he uses quite a bit to run sounds through. 

DC: How has your gear setup changed over the years?

TE: Only about five or six years ago I was on a not-so-great Compaq with a 15-inch monitor, $40 computer speakers and whatever soundcard came with it.  I did have a lot of band gear left over from my punk days but it wasn't that useful.  I ended up selling a lot of it before I moved to Atlanta.  Once I was out of college and making money most it went into musical gear, so my collection has grown greatly. 

Lately I've been buying more 'live' equipment again, mostly due to a few of the side projects I'm involved in. I've got a 1973 Fender Rhodes MK I, which is my baby.  I also have several guitar amps, a Gibson SG, Fender Stratocaster, few other guitars and basses, Pearl drum kit and a lot of other random fun things.

DC: Do the three members of Evol Intent still do most of your production separately?  What are the mechanics of collaboration within the group?

TE: Yes.  For the most part we just send files back and forth until we're all pleased with the tune.

DC: How about live performances?

TE: We've never done a 'live' performance.  We all three just DJ.  Most Evol Intent shows are one of us DJ'ing.  If the promoters book all three of us we'll do a tag-team DJ set.  We're working on an actual live show right now and hope to launch it early next year when our LP drops.

DC: When you do remix work, in what form do you usually get the original?

TE: It's usually just a folder of .wav or .aif files.  If the producer used Reason sometimes we'll get the Reason file but end up ripping the sounds out, reprocessing and starting from scratch.

DC: Evol Intent mixed Evol Intent Assemble The Monster, Disk Two of Dieselboy’s Human Imprint retrospective album The Human Resource.  What was the technical side of that project like?

TE: Dieselboy basically gave us the back catalog of Human Imprint plus a lot of brand new exclusive remixes and asked us to put our touch on the mix.  We picked out the tunes we thought would work best and got them in the order that made most sense. 

Then we put each individual tune in Ableton Live and made edits and added or cut parts, mashed up some of the songs.  We took some parts out and REXed them and imported them back in so we could play with the tempo and layer them in other areas. That's how most of the mix went.

The only exception was on the Barrier Break remix, during the slow 'chopped and screwed' breakdown that Hochi and Infiltrata did, Ibasically just took that out, imported it into Cubase at the correct tempo and manually chopped and edited the audio file, bounced it back out and replaced that section in the original tune.

DC: Have you recently started using anything new that you are excited about?

TE: It's not really new, but I'm still raving about [Native Instruments] Guitar Rig 2.  Some of the features are just amazing. I also picked up a Heil Talk Box and a Yamaha DX-100 a while back for a funk project I'm doing.  It took a while to get used to but I love it and mess around with it at least an hour every day."