Anticon is a collectively owned record label based in Oakland, California. It produces well- known avant hip-hop records, financially supports its divergent artists and is
Doseone>>> "Anticon is six years old, a long relationship. When we first started we were all so desperate about our music, about making it happen. At one point there were eleven of us living in Tim's [Sole] two-bedroom house and it was rancid. Everyone was temp working, no one was making music, everyone was starting to hate each other, and this was the dive into being together. And now it's a business, we're board members and file K-1 on behalf of Anticon."
Alias>>> "I met Sole in '94; we both grew up in Maine. The music scene was almost non-existent. We did the Deep Puddle album in '98. That was kind of the starting point for Anticon. We thought we were going to shop it around to major labels but even the smaller labels thought it was too weird so we decided to start our own label. We put out a compilation and it caught a lot of people's attention. Then Sole moved out here. It just seemed like the right thing to do; the kind of music we were doing was a little different; people here are more relaxed and open minded. So we all moved out here, kept putting music out and eventually everybody could live off music and not workdayjobs."
Jel>>> "As I've been playing the drum machine live [Akai MPC 2000] it's kind of altered how I make music in the room, too. I just want to play everything. Instead of just doing a four bar loop or chunks of four bar sequences, I just want to play a full sixteen bar thing in. I'll sequence them if it's really technical but most of the time I'm just trying to play it in, then [I] add extra stuff as it's looping I'll get a break and each hit of the drum I try to completely chop it up into hi-hats, kick, snare everything that sounds different. Then I'll try to recreate it or create a whole different break. Trying to recreate that break definitely taught me how to drum with the drum machine. I think a big step for me, and the way I write music, was I would make a song that could work as an instrumental. I would finish the song before anyone would rap on it. Dose will give me a loop of something that he thinks sounds cool and I'll make a beat around that, then he'll add to it. It's been rare that he hasn't had something written. With his words it's in his head how he wants it delivered. But we'll compromise."
On making "It's Them" from Music For The Advancement Of Hip Hop>>> "We said, 'Okay, let's do something interesting.' I sat down and tried to match the beats, rhythmically, to his vocal. I was following his cadences, trying to do something that wasn't the same all the way through. It turned into something interesting. A trick with the way I cut them is the kick and hi-hat have an extra hit at the end of the sample so you can play it on beat and it still sounds like a drum break. The SP 1200 is the main thing I've made everything on until now. The No Music was still a lot of SP structure. I have everything routed into the [Alesis] mix board then into the Mbox. I use this Dr. Sample 303 for effects. I send my drums from the SP into the Dr. Sample and affect it with delay or whatever. Before that it was VS-880s. Everyone got VS-880s and we made our music on that. And before that it was just 4-track. I lost a Buck 65 and Doseone project on the VS-880: initialized my drive without knowing it."
Doseone>>> "I've been rapping a really long time. Jesus Christ, ten years. I do a lot of vocal tracks. I never do one or two; it's always ten. It's always pairs of things fading out and pairs of things fading in. I spend so much time laying these vocals that it has to be an intriguing process for...
