Harvey Sutherland released Debt this year, a microhouse funk record that'd get anyone on the dancefloor. We speak to him about the gear that shaped the album and what we owe and to whom.
Congratulations on the new record! Been a fan since Bermuda days. You described Boy as “neurotic funk,” and Debt is more focused on microhouse funk. How did your production approach change between the two albums? Did the sound evolve naturally as you were working?
Boy was definitely me trying to cram a lot of different influences together. This one is a lot more of a “genre” record, but it’s a sound that I kept coming back to, so I followed that instinct. Changes in my approach—just spending less time on it, no re-tracking synth parts over and over or second-guessing arrangements. Everything came together pretty easily until it was time to mix it.
Debt refers to the financial contortions of being an independent artist, but it also asks what we owe, and to whom, in a creative life. What does “debt” mean to you personally, and how did that concept shape the making of this record?
It’s a big, loaded word. I’ve been grappling with this relationship to debt, the feeling of owing someone / being owed / the ledgers of modern relationships and transactional friendships, especially in the music business. Then this idea of consuming all this internet sludge, the constant scroll, that somehow all this time wasted would come back to bite me one day. It kinda forced me to just make stuff, be deliberate, use that precious time.
You mixed four of the ten tracks. What helps you decide which tracks to mix yourself, and how do you know when a track needs a fresh set of ears?
I had a few tunes that I really wanted Tom McAlister to work on. He has excellent attention to detail, and his club mixes for his Big Ever project are so refined, so they felt right to send his way. Then I had my friend Tony Buchen mix all the vocal singles on his SSL, because I trust his ears on a vocal track more than my own! I mixed the rest using Tom and Tony’s mixes as the references, which gave me a bit more confidence in finishing them.
Could you walk us through the key pieces of gear you used while making Debt? Was there something that became central to the record’s sound?
It’s an in-the-box record mostly; all the drums are programmed in Ableton, but I did a LOT of processing via my Moog DFAM and my Cadac 16ch mixer—sending parts out through the Moog filter, then dubbing them with outboard effects. Synths were mostly Prophet 5 and a Moog Matriarch. Then just plugins—I like sculpting basses and leads in Flechtwerk, and also using Autotune on everything.
How are you approaching these tracks live? Are you rebuilding them with more improvisation or live instrumentation, or staying true to the record?
The live show is super fun. I tried to make it a bit like my dub process and kinda manipulate the arrangements as we go, but then we’re playing most of the keyboard parts live and trading little ideas back and forth, switching up the setlist. I’ve focused a lot on making live visuals a big part of it, and it’s been cool to get all those visuals interacting really closely with what’s happening sonically.
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