One-half of local beat merchants Blunt Instrument, Luke Latimer gives us an inside look at the making of the duo’s latest EP.

Our new EP is called 'The Pocket', and is basically our take on what can be very loosely called bass music. It's the culmination of what has been a huge year of learning, trial and error and developing our production techniques to a point where we are (for probably about month anyway) happy with our sound.

We are both huge fans of instrumental hip hop, so we really wanted to try and bring elements of those production techniques into this EP: sampling old loops, vocals, doing cuts and reinterpreting old funk grooves are all major elements of the EP. The challenge was getting these old 'warm' (ie. crusty) sounds and getting them to gel with modern synthesized sounds and production techniques. 

The overall concept of the album was based on a term used by funk drummers — when they played a great groove it was called 'being in the pocket' (yes this is a direct Wikipedia rip). We really worked hard on trying to create interesting grooves on the EP to make it less like a lot of very rigidly structured dance music that you hear nowadays.

In the short term we are doing a few shows in the next few months that are going to be heaps of fun — supporting Opiuo at the Hi-Fi and a bit later on doing a festival in NZ. We also have a few new releases planned and some remix work including a tune for Lotek (Ninja Tune).

Blunt Instrument play the official Earth Frequency after-party at Barsoma Friday February 24.