How To Make Simian Mobile Disco ‘Hustler’ with DRC

A good half a decade before Martin Garrix released ‘Animals’, a track that would forever change the definition and composition of the dance music genre known as ‘electro’, back in 2007 it was associated with a very different sound. This was of course the year that Daft Punk gave us their infamous ‘Alive’ world tour – stylistically miles away from Garrix’s personal flavour of EDM.

A time when electro was much more comfortable slotting into hit single charts by leaning towards pop tendencies and flirting with indie, 2007 also gave us the debut album from English duo ‘Simian Mobile Disco’ entitled ‘Attack Decay Sustain Release’. As well as having an excellent title, the album came loaded with hits such as ‘Hotdog’, ‘It’s A Beat’ and the featured track for today’s DRC Sound Design Tutorial; ‘Hustler’.

There are two very different music videos that exist for Hustler, though they do share a common theme of both being intentionally provocative, and what would today probably be considered to be poor/crude creative choices in the quest for publicity. Controversial music videos are obviously not a new phenomenon, but in this particular case it seems almost as if the reaction to the initial video wasn’t as big as the record company had hoped for, and so they attempted to amp up the shock factor in an attempt to double down for the second film. Upon its emergence, NME were keen to bait our clicks by touting it as the ‘sickest’ music video ever – the true context of which only becomes evident in the latter stages of the track.

We’re only interested in the audio side of things of course, as Lucas dissects the secrets of the song’s bass, keys and lead sounds, with a little help from DRC.

Download the Ableton project from this video:
https://www.imaginando.pt/uploads/goodies/tutorials/simian-mobile-disco-hustler-project.zip

00:00 Intro
00:17 Sub Bass
01:56 Back Keys
07:40 Lead
11:23 Music
12:38 Outro

DRC – Polyphonic Synthesizer:
DRC on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/drc-polyphonic-synthesizer/id973055710
DRC on Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imaginando.drc
DRC for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/drc/downloads
DRC Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/drc

VS – Visual Synthesizer:
VS on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/app/id1560330289
VS for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/vs-visual-synthesizer
VS Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/vs-visual-synthesizer

FRMS – Granular Synthesizer:
FRMS on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/frms-granular-synthesizer/id1381392223
FRMS on Google Play – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imaginando.frms
FRMS for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/frms/downloads
FRMS Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/frms

K7D – Tape Delay
K7D on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/k7d-tape-delay/id1460245991
K7D for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/k7d/downloads
K7D Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/k7d

DLYM – Delay Modulator:
DLYM on App Store – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/dlym-delay-modulator/id1381246923
DLYM for Desktop – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/dlym/downloads
DLYM Product Page – https://www.imaginando.pt/products/dlym

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