deltron3030Deltron 3030 can rightly be considered rap royalty as their various members are among the most respected members of the rap scene over the past two decades. Comprising of Dan ‘The Automator’ Nakamura, Del The Funky Homosapien and turntable DJ extraordinaire Kid Koala, they’ve returned as a group thirteen years after their self-titled debut album.They’re currently out on tour promoting their new album Event II and  GoldenPlec caught up with  producer Dan ‘The Automator’ Nakamura to talk about how things are going with the new album and the tour.

Nakamura has noticed differences between European and American audiences saying, “western European audiences, a lot of times there are savvier to music in terms of nuances. It’s kinda like the charts I guess, when you look at the charts like in the UK, they are the indie charts and major charts. In the US, it’s not like that; our crowd in the US may not be into pop music at all, while in western Europe it’s more of a mixture.” Nakamura found that in the non-English speaking European countries music more so than the words crossed the barrier as he said “I’ve done a few records in France and language is such a complicated thing especially where English isn’t the first language and you don’t know what you’re doing and they are more into the groove of the music.” While the whole tour experience is something Nakamura enjoys he also says “I like making records and when on the road it’s stops my ability to making records.”

The new album, Event II, is more psychedelic rock and orchestral sounding than the previous Deltron 3030 album, which was based on more traditional hip hop staple of samples and beats. Nakamura grew up learning classical violin from the age of three and this has had a large bearing on not just this Deltron album but all his records. Nakamura said “I think like a string player, not based around classical music but more like on soundtracks from John Williams, where the drama comes through.” In the intervening years, between Deltron 3030 albums, Nakamura worked as producer on Gorillaz self-titled album and two of Kasabian’s album. He was in no doubt that this helped shape the sound of Event II saying “I did a lot of rock records and I think you increase your palate of abilities and techniques. I think those come into play on Event II to a degree. I would say though, that it stills sounds like a Deltron record.”

‘Event II’ has a varied guest list of performers to say the least. From Zach De La Rocha, to Jamie Cullum to Damon Albarn, the one thing that ties them together is that Nakamura has worked with them in the past. It even contains David Cross (of Arrested Development fame), Joseph Gordon Levitt and Amber Tamblyn. Nakamura went on to explain “everyone that appeared is a friend of mine and the other reason is that the little skits show they paint a picture of what it’s like in the future and in the case of Dave and Amber they happened to be the people who were around at the time who could deliver what I was looking for.”

Deltron started as a concept band about a dystopian future. Its themes still apply in an age where there are fiscal cliffs, freak whether and rapid technological advances.  Nakamura explains “the first album was more of a futuristic space romp but we still did stuff that had a message in it, like Virus for example and talking about the computer age. After we did the first record, we discovered several years later what people gravitated towards was the message. We didn’t set out with that message in mind, but we realised the first record was more of a sci fi record in terms of representing the present than we thought and when we went back for the new album we realised had to establish the present through the future.”

While it took 13 years for a follow up Deltron 3030 album, it begged the question will there be an other Deltron 3030 record. Nakamura said “Originally Del The Funky Homospien was not interested and now he’s been saying let’s do, let’s do it and we now have a better idea how to do this. It’s much more of a political concept than we thought and now that we understand that it’s easier to have a base work from.”Deltron 3030  isn’t Nakamura’s first time working on a concept album. Indeed his first major breakthrough was with Kool Keith on the brilliant Dr Octagon. There has never been a follow up together  and when quizzed if a follow up to Dr Octagon would be possible Nakamura admits “that’s a tough one, it could happen but I wouldn’t expect it to happen. It’s more likely there would be another Lovage record before that.”

As Nakamura is someone who has been on the forefront of the hip hop scene for two decades he’s well placed to voice his opinion on the current state of rap music and where he sees it going, saying “Right now in rap music there is a lot of things that come out that are not very good. Some of our most popular rappers right now make really good records, it’s just that they just make a lot of shit records, I’ll use Lil’ Wayne as an example. I guess part of what’s on with why everything seems so bad is in some ways is that you have to go through all the shit music to get to the good music because everyone with a laptop can make record or a song. So instead of one great song and ten shit ones you now get one great song and a thousand shit songs. We need someone to blow all that away.” He further explains that there is a reason for that, in that “the record labels stop developing artists, so artists they start becoming focused on the singles market. Like when Rihanna came out, she was pretty cool in the beginning but the albums were just shit, absolute garbage or Beyonce, the album after Crazy In Love was shit. You as the consumer go what the fuck, I just bought this album and it all sucks but for these two songs. Then there’s iTunes where you just buy that one song. But’s it’s not all technology that made us stop buying records it’s also the record labels being greedy.”

It’s clear Nakamura is a firm believer in the process of making albums to be listened to as a whole, saying “for someone like me making works [Albums] is what I do, but it almost works against me in the pop world, because if I’m producing albums and not being arrogant or whatever, I think the songs are all a much higher quality overall. So what happens is this one song doesn’t jump out as much as the other ones when you have one great song and all shit songs. So then people don’t really notice that’s a great song because they listen to the album thinking this is all pretty good. They’re not focusing on the one hit on this record. On Pink Floyd ‘s The Wall or OK Computer or something like that, where  it’s not really about a song, it’s about the album even though each song individually is just as good as anything people come up with.”

 Deltron 3030 play The Button Factory, Dublin on Sunday 15th December. Their new album ‘Event II’ is out now.