Joshua Steele - better known by his stage name Flux Pavilion - is a hugely successful British electronic music producer, DJ, singer-songwriter and label owner who has been performing since 2008. In one of his first interviews for a long time, Flux tells Headliner all about his life during lockdown, his fascination with sound experimentation, the dubstep days, and how he uses Steinberg’s Cubase not just as a regular DAW, but as an intuitive, creative tool.
“I’m flat out working on about three albums at the moment and I’ve been producing for a variety of people,” begins Flux, “but this weekend I decided not to do anything, and just lounged around reading comic books instead.”
Perhaps an envious lifestyle for some, Flux made the decision around 18 months ago that he wanted to do less live music, and jokingly admits that “I’m good at writing music, but travelling around and being friendly and enthusiastic and jumping around is something I’m not actually very good at, but somehow that became my full time job.
“I've been slowly working on shifting that, and as a result I’ve been stacked with studio work, which is great!”
Flux also admits that he’s generally been more productive as of late, and started off building guitars with all of his new found spare time. What started as a hobby out of necessity during lockdown quickly turned into a deep passion; Flux was soon expanding his Eurorack by building his own modular synthesis tools, and even designed and built his own guitar pedal from the ground up.
“I've just been soldering, looking into electronics and learning so much more about my craft than I ever had time to do before, which is absolutely amazing and has been a great opportunity.” he says.
Having got to where he is now doing everything in the box, Flux felt compelled to delve further into the analogue side of production, and has done just that over the past two or three years:
“There's always another VST I can download, but I wanted to buy an analogue synth to see what it's all about; it just felt like there was a whole part of musical experimentation that I wasn't really getting into. I record a part, and rather than using filter automation, I now use my hands to move the filter myself, and just that tiny touch of humanisation in my music changes everything.
“I don’t really use digital stuff anymore - it’s all analogue, because I find I can play parts in or have them recorded in and I can just change all the parameters with my hands,” he admits. “That's something that's so human and so organic, recording it once or twice and picking the best one. And then I don't fiddle with it afterwards and spend months trying to make my songs perfect, because I actually captured that moment with a real piece of equipment. Learning about what is in the equipment and building it all myself, I’ve found a new level of geekery that I never expected I would have the time to do!”