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Face and versatility are comfortably mixed. As an accomplished producer, song writer and mix artist, he considers his greatest gift to be his skill as a multi-instrumentalist - making sweet elegance as a vocalist as well as guitarist, keyboardist, and trumpet player. With one foot in Funk and the other in jazz, Face has become a DJ producer in the underground world rendering genre jumping, cross-over sounds reminiscent of our greatest Funk legends. Face's latest album "Slow Burn" featuring vocalist Jennifer Perryman marks a brilliant, innovative approach to fusing Jazz, Soul, Funk and House. Slow Burn is Face's first release on his own new independent label Facerecordings. Face has performed and worked with many staple artists in the underground industry including Julius Papp, Jt Donaldson, Brett Johnson, Demarkus Lewis, Joe Castilllo, Alfredo Castillo, Jim Pasant, and Jeff Mitchell (aka. Jazmin). He has crafted over a dozen EP Dance releases on labels such as OM Records, Estereo, Central Park Records, Grab Recordings, MStreet Records, L'amour Records, Ploff and Balance, a sub label of Prescription.
URBNET: With so many instruments out there to play and utilize what have been some of your favorite to use in tracks?
FACE: I like the guitar and piano the most, as well as the fender rhodes. I still love real horns. But organic instruments, aka. real instruments and musicians is what I lend to the most. As far as software instruments. I like the Arturia a great deal, and the Omnisphere by Spectrasonics.
Jazz & Funky rhythms explode over each one of your productions but when did you come up with the idea to cross into a more electronic sound with House music?
I think that I started to play the Steiner E.V.I. In and around 1992. Which is an invention by Neil Steiner.
It is wind instrument that controls synthesizers and plays like a trumpet. It has 7 octaves and can pretty much destroy a keyboard in some ways, at least in as far as getting emotional tracks with dynamics. I am a jazz and soul musician and was listening to the likes of Incognito and other electronic music such as Weather Report, Chick Corea Electric Band and Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters. Miles Davis was doing electronic music that was amazing long before most of what we know as underground. I grew up on so much Jazz/Rock music. They are all my influences.
'Slow Burn' is the first release on your Face Recordings label, what other projects do you have in the works for release in the near future?
I am going to release a Soul record that is related to the old mowtown sound. I am also producing a number of new records for a cd that feat. Mina Chang from Dallas singing. It will have a very smooth and soulful sound and will be more mid-tempo overall.
After working with so many underground artists and labels do you feel the need to expose yourself to a more commercial audience or have you been more suited to the underground surroundings?
I am pursuing a more mainstream sound without sounding like a cliche'. There are many great artists in the pop mainstream like Remy Shand, Robin Thicke and the like. I also dig Jamie Lidell a great deal. Music is music but there are approaches that lend themselves much more poplular.
The sounds of the recordings alone and the type of production can push a song into a more popular category. It's always a challenge to make something great that will fit into some kind of young popular culture. People only know what they know and it is difficult to appease a young audience without sounding like an idiot. lol!
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