UPPER CLASS : Simplicity Is Key
Incredibly productive and versatile, Benedict is the German producer behind the moniker upper class under which he releases lo-fi hip hop gems and, sometimes, even entrancing house tracks. His new album, Seagull Joints, perfectly encapsulates that clash of retro vibes and modern feels, offering to the listener a strange nostalgia for the present moment. We had a chat with upper class to discuss tuning in, dropping out and going sample-free.
I love your new album seagull joints? I’m curious to know how the album was developed?
Thanks! Making Seagull Joints was so much fun. The idea behind the album is a walk along the beach on a stormy, rainy day, losing yourself in thoughts. I produced the entire album in my 12-sq.m. bedroom, except for Scheveningen, that one was made on the train back from Den Haag (NL) after a dope trip there, in January 2020. The album was pretty much done by that time already, so we took it to the beach and played it on a bluetooth box while it was raining and storming like hell, barely above freezing temperature. That was my favorite moment since it made me realize the album perfectly translates the mood I was looking for.
Before Seagull Joints, I had never tried working on a project with a concept in mind, but I always wanted to create something that would feel a little more cohesive than most of my beat tapes, and send you on an actual trip for half an hour or so.
It’s also the first big project where I went 99% sample free (except for the seagulls, i ripped those from YouTube), so all i worked with were my electric guitar, bass guitar, lounge lizard and my metallophone. Not being an expert on any of these instruments, recording all of the ideas I had in mind was very challenging and it took me a lot of time to get a take right for the most part. The album definitely has some noticeable flaws here and there due to me having to deal with a lot of static noise and being inexperienced at recording and processing my own instruments and sounds, but I’ve gotten so much better at it during the 1/2 year I’ve been working on this.
I’m usually very easily distracted by the technical aspect of production and tend to get lost in little details, so laying the focus on the creative part of creating a mood, playing my instruments & layering sounds and melodies until it sounded like something I’d wanna lay drums on was very refreshing.
Where do you currently live? And how is the artistic scene there?
I’ve been living in Jena, Germany for 4 years now. It’s a small, very peaceful city full of young people in the middle-east of the country. I didn’t immediately try to connect with the artistic or music scene when I went there, since my primary motivation to come to Jena was to study politics at that time.
At some point my SoundCloud started doing better than my studies, so I decided to grab my SP-404 and play my beats at open mics around town, which introduced me to some of the friendliest and coolest people I’ve met to this day, as well as to all of the cool stuff going on in town.
The hip hop scene here is very compact, but even more close. Everyone is friends, basically. Jena also has a fantastic scene for techno and other contemporary electronic music genres. Generally, there’s a lot of talented and creative people in town doing the shit they love (some more visibly, some less) There’s at least a little bit of everything here, to be honest. For a city with just 100k citizens, a lot is going on in Jena and I really look forward to enjoying the music scene here again as soon as the clubs open again.
What has been your most inspiring production tool lately?
My guitar, definitely! Been playing it since I was 10, but never had a real use for it except for jamming around during the loading screen of whatever video game I was into at the time. I’m all self-taught, so my skills on the guitar were limited to playing most of Nirvana’s discography. After I started making sampled beats at 16, I quickly lost interest in playing guitar and gave it away to a friend in the end, since there was no possibility for me to record it properly anyway back then,
I’m very glad I invested some of my Jazz Vibes money into getting back at it with the guitar and actually seriously attempted getting better at playing. It’s such a versatile instrument and you can get a lot of good stuff out of it across all genres, even with lower experience like mine. If you have an SP-404 or an external amp, run it through that and you can already get impressive results with the quality and tone of your recordings.
I’m curious to know a little more about your live setup. How do you translate your music in a live setting?
Right now, all I take with me for playing live is my SP-404. I just fill it with a selection of my stuff and press play on stage while playing with effects.
It’s great because all you need literally fits in a bag and I can totally appreciate the straightforward approach of just playing my beats while adding some FX on my 404, but I know for sure that I want to make my own live sets a little more exciting and complex than they currently are.
There’s several really cool ways to do this and I’m still figuring out where to go with it.
What makes a good live performance in your opinion?
It’s hard for me to describe what exactly makes a good live show good because each artist has their very own way of trying to create a cool atmosphere, but an important point to me generally is seeing them enjoy whatever they’re doing or playing. Also, I like those shows a lot more (as a guest and as an artist) where the stage and the crowd are on the same height instead of dividing them into stage and floor level. It creates a much friendlier atmosphere and feels more direct to me.
A lot also comes down to the venue and the crowd. I like places where people drink less and smoke more.
Most of your albums are in a lo-fi hip hop/boom bap vibe, but you also have a couple of excellent lo-fi house bangers on your Spotify profile. What role do those 2 music genres play in your creative process?
I listen to a lot of instrumental music in my free time, hip hop & house are probably the main drivers of inspiration for me. Making house tunes usually takes me way longer because of the 4+ min length of each track and the arrangement work I have to do so it sounds finished (my biggest weakness).
A lot of my lo-fi downtempo / hip hop stuff is much simpler and rather loop-based, while with house I’m trying to really make it worth being listened to from start to finish, but you kinda wanna choose wisely what and how much of something a track needs and that’s not always easy. I really admire those who manage to create dope shit with just very few elements that they tweak perfectly. Simplicity is key.
For both genres, I generally feel more confident about making drums and have basically no idea of music theory, so when i make melodies and chords, it’s more about getting a lucky shot at trying to play something cool than actually knowing what I’m doing, but practice is gonna get me there for sure!
Would you ever consider releasing a house album?
Absolutely. I’m working on it.
Your track Atlantic.Wav remains one of your most played on Spotify. Did you expect it would become so popular?
I made that beat in the summer of 2016. It took like an hour. Honestly, it’s one of the laziest beats I’ve ever made, and far from my best. The sample ( Didn’t I by Darondo) plays during the ending scene of some episode from Breaking Bad, season one. Great song. That’s why I wanted to flip it. Slapped some drums onto the sample, added a bassline, some arrangements, that’s it. I didn’t expect it to blow up because I personally didn’t enjoy it anymore, but I guess the sample is doing the job here. It’s just soo catchy.
Though, it doesn’t really represent my style or my expectations of myself anymore. I wouldn’t release music like this today. It feels like I just barely edited somebody else’s work instead of doing something that is at least mostly based on my own ideas. Nevertheless, knowing that several million people have listened to something I made is fascinating and a reason to be grateful.
Have you discovered any interesting artists lately? Who are your favourite artists at the moment?
I like all music that’s underground with very few exceptions, but I spend most of my time listening to hip hop, bossa nova, techno, house, drum and bass and some DIY rock/indie.
Some of my favorite producers in the instrumental beat genre are Wun Two, the whole Fanso crew, Plusma, Kaizen 92, Fortnight and Hubert Daviz. My main influences concerning House are Mall Grab, Tlim Shug, Harrison BDP and 박혜진 Park Hye Jin.
Other than that, I enjoy bands like Beach Fossils, Wavves, Surf Curse, Sonic Youth, Jurassic Shark, DIIV and all sorts of rough and not so rough underground rock music.
One of my latest cool discoveries is Molchat Doma, a band from Russia that mixes influences of dark wave, post-punk and synth-pop. My Russian is rather poor, so I don’t get a lot of the lyrics, but I still love the sound of the language and the dystopian mood they’re creating with their music.
What’s next for upper class?
At the moment, I don’t see any possible scenario in which creating music would not play a main role in my life. There’s nothing really that could make me wanna stop working on getting better at my craft.
I’m experimenting with a few other genres off the record from time to time for a few years now, so maybe I’ll be joined by a few new aliases at some point. For now, I still haven’t lost the fun in making downtempo/lo-fi/hip hop style beats and house tunes, so you can expect a lot more of that for sure!
Also, I just bought a trumpet for fifty bucks.