Tales From The Krypt

"I actually stayed up real late writing some rhymes and making some beats with some of the guys who are gonna be supporting us for the Toowoomba launch (for new single Same As You). I find myself often staying up late producing music. I don't know why but it seems once I get past midnight or one o'clock – I don't know if it's just because everyone else is asleep – that seems to be the time when I just get into the zone and focus in on something. Then all the hours seem to be flying by. When you hear the birds chirping, that's always the unsettling part,” Welge laughs.

The collaboration he's talking about was with the group All Underground Sound, who KrypatmistiK have worked with previously quite a bit. They worked on a record as well, Welge says it was a low-key kind of thing with a couple of shows, but who knows what could come out of the pairing this time.

Taking the dual role of producer and MC, Welge says that both are important and satisfying in very different ways. The role of a producer is often an isolated and internal one, where Welge says he can lose hours or days nodding behind a computer, whereas rhyming comes into itself on the stage and in the party. Unlike the way most producers will often work with a beat in mind, or MCs will write over a pre-produced beat, Welge takes a more separated approach. 

“It's very rare that I will produce anything with any idea of rhymes or even a song in mind yet,” he explains. “I'm always just sort of allowing it to unfold as it does. At the end, or the next day after we're interrupted by the sun coming up or the bird-chirping freak out, you listen back to it and try and work out if anything actually good came out of it, and you find out if those hours without any sleep were worth it or a waste.”  

He says that often when he's spent a lot of time listening to the same track over and over as he's producing it or putting it together, it's easy to lose perspective on whether he still likes it or if it's any good at all.

“I play it to everyone else in the crew and if I see the kind of reaction come from them – that it's a special one – then I know to put that one aside and that's when we'll start trying to brainstorm ideas about what to write about for that track you know.”

Unfortunately, this approach will only work some of the time and Welge says the best ideas often come at times when it's all too inconvenient. He admits that he has many green shopping bags filled with lyrics and snippets that he can draw from to try and weave everything together.

“For me, a lot of the rhymes I write, there's no beat in mind,” he concedes. “They always seem to come at the most inconvenient times, like when I'm already running late for something or when I'm lying in bed already freaking out about not getting enough sleep and the words just start coming. I feel like I have to write it down because if I don't it's just gone and that inspiration will be gone. I don't get to choose and I don't have the privilege of choosing when that hits in a big way, or when it doesn't.“

KryptamistiK will be playing the following shows:

Friday 12 October - The Spotted Cow, Toowoomba QLD
Saturday 13 October - Buddha Bar, Byron Bay NSW
Friday 19 October - Alloneword, Fortitude Valley QLD