3FOR82 by MACHINEDRUM

3FOR82 builds on the vocalist-centric, genre-blending songwriting of the last Machinedrum album, 2020’s A View Of U, and the thematic groundwork laid down on 2023 EP 4#TRAX (dedicated to channel trax on IRC, a ‘90s chat platform). Between drum & bass, hip-hop, jazz, R&B and juke, dazzling beat switches and a singular ear for sonics, Stewart weaves in a crew of collaborators. Jesse Boykins III, the album’s co-executive producer and a close friend of Stewart, leads with various contributions; while a ritzy cast including Tinashe, KUČKA, Duckwrth, AKTHESAVIOR, Mick Jenkins, Ezri, Tanerélle, Deniro Farrar, Topaz Jones, deem spencer, aja monet, ROZET, Will Johnson and Ian Maciak rounds the record off.

In the quiet vastness of Joshua Tree, Machinedrum combed through old harddrives full of his late-’90s beats: many of them were made on Impulse Tracker, a rough freeware programme that lay untouched for the better part of a quarter-century. “That’s really where I cut my teeth in electronic music-making,” he remembers. Although he’s been a committed Ableton Live user for years, “there's been a yearning for me to tap back into that older self; the software is super limiting, and there’s a unique creativity that comes out of limitations.”

After finding a DOS emulator that would run Impulse Tracker, he recorded himself playing and riffing off these beats to build 3FOR82; sample by sample, he made original sound banks that could be fed into a dedicated library, giving 3FOR82 a distinct tone. “From there, there was no going back,” Stewart smiles. “It bridged the gap between my past and future self”. This period included recording himself and his environment with a VHS camera, then running the footage audio into the tracker, creating a meta-library of sounds.

Solitude wasn’t the only parameter Stewart set for the process of making 3FOR82. Time was a defining element of his creativity, too. “I went from that seed collecting phase into a pure experimentation and creation phase,” he says. “I gave myself one month to start as many track ideas as possible: over that month, I created around 45 different ideas; then, I decided which ones were the strongest, and focused on them for the album. The ones that I gravitated to really just had these natural pockets for vocals.”

Tracklisting:

Oracle (feat Aja Monet)
Respek (feat Topaz Joes & Ezri)
Weary (feat Mick Jenkins & Jesse Boykins III)
Hon3y
Heal (feat AKTHESAVIOR & Deniro Ferrar)
Ilikeu (feat Duckwrth)
U Want (feat KUCKA)
Blessd (feat Deem Spencer)
Rise (feat ROZET)
Zoom (feat Tinashe)
Kill U (feat Tanerelle)
Godown (feat Jesse Boykins III)