Junkie XL: Digital Addiction
Today
Footsteps from L.A.’s Venice Beach, Holkenborg’s studio is home to half a dozen Power Mac G5s — some are used exclusively to record audio using Pro Tools and others run Logic Pro for MIDI sequencing. “By slaving the two programs together, I have a very powerful system,” says Holkenberg. “I have audio running on one computer so I can use Logic for what I really want to use it for, which is MIDI. For me, Logic’s midi programming is far superior to any other program.”
Holkenborg also has a vast library of ESX24 samples that he can pull into Logic Pro. “All of the samples that I’ve made in my life have been converted to EXS24, several terabytes,” he says. “When I make electronic music, I just go through the cool sounds that I made throughout the years and compile some together into a four-bar loop. From there I just start arranging.”
But for “Today,” Holkenberg took a different tack. Instead of experimenting with samples and loops, he picked up his guitar. “I just wanted to sit down for three months and make music, see what came out,” he says. The organic approach yielded an album of guitar-driven melodies with electronic backbones. For vocals, he turned to singer Nathan Mader. The album is the most personal Junkie XL project to date. The tracks aren’t strictly dance floor grooves — they’re ruminations on Holkenberg’s life. “Musically, I’ve spent so much time traveling around the world carrying a suitcase, so to speak, picking something up wherever I went and putting that experience in there,” he says. “For ‘Today,’ I opened the suitcase and took all that was in there.”
How to Score
When Holkenborg scores a film, he’s bound to a different set of creative conventions. He has to interpret scenes, compose tracks for characters and situations, and, above all, please the director and producers. The end result is still a Junkie XL piece, but it’s finely tuned for the film.
His latest score for a movie called “Dead or Alive,” based on a video game — “kind of like ‘Charlie’s Angels’ meets ‘James Bond,’” he says. “The big challenge for the project was that the producers weren’t looking for a typical Hollywood score. They wanted the classic ’60s vibe of John Barry and even Lalo Schifrin, who wrote the music for ‘Mission Impossible.’”
Holkenberg was thrilled to have the challenge, creating a fusion of orchestral melodies and funky, secret-agent-inspired electronic beats. “I think that’s where the trick lies,” he says. “The producer’s didn’t want some electronic music with an orchestra thrown on top of it. They wanted to integrate different layers and sounds. So a lot of it is experimental electronic, but it has classic melodies and classic orchestration. It goes the full spectrum, from violins to completely deteriorated, bit-crushed, and chopped sounds that I generated in Logic.”
Holkenberg slaved six PCs to his Power Mac G5 command center, each one of the PCs loaded with orchestral samples — flutes, violin chords, even harpsichord riffs. “I do the programming and the media arranging for the orchestra in Logic,” he says. “When it comes to movie scoring, there are a lot of things at stake. You usually have to deal with lots of acoustic recordings. You need racks and racks of computers, all stacked with samples, and you run MIDI from your main host.”
He also runs Digidesign TDM equipment through Logic Pro. The entire operation is chained together with MIDI machine control, putting a seamless virtual orchestra at Holkenberg’s fingertips. “Logic just slaves any other computer that’s in the chain and I just work on the Logic computer,” he says. “I don’t have to do anything else. I just start working immediately and then all the slaves, including the movie footage and all of the other computers, work together. It’s a beautiful system, and it’s rock solid.”
The New Radio
Holkenberg recognizes that video games are an important — and infectious — channel for electronic music. They’re also challenging and exciting for an electronic music producer. Today’s video games require everything from cinematic scores to ambient sounds. “Sometimes the director wants the game to be like a mini-movie and sometimes he doesn’t want that at all,” says Holkenberg. “He just wants a blast of music from beginning to end. Sometimes it’s just a bed of weird sounds that make you totally uncomfortable.
“The work can be very experimental,” he continues. “Sometimes I deliver multiple sound layers for surround sound that get triggered by how the players play the game. It’s very exciting technology and we haven’t even seen the beginning of it yet.”
Holkenberg doesn’t get a lot of time to turn around a video game score. “You have to rely on a library of sounds that you made for yourself over the years,” he says. “You don’t have time to noodle around with sounds forever until you’re happy with them, because it always needs to be done yesterday.”
To speed things along, Holkenborg creates custom templates in Logic Pro. “You can shape the program,” he says. “You’re not forced into an environment that is already set up. You can set up your own channel strips, your own mixer — you can prepare everything. That’s great when I do orchestral sections. I can save a combination of instruments, MIDI routings and plug-ins as a template. The next time I do a similar scene, I can just open it and I have all those instruments there. When you’re doing this kind of work, it’s all about speed. And that’s where Logic kicks in with all those templates.”
Looking Ahead
In the end, Holkenborg is still an electronic junkie, addicted to his craft in the best way. He plays about 60 gigs a year, touring dance clubs all over the world. But he plans to spend more time making music for movies, commercials, and video games. He’ll also keep working on his own music, releasing singles and remixes as time permits. “I like to work up to 18 hours a day,” he says. “That’s how I keep really sharp. I start at five in the morning and work until eight, nine, or ten at night. That way, I can still have some kind of social life.”
