Depth Institute is a collaboration between Stuart Mckeown, Darius Bassiray, and Gab Oliver. The trio bonded over a mutual love for moody and hypnotic Progressive House & Breaks as well as re-launching the much loved Melbourne label Zero Tolerance. The underlying focus of the trio is to modernize the Zero Tolerance sound, adding a contemporary aesthetic to it, whilst still paying respects to the roots of the label. Moody soundscapes that are mediated by underlying tension and bathed in darkness, Depth Institute‘s haunted and sophisticated late-night progressive storytelling is uncompromising in every sense of the word.
Their debut was the Sunnyside Remix on the Gab Oliver – ‘Drowning EP‘ which focused on subtlety and deep textures representing the true ZT sound brilliantly. Their follow-up releases include a remix of Hot TuneiK‘s ‘Poema‘ which was heavily supported by John Digweed on his recent tour of Argentina and was also featured on his Transitions Radio show, a forthcoming remix for Digby & Oliver‘s classic record ‘Human‘ and as well as an original EP on Zero Tolerance.
Their productions reflect a true commitment to releasing upfront deep progressive sounds that others overlook.
Balance Selections 244: Depth Institute
Tracklisting
1. Digby & Oliver – Human (Kaybee & Ozzie L.A. Schizophrenic Mix)
2. Rival Consoles – Monster
3. Mckeown & Bassiray – An Introduction
4. Hot TuneiK – Revival w/ John Creamer & Stephane K – I Love You (Acapella)
5. Gab Oliver – The Boogie Man
6. Lerr – Distant (dub.format Remix)
7. Hobin Rude – Bibliopole (Mike Isai Remix)
8. Luigi Tozzi – Almost Blue
9. Gab Oliver – Drowning (Depth Institute Remix)
10. Nat Monday – Waiting (Mckeown & Bassiray Remix)
11. Madloch & Matias Vila – Reading Souls (Forerunners Remix)
12. Christian Monique – Endless Road (Tim Aaron Remix)
13. Hot TuneiK – Poema (Depth Institute Remix)
14. Feral – Three Faced Queen
15. Jichael Mackson – B 1000 Bugz
16. Joachim Speith – Dispersion
17. Primal Code – La Via Seta
18. Feral – Ultraviolet Radiation
19. Peace Division – Eh Oh Um
20. Architectural– Dream Driver
21. Feral – The Maze
22. Rick Pier O’Neil – Funktional
23. Morel – True (DJ Bird Remix)
24. Trentemoller & Buda – Gamma (Minilogue Remix)
25. Marcan Liav – Epiderme (Framewerk Dub) w/ PQM – The Flying Song (Acapella)
26. Digby & Oliver – Human (Fretwell Remix)
27. Kohra – Acid Kidz
28. Sasha – Rabbitweed
29. 21st Century Fux – Sunspirit (Ivan Gough & Luke Chable Oreo Breakbeat Remix)
30. Answer Code Request – Kruezberg
31. Thom Yorke – Dawn Chorus (Mckeown & Bassiray Remix)
Balance Selections Q+A
Name: Depth Institute
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Facebook:
Depth Institute
McKeown & Bassiray
Zero Tolerance
Soundcloud:
McKeown & Bassiray
Stuart McKeown
Darius Bassiray
Zero Tolerance
Instagram
Alias/Producer name: Depth Institute, McKeown & Bassiray, Stuart McKeown, Darius Bassiray, Gab Oliver
Labels affiliated with: Zero Tolerance, Proton Music, Belong to Label
Our last 3 releases:
Hot TuneIK – Poema (Depth Institute Remix)
McKeown & Bassiray – Cave
Gab Oliver – Drowning (McKeown & Bassiray Remix / Depth Institute Remixes)
What music did you listen to as a child?
Stuart:
Growing up my Dad was a Milkman, one of his helpers who went by the name ‘Huggy’ used to bring trance and rave tapes to listen to during the Milk Run. From there my journey wasn’t quite linear, I feel in love with the Essential Mix pretty early but got into Trance, Hip-Hop and Ambient music before becoming obsessed with early Progressive House, then Progressive Breaks (which incidentally led me to Australia).
Darius:
As a child I listened to early 90s hip-hop from the likes of Nas, Tim Dog, Big L, and Wu Tang. Around the age of 21 I got heavily into Progressive House and Progressive Breaks music which is when I became connected to Stuart and Gab.
Gab:
I listened to 3XY Radio Station growing up as well as rock and heavy metal bands like AC/DC and Pink Floyd.
When was the first time that you realised that you liked electronic music?
Stuart:
When visiting a friend in Glasgow, he introduced me to Leftfield. I’d always loved Trance and more commercial music up until that point – that helped me realise you can dive deeper under the surface to really find gold.
Darius:
Around 1997/98 it was when my Nanna sent me in import copy of DJ Shadow – ‘Entroducing‘ album from England. At that time you couldn’t get all the obscure underground music in a Sanity Music store for example, you had to have them sent from overseas. This was the first time i fell in love with sampling which then led me to the world of electronic music.
Gab:
I went to a 21st Birthday Party and saw a DJ playing electronic music, and from this very moment I was hooked. I was 16 and this was 1982.
When was the first time you saw a DJ in a club?
Stuart:
It was probably DJ Cashmere from Green Velvet at Shine in Belfast, I went in with no expectations and came out a complete sweaty mess. Good times!
Darius:
I can’t exactly remember the first time i saw a DJ but it would have been at a commercial club in my late teens at University visiting the fine establishments of Cheers in Hawthorn, or Silvers in Toorak. The first time I saw a group of DJs that made a real impact on me was my first visit to Sunny in 2001 at Rosati’s seeing Gab Oliver, Phil K, and Ozzie LA play, this changed my life forever.
Gab:
The first club I ever walked into was The Melbourne Boulevard on Swanston Street (across the road from RMIT) the DJs name was Allen Nights playing Disco and Euro Dance music on vinyl and mixing like a machine.
Which producers/artists/acts inspire you?
Stuart:
I’m always finding inspiration in music, this is one of the reasons I think I get so much joy from it. Funnily Gab was always a DJ that inspired me, the fact that he never compromised his sound and you always knew he was going dark was something that I admired about him. Technically, I continue to get inspired by the likes of Brian Eno, Robag Wruhme, Gidge & Rival Consoles.
Darius:
In the early days it was Gab, Phil and Ozzie who equally shaped my appreciation for deep music in their own unique ways, as well as Habersham, Peace Division, John Creamer & Stephane K, but above all it was Zero Tolerance. In more modern times since around 2018 I have been very much back into Progressive sounds once again and the genre is definitely having a Renaissance period currently. Hot TuneiK, Mike Isai, and Kazuki are all writing inspiring music at the moment, and recently Guy J in Melbourne was fantastic.
Gab:
My biggest inspirations were Sasha (in the early days), then around the 2000’s it was John Creamer and Stephane K, and Moshic – these guys inspired us to start our own label Zero Tolerance as the records we were writing were getting knocked back for being too deep and dark, we recently wrote a history of the label on our website. Soon after this, the overall direction of progressive music started following our lead. These days I am inspired by people in my direct circle as well as Hot TuneiK and Brian Cid alongside the artists that release on the Zero Tolerance label.
What was the last album that you downloaded/bought?
Stuart:
It was an old breaks album that I’ve been revisiting a lot lately which is BT – Movement in Still Life. My kids are obsessed with it too (oddly).
Darius:
I dont listen to too many albums, but I do keep my finger firmly on the pulse in terms of who is doing what in terms of productions in our world. The last record i got was Hobin Rude – Bibliopole (Mike Isai Remix) on Mango Alley.
Gab:
I haven’t listened to a new album in a long time, the closest thing to an album that I last listened to was Mckeown & Bassiray’s 3 hour head grinding 333 Mix.
What is your current production and DJ set up like?
Stuart & Darius:
We produce in the box with Ableton, along with a little bit of hardware, mostly a Korg Minilogue (as the knobs also midi map to synths nicely) along with an Expressive E Touche pedal for movement. Reaktor & Kontakt are our go to for soft synths and we also use Perc X which is an auto generative percussion engine that we use a lot to achieve a dark cinematic feel to our productions. The use of delays are central to our fundamental sound through the use and of effects like Valhalla, FabFilter, Echo Boy (Sound Toys), and we also use the Devious Machines plugins for expressive control.
Recently the use of a Torso T1 which is an algorithmic sequencer that builds on polyrhythms, has provided some nice variation to sequencing patterns manually. Generally we don’t adopt a lot of hardware into our workflow as it normally slows us down.
Outside of family and work commitments we try to meet with each other in the studio together once a week, and then from there we have a synced drop box that we all use to bounce productions between each other that we work on individually in terms of sound design and arrangement, as well as internally sinked Ableton clips library which allows us to import each others ideas with ease.
Gab:
Traditionally I have used Logic to produce, but in more recent times I am using Ableton more as this is what Darius and Stuart use. I do own hardware, but generally I use software more these days. I have just built a studio in the back of my house and have acquired fantastic monitors from Wayne Jones Audio and am just about to commence the audio treatment for the room. In terms of DJ set up I have a Pioneer CDJ setup as most music is realised digitally but if it were to be released on vinyl I would prefer it.
Where can we hear you perform?
We have our annual Zero Tolerance party in the works which we started last year that had a phenomenal response and we will continue to showcase this sound, which will be late this year/early next year. We also have a booking at an outdoor event in June in Melbourne which will be announced soon.
Tell us more about the podcast you made for Balance?
Thank you to Balance for the invitation to contribute a mix to such an iconic series. We approached this mix the same way we do for all of our mixes which is to showcase a wide variety of sounds that fit within a deeper and darker aesthetic. It starts off with deep future broken music and expands to Progressive House with new music from our friends and future productions on our Zero Tolerance label alongside some deeper techno which provides a needed sense of variation and tension which is then is rewarded back to our fundamental sound on the strictly deep, dark, moody and hypnotic progressive tip. Finally the tail end of the mix is Progressive Breaks which is generally how we finish proceedings, with the mix having an overall focus on proficiently sequencing together records which reflect our love for this music regardless of when it was written or released.
My Recommendations
The top track in my DJ wallet currently is:
Stuart:
Minilogue – Clouds & Water (Rrose Remix)
Darius:
Dubspeeka – Bully
Gab:
Christian Monique – Endless Road (Tim Aaron Remix)
If I could recommend only one of my tracks for you to listen to it would be:
Stuart:
Mckeown & Bassiray – Cave (Dub Mix)
Darius:
It hasn’t been released yet, but if I had to choose one it would be our Mckeown & Bassiray remix of Nat Monday – Waiting. You can hear it in this mix at 50 minutes in, and it will be coming out in the next few months.
Gab:
Deep Funk Project – Black Witch
If I could recommend only one track for you to listen to it would be:
Stuart:
Dark Sky – Cyan
Darius:
Precision – Nightmare (Breaks Mix)
Gab:
Kerosene & Jammin Unit – Heroin
The last movie I watched that I really liked:
Stuart:
The Salton Sea
Darius:
Uncut Gems
Gab:
The Godfather
My favourite TV show:
Stuart:
Black Mirror
Darius:
NBA on TNT
Gab:
I don’t watch TV, only sport – Essendon Football Club.