Todd Durrant, who was the owner of A Different Drum, the largest American synthpop label, has always been by my side for almost my entire career, since the partnership with Aphex Music and Abril Music in 1999 in Brazil, my first Remix Contest and several releases over the years.
He is also a musician and music producer, and from time to time he would also try his hand at remixes. He is also behind the Saudadeproject.
I met him on the internet around 1996 because I was looking for synthpop CDs and he had a page with several CDs listed and the price on the side and a button to send an email to buy them, without even the domain adifferentdrum.com that would only be acquired some time later.
The site was http://www.itsnet.com/~tdurrant and even that was printed on the CD artwork, it is so old that the Internet Archive only saved it after the domain was purchased in 1999, and the site already had several pages and organization, something that at the time was literally just one page. Here is the recovered one from 1998, which is MUCH better than it actually was in 1996.
There were many strange artists that I had never heard of among several that I knew, and I really wanted to buy them but I was afraid it was some kind of scam, because there were rare CDs on the list, for me here in Brazil they were absurdly rare, which increased my suspicions that it was a scam.
At the time, there was no online payment system, not even PayPal or credit cards. All the transactions I had made up until then, I bought dollars (cash) and sent them by mail. That’s right, as absurd as it may seem today, it was very common at the time. It was either that or I would have to call 1-888-88-SYNTH to use my international credit card, which I didn’t even had yet.
I decided to send him an email, and to my surprise he replied in very well-written Portuguese. He had lived in Brazil for 2 years and that helped break the ice. I made my first purchase while still sending him cash, and fortunately everything went well.
I soon became a regular customer and got my first international card exclusively to buy from him. I remember that I gave him the information in 2 different emails in a camouflaged way that he instructed me to, for example:
“Today at 12:00 we’re going to play soccer with Pedro from 03 and Carlos from 42, tomorrow, 05/98, we’ll play again.”
With this message, he was giving the first 8 numbers and the card’s expiration date. The next email gave the rest in the same way, saying something else, like:
“There are 3,450 people who missed 2 games in the tournament. There are 321 people left to complete. Please provide code 441.”
Now it was the other 8 numbers and the code. Then he saved all the numbers of all the customers and made the sales, all manually. Different times.
At that time there was no simple way to listen to music before buying it, everything was very much based on Reviews or through Compilations, where we bought because of one or two songs and through that we got to know several new bands, and if we liked them, we bought their respective CDs.
Over time, we ended up becoming friends despite the distance and always talked about mainly Synthpop, such as releases, rarities, shows, bootlegs, and everything that involved this world.
In 1999, when my friend Patrine wanted to launch a Brazilian Synthpop Label, I ended up being the link between Aphex Music and A Different Drum, thus launching the bands from ADD such as: The Nine, Brave New World, KieTheVez, Blue October and Alphaville here, for example.
In 2002, during one of my many conversations with Todd, he was complaining about the low sales of ADD‘s CD Singles, that he was making a loss and intended to stop producing them.
I told him that he should focus more on Exclusive B-Sides, and that although some singles had very high quality remixes like “Danger Is The Shame (Refraction Mix)”, most of them were very basic, that didn’t add any value, and that even I could make remixes much better than most of the ones released.
He replied:
“Really? There’s a Remix Contest going on right now for a new band I’m going to release on ADD soon, but it ends in few weeks. Here’s the Remix Kit (a download link) and I’d like you to try it.”
Todd Durrant
I really wasn’t prepared for this, all my experience was in Tracked Music and I used FastTracker II, an old DOS software that didn’t have professional audio quality. With less than 3 weeks to the deadline would be tuff.
So I went looking for it on the Tracked Music forums I frequented, when I met the creator of Fruity Loops (FL Studio), who invited me to learn about the project, which unified the Tracked style with the production standards of the big studios, and already had good audio quality at the time.
At that time it wasn’t very popular yet, and it was far from being the FL Studio of today, but it was what I had and I spent a few days studying it, which despite not having a logical use like Trackers, I picked it up really quickly and it would serve me at that moment.
I managed to do my remix in the few days I had left and delivered it on time. It was very simple because I didn’t have much time and I was still learning the software, but the result was still very good, all the members of the project approved it, as did Todd himself, and that was my debut as a Synthpop Remixer.
My Remix soon became a standout among the remixers like in this Review at Synthpop.net, getting Radio Play in NYC, and was even selected to open a Darkfield Imagery party. I later remixed many other tracks for ADD at the request of Todd and/or the artists/bands themselves.
I am grateful to Todd for the opportunity and trust, because it had never crossed my mind to work as a Remixer, and it was certainly a great experience in my life, where I was able to meet and work alongside my idols, and which enabled me to release my own album 3 years later.
A curious fact is that in the same forum post where I learned about Fruity Loops, one of the creators of Renoise also invited me to try out another new software, claiming that it was basically the modern FastTracker II. After working on some songs with FL I met Renoise and fell in love, and everything I do to this day is with it.
Goodbye
“Thanks to all of you who have supported A Different Drum as an independent label and as an online store for so many years!”
“A Different Drum started as a business in 1991 and now wraps things up in 2014, leaving behind a fun legacy of synthpop music.”
Todd Durrant
Thanks to Internet Archive you can read the final words from Todd and the full catalog (really) RIGHT HERE.
