Sound Design

Ron Trent has forever made house music in the same way that Picasso rolled around in oils—in cool blues and warm browns, with mathematical architectural designs and primitive edges, set against a smartly done brand of neoclassical elegance and brandishing a manic sense of surrealism. Since his childhood release of 1990’s fourteen-minute hypnotic “Altered States,” to 2022’s caramel-dipped, progressive, electro-jazzy album Ron Trent Presents WARM: What Do the Stars Say to You, Trent has held the master strokes of a confident genius painter at his command while being astutely aware, yet curious still, of what his canvas craves.

Born into crate digging, drumming skills, and Black activism with parents deeply entrenched in music, politics, and culturalism, Trent is smart and sly as he goes about the business of making art while managing commerce (commerce coming from cofounding Prescription Records with Chez Damier in 1993, to new enterprises such as his permanent, structural sound pop-ups discussed at the end of this feature).

“Having consciousness at the forefront of my life only feeds into community building,” says Trent, his deep voice resonating over the phone like an ace nightly newscaster. “A lot of people have come through my doors. If you’re in a position to help somebody up, help somebody up. Teamwork makes the dream work.”

He gets that the “game” of underground house means only getting “light” in the present day when the likes of Beyoncé and Renaissance shine brightly. “People talk about her taking house [music] for herself, but it’s still Black music that she’s making, so that’s never a problem,” says Trent. “Besides, too many people are worried about what Beyoncé is doing rather than staying at home and making their own change. It’s about innovation and elevation and changing the tone—that’s how the shit keeps going.” And making one’s own change—keeping the shit going through constant invention—is the mentality that has always propelled Ron Trent.

Talking about matters topical to Wax Poetics at the start of our interview, there’s a conversation around two of Trent’s fan favorites: Jean Carne and Herb Alpert. “Jean was big in my hometown of Chicago from her time at Black Jazz Records, and the album Infant Eyes was something that I can remember my mom playing when she was pregnant with me,” says Trent. “Later, songs like ‘Don’t Let It Go to Your Head’ was something Mom played over and over.

“And Herb? He is a raving, powerful force. My father was a fan of his albums, and I would play drums to them, so that when I started buying albums, my ear was already attracted to his music. Loved him since then, and even wanted to have him on my next WARM record. I mean, look at my new album—I’ve got Jean-Luc Ponty on that one. He just turned eighty years old and plays like he’s twenty. Like Herb, he’s never allowed himself a break from invention and reinvention. He’s always remaking the wheel.”

The discussion of innovation—of never allowing yourself to stay still, “to stay in one fucking box”—brings us to the concept of Trent as a producer, and using his wildest inspirations and childhood conversations as clues as to where he wants to land within a given track.

“What I do—then and now—is listen to the energy of a song, work out the fingering, and move on from there,” he says with a chuckle. “It’s all in my ear. It’s all in my history. Growing up as a percussionist like my father, I learned that sort of instinct. He had been playing since childhood, even played with Max Roach during college, and when we weren’t playing, we were talking about playing. Talking about music—adult conversations about musical engagement. From there, I had developed a sense of sound. I looked at what my father did, mirrored it, and figured out my own way. Learn the technique and forget it.”

Technique, forgotten and otherwise, lands squarely for Trent in the manner in which he composes. Even at his freest, there is a symmetry to his melodies going back to his start—tracks such as 1990’s “The Afterlife” b/w “Altered States” (the latter composed three years prior when he was just fourteen), released on Warehouse Records, or “Love Affair” on Clubhouse Records in 1992. You wouldn’t dare call the structuralism of these early cuts of Trent’s “pop” by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, there is a mathematical balance, a harmonic equilibrium that is stately sugary and pleasing to the ear as well as the feet.

“That comes very natural to me, that design and structure—it’s like great architecture, which is something I studied in school,” he says. Yes, Ron Trent’s mechanical drawing could have made him one of Chicago’s great architects rather than one of its house music’s most dynamic neoclassicists.

“Every good architect has a signature in the design. People such as David Mancuso from the Loft: he was a sound designer, an atmosphere designer. Created structure. Me? I am a designer. I am working with space. You can hear my design, the way that I manipulate space in my music—there is that ethereal thing that people say that I do,” he laughs. “‘Those Ron Trent strings’… But the way that I like to approach all of that, the melody and so forth, makes it interesting for me on a regular basis.”

Trent talks about walking into the design of house music with the desire to play with the “mysteriousness” of its swelling, spare melodies, repetitive 4/4 rhythms, and deep, deep bass lines. “House music was called ‘underground’ for a reason, not just because of where it was played, but what it was,” he says. “House music was earth and sky together. House music was tribal—transcendental in its energy—and that made it spiritual. You could take it anywhere you wanted it to go. I had a certain level of sophistication. It was a way for me to go. And, let’s face it, I was a disco kid—up-tempo R&B that wasn’t corny as a motherfucker.”

Mainly, growing up in Chicago, coming up with the 909s, the Marshall Jeffersons, and the Larry Heards in the warehouses of his youth, house music was different. Radically different. “It was outer-space, freaky shit,” he laughs.

Underground Black electronic music—house music—was punk rock. Add to it that Trent was a heterosexual producer/DJ within a predominantly LGBTQ audience in Chicago made him and his burgeoning music turn within. “I couldn’t fit into any norms, so I created my own,” he says.

Creating his own started with his first single’s B-side, “Altered States”—released by acid house legends Armando Gallop and Mike Dunn’s Warehouse Records—becoming one of house music’s most beloved tracks, a swirling psalm within a bible created by the likes of Frankie Knuckles, Marshall Jefferson, and their ilk that changed house forever. “It’s funny now, because if you mention the A-side, ‘Afterlife,’ to kids in the present, they go wild,” says Trent. “I always loved that song. I started all of my sets with it, because it’s got that long intro and creates its own atmosphere. But I was amazed and pleased by the success of ‘Altered States,’ because it was different—it had those Depeche Mode strings and that sad sound and a shuffle rhythm that hadn’t been out there before. If you were into alternative or industrial music, you found it appealing. So did I—I listened to all of the Euro-pop and new wave of the ’80s, alongside Roy Ayers, Fela Kuti, anything that signaled a higher intelligence of music. ‘Afterlife’ had that thing for me.”

From his experience with Warehouse, one where his mother helped Ron sign his contract, Trent built his own label, Prescription, into a universe of his and its cofounder Chez Damier’s design. “I was confident of my talents, so as long as there was a factory available—a studio—I can create a soundtrack,” he says. “I didn’t know about the inner workings of running a label at that time and different channels to do that, so Chez administered the business while I took care of the music. Fact. And we didn’t have anything planned out—we just used it as a place to consistently put out my records.”

Along with releasing Trent tracks such as 1995’s “Foot Therapy” and 1999’s “I Feel the Rhythm,” Prescription Records dropped deep house cuts from USG (“Life 4 Living”), Ani (“Love Is the Message [For Those Who Didn’t Hear It”]), and Noni (“Be My [Friend]”), among others.

Tracks and his own label aside, what has made Trent forever a fascinating case study in house music and beyond is the fact that he is an album artist, one whose vision of structure, algebra, atmosphere, and community figures into full-length artist albums such as 1999’s Primitive Arts, 2008’s Ancient / Future, 2012’s Raw Footage, and its decade-later follow-up What Do the Stars Say to You.

If you’re talking about something cinematic with a story and a denouement, you’ll notice that each of Trent’s albums has its own throughlines.

“Obviously, I had good teachers in hanging with my father and listening to album upon album and what they were supposed to sound like,” says Trent. “We were talking about design earlier, the difference between a David Mancuso and every other DJ—and producing an album—meant, to me, creating a single atmosphere, a set of stories, a mood. You want to take people somewhere for a period of time, a sonic book that took you somewhere else. It was a presentation. And in that extended moment, my job is to take the listener on a journey through that sonic presentation then deliver them safely at the end. Maybe it’s outer space or a vacation spot they’ve wanted to go to—if you’re a good producer, it goes further than just a book. It is medicine. Music medicine. Hell, that’s powerful.”

Understanding the importance of music and “how it relates to mankind, rather than just [putting] together a bunch of tracks meant to just make money,” Trent talks about the power of low bass frequency and how it affects the chakras—of sexual energy, ancestral energy, and animal inhibitions—and how, as an artist, he has a responsibility toward positively channeling those elements. “The wrong sonics will tear you up,” he says. “Sound is important.”

Trent had several albums planned in between Raw Footage and WARM: What Do the Stars Say to You, including one based around his “Black Romantic” poetry-and-strings track on his own Music and Power imprint titled Romantic Flight that he hopes will see the light of day sooner than later. “It’s my Barry White moment,” he says about Romantic Flight. “Something like the lounge music our parents listened to, geared toward love and lovely things and getting away from the violence and the drudgery of hard work and the everyday.”

Trent’s WARM: What Do the Stars Say to You is meant as a segue into his more romantic musical vibe, something ambient and open, yet filled with lively, provocative, and progressive live instrumentation featuring mad electric violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, members of Brazil’s jazz-fusion ensemble Azymuth (Ivan Conti and Alex Malheiros on separate tracks), and the Texas’s Thai-psych-funk trio, Khruangbin.

“I had that book in my head for a while now, and what my guests did was add texture,” he says. “WARM is about design, about being in places where the sonic precedes you, putting the spotlight on great melodies that also creates a mood. These guys are all mood creators. You listen to Khruangbin, and fuck, they have their own world. Ponty too, he has his own thing. Bring those worlds of sound to my foundational base, and it’s another universe entirely. They designed their own room within my rooms.”

But Trent didn’t take a control-room producer approach to the album, but instead was hands-on. The artist not only played live drums throughout the record, but also guitar and keys, including synth, Rhodes, Clavinet, and Hammond organ. There are moments of brilliant, spacey programming from Trent as well, and a guest spot from Italian producer Gigi Masin, known for his beloved 1986 ambient opus Wind.

Along with releasing Romantic Flight and another volume of WARM (“maybe I can get Herb Alpert for that one”), Ron Trent is working on something involving his twin loves of architecture and design, but in a more literal form.

“I want to create places where these albums can be played, so to speak; that’s part of my new venture in sound design,” says Trent. “I want to create physical spaces and furnishings that reflect my music, arriving back at my architectural past. I want to give you permanent installations exploiting the energy of what you hear and where you hear it—creating a sound culture and a way to engage with it. People understand going out and partying, but they don’t truly understand what it means to be truly immersed in sound.”

If anyone understands immersing oneself in sound, it is Ron Trent. If he builds it, you will come.