Con-sole power
From performing to thousands of ravers at Drumsheds to crafting more ambient electronic textures, Ryan Lee West’s productions as Rival Consoles are often slippery to define. His latest album Landscape from Memory is out now on Erased Tapes, ably demonstrating his ability to move nimbly through various styles and sounds, often within the same track.
“I’ve always been between genres, between club and home listening, which offers scope for more ideas but more risks with my audience as well,” Ryan says. “On my new album, every track is a different genre – some could say it’s confusing but it just feels like the natural way to produce as I’m interested in so many different things.”
The album is Ryan’s ninth in a musical career that astonishingly spans the best part of the last two decades. Signing with Erased Tapes from the outset, both the label and artist have established themselves together for their emotive and percussive take on electronica.
“In 2027, it’ll be 20 years for the label and me,” he says. “I was really naive and arrogant in a way people are when they are that age but that energy made things happen, it made me sign with the label and release my first music.”
“Since then, the industry has changed so much, and feels like it could radically change again. No one really knows what is going to happen and the tech overlords are gambling with everything. It’s simultaneously disturbing and exciting, we’re living in a legitimate dystopian sci-fi future.”
Ryan initially picked up a guitar when he started dabbling with music but drifted into electronic music, initially due to how these toys freed him to sketch musical ideas outside the band.
“It’s a cliched story that has happened to artists like Squarepusher, he used electronic music and computers to begin writing for a band,” Ryan says. “But then it became a real project – and it happened to me too without any real thinking about it.”
Over subsequent years, Ryan studied music technology at university in Leicester amid an avant garde educational setting. Rather than learning practical skills, it was more about looking at the wildest musical thinkers of the past 100 years. Rival Consoles has always been grounded in these concepts via a songwriting perspective yet Landscape from Memory stemmed from a period of disconnect from music. For a time, Ryan fell out of love with every aspect of production.
“This was the first time ever when I felt music was just no longer relevant, it was really alarming,” he recalls. “If you do anything repetitively and obsessively for a long period of time, then when it’s suddenly taken away, it’s confusing – I felt like I didn’t understand myself any more.”
“It was a by-product of a combination of factors, coming out of a relationship, the impact of the pandemic, moving house. Various things collided at the same time and had this extreme effect.”
Partly stitched together from a scrapbook of discarded audio snippets, ideas and songs did come quickly when the creative taps started to flow once again. However, alongside breakthrough ideas, Ryan also experienced plenty of doubt and confusion too.
“There were some key moments on Landscape from Memory, the title track came instantly and that felt convincing,” Ryan reveals. “‘Catherine’ was a melody I wrote in the pandemic and I always thought was special, even though it’s so basic. The melody achieves quite a lot while it simultaneously feels like it’s falling apart at the same time.”
As part of his process, Ryan often makes endless amounts of material and multiple versions of song parts, melodies and chord progressions. With just half a piece of music, at least 50 versions were spun out due to Ryan’s commitment to ensure his productions are as consistently special as he can make them. Creating contrasting moods and moments were also at the core of Ryan’s ambitions for the album. Written in various places, he used a blend of hardware and software to fulfill the recording mission he’d tasked himself with.
“‘Gaivotas’ has a super digital synth sound, then this really crude acoustic guitar,” Ryan says. “There are plenty of moments like this across the album, of opposite worlds colliding. ‘Gaivotas’ really surprised me, it felt so modern, like it was charging forward with such velocity that it had a life of its own. Even though it’s also so basic, it’s really powerful and I like its simplicity.”
Elsewhere, it’s this blending of genres, styles and more that make the tracks so striking. ‘2 Forms’ is another highlight which starts as an almost neoclassical piece before a sledgehammer of metallic bass swings through it.
“Again, there are all these contrasts and blurring of different genres,” says Ryan. “It’s almost got a grime, dubstep sound mixed up with more atmospheric touches – this way of blending can be appealing and off-putting to listeners in equal measure.”
Ryan continues to write music on his beloved Prophet Rev 2 while also creating pieces on a laptop he takes with him on his travels. Instead of creating from scratch, much of his work in the box for the album involved sketching, collaging and moving sounds and percussive elements into place.
“Writing as editing is a process which is nice as you don’t have the distraction of a studio,” he says. “I loved keeping my music on this record simple, which can be hard when you’re trying to produce and avoid distractions within the computer. I have a limited array of tools in the computer that I go to – and I like an idea to be strong enough that it just works regardless of how you listen to it, whether it’s on headphones or via a big soundsystem.”
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its various forms is a rapidly emerging technology that is turning heads within tech and electronic music production. For a producer as prolific as Ryan has been, he’s not immediately overly enamoured with what it can achieve.
“I feel like there’s not enough time in the world to do all the things that I want to explore anyway,” he laughs. “I’m not against it, I just don’t care too much about it at this point.”
As with other pieces of gear, it’s the emotive elements that Ryan is looking to wring from them, not create the perfect chorus or top line. As he says, he’s “always attracted to weird, not correct things”.
“I have watched YouTube videos of people asking AI to evaluate the equipment they have, then asking it to make a metallic sounding synth patch and it will tell you what to do – that’s interesting, it’s almost like getting a scientist to come and do something with your music. But ultimately, it’s the weird side of technology that is appealing as a producer. I guess I’m old fashioned, I just want to hear what humans have to say.”
With the album now out in the wider world, Ryan has already been touring with a live AV show, a concept that has already taken him to Australia in 2025 with an incoming London gig at Crystal Palace Bowl in August. His live show has gained as many plaudits as his recorded output as Rival Consoles, in part due to how it pushes his original synthesised works into wider, more ambitious sonic pastures.
“I don’t let the live show sway the direction of my writing too much but it is more intense and physical,” Ryan says. “Even though I play a lot of music from the record, it’s very heavy, I do a lot of deconstruction live and some songs can be completely different, rebuilt somewhere else.”
Citing the likes of auteurs such as Skee Mask and Alessandro Cortini as influences, it’s clear that he’s deep down his own rabbit hole of music-making once again. Ryan’s pleased that not only is he back to making music, but he’s also back to being a fan too.
“I love hearing minimal techno loud in a club, I really like the confidence and no fucking around of that alongside sounds that are delicate and composed,” he says. “And I hope the record encapsulates these elements of what makes me. To me, it’s an album that feels vibrant and optimistic even though we’re living in the most non-optimistic of times.”
Jim Ottewill
Buy Landscape from Memory on limited clear vinyl here
Buy Landscape from Memory on vinyl here
Buy Landscape from Memory on CD here
