Locked away in his studio in Mt. Washington, a secluded Los Angeles area just north of Downtown, is recent Orlando transplant Rene Reyes aka GENR8. Probably known best for his work with former Drum & Bass groups, Alliance and The Chosen, GENR8 has definitely made a name for himself as a solo artist with releases on labels like Evol Intent, Cartel Recordings, BC Presents and Gridlok’s Project 51 imprint.

With a history of dirty beats, clean mixdowns and solid engineering, GENR8′s perfectionism with his own work stems from the fact that he is such a stickler in the studio. As an audio engineer by trade, Genr8 has a lot of experience outside of the home prosumer setup. In Florida, he was an audio instructor at Full Sail University, and since his time in Los angeles, he spends his days on staff at the Los Angeles Recording school.

I caught up with him recently to get the low on what’s crackin in his world. Here’s what he had to say:

MC: As an audio engineer at one of the best schools in the country, what’s your day to day like?

Well, I’ve been blessed with a job that is quite conducive to my affliction with audio. Most days lately I wake up around 8 am and jump into my very minimal home studio for a few hours before heading to my daytime teaching job at LARS in Hollywood. I instruct a few different labs there so depending on what I have that day I will have some time during the labs to work up some ideas on a DAW there. For the most part, I give a demonstration of techniques and speak about the theory behind them for about 2 to 4 hours to a group of about 16 students. The rest of my shift I spend answering questions, troubleshooting rigs, and when time permits drafting ideas for tunes.

For certain labs (given the right combination of talent and attitude from the students) I’ll bring in stereo bounces of some work in progress’ of mine and I have them try and record some new parts on top of it. This has actually yielded some great results and the students love the whole experience of having a part in a legit production session.

I also have anywhere from 1 to 3 electronic music clinics at the end of every month. In those days I’ll bring in my PC tower and hook up to a nice Mackie 2.1 setup. I then pretty much do the same thing I do at home but in a better rig. Things like editing, programming, sound design, arrangement, mixing, and mastering depending on what the project I’m working on needs at that point.

MC: Tell us what you have on the go at the moment.

I’ve been in a constant state of transition for almost two years now with my move to LA so production has come at the cost of sacrificing lots of “extracurricular” time. Currently I have some exciting things going down.

I have expanded my dance music horizon to house and dubstep. I’ve found that along with drum & bass, the 3 vibes totally compliment each other. House I’ve always wanted to get into but never got around to it and dubstep is just something fresh that allows me to realize concepts I’ve tried with drum & bass for years but was never fully happy with. Dubstep allows you to think drum & bass, but the openness of the tempo allows for incredibly fresh patterns and vibes. Also, seeing how easy it is to come across good talent ready and willing to jump in the studio and “jam”, these three genres lend themselves perfectly to a productive combination of the acoustic/organic world and the “matrix”.

I have some house music in the works to come out on local heroes The Groove Junkies’ label MOHO Records under the alias “Drum People” as well as several tunes on Libertine Records.

I just finished a dubstep 12’ for Miami’s popular Basshead Music.

On the dnb front I am working on a release for AK1200’s new Big Riddim Recordings as well as still attempting to make some tunes for Project 51. Gridlok is one tuff guy to impress but I like the challenge and it has definitely improved my production skills.

I’m also working on something for the return of DOA Recordings for which I have already scheduled a session with Rawtee to go in on a colab or two with. The long overdue release of “Faith of the Fallen” from The Chosen will happen early next year on Ohm Resistance as well as a solid 12’ collab I did with Philly’s Koldfront on their Saint & Sinners imprint.

Something I just landed this week which I’m really hyped about is a collab remix with AK1200 of a tune titled “Pure Ether” for the heavy metal band Prong. They want it to be rugged so I’m looking forward to what we come up with.

GENR8′s sent us some exclusives for the Media Contender family.

(Stream & Downloads Courtesy of Media Contender)

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD CRAZE & GENR8 – AFROROCK

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD GENR8 & INFILTRATA – POSITIVE AGGRESSION

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD GENR8 – FIGHT OR FLIGHT

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD GENR8 – ROKIT

Website: Genr8 on Myspace