Tag Archives: UK

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

LTJ Bukem

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LTJ Bukem is one of the most recognised names in drum and bass. People describe and compare styles of drum and bass simply by using the name “Bukem”. His vision of music and sound has led the drum and bass scene from its small beginnings in the UK into a massive international tour-de-force of respected dance music. Speaking to Bukem, or Danny Williamson, as his friends know him, you can’t help but notice the passion and eagerness he displays for this music. It’s why he’s been doing it for close to twenty years when many other DJs, Producers and Label bosses have given it up.

“I just love it!” he exclaims when I ask the question of why he’s still around. “I can’t think of many things, if any at all, I like better than listening to and playing and making music. Twenty years,” Williamson muses “it’s quite frightening that I have been doing it that long, but it seems like two years – I’ve done so much, but I can’t do enough, you know? It’s a mad feeling! I’m just very passionate about what I do, and it’s kinda frightening that I’m getting MORE into it,” he laughs. “For the last 10 years I’ve spent with my head buried in the record label, as well as trying to be an artist and DJ. I feel kind of refreshed now as I’m spending more time in the studio and doing those things I did these things for originally.”

Being around the music scene for so long, Williamson has seen a lot of changes in his time. “I’ve been travelling for years now, and I can tell you I used to sit on planes for hours and just twiddle my thumbs, watch the movie three times in a row, listen to all the CDs that were in my bag, and now days I sit and do so much on my laptop,” he begins “I think of start ideas for tunes, or do work for the label, catch up on emails, or get ahead in work, and that has changed everybody’s lives. And Instant Messaging has changed things greatly. Now I wake up and there’s 20 or 30 tracks sitting in my inbox that someone hasn’t had to buy a stamp and post, don’t have to buy a CD, they can encode it to wav, send it, and two hours later we can be talking about it. That’s absolutely crazy! And the whole virtual studio has changed things especially. You don’t have to have a double garage sized space to get all the things and sound in your tunes. It now all fits on one table! That has opened so many doors!”

Williamson’s passion from music comes from learning classical piano form an early age, and a family relocation that found Williamson in the tutelage of a very open-minded music teacher, Nigel Crouch. “If he wasn’t for him I wouldn’t have the musical ears I have now.” One thing Crouch did teach a young Williamson was “not to be frightened of listening to anything! People label music so much, which is something I don’t understand. People say ‘if it’s not that I can’t get into that, because it’s labelled in that way’ – that’s just ridiculous.”

Williamson also has an open mind in how to run a label, giving his artists a great degree of flexibility and support. “I would have the phone ring and promoters would ask for LTJ Bukem, and I’d say “yep, but I’m gonna bring Moloko, I’m gonna bring Blame, and you’ve got no choice in the matter”. Sometimes they couldn’t mix. Who would pay ME to DJ if I couldn’t mix, but that’s the type of thing I did for my artists. It was good thing to get them out there, get them known, but I’m not sure I’d do it the same way again. Obviously my record label won’t promote itself, and playing that music is a big part of that. I’ve always put a big emphasis on getting my artists out there to play, and if you don’t do that how are people going to hear you?”

“It’s got to start at that grass roots level, and you’ve got to do the small clubs of about 200 people in Adelaide and Hawaii,” he continues. “And you absolutely have to do that – I don’t see any other way of doing it. You can’t wait around 2 or 3 years until someone brings you out for a big do where someone wants a drum and bass tent or whatever. I think you need growth, it needs to be an organically grown thing, and that’s what Good Looking is all about.”

Bukem is also all about his DJing. “I still get a thrill DJing”, he says “There are two kinds of thrills for me. I love the mixing – I love the art form of it, so every time I play it’s like a challenge for me – will I be able to pull off this mix as well as I would like to? And when you achieve that there’s nothing better. The second thing is the people and their reaction. I’ve spent years playing new music, often stuff for the very first time to their ears, and them getting into it is awesome,” he says excitedly “And I still get nervious before I play – I need my 5 or 10 minutes where I have no one near me where I get it all together and I’m like “right, let’s play this set!” he adds.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

The Freestylers

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The Freestylers have been rocking dancefloors for years, but just lately they have absolutely blown up with their tune Push Up. It’s topped the Aussie music charts, is frequently heard on commercial radio and in television advertisements, and has been ruined by that William Hung wannabe, Australian Idols’ Flick. The success of their follow up Get A Life is evidence of their skills and talents, proving they’re not just as flash in the pan as they’ve also got two previous albums which have sold over 350,000 copies, and a string of remixes to their credit. They’ve been DJing for the last 10 or so years and I spoke to Matt Cantor earlier in the year just as Push Up was released. Speaking to the other half of the duo, Aston Harvey recently, I asked what kind of impact the success of Push Up and the album Raw As Fuck had made on them.

“It’s hard to take in because obviously we live on the other side of the world, and we only get told “Push Up is this number or that number’”, Harvey begins. “I get texts from friends in Australia saying ‘you don’t understand, your record is massive over here’. It’s a brilliant feeling, and sometimes its quite good when you don’t live in these countries and you’re getting this massive positive feedback. We didn’t set out to make a record that crossed over so big… You just make a record, and know that you like it, and put it out there. With the Freestylers, we’ve had record companies take this single and that single and do what ever with it, but this is the first time we’ve had one single do pretty well across the board.”

“We weren’t even thinking of making an album, when we decided to make Raw As Fuck. We just had done a load of tracks and put them together. Push Up went in the charts in England, but because we’re so dominated by house music and the money process, we didn’t get too high, but it put us back on the map in the UK. It’s been doing well in Europe, and I’ve just found out in South Africa we’ve got a Number 1 record!” he exclaims with a laugh. “You can’t really magically do another Push Up, but there will be something along those lines. Mat and I aren’t getting any younger, so there might be a track similar, try and get a pension going!” he laughs. “Not saying it’s going to be cheesy,” he quickly adds, “I think the reason why Push Up has done so well is it sounds like a commercial record, but it also sounds like a really cool record – it sounds well produced. It doesn’t sound like an amateurish pop act just out to make money.”

Whilst we missed the last DJ tour back over the Easter long weekend, the Freestylers band will be making it to Adelaide for the Big Day Out. “The band involves 6 people on stage, an MC and a singer, bass player, guitarist, drummer and me on keyboards, scratching and sampling. The MC is Surreal, who’s not on the album but has been with the band since the start of the year, and the other vocalist is Valerie M, she’s touring with Groove Armada at the moment, she moonlights between us,” he chuckles. “She sang one song on our second album (Told You So). And I’m hoping a girl called Julie Thompson, who does sing on the album (Too Far, Losing You), she plays guitar and I want to experiment a little with that, to see what happens.”

“I find having a band takes us to another level,” Harvey goes on to explain. “It’s really expensive to get a band together to travel, etc… It’s not like we’ve been five mates who’ve been playing since high school who split the profits or whatever. I have to pay all these different musicians to perform. And then there’s all the waiting around all day – sound checks and all that. As compared to DJing – just turn up with a box of records, you can be a bit drunk and that, it’s completely different. But I love doing both!” he exclaims. “Matt doesn’t do anything in the band… well, he and I were doing the same thing, and he decided he doesn’t really like touring with the band. Yet It’s worked out for the better, because it’s quite good to go away and come back fresher. Going away, getting ideas on the road.”

Like all Englishmen, Harvey loves Australian weather. “It’s looking a bit cold and drab here in the UK at the moment,” he laughs. “I’ve only ever played in Adelaide once, and we played in this really weird kind of club, it felt like a school hall,” he chuckles. He’s talking about the old Skylab, above Minke, about a gig that happened 3 or so years ago, and it was a mad night of Adelaide’s typical small but up for it crowd. “I’m sure we’ll go down pretty well!” For those who can’t wait to see them live can pick up Raw As Fuck with a limited Remix CD featuring mixes by Ronnie Size and Krafty Kuts amongst others, as well as pick up the Fabric Live 19 Mix CD featuring Surreal MC.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Lee Coombs

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Lee Coombs is a quiet, unassuming, almost shy person to talk to. He doesn’t mince words and dribble on, which in some ways makes interviewing him rather difficult. I spoke to him the day after his birthday, and he told me he didn’t do anything big because he’s been too busy. Instead he just had a “quiet one”.

His debut artist album Breakfast of Champions is all but quiet, and given the popularity of tunes such as Push Up by the Freestylers here in Australia, I will not be surprised in the slightest if it does exceedingly well here. Being extremely dancefloor friendly, it’s full of fantastic tunes that transcend genres. It also features collaborations with some of the breaks scene’s biggest stars, including Andy Gardner of the Plump DJs, Jem Panufnik from Soul Of Man, Christian J and Dylan Rhymes. “It’s named after a party in San Francisco run by the Space Cowboys,” Coombs says of the title, after I suggested it could be based on Roald Dahl’s book. “It’s a New Years Day afterhours party that happens once a year,” he goes on to explain. “It’s just brilliant, one of the best gigs I’ve done, and they’ve made me part of the crew, and I thought I’d name my album after it. It gives props to them.”

“Collaboration is always 50/50 with me, but if I’m in my studio I’m the one working the kit,” Coombs states. “Everyone was great to work with. They’re all friends of mine, we all DJ together and love each other’s production work. The reason I choose to work with them is because I knew it was going to be great, and it panned out nicely.” The remixes Coombs has included on the album “are bonus tracks really, just to add a bit of spice” Coombs states. “No one’s heard the Oakenfold remix before, and I thought I’d be nice to put that on there”. Plus Oakenfold gave Coombs a big break by letting him do the critically acclaimed Perfecto Breaks album in 2002, and is no doubt once again Coombs giving ‘props’. “The New Order is a bit of a favourite of mine, a bit of an anthem, and it was nice to go over it again. I think my production has gotten a lot better since I made the original, which I made four or five years ago now. It’s just a bit of a treat for people.” The blend of genres is subtle and understated, but each track sounds perfect both in itself and in the sequence of tracks. “It’s music I absolutely love, that’s why it’s all in there. I can’t make music unless I’m really into it. Really feeling the electro vibe at the moment.”

When not working on the album, Coombs has been really busy touring the world DJing. “I’ve been touring all over the world basically, just got back form Hong Kong and China. It’s quite an experience over there!” he enthuses. “The music is new over there. The scene of “breakbeat” doesn’t exist as such, but it’s what they all seem to want to dance to, as though it’s a natural thing. It’s the first time they’ve had the opportunity to have clubs and international DJs and breaks seems to be what they want to go off too. It’s great!” He compares it to Australia a few years ago. “Yeah, it’s a little bit like Australia, but they’re into the more electro sounding stuff, not so much into party breaks.”

Not content with just touring or DJing, Coombs wants to concentrate more on his record label Thrust Recordings. “It took a back seat when I finished the album off, but now I’m getting back into it. I’ve got strong releases lined up. It’s something I really want to be pushing in the future,” he says. “I’m pretty much doing everything, apart from you know, the real office type work, but all of the A&R, all of the coordinating of the artwork and press releases, all of that. The next release is a re-release of one of my old tracks called “Oscar Goldman – Thrust 2”. It should be out in December,” just in time for Christmas!

I recently heard that Coombs was interested in opening his own club back in England, or possibly San Francisco. “That would be nice, but I don’t remember saying that!” he laughs as I explain I read it on a Polish music scene website. “I’d love to have my own club and control the music for a night, make what I do really work as an event. It would be nice to get people to come because they like it on a weekly or monthly basis.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Tayo

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It was perfect summers day when DJ Tayo, the head of Mob Records, also known as “Dread at the controls” after his successful KISS FM radio show, and one of the leading new school breaks DJs last played Adelaide. With his biggest crowd he rocked the Beach Party in Semaphore with an incredible blend of hard breaks and funky melodies, infused with a dub mentality. “It was the first time I did a good show in Adelaide,” he states truthfully. “It’s always been hard work in Adelaide, the breaks scene has always been a little slow, but Blake’s (promoter of traffic nightclub) stuck by it, and he’s kind of made it happen a bit.” In that time we’ve had but a few new school breaks DJs visit our shores, much to my chagrin.

Now following up his new album, Beats & Bobz vol 3 Tayo is set to make a much welcome return to Adelaide in the new year, and I hoped that he hadn’t gone the progressive route of many of his contemporaries such as DJ Hyper. “Ewww… it is not progressive… ewww!” Tayo laughs, discussing his new album. “It’s definitely harder, it’s got it’s own type of flavour as it’s very dub orientated. It’s got a few of my own productions; two with Acid Rockers, and it’s got people like ed209 and Sons of Mecha. It may surprise a few people as I’ve never had that stuff on compilations before, but that’s kind of where my head has evolved to. Doing a compilation is a way to stick your head out and say here’s where I am at now.”

Tayo has stepped down from the “label boss” position in recent times in order to focus on his own and collaborative productions, as well as to concentrate on DJing. He says that he lost something being label boss, and by stepping back he’s become excited about it all again. “I’ve never really enjoyed the boring but necessary things. I don’t think it helps your creativity or enthusiasm for things, you know? Sometimes I was getting a feeling of going to ‘work’… I’d have a pile of promos sitting there I’d have to go through. Now, I was slightly upset that with a pile of promos sitting there I was thinking of it as a chore, and that’s not supposed to happen,” he says matter of factly. “But I’ve got excited again. I’ve been trawling through websites, hearing tunes, contacting producers, and frankly doing their heads in until they contact me,” he chuckles. “There’s some brilliant music around, Aquasky, Sons of Mecha, the Breakfastas, have got my interest up again. Plus my own productions with people like Acid Rockers, Aquasky, I know what I want to look for in a tune, I know what I want to look for in a set, so it’s refocused me a bit.”

Part of the rediscovery of this excitement is the fact that Tayo has started making his own tunes with his refocused energy. Although he has worked with Aquasky and Acid Rockers and used their equipment, he finds himself being able to just use a computer to compose his tracks. “I’m fairly new to the production process, so when you start it’s a lot easier to start on computer rather than the outboard gear,” he says of the equipment he’s using. “If you start tomorrow it’s easier to spend 1200 quid on a Mac or PC, and 700 quid on Logic, rather than outboard stuff which is going to cost thousands and thousands. There’s a beauty in using the analogue stuff,” he muses “but for space and practical reasons, you can do it all on computers now.”

Another reason Tayo’s making his own music stems from his quest for finding good an new music, no doubt a hang over from his record boss role. “If you rely on what you get sent, what’s in the post or what’s in the shop, you’re not pushing yourself. My job as one of the main breaks DJ, if you will, is to stay fresh. My job coming over to a land of trainspotters like Australia,” and he jokes, although he is spot on with this assessment, “is to have stuff that you lot don’t even know about! I like to have stuff that’s not coming out for 3 or 4 months, so when the trainspotters are peering over the decks to see what I’m playing they have absolutely no idea; that’s kind of my job.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Andy Smith

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Andy Smith is the DJ behind one of the best mix CDs ever recorded, The Document, and it’s follow up, the Document II. He’s also one half of the incredibly upbeat and funky Dynamo Productions with Boca45 (Scott Hendy), and in a little unknown group called Portishead as tour DJ and sample finder. On tour recently to promote the new Dynamo Productions Get It Together, which features remixes of their finest tunes as well as a few new ones, I managed to catch up with Smith after a very successful Melbourne solo gig. “We’re not going to Adelaide or Brisbane,” he laments. “I asked the promoter why how come and they didn’t really give a good answer, so I don’t know why were not going!”

“I did a Northern Soul night last night in Melbourne,” he states, “It’s a bit of a hobby for me,” he claims of the Northern Soul music. Relatively unknown in Australia, Northern Soul, called that because DJs in the North of England in the 70s would play this rare American pre-disco soul music, is regaining popularity in the UK. Smith got into it by digging for records. “If I found a label that was interesting I’d listen to it on my portable turntable and I guess I must have heard a few things… like the uplifting vibe on this one, or the fantastic voice on that, or it had a piece of music that was just amazing. I’ve started up a monthly club in London, and that’s become one of my favourite club nights, it means I can go a bit deeper, do something a bit different.”

Deeper and different is what Andy Smith is all about. From the sombre sounds of Portishead, to the upbeat tempo of Dynamo Production, to making mix CDs that feature James Brown, Cut Chemist and Kate Bush, Smith has a diverse and interesting musical knowledge that he clearly wants to share with people. “Basically my role within Portishead was finding samples, obviously I’ve got a big record collection. Before I met Jeff Barrow, (the main producer behind Portishead), I was a DJ… obviously I still am,” he chuckles, “and when I met him at the youth club, in Portishead (the city from which they got their name), I was cutting up funk and hip hop, and he was one of the few people around who understood what it was all about. The whole Portishead sound is from Jeff, utilising the bits of the records I was finding him. When they went on tour, he was keen to help people realise the origin of the Portishead sound. That’s why I did the warm up set playing original breaks and hiphop and a crazy kinda scratch mix before the show, to show people where their sound came from.”

Given that both his mixes and the Dynamo Production stuff is so upbeat, I wondered if the being the Portishead DJ had its drawbacks. “Depending on where I am in the world,” he says “Some places in Europe, I’ll go to a gig, someone will come up to me and ask me to play a Portishead record, which annoys me really,” he grumbles, “as they don’t know about the Dynamo productions, but by the end of the night they will know. The Dynamo stuff is more me,” he pauses. “I like being in a club and rocking the crowd, seeing the smiling faces and people having a great time. Doing the Portishead thing is great because I get to play my stuff to a different environment, but week in week out, I’m a club DJ.”

The Document II was an astounding mix, and testament to his skills as a DJ. “I have a rough plan, but it all comes down to what you can get cleared (by the record company)”, he says of his mixes. “I might submit 20 tracks and get only 6 or 7 back. So I might have two tracks that mix really well, but one might get rejected, so I have to go back and put them together the best I can. I was really lucky to get that Kate Bush track,” he laughs. “I really wanted to do a mix that had a totally different intro, to make people go “wow, it’s got Kate Bush on the intro”. Some people don’t understand why I’ve got Kate Bush on there at all, they’re like ‘what’s that got to do with it?’ whereas others think it’s something really special, but as long as people talk about it, I really don’t care!” he chuckles, “but I was really lucky to get that and the track that hiphop track that mixes into it. I think Kate Bush has done some fantastic music, and if someone picks up that CD because it’s got Ultramagnetic MCs on it and then think ‘oh, I actually like that Kate Bush track now’… it’s all about opening up people to the music.”

Smith loves the scene in Australia, and he and Scott Hendy seem to have a rapport with Aussie artists, having done remixes for the Resin Dogs and Katalyst. “We did those remixes because we come out here a bit, and the Resin Dogs were kinda into what we were doing and simply asked us. The link with Katalyst is through the label (Invada) and last tour. The scene out here seems pretty good for what we do; our album did better in Australia than anywhere else in the world, which comes down to the promotion invada gave it really, and the crowd here seem to be into what we’re doing. In the UK if there’s no scene for ‘that thing of the minute’, people might pass it by, whereas over here people just listen to it, they don’t really care what they ‘should’ be listening to. The UK press tries to tell people what they ‘should’ be into, but here people listen to what they want, which is a lot healthier really.”

The new Dynamo Productions album features remixes by Katalyst, One Cut, Krafty Kuts and Jimi Ently Sound. “I’ve known Krafty (Martin Reeves) for quite a few years. We’ve always thought about getting him to do a remix. Most of the people we remixed we knew, and offered to do their remixes, so I think we owe a few people some remixes,” Smith laughs. “The Jimi Ently Sound were a band that used to play at Holiday Camps in the UK in the 60s. Someone found a master tape of them doing a version of Apache (originally by Cliff Richard and the Shadows), which then got put out on a 45… But it’s a scam,” he admists with a laugh”, it’s Jeff Barrow and Adrian Utley from Portishead who wanted to do some things under a different name without people buying them because they were Portishead. It now says “produced by Portishead”, but originally it was going to be a quiet sideline,” he chuckles again.

For the future, both he and Scott have a lot on their plate, and the continued collaboration may come to an end. “ I’ve got a Northern Soul mix out in October for BGP records, and then maybe I need to make a few more phone calls, send a few more emails and get working on Document III,” he says. “Scott’s done a solo album, out on invada, under the guise Boca45 called Pitch Sounds which is also out in October, so he’ll probably be doing promo stuff for that for a while, and if that goes well he might want to continue the solo stuff… but I think we’ll probably at some point get back together and do something, I’m just not sure when,” he adds optimistically.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Richard X

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Making mash ups in his bedroom, Sheffield based Richard X’s talent caught the ear of DJs and the press alike. In a sea of simple mash ups, Richard had a fresh sound that combined the complexity of the popular in an artistic manner, but with dancefloor, and more importantly, commercial viability. His first mash up, working under the name Girls On Top, was a limited seven-inch featuring, on side A the Whitney Houston-meets-Kraftwerk contemporary classic ‘I Wanna Dance With Numbers’. On the B-side, Richard placed his all-time favourite track, The Human League’s ‘Being Boiled’ beneath TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’, creating ‘Being Scrubbed’. These two fresh-sounding, icy electronic R&B anthems took London by storm, and were considered novel, not a novelty. His next single had on the A-side ‘We Don’t Give A Damn About Our Friends’, a version of which the Sugababes would later take to the top of the charts, and on the flipside ‘Warm Bitch’ married The Normal’s ‘Warm Leatherette’ to Missy Elliott’s ‘She’s A Bitch’.

The name Richard X has nothing to do with fighting oppression ala Malcolm X, but rather happened as a bit of an accident. “It was quite a while a go when I was doing the Girls on Top bootleg,” says Richard. “Because I wrote a letter to someone and wrote ‘Richard’ and then put a kiss, which is the ‘X’, it became Rich X, then Richard X as it became. Richard Y was another popular name; it’s what my mum used to always say – ‘Richard, Why?’” he laughs.

“At the time it was more I was bored of electronic music, and still loved with music from my past, and I was also into the RnB stuff quite heavily, you know ‘the American Pop’, since 1997,” Richard relates of his first track. “At the time it was at odds with British electronic music – a lot of people couldn’t see the similarities (between pop and electronica) but I could. For me they were cut of the same cloth, they’re both minimal, both pop songs, and I saw it as a logical step to do it as a booty. I don’t think anyone had done a booty outside the world or house music, or the world of ‘art’. It was very fresh at the time.”

This gave rise to a whole host of bootlegs, sometimes called mash ups, or ploppers (plopping the vocals of one track over the instrumental of another with little production) or, my favourite term, Bastard Pop (the illegitimate child of two unlikely pop songs). Richard wishes to distance himself from this scene, although he states, “I’m not a person to say that it’s rubbish or it’s unfashionable. I always said it wasn’t just about making bootlegs, and that’s what I’ve tried to show with the album (Richard X Presents the X factor). I’ve been doing other stuff as well, I’ve been writing and producing for other people,” he adds.

“But I try to avoid playing at the nights, just making bootleg after bootleg, because it’s bit of a trap; a trap for artists just to do one thing, it always is. That’s the only downfall in that. I like some of the stuff, and I see the Get Your Booty On web board as something really healthy, and there’s some great talent out there. I’ve got nothing bad to say about it at all. I’m just more interested in the people who take it a bit further, into the realms of making ‘unofficial remixes’, adding more of their own sound, less about bootlegging and more about traditional production.”

Richard is philosophical about the future of pop music as a whole; the way it’s made, as well as distributed. “I think what will happen is filesharing will get regulated. It is inevitable; but the only thing is I don’t think you can blame piracy for the crash of the music industry business. I think there are other factors in that; most of it lies in the hands of the record companies themselves. Companies run by shareholders are never particularly stable, and when things take a downturn it’s ironic that bedroom musicians and the people who don’t have to spend thousands of pounds putting records out, they’re the people who benefit,” he says. “Independent music will probably get a big boost in the next few years because we have that mindset of doing things on the cheap, or not getting a lot of money for it. I say we,” he says as an aside, giggling. “I’m now on a major! But I think it’s a re-adjustment. If I was a young artist doing it all again, I wouldn’t be worried at all, I’d still get my music out in one way or another.”

Being signed to a major label that helped the much-undervalued Sugarbabes to chart success with the tune ‘Freak Like Me’, there’s a delicious sense of irony that’s not lost on Richard that his album has copyright protection. “The copy protection never works, people can easily get around it,” he says. “You used to get around it just by drawing with a black marker on the CD… but don’t quote me, I don’t want people wrecking their CDs!” he laughs. “It was more of the downloading thing, which is ironic because of where I’ve come from. Sure, back then I had most of the records, but there were a couple of things I got from Napster and Audio Galaxy. It was novel way of making music. It was almost at the point where you could physically manipulate anything in the world without having to buy it. It was exciting, I was on the ‘cutting edge’”, he says with a hint of sarcasm.

“But you can’t not have copy protection on records,” he continues “But rather than hide it away and pretend that I don’t have to conform on an EMI recording, I thought lets make it really huge… just have me standing in front of this big sign! Originally it was going to be carved on a gravestone, but they weren’t having that. But it’s a red hearing, its not a matter of selling out,” he states. “I think that’s what most people might want to criticise me being on a major for, but all the records I’ve ever made have been pop music, so it’s where I should be naturally,” he says, with just a little hint of egoism.

Moving on, Richard has done the latest Back To Mine CD, which is surprising in it’s lack of well-known pop tunes. “They’re just great little records that I really do play at home,” he says of the tunes. “I could do a 20 pop record tune mix easily, but I didn’t want to do that. Electronic music was more than just the pop, it was the weird TV theme tunes, like ‘Tomorrows World’ that you’d hear once a week and get really excited about, and that’s what I was trying to capture.” Also noticeably absent is his favourite band Human League. “Last year I talked about nothing else apart from Human League. I went on about it so much it’s slightly perverse not to have included one of their tracks. But I think everyone knows the Human League, with this I wanted to make it… not deliberately obscure, but full of things that are great that you may not have come across before. I went for an obscure Heaven 17 track to represent them. Because there were a few electro compilations out there last year, given that everybody suddenly liked electronic music again, their music did get aired again, I thought I’d look elsewhere. I wasn’t being snobbish and it certainly wasn’t a dis,” he chuckles.

dB Magazine, Music, Writing

Freestylers

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The Freestylers’ Matt Cantor is chatting to me over a dodgy connection munching on some toast, so it’s very hard to hear him in some parts of the conversation. Which is a real pity because the Freestylers are amongst my favourite producers, and have been for about 8 years. Unashamedly responsible for some of the biggest “big beat” records around, they’ve progressed with the scene and have arrived with Raw As Fuck. The first single Get A Life hit the No. 1 spot in the English dance music charts with very little promotion. “Obviously we’re really happy with getting number one in the charts,” says Cantor, munching on some toast. “That’s with absolutely no promotion; it’s just people going out and buying the records. It’s nice to know that people still know the name and want our stuff. It’s the first thing we’ve had out under the name Freestylers for a few good years.”

The Freestylers disappeared for a while after the collapse of their record label Freskanova. “For a while there it was really great, just a bunch of friends together and we all used to A&R it”, Cantor explains. “We’d been recording for the people who ran it for a long time. But I guess it just ran its course. They lost a lot of money and went bankrupt and ceased to exist.” This explains the absence of the band, and also the rise of a little group called Raw As Fuck. “Just to keep the music out there we decided to put some underground breakbeat out under the name Raw As Fuck. And another year down the line we thought the dust would have settled, and we could go buck to out former name. In a stroke of genius we decided to call our next album Raw As Fuck”, Cantor laughs.

The Freestylers are just about to embark on a whistlestop tour of the Eastern seaboard, which upsets this reporter greatly because I’m not located on it! “This time it’s just me and Aston,” Cantor relates. “It’s a real whistlestop tour, we’re just coming to play our new material. We haven’t been down there for about a year and a half, we’re just in and out of there in a week, doing these four big parties.” But there’s hope yet, as Cantor says there’s definitely talk of getting the whole band down for the big festivals next summer. “The band hasn’t actually toured Australia yet, and we’re very keen to get the whole band experience down there.”

“It’s funny because I don’t actually tour with the band any more,” Cantor explains. “It was just getting exhausting, and me and Aston found we were doing the same job on stage anyway. Ashton enjoys the pressures of the road, whereas I enjoy being in the studio and DJing and stuff.” He goes on to explain that he saw the band at Fabric, and says he was very impressed. “We’ve down size the band… we used to go out with break dancers and stuff,” he pauses. “I suppose you could it an attempt to be more ‘serious’. The sound has got a little heavier; the music we’re making is a little more heavy. The band no longer has Navigator and Tenor Fly; we’ve got a MC called Surreal who’s got his own style, you know. We’ve got Valerie M doing the vocal tracks still, and bass, and drums, and Ashton on his stack of samplers. It’s a much tighter but much bigger sound.”

I asked if the the Freestylers still play the old stuff, either their own or that of the other bigbeat players. “The thing is it was really fun back in the day, there were some really fun records. But if you start thinking music was better back then than it is now, it’s probably time to give up”, he states matter of factly. “We’re really excited with the what’s happening now… that’s the great thing about the breaks scene, things are always changing. We’re branching out away from the progressive stuff, and doing the more raw sounding music, big basslines and more drum and bass influence. The great thing about the nature of breaks is that it’s always changing and evolving.”

“Raw As Fuck (the Album) is looking to come out in early June,” Cantor says excitedly. “Push Up, the next single is going to be out in May. We’ve pulled all the Raw As Fuck tunes together and those tracks still sound fresh. A lot of people didn’t hear them, as they came out as an underground thing, and now people are going to get to hear them with a whole heap of new stuff.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Dave Clarke

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When I found out I was to interview Dave Clarke about his latest album The Devils Advocate and his imminent tour of Australia, I was a little nervous. I had heard he was a horror to interview, but now I think it’s because he’s a complex individual and most of the music press is like the press in general – it finds complexity discomforting and unwieldy. The thoughts and the knowledge Clarke relates are more suited to academic texts than a short interview designed to fill up advertising space. I found him to be quite personable, if a little brisk, but it was rather early in the morning in the UK, and most people are grumpy in the mornings. Initially I thought the Devils Advocate was a reference to the mash of styles over the album. Clarke assures me my presumption was wrong. “It’s more to do with my personality”, he states. “I like to make people think a different way and play devils advocate.” Through the course of the conversation I began to get a sense of what he meant.

Other people I’ve interviewed who have burned by record companies in the manner Clarke has been come across as jaded, and I was curious to know if Clarke was the same. “I was already jaded. I came to planet earth a jaded person,” he jokes. “I wasn’t the only one who was screwed by them, there was Felix the House Cat, Thomas Schumaker, Timo Maas and others. But you deal with it and you move on and hopefully you put it behind you as best you can.” However, from bad things come good, and Clarke’s first single after this episode was an “internet-only” download. “That worked out really well,” he says. “I was just a little nervous to see if people were still interested (in me), and I just wanted to do something fun with it.” The single went on to be so popular a run of about 12,000 was released on vinyl. “But,” says Clarke, playing devils advocate, “this was a long time ago. Now you’ve got to take Moore’s Law into account – computer power doubles every 18 months, and this was 6 computer generations back. People’s download speeds are much faster now. It was at the very inception of pay-per-track, but if it was released now who knows… Maybe we wouldn’t have to come out on vinyl,” he muses. “But I still think it would because DJs would want to play it (on record). Then again, there are some DJs now who use digital files in lieu of vinyl, so maybe it wouldn’t have sold so many copies.”

On the topic of downloading, Clarke has some very definite views. “I think it sort of was inevitable. I think it shows that record companies weren’t thinking when A) they were charging so much for CDs when it was a relatively old technology when it appeared and B) when they didn’t realise they could actually sell them online, it had to take a couple of teenagers to prove it. I think it’s a shame because I like the tangible evidence (of music), but then again saying that I’ve just bought a terabyte of hard drive space to store all my CDs on and then download them into my iPod; and use it as an archive. I don’t know,” he pauses, “you can’t always hark for the old days all the time but I think it’s a shame people don’t go into record shops as much and you know, have that ‘hi-fidelity’ moments that we all hope for,” he says, referring to the book by Nick Hornby and movie by Stephen Frears.

Although he’s a technology freak, reportedly owning a light switch that cost over £500, he’s always been rather traditional about making music. “I haven’t ever used any plugins for anything whatsoever,” he says surprisingly. “A while ago I tried to heavily invest in cutting edge equipment and it never did what it was supposed to, so I decided from that point on I’d use it for sequencing and to go hardware on everything else. That’s pretty much what I’ve done up until now.” In doing a remix for DJ Hell, Clarke is branching out a little. “I’ve just ordered a computer as a stand-alone software sampler so I can run that in conjunction with my system, see how a software sampler runs compared to a hardware sample and if I get on with that I’ll move across. But when it comes to VST instruments, I’ve never been a big fan of synthesising. I like to synthesise samples, but I can’t really be bothered with attack, delay, sustain and release because it just bores me to tears.”

His latest album has collaboration with Def Jux’s Mr Lif in a tune that can only be described as hiphop, which is odd for someone known as a techno DJ and producer, although he began his career playing hiphop. “I was thinking about wanting to do hiphop, and I didn’t want to go down the usual route of using someone who’s famous in a big commercial way,” Clarke says. “Someone suggested Lif, and I went to see him live and I liked what he had to say, I liked his presence, attitude and lyrics. After a lot of talking we got together in the studio a few months later and found it very easy to work with one another.” Similarly the collaboration with Chicks on Speed was an enjoyable experience. “I recalled them from years ago in Munich, just hanging out and getting drunk with them, and there again we worked well together and it was a lot of fun.”

With such a diverse range of genres on the album, I wondered if this now reflected in Clark’s DJ sets. “I can split myself down the line (between DJ and Producer). When I DJ I specifically play techno, and electro is some other stuff thrown in, but when it comes to making music I’m a lot more wider… I have to be; I couldn’t survive just making one style of music, I just couldn’t do it”, he sighs.

As the current tour is a DJ set, I wanted to know how Clark would work his new material into it. “I don’t really concentrate on any of my own stuff when I DJ, I’m actually kind of embarrassed by playing my own music,” he confesses “I’ll actually play one or two of my own tunes in a set, but generally I get a great kick out of other people’s music. I always feel a responsibility as a DJ not just to promote your own music,” he says “I don’t know if that’s just me being silly, because a lot of other people do it, but it just doesn’t feel right. To go and play 6 or 7 of your own tracks and raise your hands in the air when you’re playing off vinyl or CD just doesn’t look or feel right, I dunno, it just leaves a bad taste.” I mention how PWEI’s Clint Mansell once said in an interview that listening to his own music felt a bit like masturbation. “Maybe I just like to masturbate in private,” Clarke retorts with a smile.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Krafty Kuts

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From the first moment I heard ‘Chunks of Funk’, I was hooked on Krafty Kuts. Here was a track so funky, oozing with so much ‘coolness’ that I simply couldn’t ignore it. After getting down to the big beat sound, which quickly became a pale mockery of itself, out of leftfield comes this stormer of a track with the vocal “not because we can… Coz we want to!” which remains a funky dogmatic greed of my day to day life. At the time I thought Krafty Kuts was black, that’s how funky his sound was to me! Little did I know he was some pale white English Geezer called Martin Reeves. Then, he disappeared for a year or so, subsequently booming back onto the scene with a vengeance.

“Yeah, a few years ago I got myself into a bit of a sticky situation”, Reeves relates over the phone. “I wanted to release some records so badly, and Ministry of Sound didn’t want to release any more records or 12 inches. There was this guy who promised me the world, and I signed this contract that I should have never had done. I wish at the time I had a manager, because he would have said ‘don’t sign it!’ I could not release a single thing under the name of Krafty Kuts for a year, and I had ten records ready to come out, and it was probably my best ever products… it was around the time of Chunks Of Funk, Gimme The Funk, and it was that party hiphop, funky breakbeat stuff.”

As you can probably tell from those titles, Reeves loves his funk. “I think it stems form a constant listening to 70’s style and a lot of black music” he muses. “It’s all I listened to, all I wanted to buy. I was a complete obsessive; I used to get up at 5 or 6 o’clock in the morning at weekends to go to car boot sales.” He explains that car boot sales are something akin to our Trash and Treasure markets. “It hit in the mid 80s, and it was quite a phenomenon; everybody was selling their records, and you can imagine the records I brought… it was just AMAZING! I was just up at the crack of dawn every weekend, wanting to buy records, and that’s how I started my record store, I just bought this massive collection off someone, who said they had loads more at home… He was a DJ and had about 10,000 records at home and just wanted to get rid of them, and that’s how it all became an obsession.”

Reeves is obviously proud of his collection. “I’ve got some amazing records, stuff you wouldn’t even dream about!” he says excitedly. “Stuff that only got released as promos, stuff that never came out, and stuff that is really hard to find.” Along with his outstanding collection of records, Reeves is well known for winning a DJ comp when he was only 12 years young, after never touching a turntable before… or so the legend of Krafty Kuts goes. I had read conflicting reports about this, and decided to clear it up for myself. “I was 17”, he states matter of factly. “I wasn’t old enough to get into a club, so I had to enter an under-18 DJ competition. I didn’t have any turntables, so it was my first experience with real turntables.” Real Turntables? “My best friend, who actually beat me in the final, he had decks but they weren’t technics, but he was really good at mixing on them. The comp had technics of course, and I was so excited to get on them and see what they were like; I had played on his turntables before, but they were belt drives and kept jumping and weren’t really great to mix on.”

“Once he let me have a go on his decks, it was like eating chocolate, but only a piece, not being able to eat the whole thing,” he continues. “Or like eating a pringle… you eat one pringle and you’ve got to eat more. You can’t stop, can you? You have GOT to have another one, there is no stopping!” he laughs. “It’s like when you collect things, if you’ve got that stance in your head, you have to continue it. I had to carry on DJing, I HAD to enter that competition, because I knew if I didn’t I wouldn’t fulfil any ambition. It took a lot of courage really, I wasn’t that good, but I managed to put a few good ideas together, and people were cheering and that, and I thought then that this is for me.”

Reeve’s knack for putting “a few good ideas together” has earned him a lot of respect from audience and peers alike. “I met Q-Bert last year when I was in Australia, and to be honest I thought he wouldn’t have a fucking clue who I was”, he says of one of his brushes with fame. “Then you speak to someone who’s just such an idol to me, and I introduced myself … ‘Hi, I’m Krafty Kuts’ and he says (and here Reeves puts on a generic American accent) ‘yeah, I know, I’ve heard a lot about you, blah blah blah’, and I was speechless! It was like Cash Money too, one of the first DJs I ever saw, and at an awards night last year he comes up to me, gives me a big hug and says (donning the American accent once again) ‘well done Krafty, you deserve it!’ and I’m like ‘oh my god, this isn’t real’… people I idolise coming up to ME, and giving ME respect for winning an award. Not only was it great to win the award, but it was amazing to have someone you admire to give you props, it’s like a double whammy!”

But what is it about the Krafty Kuts sound that makes people sit up and listen? When he did a mix for mixmag called Instant Party, Just Add People, it sold like absolute hotcakes, and is quite a sought after CD, up there with Coldcut’s Journeys by DJs and Andy Smith’s The Document. “It’s kinda about being clever,” he says, “in general, thinking about what people are going to like. That’s the hard thing, trying to choose a collection of records that make people think ‘these work well’. And I think I’ve done that in the past” he says without a hint of ego, “and people have come to expect the unexpected with me, and they think ‘I wouldn’t have done that, that’s a good idea’, and that’s what I try to do.”

His latest mix CD These Are the Breaks captures the essence of Krafty Kuts. “I’m absolutely thrilled with this mix, it’s a proper representation of where I am at the moment and what I do as a DJ. It’s got the party hiphop element on the one CD, and on the other it’s got all the proper really good current and classic breakbeat tunes. I think people can listen to and dance around in their living room, or bop in their cars to it,” he continues. “It’s one of those CDs that I think will stand the test of time, it hasn’t got any throw away tunes… there’s a couple of tunes people will think “that’s a bit ‘now’”, but you’ve got to have some of those on it. I try and capture elements of past, present and future, people listen to it and think “oh my god, what’s that!” or hear a mix and think “how did he do that!”

Similarly, his live shows are much the same. “It’s quite a strange phenomenon, really, because as soon as I walk in I look and feel the vibe, I’ve gotta take in this intense situation within seconds, and think ‘right, where am I going with my DJing’. I always try and do something different; I never play the same set twice, EVER. I don’t sit there and have my records in order, no way, that’s not me. I’m about taking the vibe from an audience into me, and giving it back. There’s certain records that you’ve got to play because they work so well together,” he muses, “but generally speaking, I can be getting into something, and see that they’re down with this hiphop vibe, and then maybe start the breakbeat, play the slower tempo but funky new stuff, and slowly build up, but I’ll play a lot less break beat and cut out my drum and bass tunes… Or if it’s an up for it mad crowd then obviously go for the more up tempo breakbeat stuff and move into drum and bass.”

“It’s the crowd that dictates where I’m gonna go. I do choose records in a small way, but I’d rather let the crowd choose for me, although theoretically they don’t know that. It’s weird; I have to read what they want collectively, and give that to them”.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Freq Nasty

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Freq Nasty is one of those people who are just ‘different’. He looks different, with his mass of dreadlocks; he sounds different, with his accent sounding British and Kiwi all at once, and he makes music that is just different, and unashamedly so. The thing is, it works. It works very well. Even the casual listener can hear some amazing stuff off his latest album and know that not only is it different, it is damn enjoyable too. Unlike other producers who go out of their way to make things different, and end up simply losing their audience, Freq Nasty doesn’t lose sight of his listeners or the dance floor.

Darin McFadyen came up with the name Freq Nasty through thinking about sci-fi B-movies. “From all those superheroes from the late 50’s early 60’s that had really stupid names and crazy super powers”, he says, “and Freq Nasty has one of those kind of retro-futuristic sounding names, like it would be one of those retro-futuristic cartoon characters. That was the kind of vibe I was on – a lot of the samples I used at first, and the tune Booming Back Atcha, all the artwork on the first album was themed around that type of sci-fi.”

Growing up in New Zealand, he faced the same difficulties as we do here in Australia – isolation and a very small music scene. There was no internet, so he had to rely on radio, and as here, radio was all about rock music. “I love the intensity of rock music, and always have,” he enthuses. “I’ve listened to everything from AC/DC, which I still love to this day, through to your Carcass and Entombed and bands like that. But there’s also this idea that you end up getting the English stuff before the American stuff and the American before the English, so you’re in this weird mid-ground, and you end up taking on a lot of influences. If you live in England, you get an impact of the American stuff, but there’s a lot of stuff you miss out on, and I think if you live in the States it’s the same thing. But if you live in New Zealand or Australia you get a very wide spread of stuff from Europe and America, and I think in that respect I have an even-handed approach to listening to music, and the way I hear music”, he says of the influences on his music. “When I first left New Zealand I was going to move to either New York or London, and I think the way I make music is very much from that perspective – the American thing of hiphop and funk style, with the progressive of the UK dance scene sums up my sound.”

McFadyen is unashamedly honest about trying to make his music different. “The way it comes about is I just try to make something different. The way Plumps do their thing is amazing in their right, what Aquasky does is amazing in their own right, what Rennie (Pilgrem) and BLIM does is all amazing, so when it comes to me making an album I say ‘right, all this has gone on, I’m going to do something that isn’t really happening at the moment’, and present people with something they didn’t realise breakbeat could be. It’s that simple,” he states. “Someone asked me what inspires me a while ago, and I was saying that a lot of the stuff that I hear out there, but it probably wouldn’t be breakbeat records that inspire me. I appreciate a well done dance record for sure, but I hear an amazing dance hall record or old dub tune, or some mad breakbeat garage tune, some 8-bar tune on a pirate radio station that some 17 year old kid has made, and I think ‘fucking hell, that’s incredible, I could do something with that’, and I twist it up and do my own version, and the way I make it coherent is that I’m always nicking influences from elsewhere, but the other half of what fits in will be that thing I do.”

“And I hope that in a year or two’s time people start listening to it, and people start making their own versions of that, and in a way another sub-genre comes about; in England these things happen so quickly and so easily if a sound picks up” he continues. “And the whole Ragga-dancehall kinda dub-reggae thing is starting to pick up momentum over that mixture of breaks and those sounds and it will probably be a lot prevalent in the next year, year and a half. I’m already hearing records out now that are using those kind of beat patterns that didn’t happen a year ago.”

McFadyen is also about to create a different expression of his forthcoming album Bring Me the Head of Freq Nasty, incorporating a character made for the single into a whole audiovisual experience. “Initially it was going to be a ‘dex and fx’ thing”, he says “but that’s now been translated into the Video Nasty Experience. It’s a character designed by Jamie Hewlett, who did Tankgirl and the Gorillaz stuff, he’s created a Freq Nasty character for the video but then there’s a whole lot of other stuff that’s been created around that, with the character being integrated with real photo’s and film using new CG stuff. There’s lots of graphics and text chopped up, and everything is going to be themed to the album. There’s not a lot of old video and that… it’s not about recontextualising the old; for me, what I’m doing is creating everything from scratch, there’s probably not going to be anything nicked in there.”

Unfortunately, the Video Nasty Experience won’t be coming to Australia this time around, but we can expect it sometime next year. Fortunately, the Freq Nasty website www.freqnasty.com features the kind of thing to expect from this exciting producer, and he’s set to play in Adelaide in December.