Tag Archives: UK

Blim

Gervase Cooke, the Boy Lost In Music, certainly has a lot to say about music, and we could have chatted for hours if it wasn’t for the phone card giving up the ghost. Getting into dance music because he was self confessedly too pretentious to listen to indie as it exploded into commercialism, he’s become one of the most important figures on the Breaks scene today, and cites Australia as the reason that breaks parties are some of the best parties in the world.

Cooke got the name BLIM because he literally was ‘lost in music’. “I used to write music on headphones in the corner of the lounge room of where I lived so other people wouldn’t get annoyed by it or if it was late at night,” he says of his name. “And I used to do it for quite long periods of time on end, and if anyone come up and tapped me on the shoulder or anything I’d jump out of my skin because I was just somewhere else completely. A blim is a very small piece of hash here in England, the very last little bit,” he adds “so I thought of that and how it could come to mean something else, and thought up Boy Lost In Music, and it stuck.”

His introduction to dance music came from early Warp releases. “I was into indie music and rock, and when it came to about 1988-1989 I was primarily into a lot of indie – Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, and a lot of underground stuff as well; and I went to Manchester because that was really good for that kind of music. Just as I arrived there it exploded on a commercial level, and made me not want to listen to it. Coz I’m pretentious in that kind of way,” he says, and I’m not really sure if he was joking or not. “Then I heard some Sheffield techno, some really early Warp releases, and because I was a scientist at the time, I was studying mathematics, the logic of the way the music was put together was instantly recognisable to me, and appealed to me and made me want to buy some machines to make music.”

Whilst some may think that beginning his musical life from an essentially classical orchestral base of piano and violin would aid him in leaps and bounds, Cooke isn’t so sure. “Learning an instrument growing up as a child is a frustrating experience really,” he says candidly. “Because you kinda don’t want to do it, you know what I mean? You see it as a chore.” So Cooke doesn’t think that it has had a big influence on the way he makes music. “Just the experience of growing up in constant contact with musical instruments, however badly you interact with that” may have had an impact, he says, “but I would have to say it’s intuitively… I have to say I’m not consciously aware of it.”

Cooke started his electronic music career producing drum and bass for Emotif and SOUR, before moving over to Botchit & Scarper with labelmate Freq Nasty. “The simplest way to explain it is I just wasn’t happy doing it anymore,” he says of the change in musical direction. “I didn’t feel it anymore, I didn’t believe in my music, didn’t believe I had an opportunity to make myself heard in drum and bass, for a number of reasons – some to do with the music itself, some to do with the people involved in it. And when I first started to make breakbeat, it made me feel happy, and that’s the choice I pursued. It’s not even necessarily a conscious decision; it was a matter of doing what I wanted, what I liked.”

Cooke is known for making and playing music with a party vibe, and is partly responsible for the term “festival breaks”. I say partly, because it seems it’s a joke that, due to the music press, has spiralled out of control. Certain aspects of the UK music media have pointed to it as a move away from the harder sounds of breaks, but Cooke says, “It’s not a move a way from anything. It was just a joke me and Rennie (Pilgrem) had in the studio one night when we recognised the sound that we were making. I don’t think we deliberately set out to make anything… it was just something that when Rennie and I get in the studio we make music in a certain way – it sounds big, like its at a festival, we’ll call it ‘Festival breaks’, just laughing and joking about it… and one of us mentioned it to somebody and then all of a sudden…” he trails off with a smile.

Cooke believes the real party vibe comes from visiting Australia. “Everywhere I go this year it’s exactly the same,” he says. “I’ve got a digital camera, and at some point in the night I take a picture and everyone’s got their hands in the air, and I’ve got them all in a line, and unless you take close look of the racial mix in the crowd you’d never notice the difference,” he says. “And it’s been the same everywhere I’ve been… all around Eastern Europe where I used to go 5 or 6 years ago and they had a scene but really tiny and small. They all got scenes going on now. I used to play in Israel and it was just dead – it was good, you had a couple of people into it but you couldn’t get a party going. Recently they had a rocking crowd and I ended up playing for 4 hours – they kept the venue open for two hours longer than it was supposed to be! I just played in China and they fucking loved it, and they never even heard it before. They just couldn’t help themselves.”

He cites Stardust in Adelaide and Two Tribes in Perth as the places he started to notice this. “This year all the gigs are like that, everywhere I go. It’s phenomenal, absolutely fantastic,” and you can tell he is really enjoying the breaks scene at the moment. “I think the music has become a lot more fun, and I feel that it’s the British DJs who go down to Australia for the summer bring back that influence.” An unusual statement, considering it’s usually the English scene that has been seen to influence our dance music scene in the past. “Breaks parties are the best parties to go to in this country [the UK] now, there’s no question about it. I wouldn’t have said that if I didn’t think it wasn’t true, it definitely didn’t used to be true,” he states. “You go out now to a breaks night, and it’s a real fucking party. It wasn’t in London for so long. We were amazed to find out that in Australia that was like the norm. In some ways I think Australia’s party and fun vibe has filtered back into England and made the vibe fun back here.”

“You know what I mean, just real fun, proper parties,” were the last words he said to me before the phone card cut us off, and you can see exactly what he means as he hits Adelaide.

 

 

Meat Katie

Meat Katie aka Mark Pember hates flying. LOATHES it. You can hear the venom in his voice as he speaks about it. “I’ve done over 60 flights this year, and I still HATE it. White-knuckle ride for me all the way. It’s the take off and landings I hate the most”. Yet why would he agree to do an album and subsequent tour of Australia, knowing that the only way to get here is to fly? “I don’t know… it was stupid”, he laughs, “I love DJing and stuff, love it when I get there… it’s just the flying!” he says exasperatedly. Pember was out here recently promoting the album “Destination Australia 02”, and we spoke in between sniffles as we both had the flu that seemed to wipe out everybody.

Pember got into the dance music scene in the early 90s. “I used to be in bands,” he says of his beginnings. “I started off in bands, and a friend introduced me to samplers, and the first thing I did was sample drums and bass. This was the early days of bigbeat, and it just sounded more dancey, more clubby than the stuff I did previously.” His first foray into dance production was Ceasefire on Wall Of Sound. Pember says, “I split with my partner, and he decided to continue with wall of sound with the name, and I decided to continue with a new project.” That new project was the darker sound of Meat Katie, and for those who wanted to know, the name comes from a film about sex.

Pember has been at the forefront of breakbeat since it moved from being cheesy Fat Boy Slim style breaks to what we know as ‘new school breaks’. The scene has exploded in recent years, and considering Pember once said, “I’m not convinced that Breaks is going to do what Garage or Trance has done. I think it will be a cult scene, healthy but not mainstream” I wondered if his position had changed. “It’s a difficult one, because when I said that I genuinely meant it”, he muses. “It is particularly big in Australia. There are certain acts that I think may break through to the mainstream, but as a scene it’s going to be rooted in the underground – the same as drum and bass. There may be the odd track or two or the artist that goes overground… hearing some of the new stuff, like Plump DJs and some of the Stanton Warriors stuff, I can see the accessibility more so than I did maybe a year ago. But for me, and my own sound, no, I don’t think I’ll ever break into that market. I’d love to, but it’s not realistic for me.”

The recent Destination release is the second in the series, but not many people heard the first mix, done by H Foundation. “There was a problem in that they had only released the Fabric H Foundation Mix two weeks before, so I think EQ had a few issues in that everyone was mentioning the Fabric CD and not the Destination CD,” Pember explains. “And that’s a real shame those guys at EQ are really good and it’s a bit of a shitty thing to happen. But I jumped at the chance of doing it, and I’m a big fan of playing out here and my records seem to be selling well, and I thought this would be a great way to set the record straight as actually what it is that I’m about. By doing a domestic CD I’m hoping people understand my vibe a little better. It’s breakbeat based, but I like to touch on different styles as well, and I saw this as the perfect opportunity to do this.”

Pember’s previous works, such as his track ‘the Hum’ with Lee Coombs, are often dark and tribal, but this mix CD is a lot “lighter”, showing that there’s a lot more to Meat Katie than meets the eye. “I guess it’s how people perceive it. I’m not a moody person, ya know!” he laughs. “Sometimes my music can be mood based, which may lead people to think I’m always like that, but my taste is very broad. I like funky music… I’m not a big fan of cheese, but I do like stuff with a bit of a groove.” This mix CD certainly shows this, as it moves from DJ Shadow to Meat Katie to Matrix versus Goldtrix.

Hum is also the title of his successful club, which is coming up to its 2nd birthday in November. “It’s moved to a new venue, a place called the Fortress, and it’s like two story down basement warehouse venue, and we’ve got a license til 6 in the morning, which is quite a late license for the UK. We keep it quite cheap as well…” Pember says of the club. “We do it sporadically now, every 6 to 8 weeks. Thing is, we get other work – good paying work – elsewhere, and we have families and actually have to make a living as well”, he laughs.

His other project is the label Whole 9 Yards, which has recently released the new Elite Force album. “I’m actually taking a bit of time off, as I have another child on the way which is due in January and I need a little home time,” Pember explains. “I spend a lot of my time running the label, and this will be a great opportunity to put it on the backburner for a little while, to concentrate on the things I need to do.” I wondered if Pember thought it was difficult being a father and working in the music industry. “I think it’s hard having a family and doing ANY job, really” he laughs. “You’ve got a lot of responsibility and all that. I wish I was there a bit more on the weekends… I spend the week producing and running the label, and come the weekends I go out and DJ, and try and grab moments being at home, but now I’m really making an effort to make some quality time. It’s difficult because you’ve gotta make money as well, make ends meet”.

Pember missed Adelaide on this tour, but is sure to return to Australia, most likely after his break in January. “Do you know what? I would love to come to Adelaide,” he says. “It’s a real shame I didn’t have an Adelaide date this time –I’ve been here 4 times now and I’ve never been there! I’m going to harass my agent next time I’m down,” he laughs. In the mean time, get a copy of the Destination Australia 02 CD and prepare for a funky ride through some great breakbeat!

Aphrodite

Aphrodite, aka DJ Aphro, aka Gavin King, is recognised as one of the main players in the global drum n bass scene. He’s been rocking the funky beats since the early days of the rave scene and was instrumental in shaping the early sounds of jump up jungle. No drum and bass anthem set would be complete without a few of his tunes in it, and they’re welcomed by old and new school alike. Alongside fellow partner in crime, Micky Finn, he runs the Urban Takeover label which is dedicated to releasing tracks by new and established talent of the drum n bass variety. Aphrodite Recordings is King’s solo label released on V2 Records, and has over 40 releases on the label.

I interviewed King from his hotel room somewhere in the US as he was nearing the end of an intense tour, and he sounded tired and distracted. He did a show the night before in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and says, “it was really really good. Last night there were about 250 people, and they were bangin’ to it, so when the house lights came up they were all still dancing, with encore and cheers and stuff.” That sounds like Adelaide, where you can get 2 -300 dedicated junglists out on a Wednesday night to see an international. “I haven’t played in Adelaide for yonks, years and years!” he says, “so it will be good to get back.”

King is well renown for using hiphop samples in drum and bass: in fact at one time that’s all jungle seemed to be – a phat rolling bassline, a sped up breakbeat, and some hiphop vocals. “They love the hiphop samples”, King says of the American audience. On his last project, King moved away from samples and had some old school masters of hiphop perform on his album, including Schooly D and Big Daddy Kane. “I think they may have heard some remixes, and became interested”, King says of the team ups. “I met Schooly D thru a mutual friend in Philadelphia, and Big Daddy Kane was hooked up thru the record companies”.

The drum and bass crowd is a fickle and cliquey crowd who seem to have a new hero every week. King used to be king of the beats and his tunes used to rock the dance floor every time someone dropped the needle into the groove. However, in more recent years, especially in Adelaide, he’s fallen out of favour. Some claim it’s because “all his tunes are the same”, claiming them to formulaic, cheesy and bland. Yet hearing his latest stuff, one would have to disagree, because King’s new stuff is quite different. “I generally ignore the message boards and press”, King says of the attitude toward him. “Now again I go look on them, and it’s pretty silly because someone will be saying I’m absolute crap, and someone else will be saying I’m brilliant, so, obviously none of these people know what they’re talking about” he says gruffly. “I play music for the crowd in front of me, to try and get them going. If they go off to them then that’s good.”

This last statement is also the way he makes music. He says he doesn’t sit down to specifically write a happy or bouncy tune, but rather he makes tunes in order to get people to move. “Making an album is hard. You’re stuck in a box studio for a couple of months at least, and… well it’s just a lot harder [than touring]”, he says. Despite the negativity aimed towards his style of music, he is one of the biggest selling drum and bass producers, and his last album even outsold Baby Spice’s solo effort. “I don’t really care that I’ve outsold Baby Spice… or anyone else… I just make records for the love of it,” he says of this achievement.

A lot of drum and bass DJs are embracing CD technology, and it’s not uncommon to see someone like Pendulum perform a whole set purely off CD. As it is well known that King plays a lot of dubs, but he still prefers vinyl. “Generally I don’t use CDs; I’ve just started too, but I prefer acetate,” he says. “Because I’m old school!” he laughs. CDs also allow DJs to grab tunes off the web, and play it to a crowd hungry for the latest banger. “There’s good things and bad things about people downloading my tunes and playing them out. The bad things are obvious, yeah?” King says. “My last album sold 2 or 3 times less than my first, but people seem to know Aftershock more. More people know the tunes, which I find bizarre! For example, in January this year I played in Russia, there were 3-4,000 people to see myself, Goldie and Technical Itch… it was a massive show… and they all know drum and bass and the tunes, and I don’t know when I last sold a tune in Russia! It’s all due to downloading.”

King is known for playing a good vibe that ranges from classic to upfront and exclusive dubplates. Earlier in 2003 he released the ‘Urban Junglist’ compilation on his Aphrodite label which features Peshay, High Contrast, MC Fearless and Skibadee as well as a some new original talent making their release debut’s on the compilation. King is heading to Australia for the ‘urban junglist tour’ to rock the crowd.

Ils

Illian Walker, aka Ils, is one of the hottest breaks producers in the world. He was one of the first people Adam Freeland signed up to his record label Marine Parade, and he’s been recruited by Distinctive Breaks to produce the next instalment of the excellent Y4K series. Even though the record label that released his first record, Idiots Behind the Wheel, burnt him, the well-distributed promo solidified his street cred with magazine editors, DJs, and label heads across Europe. His second album for Freeland’s Marine Parade was the first full-length artist album for the label, was critically acclaimed and earned him the title of “the producers producer.”

“To be honest I don’t really understand what that means,” he laughs. “I take it in a complementary way I suppose; it’s nice to be recognised in some kind of dimension”. Anyone who’s heard his tunes will notice the incredible complementary sounds he manages to produce seemingly out of thin air. “Being in a rare groove / funk live band had a massive impact on my drum programming and the basslines,” he says, of his days playing bass in a funk band when he was a mere14 years old, but it was the seminal rave act of the 90’s, The Prodigy, that inspired Walker to buy a sampler.

Throughout the 90’s, Walker made his living by working as an engineer for various DJs and producers. It was here his technique caught the ear of LTJ Bukem, who asked him to do work for Good Looking Records, and then later he worked with James Lavelle and DJ Shadow at Mo Wax on the U.N.K.L.E. project. “It was good to be around those kinds of people, to see how they worked, to hear music through their ears. You can sit in the same room with these people, and learn how they perceive music, the sounds that turn them on. And you see different methods of work, some people use different studio, or different kit, and it’s fascinating to work with these other people”, he says of his time spent with these doyens of dance music.

The disappointment with the Fuel label going under and not receiving a cent for his work led Walker to abandon dance for a year or two. “No one’s really seen or heard from the label owner of Fuel. It’s a bit insane,” he laughs. Asked if there’s any chance of re-releasing the album to new fans, Walker is a bit hesitant to look back at that stage in his life. “As far as I know I never signed a contract for that album or anything, so technically I could re-release it, but I feel I should move forward. There’s a lot more music to be written, really.” He also doubts he’ll go back to producing drum and bass, the sound that got him his start. “I’ve worked with a couple of singers who sing at that speed, and if I was producing a singer, and drum and bass really suited, I would do a drum and bass backing track to fit the song if that energy was required, but for myself, I’m not really interested at the moment.”

Looking forward is what Walker is concentrating on. A few of his tunes have been licensed for commercials, which is a great way for a producer to cement their financial standing, but some people point the finger and scream ‘sell out’. “I think considering a lot of breaks doesn’t get mainstream radio play in this country – you won’t hear Ils on Radio 1 – so I think if I can get on TV that’s good from a musicians point of view”, he explains. “I’d be annoyed if my music was used on a tampon advert or something “ he chuckles, “that kind of thing is quite critical. A lot of my older drum and bass is used on gardening and lifestyle shows and things like that and I find it funny. But if it’s for something like Nike, that has really groundbreaking adverts, that use cutting edge editing techniques, that has really cool visuals, and if it’s a cool product, I don’t consider it selling out.”

As well as working on his third album, Walker has been working on the next Y4K Breaks album. “I’ve tried earthing it by throwing a few anthems in there,” he says; on making his set stand out from the marvellous forerunners by Tayo and Freq Nasty amongst others. “I’ve got a few vocal tracks in there; I dunno, something about the Y4K series is it’s usually quite instrumental, so I’ve put a few vocal tracks in there. I think vocals work well over breaks, and tried to represent that in there. There are also some totally new tracks in there by unknown and up and coming producers.” There are also a few of his own compositions as well. “I’ve got a track with MC Dynamite, Roni Size’s MC, that’s totally unheard and been kept under wraps for a while, and some other tracks that haven’t been allowed to be licensed to CDs in the past.”

Walker is looking forward to touring, with the possibility of hitting Australia towards the end of this year. Whilst he has only been DJing for the last year or so, he believes he could pull off a live performance similar to the Roni Size Reprazent live show. “I admire the whole Roni Size live thing, I find that absolutely ingenious. That’s one of the few rare examples of studio sequencing stuff being performed live. And still a lot of people can’t emulate that. That’s the benchmark,” he says. “I have enough tracks that I’ve written in the last 9 years, so I feel I’d be able to go up onstage and give and interesting set. I’ve got enough back catalogue, and good singers and performance people that I believe in to feel it’s the shape of a good show,” he says. But whether it’s a DJ or live set, Illian Walker’s show would be one that is worth hearing.

Check out Ils Y4K mix out soon through Distinctive Breaks, and keep your eye out for a possible tour towards the end of this year.

Planet Funk

Planet Funk is the coming together of Marco Baroni, Sergio Della Monica, Alex Neri and Dominico GG Canu, Italian and English producers who found a common link in their desire to create a new kind of dance music, a new kind of funk. Bored with traditional notions of Italian Dance Music, they sought to inject a new life into the tired cliché that had become their scene. “We tried to produce something fresh. In the creative moment we try to let ideas come freely,” says Marco Baroni, through a crackly telephone line from sun drenched Italy. Meeting in 1999 at the Miami Music Conference, they joined together and produced the incredibly successful “Chase the Sun”, a song that got an incredible amount of airplay, which you are sure to recognise once you hear it. After the release, the guys spent a whopping two years in the studio, producing their debut album “Non-Zero Sumness”.

“We each knew each other through our individual projects”, Baroni explains, “but met up in Miami. We were looking at doing something a little bit different, because we all had been doing this for about ten years or so.” Their time in the studio was well worth it, as they took the time to finish their tracks, and learnt to work with each other cohesively. “Its not so simple as when you stay with people a long time, sometimes you fight maybe for a cigarette”, he laughs. “Now we know each other much better than we did a few years ago and work very relaxedly with each other”.

The album features two incredible singers from the UK, Dan Black and Sally Doherty. Dan Black is the front man for the group “The Servant”, and his voice has that punk rock edge, often sounding like a cross between Ozzy Ozborne and Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays. Planet Funk found Black through “the guys from Naples producing his album, and we like the way he sings and he really seemed right”. The decided they wanted his unique voice and punk mentality on their album, and sent him an instrumental version of “The Switch”. “He really liked the music, and wrote some lyrics for our songs. He gives the music a different style, brings a different feeling from ‘dance’. We wanted to get something different from the rest of the album, and people’s reaction is fantastic, they really like it.” Sally Doherty, a folk singer trained in Gaelic and Classical singing, was discovered over the internet, proving that this new medium can work for independent artists.

In addition to winning 3 prestigious Italian Music awards, Best band, Best newcomer and Best dance act, Planet Funk have been played by DJs across the world from Pete Tong to Adam Freeland, and have been highly praised in the European press. However, Marco holds his audience in higher esteem than the press. “We always try to think in terms of the people, because the people, the crowd, are our life. We like to make music for the people. All this reaction from Italy was fantastic, but normally we don’t like to think in these terms. We like to think of music directed to the people as most honestly as possible.”

The live show has become Planet Funk’s main focus; something that I imagine would be quite difficult for a group of dance producers. Baroni is frank in his assessment of playing live. “We like very much to play live. It was another natural step for us. We just love the reaction from the crowd. Our music changes a bit when we play live, we use real drummers, 3 singers, and we make a show of it”. The live show must be pretty impressive, as they have played in front of crowds as large as 70,000 people. The live element has also helped the direction of the next album. “We’ve just started to write for the next album, and we’re happy with what we’ve done so far. The success of the first album is important, and playing live is important. When we try and write new, different things there’s not so much pressure.”

Planet Funk’s album “Non Zero Sumness” is out now through Sony Music, and Baroni says that they’re hoping to bring their live show to Australia during the European Winter. “We’re Chasing the Sun” he laughs.

 

Lee Coombs

Lee Coombs is best known for the seminal ‘Perfecto Breaks’ CD, an awesome journey through breakbeat that seamlessly slices together old rave with new school hits. Coombs got his love of DJing from the early days of the warehouse and Acid House parties of the late 80’s and early 90’s. “I just heard the music and saw there was a little scene,” he says, “and wanted to do it straight away. It just attracted me completely, and I made it my mission to get hold of the music. I don’t know what it was, something in me said I’ve got to do that, and I did”. Coming from this background it’s no wonder he’s one of the leading lights of breakbeat. “I didn’t all of a sudden get into breakbeat, it’s always been that way for me,” he states matter of factly, telling the history of rave music from the original funk breaks, through house and the rave scene, right up to drum and bass. “I didn’t go that way though (into drum and bass), I’ve always been playing house music that has a breakbeat.”

For the Perfecto compilation, Paul Oakenfold, impressed by Coombs’ ability, simply rang him up and asked him to do it. “I choose the records I wanted on there, then set about re-editing and remixing, and then I mixed it in pro-tools,” he said. “Records are best for playing in clubs I think, and while it does sound good when you do a mix on decks and record it to CD, I just wanted to have more precision than that, have it exactly how I wanted and make it sound all like one record.” This is not the first time someone has simply liked Coombs stuff so much that they just had to use him. Justin Rushmore of Finger Lickin heard Thrust One, one of Coombs earliest hits, and asked Coombs to join his little collective. “He absolutely loved it,” he says of Rushmore’s take on Thrust One. “He said he wanted me to make tracks for his label. I thought that he was genuinely into my stuff and I was the first artist outside of his collective to be recording for Finger Lickin. The people who owned record labels I had met before were businessmen, they weren’t necessarily into the music, it was all about money. And I thought ‘well, he’s into my music, and he’s prepared to put money into it, it’s gotta be a winner’”.

Coombs is well known for his remixing and re-edits, particularly of older tunes. Whilst there is a lot of quite average remixes out there, Coombs seems to add an undefinable edge to the music that lifts it above the garbage. This may be because of the reverence he holds for the tunes. He says of his edits, “they have a little bit of nostalgia, bit of memories,” and that’s why he likes doing them. “To be honest some of the old tunes were some of the best tunes ever made. It’s to do with the vibe they’re sending out. Music is about vibe for me, about the vibe it is giving, and I just love the vibe of the older stuff. It’s quite hard to describe, and explain,” he laughs. “Just about every rave record from back then influences me. It’s difficult to name names. You wanna name a real classic you’ve got Joey Beltram’s Energy Flash, that’s a big influence and shapes a lot of music for me. Todd Terry, Arthur Baker, lot of names, lots of individual artists you wouldn’t know who they were but made one record that sparked things off.”

Other DJs also appreciate his music, and he has a diverse range of DJs playing his music, from Pete Tong to Kosheen. “Great, fantastic, brilliant, it’s nice to be crossing into other genres,” he says about the wide range of DJs playing his work. “But to be honest, I don’t go with the attitude that I make breakbeat music purely for breakbeat people. I make music and it just so happens it fits in with breakbeat very well. I like to call myself an artist, but I can be breakbeat artist, I can make house, I can do anything really. It’s really nice that people not associated with what I do pick up on it.”

Coombs is happiest at home, as he doesn’t like travelling much. “It’s a bit of a worry,” he says nonchalantly of the effect terrorism has had on travelling. “Travelling is the downside, I do a lot of sitting around on my own in airports. People think DJing is really glamorous but it’s not. It’s hard work. I DJ out of the UK a lot, most weekends I’m somewhere in Europe. Going to the States you gotta do 11-12 hour flight, and obviously Australia is a whole day of travelling, and I’m not looking forward to it to be honest. I can’t wait to get there and get the travelling out the way.” Another reason he likes home so much is the shift in the direction of the scene in the UK. “It’s kinda going back underground, which is good, what I like,” he says. “The big superclubs have kinda had their day, they’re all shut in England now. You had Gatecrasher and Cream and that and they don’t go anymore. It’s all gone back to smaller clubs, which is better for the atmosphere and for taking it back to what it should be. You get people that are actually into the music and not there because it ‘is a club’. It’s no longer the name of the club that’s important, but the music that’s played there.”

Another place he loves is San Francisco. “It’s just a fantastic place to be, it’s just totally different from anywhere in the world,” he says. “It’s totally different from anywhere else in the States! They really get into parties; it’s perfect for DJ’s playing the right sort of music.” Again, his love of music comes out in the reason he loves San Francisco. “I was very influenced by some of the music that came out of San Francisco 4 – 5 years ago. They’ve been making house music on the sort of tip I play since house music began and it’s like a pilgrimage to go there.”

On top of recording tunes for Finger Lickin’, and DJing around the Globe, Coombs also has Thrust Recordings to keep him busy. “It’s my label but I’ve been too busy to do anything with it for the last year,” he says. “On my travels I’ve been picking up artists that I like, and from people whose records I’ve been playing I’ve been getting remixes, and tracks made for the label, and I’ve got 4 or 5 releases now and it’s all kicking off right now.” Some of the artists and tunes coming out are ‘Tribal Tensions’, Elite Force with ‘Double Black’, The Burns Brothers (Jem from Soul of Man & Coombs) with Machine, of which Coombs says is more house orientated. “There is an artist from Toronto called Paranoid Jack, and my remix of Dramattic Twins Mind the Gap,” he says. Not only that, but he’s also done a remix for Air Recording of Tony Faline’s Feel the Funk, which he says he is quite happy with, and has been collaborating with “Meat Katie, Danny Howell, Rennie Pilgrem, Elite Force, Dramttic Twins, there’s a little group of us where we’ll do our edits then swap things around, swap tracks and so on”.

Being the unassuming person he is, he expects “hopefully some really good parties, that’s all I can expect,” when he visits Adelaide next week. “I’m not expecting much weather,” he laughs. Despite the weather, I’m sure he’ll get a warm reception when he plays Traffic.

 

 

Julian Cram

Cut Le Roc

Lee Potter, aka Cut Le Roc, is a funny guy to talk to, making lots of jokes and having a laugh. This is reflected through both the music he makes and plays. He doesn’t take it too seriously, but seriously enough to have a go at changing the perception of the dance music scene as being dull and dark and all about what you look like and what shoes you wear.

Potter first started DJing at the tender age of 12 years old. Rather than picking up a guitar, as he was in his terms “a real hiphop kid”, he went out and purchased “what we call ‘cake tin’ turntables, belt driven things with heaps of slipmats and plastic, anything to keep them going in time”. Skipping school, much to his Mothers’ horror he “basically spent every minute of every day just scratching records and trying to work out how they did things and work out new things”. This led Potter into collecting old funk records, looking for that prefect break, which got him listening to funk, soul and jazzy stuff in general, and amassing a huge record collection.

He developed a passion for dance music in a pretty usual manner “You’d go to a hiphop jam” he says “and it’d be full of blokes with funny hats on with their arms crossed. I’d rather be where the girls are with hardly any clothes on,” he laughs. “But that’s a big no no in that scene – you’re only supposed to like hiphop and that’s it. I found acid house parties quite mad – it still had that funky feel to it, it’s electronic, it’s got this really weird, annoying bird chirping noise, and there’s girls here!” he laughs talking of the Acid House parties his friends took him to. “I started to become more open minded about music, which was a really good thing to happen for my career because if I was still a hiphop kid now, I’d be making good little hiphop tunes in me bedroom, but not going anywhere.”

Something that gets brought up a lot is the fact that he’s listed in the Guinness book of records for playing on 8 decks, a true testament to his skills as a DJ. “I did the Future Sound of the UK (FSUK) 4 mix for Ministry of Sound, and they asked me if I could do something special they could base promotion around, and I said yeah, whatever. They came back and said ok, we’ll have you play on 8 turntables, Vestax have agreed to supply the equipment, we’ll do it at the Ministry, get the press and punters down to see it. Then they told me at the last minute that Guinness may not come down, after I spent two months practicing for it, because they were all out watching people eat beans or something”, he laughs. “But it was more of a fun thing, not something I wanted to be seen as me showing off or anything. It was just a good fun time.”

Now Potter is head of his own record label, as well as a producer and remixer. “I haven’t done a remix in ages, but the rule with me for remixing is I only do it if I like it, and if I think I can bring something to the mix. Not just cheeky samples they can get in trouble for, but even something subtle, like new drums or filtering. Something that brings a new element or vibe to the track.” This last statement is indicative of the philosophy behind his record label, Rocstar Recordings. “I left Skit over a year and a half ago, as I wanted to pursue some other avenues. There were a lot of things happening there, they were focusing on Fat Boy Slim, the Lo-Fi All-Stars, and Xpress2. I said to them that they didn’t really have enough energy to focus on me as they had for Norman Cook, and that’s cool, he was the one who paid for everything,” he laughs “They were cool with that, and we’re still all good friends.”

“I didn’t necessarily want to do my own label, because I know how much work it is and I’m a bit of a lazy bastard” he laughs, “but I sent my stuff to a few people I know who run big breaks labels, people who had put out stuff similar to what I’ve done in the past, and they came back to me saying “we like it and all, but it’s not really the direction we’re heading.” It appears that Potter wasn’t making the same sound as every body else. “Everyone’s doing this new school, tech-breaks, slowed down drum and bass sound. I thought people who ran record labels were like the guys at Skint – quite open minded to musical sounds. I said to them “wouldn’t you rather be at the cutting edge of something new, to turn people’s heads and make them say “that’s really good and new” rather than put out the same old same old? They’d bring out the old “the dance industry is in a real rut, and we’re not selling as many records as we used to”. It’s my opinion that if they’d put some different music out, get the people excited over new stuff, they might buy it”.

“So after about 7 or 8 rejections along these lines I thought, “fuck this, I’ll do it myself”. And what kind of music is Potter bringing out? “It’s just good, funky music. It can be hiphop, it can be house, it can be breaks, it can be disco, whatever. I have a real vast array of artists doing different things for the label. The whole thing is “funk and fun”. Everything is so dark and heads down,” he explains of clubbing in England at the moment. “’Have you got the right shoes on? Is your make up running? Get lost, we’re night clubbing.’ I’m just trying to re-introduce fun and funky music back into the scene, music that no matter what style / genre you like, you’ll enjoy listening to this too. We’re just trying to break out of the mould, do something different.”

Potter is finally going to bring his fresh and funky beats to Adelaide. “Basically I’m going do what I normally do, and to hit you with everything,” he laughs “I’m not going to go too down tempo or hiphop, nor too dark, but take you from head nodding to having it large. Come down and say Hi, I might just buy you a Vodka” he laughs.

DJ Hyper

DJ Hyper aka Guy Hatfield is one of those DJ’s who always seems to have his name associated with words like “seminal” and “ground breaking”. His ‘Y3K’ series of breaks set the formula for the successful ‘Y4K’ series, and ‘Bedrock Breaks‘, based on the back room of John Digweed’s Bedrock club where Hatfield holds a residency, is heralded as introducing the world to breaks. Holding residencies in 3 countries (the UK, Spain and the US), running a record label and writing for music magazines, considering he’s only been DJing “seriously for about the last 4 or 5 years”, is testament to his desire to spread breaks to the world at large.

Hatfield got into breaks because of his “boredom with house music. I used to go to the FREE Parties, but then started to get into hiphop and experimental breaks, ‘Mo wax’ and DJ Shadow and the like, and progressed from there into labels like ‘BeatBox’ and ‘TCR’. I like playing breaks because it’s got the energy, it’s very diverse and it comes from all sorts of [musical] areas. It can be so varied and has so many different styles that it keeps fresh all the time. I like drum and bass, but about half an hour it drives me up the wall, it’s too hard and repetitive – all sounds the same, but I could just be getting old [laughs]”

Having been a forefather of the scene, I asked what Hatfield thought of the breaks scene, both in the UK and abroad. “In the UK the scene is becoming very strong, with lots of people putting out records, some good, some bad, some good club nights and a lot more radio exposure happening. More so on the specialist radio show level, and definitely still underground compared to other music scenes, although there is the potential for cross over in the likes of Terminal Head, [who are signed to Kilowatt]. In the US it’s great, the vibe is great, and its scene is growing. I do some pretty full on touring over there, I will be over for the Miami Music Conference, then back to London, then back to the US for a month. World wide the scene is getting stronger and stronger too, there’s people from Sweden, Hong Kong, America, Australia – Kid Kinobe & EK – and they’re all producing some excellent stuff.”

With the scene growing, and even dnb record labels jumping headfirst into breaks, I asked Hatfield how he will keep ‘Kilowatt’ distinctive from the other labels. “Putting out quality records and not putting out any old shit [laughs]. There are a lot of shit records out there at the moment. The key is not to worry about what anybody else is doing, but to put out good records, quality and not quantity. ‘Kilowatt’ is for artists, in that I’m going to have people I respect and like do albums, not one offs.” The line up is already looking fantastic, with Terminal Head, Stir Fry, Fatliners, and False Prophet being the first signings. Hatfield is not afraid of production himself, being responsible for taking the rather average Addicted to Bass by Puretone (Josh Abrams) and turning it into a stompingly beautiful piece of breakbeat genius. He’s also got a new single Catnip out on Timo Mass’sAcetate Ltd’ pressing.

Hatfield will be in Adelaide for the first time at Stardust Summer Edition, and I asked him what we could expect. “Quality breakbeat – not too dark, as a lot of people think breakbeat is dark, and that can cloud people’s vision of the scene, but I try to stay away from that. I play groovy, funky stuff, where people can have a good, fun time and not stand around the decks looking stern [laughs]”. “Mixing wise I’m a smooth, fluid mixer, or so I like to think, but don’t we all [laughs], blending the tunes rather than jumping around in the mix. And I am very, very fussy about what I play. I lot of records people go mental over I just think “they’re crap” [laughs] and that’s not to knock them down, I’m just really fussy about what I like.”

It’s that fussiness that has led him to be listed in Urb Magazines “Next 100” and put him in the “top 10 to watch over the next 12 months” in US Mixer magazine, as well as being voted the No 2 breakbeat DJ in the world in UK’s DJ Magazine. And it’s his reputation as being a unique and skilful DJ that has this interviewer counting the days to the release of Bedrock Breaks 2 out on Bedrock, and he plays the Stardust Summer festival.

 

The Scratch Perverts

The Scratch Perverts are Tony Vegas, Prime Cuts and Plus One, undoubtedly three of the best turntablists in the world. They’ve won more ITF’s and DMC’s between them than there are acronyms for DJ battle competitions. I interviewed Joel aka Prime Cuts, and asked him where how the name came about. “It was born out of names Tony and Theo from the Wiseguys were playing around with for a bit of a laugh really. I remember I really hated the name at first, but it kinda works and sticks in people’s minds… people don’t forget it too quickly.” And why didn’t Prime Cuts like the name? “It made me think of dirty old men in raincoats, and now I am a dirty old man in a raincoat, so maybe it is applicable [laughs]”.

They quickly became the UK’s premier crew expanding to an eight strong team that included names like First Rate, Killa Kella and Mr Thing, the latter of which was here recently with DJ Vadim on the Russian Percussion Tour. It was only at the beginning of last year that they decided to slim back down to the original members of Tony Vegas and Prime Cuts. This was partly done to keep the name synonymous with the absolute highest standards and partly because this year will finally see the Scratch Perverts record their debut album. The split is well documented on the web and in print, but I wanted to ask Joel if he had any regrets or is he just simply sick of hearing about it.

“For me it was a very necessary step in the evolution of the Scratch Perverts. The crew is now a three-man outfit and it will be that until the end of the scratch perverts. Legally, the name is owned by all three of us. And I’m hugely confident in this crew.” Originally the crew was cut back to Tony Vegas and Prime Cuts, but now Plus One has been added to the line up. “It never felt like we were adding a third member, he was always a part of the crew. He’s a good friend and really dope DJ. He has an incredible musical brain and maturity, and we just felt it is the right time (2 years ago) to make it official.” I had to ask if he thinks they’d do a big ‘Reunion’ tour ala The Stones in 20 years time “I’m not sure we’ll all be alive in 20 years time [laughs]”

Being from the UK, and wining the DMC’s in New York, the home of hiphop, I wondered if Joel felt there was a difference in styles across the Atlantic. “Every area brings its own influences. In UK we have a lot of different music. I don’t think you get the mix of music you get in London anywhere else in the world. The UK in general has a lot of different kinds of music; it’s very multicultural, very integrated. The States are a bit little more isolated and I don’t think things mix together so much. We’ve got forms of music that’s been born from that [multicultural mix]; chiefly drum and bass, which is a reflection of a lot of different music forms and cultures coming together to form a completely different sound.”

“And that’s something we really try to embrace as the Scratch Perverts – the music we are surrounded by at home, to just to be “us” and what we know, and what we’ve absorbed over the years. There’s no point us trying to do a real heavy New York sounding hiphop album because that’s not us, we’re not from New York and that’s not what we’ve experienced.”

Hiphop culture seems to be on the up and up. You see DJ’s in advertisements selling anything from juice to cars. Joel says “that it’s all good. You’ll go to a local bar in London and there’ll be “Nothing” by Noriega playing, and you’ve got Missy Elliot in the charts, and I think it’s fucking great. It’s a wonderful thing and it’s a music people can get their teeth into a lot more than some of the dance culture which is there for you on the night and that’s it. I feel there’s a little more substance to hiphop. It’s got a cultural background and history that other styles don’t have.”

I asked him what impact he thought the Scratch Perverts residency at Fabric has had on the UK hiphop scene. “I’d like to think it’s drawn some people into it” he says. “You get a real mixed crowd down there; you get the crowd that’s there to see us, and then you get your club crowd, and then you get those from out of town. I get a real kick out of playing records that I know a lot of people there won’t have heard of, and watching people leap around and go crazy to it. One moment really sticks in my mind where I played an old school tune “Rock the Bells” by LL Cool J, something that I don’t normally play out. I played it and people went crazy. We actually got a remix off the back of that night because Howie B came up and loved it so much.”

Having said this, I had to ask him what he thought of the commercialisation of hiphop, specifically through MTV giving the Best HipHop Artist award to Jennifer Lopez. ‘I don’t really fucking care to be honest. The whole kind of awards thing is bullshit anyway. Who are MTV to say ‘you now are worthy of this’?” he asks. “For me if you’re a creative and honest person when you put something out there hopefully a lot of people relate to it. That to me is the awards ceremony right there on the street, where people embrace your music or they don’t. You don’t need a panel of judges made from nobodys, has beens and wish-they-were’s to say, “Yes, you are now Hiphop”. The fact that they chose J-Lo shows they have no fucking idea anyway.”

Being one of the most talented DJ’s in the world, I was wondering what he thought the most difficult aspect of Djing was. “Allowing yourself to have the confidence to be completely original” he says frankly. “When you first start djing it’s natural to mimic the people that you like, and I think it’s quite difficult to have the self-confidence to branch out and do something totally mad original. I was DJing for years before I did any original stuff that was really my own, and it takes a while to build that confidence”.

With DJing becoming more popular, and technological advancements in sound reproduction, and innovations such as CD Mixers and Final Scratch, I wanted to know where Joel saw this all heading. “I don’t see that Final Scratch and CD mixers completely revolutionise the turntable per se, as they basically do exactly the same job. The nice thing about them is you can burn your own sounds and tracks and then manipulate them. I see those things as a studio based tool. I don’t see them replace the turntables in a live environment because what’s the point? The turntable is already a better equation. It’s a fucker taking 200 records to and from a gig, but I’d rather that than a laptop into a sweaty club spinning mp3’s that doesn’t sound too clever.”

“As far as a studio thing they’re incredible. I have one of those pioneer CDJ1000’s and I love it, its an amazing thing to have. It means you can cut your own sounds. You can burp into a microphone and scratch your own burps, whereas before to do that you’d have to cut a dubplate and they’re not nice to cut and scratch.”

“That isn’t to say I’ve been sitting here burping and scratching for the last six months” he adds, laughing. I asked if he has a preference for either DJing or producing, and, as I suspected, he enjoys both. “I like the insular aspects of working in a studio and creating something, then handing it over to Tony Vegas and Plus one and seeing what their reaction is, and I get a great kick out of it when they really flip on something that I’ve done. And I love Djing because it’s there and then and I like the atmosphere and the party vibe when it’s a mad night out. I imagine that for the first half of next year there’ll be more producing than djing, but once the album is out we’re going to hit the road again.”

Their up-coming tour of Australia will see them doing some larger festivals and some smaller club gigs, and asked him what he thinks about this. “It’s nice when you have the intimacy of a close club gig, but for me it’s all about the atmosphere – if you can created the same atmosphere you do in a small club in a huge venue then that’s even more incredible. When we played Sydney last year we played to 1500 people, which is a pretty large venue, but the atmosphere was unbelievable – I would site it as one of the best gigs I think we’ve ever done, of all time. The atmosphere was at fever pitch and when it’s like that it just drives you to perform better.”

My final question was what was it about DJing that’s kept him going, what does he like best about it. “I suppose the lifestyle – getting the chance to meet and see people you wouldn’t normally have, the chance to travel to places like Australia and get payed for the pleasure of doing it and seeing people have a good time. It’s something we never lose sight of, we have one of the best jobs on earth, and we try to break our balls and work as hard as we can, improving what we do so everyone enjoys themselves as much as possible if they’re kind enough to come and see us.”

And luckily Adelaide will not miss out on seeing this awesome act, as they’ll be here in Early January next year.