Tag Archives: UK

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

A.Skillz

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I was chatting on the phone with Krafty Kuts’ partner in crime, the incredibly talented Adam Mills, aka A.Skillz. He was chilling in bed and having coffee brought to him by Melbourne’s Nick Thayer, who was staying with him working on a track in his studio. “It’s very early; it’s 9:20 in the morning!” he exclaims, “I didn’t have a big one last night so I’m travelling pretty good. Sometimes I have lunchtime lie in and recoup from the night before,” he chuckles

Mills started as a drummer, but exchanged sticks for decks after messing about playing records. “I grew up playing drums and always though that would be my career because that’s what I spent my time studying, and then I started DJing for a hobby and started making beats,” Mills says. “I actually had a music program to record the band, and I thought why not have a bash at making something with that. I made Trickatechnology, and I took it to Brighton to Krafty Kuts’ shop and he really liked it and asked if he could cut a dub plate and play it out. Naturally I said ‘alright’ and from there on I got more and more into DJing and it snowballed really. I started getting gigs and having clashes between DJing and the band, and in the end I had to leave the band because it wasn’t fair they’d miss out because I had a DJ gig.”

Apart from having Nick Thayer over, working on a track, Mills’ has been busy making mix CDs, gigging and trying to concentrate on his eagerly awaited first solo album. “This will be the first one that I’ve done totally by myself. I’m really in the middle of it and aiming to finish it by the end of the year, with a release next year.” No doubt he’ll get some help from Krafty, and he’s been working vocalists such as Curtis Santiago from Canada, who won the Galaxie Rising Stars Award from the CBC a few years ago, and is making waves on the hiphop / funk scene over there.

“I’ve been fitting that around doing a lot of other things, doing the odd remix here and there,” adds Mills. “I’ve just put out another bootleg, called Money Banger and Hotdog, part of the Insane Bangers series, which is something me and Krafty started”. He’s also been on tour in the USA, Canada and recently Australia. “Canada was quite similar to Australia in terms of the scenes there. I’m not strictly a Breaks DJ, although I’m somewhere in that bracket, and they’re really into it and I was really well received, with clubs of about 500 people really going for it, but the American leg of the tour was a very different story. I was playing to smaller bars, and I’m not as well known and don’t have the exposure I do in Canada. But all the shows were good, it was just like starting from the beginning again. There’s a few people over there doing what I do – Fort Knox Five, All Good Funk Alliance, Malente. It’s a small scene, but America’s so big that thier small scene is actually quite big.”

Whilst a lot of DJs including Krafty Kuts are getting into the harder sound of breaks, A Skillz is doggedly a funk fiend and plays the funky side of breaks. I asked him his opinion of the harder stuff, and he is a fan but more philosophical about the whole scene. “With really hard stuff, when a tune is new or unreleased, that’s when it’s having its day, but by the time it’s released it’s got about a month before it’s old news when the next heavy tune comes out. You’ve got to have the new stuff all the time. But with the funky, more musical stuff that’s got more of a hook, and got that melody you really enjoy listening to, it has a longer shelf life, even 2 years down the line. You might find an old tune and think ‘I’ve always wanted to buy this tune’, but if you find an old drum and bass or hard breaks tune you wouldn’t really consider buying it. I think the funkier, soulful stuff has a longer shelf life.”

Talk shifts to his latest mix CDs, namely FreshTrax on the Finger Lickin’ label. “When I did the FreshTrax mix I was slightly frustrated because it was purely Finger Lickin’ material. When you’re quite limited in what you’re allowed to use it is a little frustrating. I did a ‘BoxFresh’ (clothing label) mix with Krafty, and because there was no limit to what we could use – there were no licensing issue or anything because it was a give away – we could use anything. I think when you’ve got unlimited choice in music it becomes really fun! The FreshTrax was at the opposite end of the scale, it was a lot harder to put together. But it’s a showcase of Finger Lickin’ rather than me as a DJ. The one I’ve just finished called Export 2 (due on Finger Lickin’ soon) but I had a lot more choice, and I really had a lot of fun with that too. I haven’t really done a lot of mixes on my own, I’ve done so many with Krafty that it’s not tedious at all!” he laughs.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Koma and Bones

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Often mistakenly called a ‘duo’, Koma and Bones is actually comprised of Chris Kirkbridge, Andy Duckmanton and Jude Sebastian. The three of them met through the usual way most DJ / producer hybrids meet – through a love of music. Duckmanton (Koma) has been DJing since the late 80s, playing in clubs in his home town of Lancaster, close to Manchester. “We met just as all the rave culture was kicking off,” Duckmanton begins, “and I believe Chris and Jude used to come down and sample what was on offer, if you get my drift,” he chuckles, “including the music! But we didn’t get together until some years later. Chris (Bones) by this time had been doing his own thing DJ wise, and in about 95 and we formed a DJ partnership as ‘Koma and Bones’ doing a few gigs here and there but nothing major.”

“Jude, or ‘And’,” he laughs, “had been getting down with a few keyboards and samplers, learning his trade so to speak. I had met him a couple of years previous and knew him quite well, and by this time he had already had a couple of tracks out on his own, so it just seemed a natural progression for myself and Chris to get together with him as our producer and engineer to see what we could come up with, and so here we are ten or so years later.”

A few years ago, Koma and Bones seemed to be everywhere. They had tracks on numerous record labels, and had done remixes of artists such as New Order, Crystal Method, EZ Rollers, with a remix of X-Press 2’s Smoke Machine winning them ‘best breaks remixer’ in the US’s Remix magazine. But of late they’ve been a little quiet. “Funnily enough we have probably been busier in the last 6 months than we have ever been!” chimes in Kirkbridge. “We have launched our label Burrito, recorded for lot49, TCR and Thrust. I guess when you are not doing albums your profile does tend to seem a bit quieter, but that’s the route we have taken”, he grins. “We’ve done plenty of remixes, maybe not as high profile as the New Order one,” Duckmanton chimes in, “but we’ve remixed the Breakfastaz, La Liga, Uptown Connection, Headrock Valley Beats, plus made a track for Rennie Pilgrem’s TCR 100 release, Time Waster. So to us it’s been business as usual really, but I think because we haven’t done another artist album or mix compilation you just don’t get all the same publicity.”

DJs / Producers seem commonplace now days, but Koma and Bones were almost driven to produce to find the sound they wanted to play. “It was the natural thing to try and do in the beginning, myself and Chris just wanted the chance to get a track together just using samples at first to see what we could come up with, but we needed someone who could put it all together someone who had the knowledge and the equipment, so that’s when we approached Jude to see if he would be interested,” says Duckmanton.

Now with a wide range of breaks and producers making excellent music, the boys feel a bit spoilt for choice. “Evil 9, Freeland, Meat Katie, Jono Fernandez, Metric, Cirez D, John Dahlback, Sebastian Ingrosso, anything really that sounds fat in a club,” quips Kirkbridge. “We like to embrace a few styles when playing,” adds Duckmanton. “At the moment we’ve been playing a bit of techno and electro, producers like King Roc, Justice, Oliver Huntemann, D Ramirez to name a few, but we still mix it up with the breaks… I think as long as it’s got a ‘breaks mentality’ we will be into it, the Justice remix of Franz Ferdinand is a fave at the moment and Oliver Huntemann’s Bastard is awesome!”

They’re also well known for making cheeky bootlegs. “We make them, we just can’t talk about them!” cracks Kirkbridge. “Yes, we’ve done quite a few over the last couple of years, of big artists too,” adds Duckmanton, “but I think unless your selling quite a few thousand the record companies wont bother you. I would have thought as its pretty good promotion for the artist – almost like a free remix!” Kirkbridge chimes in again “Hopefully the artists see them as a compliment. But who knows?”

You can catch Koma and Bones playing at the We Love Sounds Festival alongside Grandmaster Flash, Mampi Swift plus IC3, James Zabiela, and Patife with Cleveland Watkiss plus a host of local and interstate guests on Sun 11 Jun at the Shores Entertainment complex, West Beach.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Tayo

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It was quite early in the morning when I called the UK, and computer problems meant I called a little late and had to cut my interview short, but Tayo, the Don of the breakbeat world, was gracious and kind, and let me conduct the interview without any sense of annoyance, although he did stifle a few yawns every now and then. Having been around since year dot, working with Adam Freeland, being head of Mob Records, who gave Stanton Warriors a push start, and with his radio show ‘Dread at the Controls’ on KISS FM, he is at the forefront of pushing new sounds and keeping the breaks scene vibrant and alive.

He has also put out many a compilation including Beatz and Bobz and Y4K, and his new Mix CD “These Are the Breaks” is the follow up to Krafty Kuts’ fantastic double album from 2003. “They wanted me to do it,” Tayo says about the new compilation. “DMC got in touch and said they were re-igniting the series and they wanted me to do this one. I guess the label wanted to do a breaks series and they already had a brand in place, so they called me in.” The mix is quite different from Krafty Kuts mix. Whereas Krafty blends hiphop, funk, breaks and even dnb, Tayo is straight up dubby breaks, a sound which Tayo has made his own.

“It’s very much the music I’m involved in and that I make,” he notes, “and I’m just trying to bring my own interpretation of the breaks so people don’t get bored of the breakbeat formula. I think sometimes it can be a little straight ahead and know what you’re getting, you know?” and I agree, but also say how I think breaks one is the most interesting scenes out there. “There’s a lot of interesting music out there,” Tayo agrees, “and I was just trying to put my own stamp on it. It does have a few of my own productions on there because this style (dubby breaks) is hard to find,” he adds, “but at the same time making tunes is what I have been doing for the last year or so.”

And that doesn’t mean Tayo is bored with breaks, on the contrary he is enjoying the broad brush that breaks DJs paint with. “If I look through my record box I’m quite happy with what I’ve got at the moment. I’ve been looking out to other scenes, all related to the breaks genre, but not quite so much nu-school breaks, which can seem a little formulaic sometimes. But it was a chance to get some of the stuff I’ve been involved with out there.”

Tayo has been rather busy in the studio. “I’ve got a track coming out on Mantra Breaks I did with Acid Rockers called ‘Shorty the Pimp’, I’ve got another coming out on Aquasky’s label Passenger called ‘Wildlife Dub’, I’ve just done a remix of Basement Jaxx, and I’ve got a single coming out on Finger Lickin’ later this year, and they want me to do some more stuff and make an albums worth. I’m going to let stuff incubate for the next few months and get it done,” he says of the deal, which will be his first artist album. “It’s going to be whole new stuff, because the mix album was done so I could get my stuff off my hard drive and out there. Now I want to concentrate on less dancefloor tracks and more album tracks, with vocalists and so on. It’ll still be dancefloor,” he assures me “but just less 12 inch, shall we say? There will be stuff I’ve worked on but haven’t released… I’ve got a grand idea for it, but whether it works out like that is another thing, but I’m going to have fun trying.”

Tayo is also looking forward to coming to Adelaide. He says he’s only had one ‘big’ show in Adelaide, and that was at the Beach Party in 2004, but I assure him that breaks is a lot bigger now through the efforts of Blake of Stardust, Los Proyectos Magicos, Hi-Fi, and the Adelaide Breaks Collective. Being reassured after I told him about the massive Krafty Kuts and Stanton Warriors show late last year, Tayo is looking forward to “having fun and getting a good crowd” at the end of March.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Jay Cunning

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In the world of dance music, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that having a career that spans over 10 years is in fact a long time to be in the biz. Many DJs come and go, having taking it up as a hobby in their younger days, or as a way to supplement their incomes, but then they have a home and a family, or get a ‘real’ job and don’t have the time, or doing something lame like music journalism. Jay Cunning, whilst still only relatively young, has been at the game since 1989, starting in acid house and working his way through musical styles until he settled with breakbeat in the late 90s.

Cunning is your pretty typical “hard work pays off with a bit of luck and lot of skill” DJ story. His main break into the spotlight was a two-pronged attack with his skills pricking up the ears of listeners on BreaksFM, and also the editors of both Musik and iDJ magazines. “I used to always go to this record store in Kensington,” Cunning begins, “and that’s where I started buying stuff that was a little bit different from house or drum and bass. I started listening to the early Freskanova stuff, early stuff from Matt Cantor (Freestylers) and Andy Gardner (Plump DJs), and I had been buying it for ages but not really doing anything with it, just playing it to myself. And I saw a flyer in the shop for BreaksFM, so I called the guy up and had a chat with Alex (Orton-Green aka Uncouth Yoof) and we spoke for a couple of hours and we got along very well, and he said, ‘send us a CD, and if we like it we’ll put it on the show’. They stuck it on the show and next thing I’m doing the weekly radio show.”

His other opportunity came from the Pressure Breaks mix CD that Cunning puts out. “It’s quite funny, a lot of people think the Pressure Breaks CDs are officially released and you can buy them in shops and stuff, but these are all purely promotional material though,” he chuckles. “It was a way for me to get a mix CD together and out there. The way I was looking at it as a new DJ coming into it was these labels and promoters are getting CDs left right and centre and I needed to do something that was going to get me noticed and really stand out,” so with a friend Cunning worked on the artwork as if it was an actual release. “The first one I did I sent it off to iDJ and Musik magazine and I actually won the competitions with the same CD twice!” he laughs, which was a little embarrassing with the two most popular dance magazines having the same mix out in the same month, but a bonanza for Cunning’s DJ credibility.

And Cunning thinks aspiring DJs need to learn from his example. “I’d say it to anyone who’s starting out DJing, put as much effort as you can. With picking the tunes and doing the mix you could be the best in the world, but I’ve been given CDs with “Bob” written on a blank CD and there isn’t any motivation to listen to it. If you’re getting X amounts of CDs a week, and some one’s gone to the effort of doing art work, as a label boss or promoter you go ‘hold on a minute, I’ll take a listen to that’”, he smiles.

Whilst Jay has been busy producing tracks with 2Sinners and Smithmonger, and running Menu Music, his label that he runs with partners in crime Atomic Hooligan, they’ve also squeeze in a mix for the latest “Beats and Bobs” on Functional. “Both Terry (Ryan of Atomic Hooligan) and I said from the start this should represent what people would hear in a club if Jay Cunning and Atomic Hooligan were on the decks,” Cunning explains. “I will say it is quite conservative, and I use the word loosely, but we’re a lot more cut and paste with rough scratching thrown in and dropping stuff down on it when we play live, but with a mix CD it’s got to be a little more structured. The Mix CD shows a diversity in breaks, there’s techy stuff, funky stuff, tougher stuff, but when you see me and Terry out, you really don’t know what you’re going to hear next; it might be house, it might be drum and bass, it might be a hiphop thing. And this is very much the Menu ethos – creating a party vibe,” he grins.

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Menu Music – Terry Hooligan

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Despite having a wealth of releases between them, Terry Ryan, Matt Welch (of Atomic Hooligan) and Jay Cunning discovered a mutual love for a certain type of breaks that were funky and full of bass. Yet this trio weren’t feeling what other record labels were putting out, so they put their money where their mouths were and set up their own label.

“Me and Jay were in a fish and chip shop in Queens Park in London after doing a radio show a few years ago,” Terry Ryan explains, “and we knew we needed a name for the label. I was saying ‘we can call it chair records or ketchup records, it doesn’t really matter, as long as it’s got a name’ then I pointed to the menu and said ‘we can even call it Menu Music‘ and it just stuck. We even went back there to do some of our press shots!” he laughs.

Setting up a music label in this day and age isn’t an easy thing. Many fold from financial pressures, or lose their focus as the green rolls in. Even Adam Freeland’s Marine Parade had to close briefly last year. With so many out there, how will Menu Music stand out? “Well, there’s really only one true way to make a label stand out,” states Ryan, “and that’s the music. You can have promo, good press, radio and all that stuff, but if the music ain’t good, the label won’t stand out. Plus, I think we have a good package. We have the radio show and the multi-deck show that Cunning and me do, so Menu will always have a presence in the clubs on the airwaves. And we have a really clear view of what we like and what we want to play, and that spills over into our A&R for Menu. I don’t think there are many labels at the moment that are really consistent. We are very, very selective with what we want to release. And we wanted to hear music with funk but with enough ass in the bottom end to make the walls shake. That’s what we wanted to hear, and that’s what we want on Menu. That’s quite a broad statement, we realise, but when you hear the first release from Rico Tubbs you will hopefully understand what we mean. Flashlighter and Brazilia sum this up perfectly. And we have even more of this kind of ass funk to come!”

Their style of breaks is hard to define, but it certainly gets the body moving. Rico Tubbs‘ tunes are the bomb, being full of funk with a phatass booty-shaking bassline, while on Atomic Hooligan’s new You Are Here the music unfurls in a confident and stylish manner, eschewing the ‘laddy’ tag that breaks sometimes conjures up and presents a much more mature and interesting side. “We have a couple of new guys I’m really excited about,” Ryan enthuses. “Jay Stewart really has the sound we want for Menu. The next release is by J-Cat who has made this amazing little, half big beat/half ripping breaks number, that’s also got an Atomic Hooligan remix. We have Majool from Argentina who has again given us something completely different but fits into the Menu ethic. And of course there’s Rico – we still have the best to come from him!”

With iTunes and legal internet downloading becoming widespread, I was interested to find out they view vinyl as very important for the label. “Menu will always release on vinyl as our primary format. Just because there are new formats doesn’t mean the old trusted ones are going to disappear. I think there is space for all the various ways for music to be heard, but I love vinyl, no two ways about it,” Ryan declares, “and so does Jay. Personally, vinyl still holds so much magic and potential.”

That said, they also embrace digital music. They sent me a pre-release copy of Flashlighter via email, a process that is becoming far more common. “It puts us closer to the consumer. With no middleman you can really see what’s going on,” Ryan says. “And it’s a worldwide format. On a real practical level, someone in South Africa, someone in Russia and someone in London can all buy the same tune on the day of release, and that’s very positive. No waiting around for weeks for it to get to your local record shop. Plus, it’s unlimited. Once the shops run out of the release, it may take a week or may never get re-stocked; this way, a release can just tick over forever. So if someone gets into the label at a latter date, they will have full access to past releases.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Kosheen

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Since their meteoritic rise to the top of the dance charts, Kosheen, consisting of singer Sian Evans, Darren ‘Decoder’ Beal and Markee ‘Substance’ Morrison has toured the world, playing hundreds of gigs to thousands of people. Their incredible live shows have wowed audiences and their releases impressed critics on all the major continents of the globe. The name Kosheen is, according to Morrison is a mutated version of Cochise, and also means ‘Old’ and ‘New’ in Japanese. That’s an apt description, because Kosheen has been around for a while now, and yet still manages to stay fresh and relevant in the demanding dance music scene.

Both Beal and Morrison grew up on a healthy diet of punk and brit pop. “As a teenager, I was listening to The Jam, The Smiths, Echo and the Bunnymen, Stone Roses, Happy Mondays,” confesses Morrison, but both grew into the burgeoning Bristol drum and bass scene, along side seminal dnb DJ Roni Size. They met at a nightclub where Morrison DJed, Ruffneck Thing. They also met Evans there, and the trio hit it off. With a view to make actual songs with a beginning, middle and end, rather than little loops and quirky vocals, they took the world by storm with Hide U, which charted in Top 30s around the world.

On the back of this success, the trio began taking their show on the road. “I think we’ve played nearly everywhere in the world except Outer Mongolia and Ecuador!” laughs Morrison. “In Asia we’ve played China, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand. I love that part of the world!!” Travelling for such a long time and to so many places was “exhausting though”, he adds. “Especially at first as we didn’t get home for 3 months. We’re more selective now and space our touring out a bit to stay sane!”

Morrison relates on of his favourite on the road stories from when they toured Serbia in 2001. “Just after the Nato bombing!” he exclaims “We were kinda worried that they were gonna lynch us or something! All the bridges were destroyed and still sticking out of the river and stuff. When we got on stage and started our first song Catch, the entire crowd went mad and 20,000 people were all singing along. Me and Sian looked at each other like ‘Huh?!?’ Apparently our tracks were all over the radio! And when we went to the airport they were selling ‘our album’ at the airport, but it wasn’t even out yet!! And when you asked for it and they went in the back to burn it off and photocopy the cover!! Apparently we sold 50,000, but we never saw a penny though,” he laments.

The last album Kokopelli was seen by many to be darker than their debut Resist, and heralded the start of dnb producers using guitars. I asked Morrison if he has noticed the increase in guitars in dnb from the likes of Pendulum, and what he thinks this means. “Well I can only speak for myself, but the guitar was my first instrument and I write a lot with the guitar. But as kids of the electronic age we’ve experimented and fused the best elements of guitar with electronic production. I think on our new album we’ve reached the apex.” The new album Window on the World is long overdue, being held up with lawyers and contracts and the like, but is out early 2006 through Universal. “It’s the best thing we’ve done,” revels Morrison. “It’s more electronic, and the sound is awesome, it’s the kind of place we’ve been heading to and now we’ve reached it. It’s different to anything else out there, but unique quality music that people will appreciate.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Roots Manuva

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At age 7, Rodney Smith, thought he was too cool for the violin, and, being the son of poor parents from Jamaica living in South London, he sought out music more to his taste. “I was walking past Stockwell Skate Park and there was this sound system being set up. They were probably just trying out their speakers, and these dodgy-looking blokes standing beside it just admiring the sound of their bass,” the man who is Roots Manuva describes the first time he saw a sound system. His voice over the phone is exactly the same as it is on his albums, and his inflection and tone is wonderfully lyrical. “The sound system has been a massive part of the social actuality of the Afro-Caribbean people. Part of me culture and me heritage. That was what brought me to music, the sound through a big sound system, not the learning of music. I was learning the violin when I was 7, but it wasn’t cool enough for me, you know, so I kinda stumbled into reggae and then in my early teens was attracted to hiphop.”

Smith has just finished a “Back To Mine” mix, and just completed a tour of Australia, (sadly missing Adelaide), but I got the opportunity to see him not only at Park Life in Sydney, but a few years ago in Melbourne too at Vibes on a Summers Day 2001. In 2001 he just had a DJ and extra MC, but this time around he had a whole band. I asked the enigmatic performer why he came down with the band this time. “Using a band just seemed natural, just a natural evolution from sampling and using the machines. It adds a whole new dimension and flexibility to the live entity. It’s more of a challenge, it’s more scary, and there’s a higher place to fall from when you’re using a band.”

Smith enjoyed his tour, but finds travelling tedious. “It’s such a pleasure to be performing to such large numbers in Australia. It was a good ego boost, or ‘a ripper’ as you say over there,” he laughs. “Travelling is a real pain in the arse,” he adds. “Just as you’re getting into a place, you’re flying away again. And with Australia being so far away and so big, going through all those time zones it was such a physical engagement. There was many a tetchy moment between the band. There’s just so much to think about – everyone’s emotional state is fragile and up in the air, and it took a force from another world to come down and assist us to keep it together,” he says, with his voice rising like a preacher.

His last artist album, ‘Awfully Deep’ released at the beginning of this year, was also quite a challenge. “It was more intense, more of a laboured process, with more attention to finicky detail. Our past records have been more punk rock,” his laugh booms again. “A demo recorded in my front room, and other times we’d take five skeletons of tracks down to the studio and try and get five tracks done in two days. Have a couple of spliffs and a half a bottle of champagne and it was like, ‘right that’s it!’ But no more, we don’t have the time or money to be messing around,” he says sternly. “This time I would start off with the stripped down laptop ditty and take that to a bunch of musicians and get them to musically embellish what I do to step it further to a different sonic harmonic spectrum.”

Our chat takes us to his latest project, Back To Mine. “This compilation wasn’t about influences for me, it was more about putting together a bunch of music under the context of people coming back to my house after a night out,” he says, when I ask about the tracks he’s chosen. I mention how I think this Back To Mine is one of the most enjoyable, most listenable and accessible, especially compared to Adam Freeland’s Back To Mine. “Is it?” he asks, thanking me. “Well I’m always making mix tapes, so I kind of tried to hit it with the mix tape stroke radio show vibe. Definitely thinking about my audience, and not sitting there scratching my own balls and showing everyone how I have a deep, deep knowledge of all there is in music,” he laughs.

 

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Stereo MCs

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The Stereo MCs are back after a few years in the wilderness with a new label, a new record Paradise, and new positive outlook. Speaking with Nick Hallam from the band was an interesting experience. Listening to someone who has experienced the worst of what the fickle music industry has to offer, but someone who’s still positive about the band’s musical future, gives even jaded music reporter like myself some hope that beyond marketing, money and managers, music is still the most important thing.

Even though the core group of people who form the Stereo MCs – Rob Birch, the indomitable front man of the group, writer and instrumentalist Nick Hallam, and singer Stephanie Mckay – have been on the road and in each others face on tour busses for quite a long time, there is still a great deal of love for each other. “If we’re not making music, we go to Rob’s house and listen and play records, play some table football, that kind of thing,” says Hallam.

Hallam claims there is quite a lot of optimism now about all aspects of the group. “We toured Deep Down and Dirty for about a year or two after the release,” he says of the last few years. “It was a bit of a weird time really. Because Deep Down and Dirty didn’t sell as well as Connected, the record company started becoming a bit negative, and we felt we had to get away from them.”

Things then changed quite dramatically in the Stereo MCs camp. “We fired our manager and we carried on doing quite a lot of live shows for a number of years and then got back into the writing process. In the meantime we were sorting out our legal troubles as our manager took us to the lawyers. And after that all got sorted out, we got out of our deal with Island Records, which we thought of as a corporate record company and we didn’t feel anything for them. Then we got a new manager, who is really positive and helped us start our own label, and we started to get our confidence back.”

Not surprisingly, the legal and contractual problems left a bad taste in the group’s mouth. “There was so much negativity around us at that stage that we kind of lost the plot a little bit, we thought it was all a bit pointless, we didn’t feel as though we were part of something anymore. Island were acting like a bank and we just felt de-motivated by the whole thing,” he laments. “But now we feel it’s a new start – we’ve got the new label, we’re doing it kind of low key really, but we’re establishing a firm base for ourselves again to build something. We’ve done some live shows around the UK and Europe and it’s been real nice, it’s feeling good, as good as when we first started even,” he enthuses. “It’s refreshing.”

“After Connected we had a few bad years where we shouldn’t have been in the studio. We needed to get some fresh juice really. We did the DJ Kicks thing for K7! and it kick started us into making records again. When we did Deep Down and Dirty we felt really good about it, because we had broken through a hurdle for ourselves in terms of actually making a record, so we were a bit disappointed at how the record label treated us like a fucking donkey, you know what I mean?” he laughs.

“But now I think we have control over what we are doing, we’ve got our shit back and we’re feeling more inspired than we have done for about 10 years. Once we cleared the decks of all the bullshit, got rid of people who had grudges against us because we hadn’t made them rich,” he chuckles. “Now we got a new team who have an open minded, positive approach to us and what we were doing, and it has became about making a good record and having fun doing it.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Depeche Mode

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Depeche Mode is one of the stalwarts of the alternative music scene. They’ve been making music which is both moving and emotional for 25 years, have been through various line ups, and have endured all the hardships and highlights that a quarter of a century in the music industry could throw at them. “We feel really privileged to have worked for 25 years,” says Martin Gore, the lead songwriter of the band since Vince Clarke left in the early 80s. “It’s kind of nice being around for so long, it means parents can introduce their kids to us,” he laughs gently.

Alternative is not a word they take to lightly however, as selling over 50 million records is hardly “alternative”. But they do have a distinctive style, a style that puts them almost in a genre of their own making. The floaty vocals, the dark, electro synths and emotionally charged lyrics have kept them in a mystical place aurally, the province of Goths and other alternative subcultures, although they’ve appeared on Top of the Pops numerous times, and charting in the Top 10 with 13 album release. “We don’t really make music for any one group of people,” Gore states, “this album is aimed at anyone, our old diehard fans and new fans alike.”

Depeche Mode has never felt the need to branch out. “We leave that for our remixers,” he chuckles. They synth lines and dream-world vocals lend themselves to electronic remixes especially, and they’ve been remixed by nearly every big name in the electronic music scene since the 80s, including Flood, DJ Shadow, Kruder + Dorfmeister, Speedy J and Portishead. They even offered their tunes Dream On and I Feel Love from Exciter up for fans on the AcidPlanet website, although Martin isn’t too keen on doing that again, although he wouldn’t go into further details.

But this is almost like mutual obligation, considering that Depeche Mode pioneered synth and sample based electronic music, influencing everyone from Portishead to Derrick May. I was surprised to hear that they had asked Ben Hillier, who has produced the acclaimed Doves release Some Cities, and Blur’s classic Think Tank, to produce their latest album. “Ben Hillier isn’t known for working on electronic bands, so we were surprised and excited when he turned up with all this vintage synth gear,” Gore says. “We used both old and new technologies on this album, a bit of re-wire on a Mac G-5, along with the old synths.”

However, despite claims that Hillier hadn’t listened to the back catalogue he was supplied, he did add a little something to the band. Although the band went into the studio with an open mind, they were surprised with Hillier’s ‘down to business’ attitude. “We’ve always thought we worked quickly with other producers, but Ben worked with us really fast,” Gore exclaims, “it was probably the quickest recording session we’ve ever done, and it was great,” he adds with the touch of a smile.

The new album is also a little more upbeat, but that’s a little like saying a slug is faster than a snail. “Melancholically upbeat” laughs Gore, agreeing with me. In the press release it claims that Dave Gahan, the main vocalist said: “It’s better being in Depeche Mode now than it has been for 15 years!” “It’s probably because he’s feeling good about himself and his health,’ Gore says, a veiled reference to Gahan’s drug troubles in the 90s. “He also wrote a few tracks on the album (I Want It All, Suffer Well and Nothing’s Impossible), and I guess that makes him feel more attached to the creative process this time around, which is a great thing for the band as a whole. I feel excited to have a new album and keen to get on the road for our world tour in 2006.”

dB Magazine, Interview, Music, Writing

Plump DJs

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Lee Rous of the Plump DJs is a very down to earth person who doesn’t like to mince words. He’s very modest in his achievements, and very thankful for the lucky breaks thrown his way. Having had the very glamorous job of waiter, especially compared to partner Andy Gardner’s box factory job, before the two met and began making music, neither had any idea they would transform the dancefloors of the world.

“I don’t think we were ever arrogant enough to believe we were going to succeed in what we were doing,” Rous begins. “You can just hope people like what you do when you get in the studio. We count our lucky stars every time we get another gig – it’s the best job in the world and we’re lucky to be doing it.” But he’s not saying it’s easy. “This summer has been giving me a good ol’ punch up to be honest,” he laughs. “We’ve been touring massively all this summer, and been trying to work in the studio when we can, but I think me and Andy are feeling the heat a little bit at the moment. We’ve been doing lots of gigs and it’s wearing us down a little bit, but it’s all for good, and we’re looking forward to getting stuck into our artist album and having a little bit of a chill out at the end of summer.”

When not touring, the pair have been in the studio, recording some new material and preparing for their latest mix CD, Saturday Night Lotion. “All the records we’ve done since Eargasm are all dancefloor tunes”, Rous explains on why a mix CD rather than a full artist album. “They’re just uncompromising dancefloor records we’ve really enjoyed and road tested for the last two years. Bearing that in mind, and thinking about what an artist album is – an artist album to us should really reach beyond the dancefloor and be a bit more personal. I think we really wanted to provide a dancefloor album, so slipping other artists on this album from the Finger Lickin’ label seemed to be quite a natural thing to do. Those artists are really influential to us,” he adds.

Rous thinks DJing and production go hand in hand. “I DJed before I knew how to work the studio,” he states. “It is absolutely lovely making a nice record in the studio, it’s a superbly creative process and such a great feeling once you finish a track. You get so excited about having the opportunity to be playing the record to people. But then again you need to play the record to people to get the full effect.” Wondering if there was any chance the pair would go the way of Adam Freeland or Freestylers and get a band together to perform, I was surprised to hear they prefer the DJing thing. “We’re don’t really have the inspiration at the moment to take the Plumps live, we really enjoy the simplicity of DJing, of playing records and providing a soundtrack to the evening, and we find it works really well. We’re learning about what makes people dance and get in the studio and putting that to practice. I think when we make another artist album you could see a lot of experiments that are quite unusual to what people think the Plump DJs are, but we’ve got no real ambition to do a band thing at the moment.”

Saturday Night Lotion is also the name of a new pheromone based scent aimed at the clubbing market, and all the promo material about it claims the Plumps are the ‘obvious choice’ for the face of the cologne. “I’m not really sure what that was all about! Rous proclaims innocently. “It’s a funny website though. Not really sure why I was the ‘obvious choice’, maybe I’m just an ‘obvious’ person,” he laughs.

The pair had just finished performing the Glastonbury festival, playing with the who’s who of dance music. Booked to do three sets over the weekend, it seemed the English Summer had other ideas. “We tried to do 3 sets, one for this breast cancer organisation, but unfortunately their tent got struck by lightning and got washed away in the rain. But the other gigs went really well, we had a great time.” Another festival they really enjoyed was Field Day in Sydney in 2003, which they still count as one of their best gigs to date. “Yeah, Field Day 2003 was such a momentous occasion for us, a first realisation of our goal of wanting to get breakbeat heard at such a large scale,” Rous says fondly. So, when are they heading back to Australia? Rous wasn’t sure about playing Field Day this year, but did hint they boys would make it down to Adelaide for the Big Day Out.