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Earplug Q&A with Jamie LidellEarplug Home > Issue 124
Feature
July 3, 2008
Jiminy Cricket
Jamie Lidell chirps a different strain of soul
When it comes to playing that funky music, any white boy can sashay into a studio, push some buttons, and walk out a blue-eyed pop star. But few vocalists of any shade can carry a tune while simultaneously carrying off a range of absurd antics. In addition to breaking out the beatbox, Jamie Lidell samples and loops himself into a howling chorus of banshees, unleashing his inner soul-man in a caped romp across the stage. Dressed to the nines, but no less naked for it, Lidell has banged his sweet pipes at Warp over the course of three albums, making the former IDM label sound more like Stax or Motown. On his latest release, the intimately titled Jim, Lidell brings Burt Bacharach-style harmonics to the dub plate. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez asked the man about his unlikely career trajectory, his sartorial prowess, and how "the voice" reacts to a specific nightmare scenario.
You are here: Earplug Home > Issue 107
Feature
November 8, 2007
Minced Beats
Prefuse 73 puts hip-hop through its paces
For almost a decade, Prefuse 73 has rocked Warp's glitch-pop roster with hyper-edited, slightly schizophrenic, somewhat melancholy hopscotch beats. While globe-trotting in support of his latest CD, Preparations, Guillermo Scott Herren (also one half of Savath y Savalas) set aside a couple of hours to talk roots, edits, and karma with Earplug's Jorge Hernandez.
Earplug: What inspired your time in Spain?
Guillermo Scott Herren: My father's Spanish and my mom's Cuban/Irish. I was born in Miami, but I came up in Atlanta — a largely black-and-white world. So, I didn't have a chance to dig into that part of myself. People would say, "You're what?" The whole time I was [living] in Spain, I was devoted to absorbing the culture, the people and getting a sense of myself.
EP: Did you do any partying?
GSH: I know I'm on one of the ultimate electronic labels, and I love Warp — they've been nothing but good to me — but I really consider myself a hip-hop artist. I don't really know much about electronic music and the club scene's not my thing; so no, I didn't party at all.
EP: Are you tight with other Latino/Hispanic electronic artists like Tommy Guerrero, Kid 606, or Matias Aguayo?
GSH: Tommy's my boy. I love that guy. His head and heart are totally in the right place and his music's great. A couple others I've actually had trouble with. At a recent festival I had words with someone over the heritage thing. I'm not going to name names because it's not important.
EP: Fair enough. I saw your newborn's picture on MySpace. How's that going?
GSH: That's Alejandro, and he stays with his abuela in New York while I'm on the road, which is a lot. I'm 32 now. Over the years, I've had everything — girls, drugs, fame — up in my face, and when you're young, you can get caught up. As you get older, you realize that's all meaningless and a big distraction that has nothing to do with anything real.
EP: Sounds holistic. What's your spiritual life like?
GSH: I get that from my mom; she's a big New Age hippie type, and she's been a big influence.
EP: Your tracks are highly disembodied. Why mince the words of vocalists and MCs like that?
GSH: When I started out, I was almost obsessed, compulsive, about that editing style. I was trying to get at something with the vocal treatments and I was reacting to something and defining something for myself. Lately, I've eased up on that and now the words are much more important and present.
EP: Your music's like a bipolar dialect...
GSH: I've definitely experienced that — the highs and the lows and the mood swings. I've learned to work through it and use it to put more passion into my music.
EP: You're pretty hardcore about the state of hip-hop and the industry. Antipop Consortium was on Warp, and you've worked with Mos Def and El-P. Any collaborations you've passed on or regret?
GSH: Again, I'm not into calling people out in print, but I've turned down some pretty high-profile calls because I'm not into doing things just to make a buck or be part of some gimmick.
EP: You started out DJing and working for a commercial studio. Has radio success killed hip-hop? Anyone on the Top 40 you'd care to produce? Mary J. Blige, maybe?
GSH: If Mary J. Blige came knocking, I'd be all over that, no doubt. And some of the tracks on the new Kanye album are really smooth. Many others, including some of the more allegedly enlightened ones that are selling out, I still have issues with.
EP: On the subject of issues — your name refers to the jazz period pre-fusion, 1973. Your inward style seems suited to that era's free-form experimentation. Why the disconnect? Are you a bebop head?
GSH: Music lost focus around then. I admire musicians like Alice Coltrane who had a solid vision and explored it all the way through, and took the listener along, no matter the fallout or feedback.
EP: While we're talking feedback, how do you like doing press?
GSH: Cats who get on the phone and straight up say they've had a promo for a month and didn't bother listening before calling, that just kills me. There are good guys out there. This one guy, at another website, his editors questioned his integrity and fired him. I heard from him the other day; he's reporting on Iraq now.
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Feature
August 30, 2007 Papis Chulos
Modeselektor go from mama's boys to proud papas
Modeselektor's down 'n dirty techno takes no prisoners. The duo's live shows are bombastic assaults on the senses that leave no genre unturned — crunk, dub, and electro all get worked into the mix with equal abandon. Gernot Bronsert and Sebastian Szary have been kicking around since 1996, but the one-two punch of their 2007 Boogy Bytes Vol. 3 mix and this September's full-length, Happy Birthday! — both for their longtime home Bpitch Control — have set the world's dance floors atwitter with sweaty glee. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez rang up Szary to talk shop, babies, and bingo while Bronsert puttered and muttered around in their Berlin home studio.
Earplug: This is a new studio?
Sebastian Szary: We left the studio one year ago because the house was under reconstruction. During the production for Happy Birthday!, we did several tracks at Gernot and his girlfriend's home. Now she's pregnant, my girlfriend's pregnant. It was all quite a production.
EP: When are the babies due?
SS: Mine's coming first, in October; Gernot's is due in December. This is the first time. I don't know what will happen then. This is a new experience.
EP: A lot of club kids are having babies now. What's going on?
SS: That's the reason we called the album Happy Birthday! We had a lot of different names for it. We were going to call it 700 Years of Modeselektor, Name Dropping Volume 1.
EP: Are you guys going to take some time off?
SS: No, the babies are coming during tour stops. I think it's a never-ending tour. The last tour we played for a year and a half, closing on New Year's in Glasgow.
EP: Are you coming to the States?
SS: Of course. Maybe spring next year. Our first show in the US was in Missoula, MT, last year. Can you believe it? David Lynch is from there. It was on a Wednesday, in a bingo hall. The guys that booked us put in a sound system and some lights, and we had 400 people there. One day later we played Seattle, then San Francisco, etc.
EP: What was the most interesting show?
SS: Detroit was interesting. We played the DEMF, but not the festival. We played at a theater. I never saw a city like this. It's a shrinking city, but it's a moving city.
EP: Wasn't Berlin like that at some point? It's been very trendy lately.
SS: It's a good place for working, but it's not paradise. It's dirty, loud. But it's cheaper than New York, and good food. Lots of communities from everywhere.
SS: With Otto, we did this amazing cover version of Scooter's "Hyper Hyper." I said, "Do you know it?" He didn't, so we sent him the original and then we did it. You know Otto? He's a big blond guy with brown skin and he does shows with big outfits.
EP: How did you hook up with Paul St. Hilaire? You did something with him before — I think Dabrye did a remix.
SS: The Paul St. Hilaire song is a Moderat track, because we did it with Apparat, so we call ourselves Moderat. It's not in the credits, but that's it. Gernot worked at a record store called Hard Wax and Paul would come in. He started coming to our shows, then said, "Let's do a track together." He's very organized.
EP: How did that work? I imagine you're more spontaneous.
SS: In the past, we'd go in and just start pushing buttons. But for the new album we'd start at 6am and work like a regular day with a break in the middle for lunch, then we'd work some more.
EP: Which one of you is into customizing gear?
SS: I started with an 808 back in 1990, to learn how it worked. Then I met Gernot and we started working together.
EP: What were you planning on doing before music?
SS: Gernot used to work with handicapped kids. And I did a very dirty job. I worked in a concrete plant. I did that for a few years; then I found my second life.
EP: So now it's just music? You don't miss your old jobs?
SS: Modeselektor is our life now. It's everything.
Feature
April 26, 2007 All Gussied Up, With Nowhere to Go (But Up)
GusGus return with Forever and a far-reaching perspective
Once an "apostle-like" 12-member multimedia conglomerate, Iceland's GusGus is now a self-anointed techno-soul trinity in full halo drag. Their current album, Forever, dropped in February. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez gets the grease from President Bongo, leader of the Pineapple Empire, on their "spectacular Schnitzel on the Highway show," due to burn rubber this spring.
Earplug: It's been five years since Attention; were you suffering from attention deficit disorder?
President Bongo: I wish! No, we've been busy with other projects. Giving birth to babies, a record company, photo exhibitions, DJ'ing, playing live — we quit touring Attention in late 2005 — and we were waiting for "Moss." It only came to us six months ago.
EP: "Moss" is a monster track. I loved hearing Daníel Ágúst again, and Earth is an amazing vocalist.
PB: Daniel and Earth are brilliant song composers; we're just good stylists. We can't work with anyone but them.
EP: Former vocalist Emiliana Torrini sang on the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack. What other film/video work has GusGus done?
PB: We don't do these things anymore. They are extremely boring. You have to compromise, and we are not very good at that! But we have done some scores for Levi's and Coca-Cola, and some movies have used our tracks.
EP: Do you see any of your ex-bandmates?
PB: Mostly Daniel, as we are always working together. I don't know what my father is doing, either, so I guess I'm up my own ass a lot.
EP: Most techno is dismissed as soulless; have you encountered problems going in a more straightforward dance direction?
PB: I don't agree with this. Kraftwerk is one of the most soulful bands that ever emerged to the human race. Most of the electronic music that I have listened to is full of love and soul. I think that the love we put into our music has been the main reason for us being ten years old this year.
EP: There's a fuzzy, fat Detroit sound to your music. How was Forever made?
PB: We use analog equipment and are constantly on the lookout for new synths. The German Doepfer tops the new list and the Arp 2600 reigns over the old ones. All the tracks on this, and all other GusGus albums, have been done in Iceland. Carl Craig and Aaron-Carl have been our musical influences from the Motor City, but mainly we are influenced by the energy that emerges when we meet to do music. We had Aaron-Carl doing backing vocals on the album. Remixes have been done by Icelandic and German friends; Detroit friends are still working on them.
EP: Explain the song "If You Don't Jump, You're English." Do you have mixed feelings about the UK?
PB: No, not at all! I think the UK is great, but Argentinians don't, and that's what the track is about. The guitar samples are from the Icelandic punk band Purrkur Pillnikk's album Googooplex from 1982 — one of the most influential albums in Iceland, ever!
EP: I heard you spent time in Barcelona.
PB: We had a monthly residency in Barcelona four years ago. We were dead bored. Too hot. Barcelona people are too lazy, so we stopped playing there and returned home. We don't like Ibiza, either.
EP: A friend's visiting Reykjavik; do you recommend any hotspots so she can do it up right?
PB: Do it upright? As in… against the wall? Sirkus is the after-midnight, Boston is the before-midnight. Qbar is the gay one and Kaffibarinn is the boring one.
EP: Iceland is part of a Human Genome/deCODE project; any GusGus DNA in it?
PB: No, Icelanders are leading in that field because we are so few and we have records of our ancestors going way back. It is easy to isolate sickness and to see if it is genetic. We are very positive and generally very happy.
EP: You guys do seem forever "high on love." Who sent you? What do you want?
PB: My grandmother is an elf and she was sent by Master Elf Monsieur Techno Elf. We are sent to convince Americans that rock 'n roll is dead. Techno is the new punk!
You are here: Earplug Home > Issue 90
Feature
March 15, 2007
On the Seventh Day, He Kicked It
Henrik Schwarz brings Sunday Music to !K7
Berlin-based musician Henrik Schwarz has been DJing since his teens, and made a name for himself early on thanks to star-making supporters like Gilles Peterson, who has repped Schwarz's soulful, jazzy, electronica on his radio show for years. Inevitably, !K7 came calling, certifying Schwarz's gold status by signing him on as the latest artist to mix the label's DJ-Kicks series. Schwarz's mix is ambitious in its unitarian scope, reaching across soul, funk, rare groove, house, and techno. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez caught up with the DJ before his gigs at this month's Winter Music Conference.
Earplug: What's it like being the "next big thing"?
Henrik Schwarz: Oh, I'm not taking it too seriously. Music's always been a fantastic hobby; I never had to make music to earn money. I'm also only playing two weekends a month, just to keep things in balance and have time to think about what's happening.
EP: Tell us a bit about your early music-making days.
HS: I had my first studio in the basement of my parents' house. They were going mad because they only heard a bum-bum-bum-bum bass drum all night long. I had no idea how things worked and nobody to show me. I had a computer and wanted to attach my MIDI to it. It took me nine months to hear the first tone. I spent what I earned as a bartender and at my first DJ gigs on gear. I had many different synths and drum machines.
EP: How would you complete this statement? "Music is..."
HS: Music for me is a language to express things that are too complex to describe with words. Body music enters through the body; other music, like rock or classical, is head music. Everybody is collecting his own music in his head or body or soul. It's your music fingerprint. Your music is you.
EP: Arthur Russell's on this mix; that's a strange musical fingerprint.
HS: His music is avant-garde, but at the same time, dance music. He uses classical instruments and background and combines these with synthetic sounds, effects, and recording technologies. That opens up a huge space and touches my heart, head, soul, and body.
EP: Sounds mystical. Energy vs technique?
HS: I like technology, but it's only a tool. I believe in energy rather than technology. The turntable is a great tool, and I always loved DJing and vinyl. But I liked making music with computers from the beginning. Of course, the sound quality's not so good compared to vinyl and analog recordings. There seems to be a lack of energy if music or images get digitized.
EP: Your label is named Sunday Music — what about the six other days?
HS: I had a day job as a graphic designer, working long weekdays. Then I was DJing on Saturday night, so I only had time to produce music on Sundays. That has changed: now it is half and half. Half design work, half music — that's perfect!
EP: What's the Chicago ensemble project?
HS: It's called The Deeper Soul Arkestra, on Deeper Soul Recordings. They released an album of remixes from the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, a jazz band that's played together for over 30 years. I did a remix for them, and the label invited the remixers to meet them in Bordeaux to play a concert together. That went so well that we all agreed to record a few things in Chicago. For me it is spiritual-jazz-meets-electronic-laptop-production live. Hopefully, we will finish a record soon.
EP: What else is next?
HS: I am working on my album for !K7 and on a new 12" with Âme & DixonInnervisions. Also a new collaboration with Kuniyuki from Japan. from
EP: Any other big interests, outside of music?
HS: I love cooking — so mostly when I have free time, I cook!
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You are here: Earplug Home > Issue 99
Feature
July 19, 2007
Brighton Beats Memoirs
Fujiya & Miyagi leave their day jobs in the dust
A trio of former jocks from Brighton named for a Japanese turntable and the Karate Kid master, Fujiya & Miyagi play "exquisite corpse" with '70s psyche rock, '80s post-punk, and '90s electronica. Their US debut, Transparent Things, echoes Can, Wire, Happy Mondays, and LCD Soundsystem. Head-nodding form follows hip-swaying function: lean, modernist bass lines pulsating at steady metronomic tempos as melodic synthesizers swoosh over droll, muttered lyrics. A handful of collected ten-inch singles has flipped the F&M art-rock conceit from back-page punch line to marquee sensation. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez spoke with lead singer David Best as F&M prepared to quit their white-collar day jobs and hit the road on their first US tour.
Earplug: So what's this about you not liking iPods?
David Best: Think about albums like Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk, and how nowadays everything's on shuffle; you lose the album, don't you? It's like when you have 100 channels on TV. Without being a bit wanky, some songs need to breathe a bit. But it cuts out the snobbery because so much is available to everybody, so that's some middle ground. I'm sure I'll end up getting one at some point.
EP: About Spirit of Eden...
DB: It's one of those albums you can go to sleep to. For ages and ages, six months really, I couldn't listen to it all the way through without dropping off. Now, I do sit-ups to it. It was kind of relaxing, and then I thought, "This album's amazing!" It's not Purple Rain — you need to give it time.
EP: Are you tired of talking about Krautrock?
DB: I love all that stuff, but I also love a lot of other things. We grew up on stuff like Happy Mondays, Talking Heads. I don't want to be just the sum of our record collection. Bryan Ferry's my favorite ever, with that vocal delivery, half spoken, half whispered.
EP: How about Scott Walker?
DB: The Drift is brilliant; it has some of the best lyrics. It's so dense and heavy. I'll probably listen to it sporadically over the next ten years. Tilt and Climate of Hunter are that same way, too.
EP: But you also like radio-friendly, three-minute French pop?
DB: It's just the way it sounds, really. I always listen to lyrics first. The fact that it's in French and I can't understand anything makes it so much more interesting. When I listen to English or American bands, I'm not that into it.
EP: You use French in lyrics; they're very dry, but the music's very accessible.
DB: A lot of our stuff comes from getting the groove right, the bass line and drums — we don't put a lot of stuff on top of it. I don't want to throw guitar solos into everything. I'd rather keep it more streamlined.
EP: Your lyrics and humor appeal to a very smart set. Do you do most of the songwriting?
DB: Yeah, then someone else might add another element — a beat, or Matt [Hainsby] might bring a bass line in — until a song miraculously appears. Most lyrics in English are about the sun shining, with obvious rhymes, and I just got sick of it.
EP: Are you a production freak?
DB: Going over hi-hats all night is not my idea of fun. Steve [Lewis] programs it all. We kind of sit there and fall asleep and wake up when he's got something. Then between the three of us we come up with what we come up with.
EP: Do you all still live near each other in Brighton?
DB: Until the end of the month, then we stop working. Matt works in the same office as me. We're quitting then.
EP: You mean your day job? Now you get to go on the road and be rock stars?
DB: Well, we're recording actually.
EP: The new album?
DB: I was gonna call it Light Bulb, but we have a song on there by that name, so now we're calling it Ventriloquism.
EP: Do you read a lot?
DB: Not as much as I'd like to. But as the title of the last album suggests, I'm a massive Vladimir Nabokov fan. I never bothered really reading [Nabokov's novel Transparent Things] before, I just got through it. But re-reading it, I was like "Oh, it's all right." Then I traced it back like bands that I liked before, and got into all these other Russian authors.
EP: What kind of student were you?
DB: I was gonna be one of those people who was just gonna do art, but really half-assed. I went to art school so I could start music, really.
EP: How has your music evolved?
DB: Our last album was more electronic, but it didn't translate well live, so our songs changed. We stopped listening to so many Warp records. It's great stuff, but I really also love Bowie, Roxy Music, [and] Wire — they're from the same county as me.
EP: You're also a David Niven fan. He's part French/British, with a wicked wit. Does that explain everything?
DB: I've always loved that little mustache. His autobiographies are great. But it really explains nothing. That's a recent fascination. We've been Fujiya & Miyagi for a while now.
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Feature
March 1, 2007 Massey Attack
Pacific pioneer wades deeper with Subtracks
Graham Massey has been a formidable presence in indie and electronic music for more than 20 years, playing in Biting Tongues, 808 State, and Toolshed; composing soundtracks; and producing and mixing the Stone Roses, Primal Scream, UB40, Art of Noise, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Goldfrapp. When Björk morphed from punk pixie to electronic prima donna, Massey largely fashioned her makeover. For nearly ten years, he has ripped out analog-inspired live shows under the Massonix alias; Earplug's Jorge Hernandez caught up with him to talk about Subtracks, his new collection of Massonix material.
Earplug: Subtracks distills your "weird shows" over the years for Skam, Autechre, and Warp events. How do you translate that to CD?
Graham Massey: Playlists are a great filtering system. Sometimes when I make music, I don't know where to put it, so I set it aside. Many of these tracks were favorite things that I listened to while I was doing the dishes. Also, the label was very clear about what they wanted, so that helped. We passed CDs back and forth until we got it right. If it doesn't work, I'll use it elsewhere.
EP: What is your Toolshed project?
GM: It's like a pawnshop spread out all over the street. We're all avid instrument collectors. Paddy Steer from Homelife is my right-hand man. Its style varies wildly depending on who's in it at the time, from ambient when it's just two people to big band, which I really like, when there are more of us.
EP: What else are you working on?
GM: I do another electronic thing with a guy called Graham Clark; he plays electric violin. I'm also learning to play the drums for a new organ quartet called Sisters of Transistors, and I'm doing a remix for Simian Mobile Disco.
EP: Are you touring for Subtracks?
GM: I don't really like touring alone. I prefer playing with other people. But I might be playing the next Sónar in Barcelona.
EP: Are you doing anything with Biting Tongues?
GM: We're re-forming for a one-off concert next month in Manchester. We did it about three years ago in London, and we've been trying ever since. It's not related to it, but it coincides with a Soul Jazz compilation, DIY, coming out around then that's about '80s cassette culture, featuring Throbbing Gristle, all those guys.
EP: How did the It's All Gone Pete Tong soundtrack happen?
GM: I got commissioned based on my show reel. While I was making music for it, the director kept saying, "There's something I don't like." He figured out what it was: synthesizers. I said, "Well, you got the wrong guy." So we reworked the tracks with more organic instruments.
EP: For 808's tenth anniversary, there was the collection 808:88:98. Is there an 808:88:08 tour in the works?
GM: We did a couple 808 gigs last year. If we were to do it, we'd revamp the whole show because the technology's changed. We're remastering tracks and rereleasing each album with rarities, b-sides, and other mixes next year.
EP: Will you hit any US cities?
GM: It would be great. Dallas was always a hot spot; I personally love Seattle, Portland, and Chicago, of course. LA has always been big for us; they had DJs like Swedish Egil at MARS FM. We had a big Hispanic following there.
EP: LA loved Manchester. How has DJ culture changed since the scene's golden era?
GM: It's easier to organize things now. Everything's not so centralized; there's a lot of music outside urban areas. I'm old-school. I still buy vinyl. My son is beginning to buy music and he just wants the stuff he likes immediately. But I do pull random vinyl out of my collection every week and make sure he listens to obscure b-sides, just to school him.
Interview: Arling & Cameron (Earplug 84)
You are here: Earplug Home > Issue 84
Feature
December 21, 2006
So Post-Everything, They're Not Even a Band
Arling & Cameron's Hi-Fi Fantasias
In the early '90s, Amsterdam's libertine spirit fueled Gerry Arling and Richard Cameron's pan-sonic Easy Tune parties. For the better part of a decade, these intrepid musicologists — wry humorists, multimedia conceptualists, chronic collaborators — and their salon-turned-band successfully pushed a world-party agenda. Then, filmmaker Theo van Gogh was murdered, a cartoon sparked riots, and, while promoting their last studio album, We Are A&C, a tour-bus accident injured Cameron's back shortly after 9/11. Five years on, they drop Hi-Fi Underground, a CD that defines their career and times. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez caught up with Cameron to talk about their music of changes.
EP: Is Amsterdam still a fairytale place?
RC: No, although it still looks like a fairytale. The mood changed dramatically in the late '90s. I moved to Berlin partly because of that. "Shake It" was written during the cartoon riots. Before the van Gogh murder there was Pim Fortuyn [the Dutch politician assassinated in 2002] — the first political murder in 400 years in Holland! The country hasn't been the same since.
EP: Last time you were cheeky, horny holograms. This time, you're new-romantic dandies.
RC: It's a side of us that's always been there but never found a place in our music in the way it did on Hi-Fi Underground. But we've done it before. "Born in June," a ballad about my niece born in Ecuador, is quite tender and heartfelt — and was used for a US Audi commercial, nevertheless. There are more examples, but people never picked up on it and always focused on our ironic side.
EP: You've licensed tracks to Gap Kids, The Sopranos, and Austin Powers 2. Is licensing "cool"?
RC: Seven years ago, it was very uncool to be in commercials. Nowadays bands even put out press releases [about their licensing deals]. I don't see how using an existing track for a commercial could corrupt us. The fact that people hear it a lot and maybe get fed up with it also applies to songs that are played on the radio too often, and I never heard any band object to that.
EP: How did the Vogue podcast happen?
RC: They asked if they could use our music and we said yes. We're interested in fashion; my wife and I often DJ for fashion events.
EP: What's your project with Pizzicato Five singer Maki Nomiya?
RC: It's [a show] called JOY and it's directed by Makiko Hayashi from the burlesque group Romantica. I'm the musical director. I wrote two original songs for it, including the theme song, and I'm involved in the selection and rearranging of her own and P5's material.
EP: Larry Tee admires your musical taste. What are you listening to currently?
RC: The most interesting "pop" thing I've heard or seen in a long time is Planningtorock, but I'm also very much into dance music again. I recently was in the studio with Larry Tee, and I work with Dutch DJ Joost van Bellen as Cowgum. We just recruited Mark Verbos as a third member. We already released two 12-inches but are planning new releases involving Mark.
EP: Why did you say your MySpace account wasn't run by "some intern at a record label"?
RC: I didn't mean to say anything bad about interns at record labels. If we were more popular we'd need an intern to handle our page, as well. For now, when you write us on our MySpace, I'll answer personally.
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Feature
June22,2006 Reel Around the Fountain
Tom Moulton goes back to the source of the mix
Fire Island's legendary all-nighters have clearly served Tom Moulton well. Inside his Upper West Side apartment, the disco legend easily spends hours mixing in Pro Tools on a Mac linked to seven hard drives. Fortunately, Manhattan's pre-war buildings are as famous for their thick walls as for their noisy tenants. Labyrinthine, floor-to-ceiling shelves and cabinets of CDs, vinyl, and tape reels double as bonus insulation.
But don't take Moulton, whose first mix CD, A Tom Moulton Mix, has just come out on England's vaunted reissue imprint Soul Jazz, for an opportunistic archivist just because a new generation of fans and crate-diggers have restored something of disco's cachet. "I've removed the 'record' button on every piece of gear in here to deny myself the temptation of recording," he explains. "That way, I limit myself to mixing." Synonymous with DJ culture, the accidental innovator of the 12-inch and "King of the Disco Break" came closest to recording a proper mix before this with a series of tapes he programmed for Fire Island's Sandpiper club in the early '70s. "I noticed dancers leaving the floor on the 1 of the 4/4 beat because the shift in tempos between three-minute songs was so rough."
This dancer-centric approach guided Moulton through decades of A&R, promotion, and production at labels like King, Scepter, Sigma, Salsoul, and West End Records. He was a fixture in disco's belle monde, but recurring frustrations with industry politics led him into self-imposed exile during much of the '80s and '90s. By then, he had already made his mark, fatefully substituting 10-inch acetate when 7-inch blanks ran out, and recording hot "to spread out the grooves and fill the extra space." Moulton's independence is legendary: he threatened to pull his Gamble & Huff collaboration Philadelphia Classics when Sigma rejected "Love Is the Message" and mixed organ over vocals on "Do It 'Til You're Satisfied," despite BT Express' dismay. "La Vie en Rose" happened because Grace Jones approached him with his own bootleg instrumental; and "Doctor Love" because he endured cardiac discomfort to finish it. Recently, he has queued up to offer elusive dream client Enya his services. "I only agreed to this Soul Jazz compilation because it might help get my mitts on 'Flora's Secret' or 'Lazy Days,'" admits the Prefab Sprout, Level 42, and Cabaret Voltaire fan.
During disco's heyday, a sleeve bearing the phrase "A Tom Moulton Mix" moved units and bodies via gold record-winning, turbo-soul bass lines, razzamatazz hi-hats, reversed scales, and panoramic sweeps gallantly astride galloping tempos. Yet Moulton insists his coveted tag "in itself doesn't make it better if the song isn't good to begin with" countering the bravado of artists like P. Diddy. "The key is warmth and a great hook. Everything should sound like a million dollars." Moulton cringes at dirty mixes requiring so many filters that everything ends up sounding dead. "If you go to a hospital and you're flatlining, what does that mean?" asks the former model turned self-taught groove master. He believes that people respond most viscerally, as he does, to music that modulates organically.
To Moulton, listener response is so essential that he dismisses white-label secrecy. "Why make a record if you're not going to tell anybody what it is?" Mention the Internet as a way of telling everyone and he makes an obscene gesture. Propose a ring tone as a way to reach a new generation and he acquiesces slightly. In keeping with Moulton's fair-trade agreement, he drags and drops a few unlicensed mixes of well-worn grooves onto a disc, handing them over while adding, "You can play these out; just don't post them online."
-JH
Feature
May 25, 2006 Interview: Matthew Herbert
For over a decade, England's Matthew Herbert has created some of electronic music's most provocative offerings, from his propulsive early house tracks to the political noisemaking of his Radioboy project (which critiques capitalism by sampling its worst offenses). On his new album, Scale , Herbert expands his musical reach by fusing pop songwriting with big-band production and orchestal arrangements. Earplug's Jorge Hernandez caught up with the artist in New York to talk about music, pop culture, and, of course, politics.
EP: Hearing you close a recent DJ set with Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry About a Thing" put Scale in a different context; there is a very classic American soul feel to the CD.
MH: That's one of the influences I've inherited in a way, because I don't spend a lot of time listening to old music. I do listen to old music, but it tends to be Mahler, orchestral stuff. I don't want to make a record that's pastiche or parody or has any influence like that .. but there is a nostalgia for a time when pop music was done with craft, with musicians playing properly, and with everything done to a high standard.
EP: Were you listening to anything in particular around the time you made this album?
MH: Not really. My life is nonstop and generally full of music, so in my time off I like to be quiet. At a couple of moments I did listen to Quincy Jones or Earth, Wind & Fire to listen to how they mixed the orchestra in with the band. They mixed them extremely quietly, really. Mine's significantly louder than that, but I had 140 channels of audio after the Abbey Road sessions. It was quite a technical thing, mixing all of that.
EP: Are you a gadget freak?
MH: No, not really. Ultimately, what I work with is microphones and recordings. I do check things out from time to time, but I think if you spend too much time on the technology, you're doing the wrong thing. You should be making music really.
EP: Are you still out collecting sounds much?
MH: No. I used to do that, but now I'm very specific. The world is making noise all the time, nonstop. You'd go mad if you tried to collect everything.
EP: How do you move yourself on to the next project?
MH: Normally, the government starts a new war, or Starbucks opens another branch.
EP: What do you think about Starbucks selling music?
MH: I don't like the exclusive thing. But ultimately, what's the difference? We have to pay to display our music. Record shops in America make more money from record companies than they do from people buying music, so they're all just promotional fronts anyway. The whole music industry is corrupt anyway.
EP: Do you take any joy in watching the old label system go down the tubes?
MH: It depends what replaces it. I think those big companies will find a way to establish their stranglehold in a different way. I do think with digital music we can distribute our music instantly. So, I finish an album, and it can be online within an hour. And provided that you have a group of interesting people that know who you are, then it becomes an important way of bypassing all those structures. It has the possibility of being a genuine revolution, but at the moment it's a big mess.
EP: You remixed Roy Ayers recently; what happened to artists like that? They seem to be missing these days.
MH: There's a real lack of ambition in electronic and dance music. It's incredibly conservative. It's particularly disappointing because it's supposed to be a forward-thinking genre, pushing boundaries.
EP: Given your assemblage approach, how do you know when you're done with it, when it's finished?
MH: It's totally specific; they're not random, these things. If someone's being sick on the record, it's there for a particular reason, at a particular point in the song, and at a particular location .. outside of an arms fair. If there's someone playing golf on the record, then there are 12 hits of the ball. It's in pursuit of a greater ideal. With this record, I wanted to let the music breathe a little more. In the past, all my rules left me little to work with; on this record, I just wanted to enjoy the song aspect more.