LF – In terms of DJ’ing, Where did you first start and where did your inspiration come from?
JR – I was in a band for the majority of my teenage years, a mediocre Indie band. Then I started hanging around with a different group of mates who were into things like The Presets and Soulwax. I began to like it more than what the band was into. The band weren’t really feeling it. I bought a set of decks after seeing a few people DJ’ing and thinking it looked pretty cool. I got so much stick from my mates for buying the worst pair of decks imaginable. DJ’ing came as a bi-product of getting further into music. The band I was in played indie/pop and enjoyed a moderate level of success, in fact they’re still going now. It was music reminiscent of The Kooks or they might say Franz Ferdinand.
LF – What are your musical roots/ influences before the band?
JR – When I was young the first music I was listening to was a Ministry Of Sound – The Annual album in 2000. Then I started getting into The Strokes and The Hives and all the NME stuff. I still listen to some of that stuff but it never fulfilled me as much as when I started conscientiously looking for music.
LF – What influence did your parents have on your musical taste?
JR – They played a lot of Beatles and The Smiths when I was young. I have vivid memories of listening to The White Album and How Soon Is Now which is pretty bleak for a childhood but…
LF – So if I was to say Beatles or Stones? You’d obviously prefer The Beatles.
JR – I’d say the Beatles. The Stones have got their moments but I’d have to say the Beatles.
LF – What is your biggest tune to play to a crowd at the moment?
JR – Yo Majesty – Don’t let go (Hannah Holland Remix)
Phaze Action – Good Lovin’
At the moment techno is what I’m really all about. 2007 saw like the fidget house explosion with loads of people quickly getting into the music thinking ‘this is fucking amazing’ and the future.
LF – It got old really quickly didn’t it?
JR – Yeah it did. People like Herve and Crookers were making that wonky kind of house music but it did get old.
LF – Do you think Dubstep might suffer a similar fate?
JR – No. I think Dubstep has more of a shelf life, more of longevity to it. The people involved have got it sorted. Skream, Benga, Rusko etc have built up more of a genuine movement. I think it’ll evolve as genre as well as opposed to fidget house which has nowhere to go really.
LF – I remember in 2007 being blown away by Switch and the likes at Chibuku but the style seemed to get boring.
JR – Yeah it was all well and good at the time but it did get old pretty quickly. Most good producers have moved on to making more techy stuff and the others have sort of fell by the wayside. I look back at some of the songs we were playing like ‘what the fuck?’ It’s all the same. The crowds that fidget house attracts are all really white middle classed kids with their Kanye specs on shouting things like “Bitches Bitches Hoes Whooo Yeah” and shit like that. Looking and dressing like fucking tits.
LF – The New Rave/ Indie Disco thing kicked a lot of that off.
JR – Yeah it was kind of The Presets/ Klaxons influence that led me into this type of dance music, like many people. I got into Erol Alkan just because I thought his name was really cool and I thought there’s no way that he wasn’t going to be any good just because he has the coolest name I’ve ever heard.
LF – And people like Justice, they just look like the coolest mother fuckers in the whole world.
JR - I still think some people from that Ed Banger movement back in 2006/2007 have got something to offer, something to say but justice haven’t seemed to put anything out for a while apart from that Lenny Kravitz remix that came out recently that was a bit shite.
LF – They came onto the scene so quickly and just took over and at that time there’s a list as long as my arm of similar artists who blew up quickly, released tracks for the dance floor, played to the masses but now you hardly hear of them.
JR – Yeah there’s going to be loads of casualties from that movement. You could name loads of singles by little electro acts that came out and got played for like a week or two then disappeared into the realms of nothingness. What are they doing now? I can’t deny that Justice are amazing, their live show is awesome. Aesthetically pleasing, the whole visual element of having the full marshal stacks when essentially all they’ve got is just a laptop behind there it’s pretty boss. And it’ll be interesting to see what they come up with next. If the second album just is more of the same then I probably won’t be interested to be honest.
And I do think this year the electro banger is going to make a comeback. There have been a fair few big singles already that I’m really into. The Erol remix of Yeah Yeah Yeah’s – Zero is something that I don’t think would of worked last year but in the context of the stuff that’s coming out now it’s working well.
LF – Away from DJ’ing? What music do you listen to?
JR – A lot of chilled out, bugged in type mixes. Im an absolute sucker for podcasts to be honest – the Durrr podcasts are very good. Probably the best podcast I’ve heard in years is the Skull Juice Lounge Mix. It’s fucking amazing, you can get it for nothing online. The hot chip bugged in/ bugged out mixes are really good too. The bugged out one is amazing, kinda like techno house and the bugged in one isn’t bad either, it has weird calypso samples with Dizzee Rascal accapellas over. It’s typically weird, a more testing listen than the likes of 2manydjs – the whole ethos behind it was that they wanted to make a soundtrack to a house party. I think they pull it off quite well. Also Noze’s album, ‘Songs on the Rocks’ and Paul Giovannis ‘The Wickerman’ Soundtrack are really good.
LF – Aside from dance music are there any bands you’re listening to at the moment?
JR – You know what, everyone says this but I’m into Empire of the Sun and more recently Passion Pit.
LF – I’ve just reviewed the passion pit album on Audio Bounty.
JR – I’ve got the EP chunk of change
LF – Sleepyhead is the only track that remains on the album from the EP. And it’s probably the best track on the album.
JR – I think sleepyhead is like MGMT meets Duke Dumont, the whole high pitched vocal, it’s clever, original. It’s good pop music.
There’s a lot of like Psychedelic stuff coming out at the moment like Beyond the Wizard Sleeve. Erol Alkan and Richard Norris have released this compilation of remixes of various different artists. Some of the stuff they’ve done is brilliant. They’re using like 60′s psych noises with live drum samples. It’s remixing but it’s not necessarily all for the dance floor, it’s a lot of interesting experiments.
LF – There seems to be somewhat of a garage rock/garage psych revival at the moment. Bands like Black Lips and Deerhunter and the bands that we went to see at the O2 Academy last night had a big garage feel to them.
JR – Who was on?
LF – The Gay Blades, two geezers from Brooklyn, they were alright, they tried hard but the crowd were pretty shit. It was a load of kids who were only interested in Cage the Elephant. White Denim were on, probably my band of 2008 and they were awesome, they rocked the shit out of it but the crowd didn’t really give a shit you know. Most of them just wanted to see cage the elephant which is understandable.
JR – I heard that White Denim are really good live but I’ve only heard bits of them to be honest. I feel really out of touch with bands. Keeping up with dance music is such a full time occupation.
LF – We’ve kind of had like a role reversal, a couple of years ago I was sourcing out the newest music every day and now I’ve took step back and regressed a little into listening to bands a bit more and like you say you can only do what you can do, you cant physically listen to that much music every day, every week, its impossible.
JR – What I’ve been doing more often recently in terms of finding music is going on to Beatport and looking through the back catalogue of certain labels and uncovering things that way. Basically Im a bit sick of trying keep up with the newest releases, you find if you look at mixes on every blog its kind of the same stuff and if your not a 2manydjs or Erol Alkan your not going to get the exclusive stuff.
LF – How does that work with you, do you get sent any exclusive stuff?
JR – No not really. My mate Paul who I do Biblioteque with is on Renegade and we know people who are on big lists so if there’s something I really need I can normally get hold of it. If you find a really kick-ass track from 2006 or something that nobody paid any attention to at the time but now it’s relevant to today then you’ve got a track that nobody else has. I just think it’s a lot more interesting to play stuff like that and also it shows off your taste a lot more. Through some blogs you can be spoon-fed an awful lot of shite. There’s a compilation coming out at the end of next week, it’s the Turbo Omni Dance compilation. Turbo is Tiga’s label and it’s probably one of the best labels in the world for what it does and it’s a good compilation categorising what they’ve done in the last ten years and theres a few new tracks on there. If you go onto internet forums at the moment you’ll just find that every single person is posting mixes of these songs. There’s no thought gone into it.
LF – Do you bother with The Hype Machine?
JR – Sometimes I do yeah. I won’t lie; there are certain blogs that I read. Keytars and Violins is probably hands down the most amazing resource for music for me. He mostly posts a mixture of new stuff and old, the guy who runs that is so on it. He deserves all the success he gets, it’s absolutely brilliant.
LF – It’s like you say with certain dance music blogs, people think they’re often getting exclusive stuff but at the end of the day thousands of other people are on to it as well.
JR – I don’t think you can rely solely on sourcing music from blogs because you’re only playing out stuff that other people have discovered as opposed to finding stuff yourself. If you find an obscure blog that has a different, more personal take on music then that can be good. It’s the same as listening to a DJ set from say 2Many DJ’s for example and you hear one song and your like ‘what the fuck is that song?’ and you go out and find it. A good blog will demonstrate musical diversity.
LF – A good blog is one that isn’t just trying to hit the Top 10 on The Hype Machine?
JR – Yeah exactly. Blogs like LA Friendly and stuff like that are just after the biggest bangers as quickly as possible. The whole American, LA scene just does not appeal at all. Steve Aoki and all his cronies are basically taking all the ideas from Europe started by people like Ed Banger, Institubes and Turbo and re-packaging it into these two hour ‘noise projects’, it’s like you go down there and put on your bright fucking clothes and your visor and stuff and just fucking throw yourself around to two hours of pure noise. I’m just not really interested in that. We play five hours when we do Bibliotheque and if you arrived and just started playing Soulwax and Ed Banger for five hours it would just be tiring. You need to build up a night, you have to have the ability to adapt. When we start we play Disco / Italo Disco / 70′s Disco and some newer stuff for the first 2 hours. One track we’ve been playing for the past year and everybody comes up to us and says “What remix is that?” is Kylie Minogue ‘Slow’. It’s fucking boss. We’ve had some stick for it but it’s amazing.
(Plays Kylie – Slow and to be fair it sounds good)
It’s got an acid house 303. It fits in with what were doing, everybody thinks it’s a remix but everyone knows it so they dance. It fills the club, I don’t know who produces it but I’m going to find out.
LF – As a DJ is your ethos to fill a dance floor with what the audience want to hear or indulge yourself by playing what you want to play?
JR – It’s always got to be for the audience or you just become DJ Ego really. You’ve got to find a mid point. When I play Peacock or Korova I won’t be playing the same stuff as I would at somewhere like Chibuku. In a club I’ll play electro and techno. I record two types of mixes really – the ones I do with Paul we gear towards fun party tunes.
LF – Do you have more scope to experiment at Bibliotheque?
JR – Yeah, we kind of have more scope to experiment with different styles when we play at Peacock because we can get in there and play the latest obscure disco cut off some weird blog and follow it up with holiday by Madonna. When I play in clubs it’s totally different. I spend most of my spare time looking into techno to be honest; when I come here (his studio) most of the music I’ll play will be techno. The main genre of music I like to play as a DJ is a mixture between dark electro and techno. I feel really at home playing this type of music in clubs, it comes as second nature. Obviously DJ’ing in bars is a different experience all together but still equally enjoyable. I’m DJ’ing with Paul who’s my best mate and we just get on really well. I think the best DJ’s are the ones that have one foot on the dance floor and are into the night.
LF – Do you ever find that you have to play certain things that you’re not really into just to please a certain crowd?
JR – Well yeah a lot of people seem to want to go into town because they want to hear all of the music that they already own. They don’t want to hear anything new. They want to hear Lady Gaga, Sex on Fire, Beyonce, that new Calvin Harris record which is fucking terrible and Bonkers which is jarg.
LF – Bonkers is my biggest hate at the moment
JR – It’s fucking wank isn’t it. Armand Van Heldan man, you’ve got your moments but this isn’t good and Dizzee Rascal has jumped on to see if he can make a bit of coin from it.
LF – I think Bonkers is the signal of the end of that sound.
JR – The signal of the end has got to be Day and Night by Crookers.
LF – Crookers were putting out some awesome stuff. I was into them at one point.
JR – Yeah everyone was man, I remember going to see them DJ at Gatecrasher at the beginning of last year and thinking these are boss. I can’t deny that they had some great tunes and their always going to have them. There was one track on this record label based in Germany. The genre was like the portugese/brazillian baile-funk, I think the track was called atomic baile boy and it was fucking great. They had some really good tunes but now they’re remixing U2 which says everything to me really because that’s just like the antichrist of music.
LF – I can’t do U2, I get a horrible feeling inside when I hear them. Have you ever seen the Bill Bailey stand-up were he rips the shit out of U2?
JR – No I’ve not seen that one.
LF – He gives an example of what would happen at a U2 concert if the power went. You know how their whole sound is just based on certain guitar effects, well Bill Bailey is playing along and he gets this U2 sound going and then the power cuts and he’s just playing Jingle Bells.
JR – My favourite thing Bill Bailey has done is when he did the Chemical Brothers doing the BBC news, that’s hilarious and Kraftwerk doing the hokey cokey, that’s funny as well.
LF – U2 for me are the epitome of boring. It’s something for Dads and if your Dad liked it you’d be pissed off with him. If my Dad listened to U2 I’d be gutted.
JR – It’s just music for money really and I don’t like the way that Bono sees himself as this really important political figure. What’s the difference between Bono and God? God doesn’t walk around Dublin pretending he’s Bono.
U2 are massive and they’re going to stay massive forever and they’re going to keep on releasing albums with two big fuck off singles that will do really well. I can’t deny that musically they’ve got a real sound of their own and an ear for a good melody and I’ll say the same for Coldplay as well. Coldplay have got this knack of using clever, quite whimsical chord progressions and really ambiguous lyrics for example a song like ‘The Scientist’ which could just be about anything. They make songs that will be played forever at funerals and stuff.
LF – Festival audiences eat it up for breakfast.
JR - For me the only band that are around today that are absolutely massive and have never sold out are Radiohead. Radiohead are the best band in the world.
LF – Yeah, they can play any genre.
JR – The fact that they started off as basically an Indie band and then OK Computer was something well ahead of its time and then they released Kid A and Amnesiac which were amazing. He (Thom Yorke) used to listen to a lot of Autechre and Aphex Twin when he wrote those and in the songs you can hear all these scatty, weird, electronic elements which are boss. Then Thom Yorke’s working with Modeselektor who are absolutely fucking amazing. Modeselektor was on at Chibuku Birthday and was really good.
LF – Was A-Trak on that night?
JR – No A-Trak was supposed to be on the night when Paul was on but apparently he was playing Coachella the next day and he’d agreed to do Chibuku but then just kind of sacked it off.
LF – What’s your opinion of the stuff A-Track is putting out now?
JR – I’m not really into it. He’s working with some really big producers like Laid Back Luke and armand van helden and he’s clearly got aspirations of grandeur. Fair play to him but some of his tracks for example the one he did with Laid Back Luke are a bit cash happy for me but everyone loved it so fair play. I don’t really rate him as a DJ either to be honest.
LF – For me he’s not really a DJ who should be playing that type of music as he’s a turntablist by trade.
JR – Well yeah he started out with the DMC thing and the video of him doing that thing when he’s like 15 and winning it is amazing. There’s a video of him at the WMC beat juggling daft punk and it was really impressive and there’s no way I could do that but to me it just sounded shit. He had the Soulwax remix of daft punk robot rock and was just going ‘baam baaam baam baaam’ and if you watch the crowd get into it at first and then he just goes on ‘baam baaam baam baaam baam dgdgdgd baaam dgdgrr baaam baaam’ and the crowd are just like, “this is un-danceable, what the fuck?”
LF – If he was doing the turnatblism thing to audiences who wanted to hear it, he’d be one of the best in the world.
JR – You mentioned DJ Craze before and he shits all over A Trak and his Fabric mix is fucking brilliant and he plays all that electro hip-hop stuff but none of it is dead obvious it’s clear that this music has been researched. An A Track set will just be full of Justice and Boys Noize and you have heard all of it whereas DJ Craze’s fabric mix is just the opposite. He utilises his scratching really well he knows how to incorporate it and he’s got the single best mix of two records I’ve ever heard. He mixes some Kazey & Bulldog track into Switch’s remix of ‘Get Yourself High’ by Chemical Brothers and he just filters it in but keeps them both running together and it sounds amazing. The whole mix is like an hour long party.
LF – I saw Craze at Chibuku birthday a couple of years ago and he was impressive then.
JR – Yeah the main difference between Craze and A Trak is that Craze plays less obvious tracks. Most of what A Trak plays is just obvious ‘bangers’ really.
LF – So when’s Biblioteque?
JR – Every Thursday upstairs in Peacock. Sometimes we do one night over the weekend like a Friday but it’s mainly every Thursday. Were starting to get a few people interested and coming back every week which is good. The name Biblioteque has existed for over a year and we were kind of calling our Saturday night in Korova Biblioteque on the internet but never really put any time into promoting it. Korova was a different kind of vibe. The first gigs I ever got were in Korova and I’ve got really fond memories of starting to play there and I was only using vinyl then and I remember carrying this dead heavy bag of vinyl to gigs. Now I’m playing CD’s and I’ve got more music in my CD wallet than two of those levels of shelves in my vinyl storage. The benefits are obvious for playing CD’s, they’re just easier to use. We had some amazing nights in Korova early on, when it was still quite cool and it was getting some amazing bookings and there was a good crowd going. I’d say it was the golden age of Korova, 2manydj’s played downstairs! You’ve only got to look at Revo’s old Evol listings and they’re just intimidating. ‘Carla & Kirstin’ ran a night called ‘Dolls’ and booked Klaxons to play there on a Tuesday night before most people knew who they were and hardly anyone fucking came.
LF – How did you find playing with Revo at Chibuku?
JR – Amazing. It blew my mind playing in the theatre warming up for Boys Noize. Revo really knows his stuff, his record collection is amazing. I can go to him with a CD with a new track that I like and he’ll go “yeah that’s good but it’s basically just copied off this” and he’ll pull a record from the shelf from like 1992.
LF – Aside from Bibliotheque, what else are you doing at the moment?
JR – Biblioteque is with Paul and I do DJ solo and when I do solo gigs it’s all about Techno and electro and I’ve got few mixes up on the internet. I kind of see myself as a different DJ when I’m playing on my own. I am mixer nazi, I can be such a pain to DJ with, I’ve always got to have a hand somewhere, I need to feel in control of what’s happening, I’m a bit of a bastard like that.
LF – There’s no I in Team.
JR – I’m getting a lot better at it, I’ve stopped touching the controls as much while Pauls playing. I’m trying to get into production now. Trying to learn how to make tracks.
LF – Are you going down the analogue or software route?
JR – I’m using Ableton Live at the moment and I’m in VERY early days. I’ve been quite conservative up until now making really simple re-edits and stuff.
LF – It’s good for remixing live, you can copy the same track as many times as you like and select different start points and add effects to each track.
JR – I’m working on a new three deck mix at the moment with one deck solely for acapellas and various bits and using loops from different tracks. It’s complicated but it’s just another thing that I need to do. Production is something else you need to get into if you want to take yourself seriously as a DJ now because your going to hit a glass ceiling sooner or later. Production is your ticket to getting gigs. You can essentially never DJ in your entire life and if your making tracks that people love you can get the chance to play them live. A really good example is daft punk, they did a limited number of DJ sets early in their career then they released ‘Homework’. Imagine having only DJ’d a hand full of times and then being offered mega amounts of money to DJ on the back of your production skills. Somebody who I think is a really brilliant DJ is Brodinsky. He is easily one of the best new DJ’s in the world. He played with 2manydj’s and the presets in Liverpool last Easter. If you ever get chance to see Brodinsky, he just fucking wipes the floor with anyone. Completely eclectic and technically flawless and he deserves all of the kudos he gets. He’s releasing a bugged out mix this year, his first proper commercial mix release and it’s the thing I’m looking forward to most. I’ve got every faith it’ll be boss.
Click the links below for two fresh ‘n’ tasty new cuts from James Rand
Umek – Recycled Loops 2 (James Rand’s Bugged Out Classix Mix)
Narada Michael Walden – I Shoulda’ Loved Ya (James Rand’s More Sex, Less Sax Mix)
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
nice! i’m gonna make my own blog