2011 seemed like a really big year for you guys.

Eamon Harkin: Yeah, it was a big year for us. I think a big part of that is the fact that we returned to this spot in Gowanus [Grove] for our outdoor party. And we had a really great run of 16 parties. Well, maybe 13 or 14 because we lost a few with rain. And that was great; we got a lot of momentum from that. A lot of people really loved that party and came out. One of the big themes for us this year was doing parties by ourselves and not having guest DJs. That was a purposeful strategy because that’s how we want to grow and develop the party, but also ourselves as DJs. That’s where we want to take the party. And it really worked.

Justin Carter: Yeah, because parties that are all about a guest are often really just vehicles for a guest. And of course we appreciate all the people who come and play with us, and we still bring in guests, and were not going to stop doing that — at least any time soon. When a party has a guest every single time, though, it can become a stage for someone else. And the whole reason we started the party in the first place was because we’re DJs, and we wanted to play records. And so we saw that there was an appreciation for us as DJs when we were playing alongside guests, and we also saw that we needed to start using this thing that we developed as a stage. We had this mission to really make the party into a party. Something that had it’s own identity, instead of having the identity of the guest. Mister Saturday Night has become this thing that has an identity in and of itself and isn’t about who’s playing — it isn’t even necessarily about Eamon or me. It’s just this thing that happens, that now it has a life of it’s own.

EH: And that’s the goal of the party: for it to be a party, to be a community. To be a thing in itself, to have a life of it’s own. So if there’s a guest there, the guest is a guest, rather than a headliner. He, or she, adds musical variety. There are some parties across the globe that do that well, and I think we achieved something similar this year. That’s been the most satisfying thing.

Is there any party in particular that stood out to you?

JC: You know, it’s funny because it was probably the least-attended party of the whole year. There was a string of crazy rain that happened in August, and there was one day where the party got cancelled because it looked like it was going to be torrential. And then it wasn’t torrential. So we were sitting at home looking outside at a beautiful sky, and then the next Sunday we were like, “We’ve got to do the party no matter what.” The weather forecast was awful, and ended up being awful just like it said it was going to be. I think maybe 150 to 200 people came. That was one of those moments where we realized that there are still people that will come out to see us in a crazy downpour and have an amazing time. It was an incredible party.

The party has taken place in a handful of venues. What do you look for in potential spaces?

EH: First and foremost we look for something that’s comfortable. The commonality among all the spaces is that they all have wooden floors. That’s really important for a dance floor, for us. We want it to feel warm, we don’t want it to feel like a reverberating warehouse. We want it to be a kind of place where you would want to hang out. And you can be social, but you can also just get on the dance floor and get on with it. 12-turn-13 definitely has that; it’s almost a legendary venue in New York at this point. House of Yes definitely has it, and the place on Scholes Street had it as well, to a certain degree.

JC: I think another thing that we look for is a positive relationship with whoever is in charge of a space. We continue to have a very good relationship with all three of those places. The people who run those spaces are reasonable, smart, creative people who are not trying to angle on you at all. They’re just really good people to work with.

EH: Which kind of comes back to what we’re all about in the first place, which is an experience, you know? And a community-based experience that is about people interacting and music. You don’t get that unless every person involved is in line with that vision, and unless you’re in a space that facilitates that.

What parties in the past have influenced the way you approach the Mister Saturday Night parties?

JC: Well, the first party that I went to in New York, period — before I knew anything about parties or DJs at all — was Body and Soul. I just went there because a guy on the hall in my dorm, he had an older boyfriend who was part of this old-time club scene, so literally the first Sunday that I was in New York City I went to Body and Soul. The elements that made that party so good were, of course, the music and the sound system, but really there was this great cross section of people. It felt like a real community, so that’s definitely an influence. It’s not like every time we think about our party we’re thinking about how we can make it more like Body and Soul or whatever Eamon’s influences are. That’s just what my original experience of a party was, and what a great experience for that to be. I don’t really have any nostalgia for raves or that side of dance music. I don’t really have any nostalgia at all. The only thing that I really knew in the beginning was Body and Soul, and so I think that probably just naturally has an influence on me.

EH: Years ago I was living in London, and my entry point into DJ culture was through post punk and indie music, basically. I think that the initial influences on me, and really what turned me on to DJs, were people like Optimo and Erol Alkan, when he was doing his Trash party in London. My sister was living in Glasgow at the time, so I’d go and see her and go to Optimo, and then when I was student I’d go to Trash. And those, for me, were great because it was the kind of music that I was more accustomed to at the time, and they were also communities — that’s the thing I’ll always come back to. It’s kind of rising above and beyond just the music or the club.

JC: Was Trash heavily focused on guests?

EH: No. Well, they were parties. That’s the thing: a party can’t become a party if it’s always about guests. Because you have no continuity. Right? And so the continuity comes from people pushing their vision on a continual basis. At Trash you’d hear Erol Alkan play great obscure indie records at the time. I’ve become slightly disillusioned with where Erol Alkan’s taken his aesthetic since then, but I really respect where he came from and what he did. And similarly for Optimo, and Optimo continued to be a huge influence. We’re going to play there at the end of the month in Glasgow. And we played last year, and that was just a really exciting moment, to be asked to go out there and play. So I wasn’t, like, in the rave scene in the UK or Ireland, so the influences from a party perspective kind of finish there, to be honest.

How did you guys get into house music and start DJing?

EH: Well, for me it was one of my oldest friends at college; we were in London, right? There are lots and lots of record stores, lots of parties, just lots of music going on. We were living together, so we just started buying tons of records. We used to play these fairly small little hip-hop parties; we just kind of fueled our love of music doing that. And that was around the same time I was going up to Glasgow and going to Trash and all that — I was still kind of an indie guy. Then I moved to New York. Do you remember a party called Motherfucker?

No

EH: So there was lots of parties downtown in New York which were based around rock and roll, and Justine D was a big figure. I was operating in those circles, and I got — Motherfucker was actually would another party that would be some sort of inspiration. What attracted me to that was the fact that it was downtown New York. I was besotted with the history of downtown New York, and I wanted to follow it, whatever the current version of it was. It was a really interesting party. They had Hot Chip play there, they had ESG play there, they had The Cramps and the New York Dolls play there. I got to play Motherfucker three times, which was pretty amazing as the party was huge and a true New York melting point of different types of people. But you know, I started to get bored of hearing guitar music at these parties, and wanted to hear more beat-driven stuff, so I started to seek out house and techno parties. Justine D, who was running those parties, became the musical director at Studio B and brought me on board as a resident, and we were doing parties there that were quite wide ranging in music. That was around the time that Justin and I met for the first time and started working together.

JC: For me, I just grew up with a dad who was really into music. He was a musician, he continues to be a musician, he plays the guitar, he’s been playing guitar for, I don’t know, 45 years or something like that at this point. And he also had a big record collection. So I spent a lot of time in the car with him, growing up. He had a big tape collection as well, and so we’d just listen to music all the time. It was just a natural progression for me to grow a record collection (it was a CD collection at first). I also was playing music a lot. I was a guitar player and a singer and a songwriter through junior high school and high school and into college. And after college, I kind of stopped playing music as much and writing my own music as much. Around the same time I found myself saying something along the lines of “There’s no good new music,” and as I said it I knew that it wasn’t true. I decided that I would start to go to Other Music and a few other stores in the city and just educate myself, or let the record store clerks educate me because I knew that there was a ton of music out there that I didn’t know anything about. So I just started buying records, and I just bough my own turntables and played records in my bedroom for six months. It wasn’t long before I started DJing out.

How did you two start working together?

JC: Eamon just sent me an email, because Eamon’s very proactive, and he was like, “Hey, we should meet.” And we went and met for a donut at Peter Pan up in Greenpoint, and we just became friends through that — fast-forward a little while and we were doing Sunday Best together. And… well — actually, you tell the story about APT.

EH: So Justin was organizing a residency for Afrika Bambaataa. So he asked me and Lindsey Caldwell to be the other DJs. So we did this weekly party with Bambaataa where I would open, Bambaataa would arrive with is entourage, and I would quickly get out of the DJ booth before Bambaataa came in because APT had this tiny little DJ booth, and if Bambaataa came in, there’s no way you were getting out — he was a big man. The party didn’t last very long because Bambaataa had a touring schedule, and –

JC: Honestly, it just wasn’t that successful; it was on a Tuesday night, and nobody in New York can draw every Tuesday night.

EH: But it was fun, you know? It was pretty awesome to be playing with Bambaataa. Around the same time we started Sunday Best, which was kind of the original incarnation of what Mister Sunday was this summer.

JC: I realized in working with Eamon that there was somebody who took it as seriously as I did. Like, Eamon would respond to emails and respond to phone calls, and he treated the business of throwing parties seriously. And not to say that you’ve got to be all spreadsheet about it, but I feel like nightlife in general is something that a lot of people are drawn to because it’s so loose. But I think it’s really important when you’re running a party to be serious about presenting people with a good experience. That’s something that I saw that Eamon was committed to, so it was a very natural draw to each other once we actually started working together.

How did Mister Saturday Night start?

EH: Well, Santos Party House had opened downtown, and I think there was a genuine excitement about this club because it was a good club to begin with, and it had creative, interesting people behind it, and it portrayed itself as alternative and different. We ended up signing a deal with Santos to program every Saturday night, both floors. Justin and I would program it and run it and be residents, and then we’d also have James Friedman as a resident and Twilite Tone, who Justin had been DJing with as well. Justin came up with the name “Mister Saturday Night,” and that’s how we started.

JC: Which Eamon wasn’t so excited about in the beginning.

EH: No, I felt it was a little too jazz hands. But so we did it from January to May. However, our dreams of having this really great relationship with the people at Santos were dashed, to be honest. And at the point, you know, I’d worked at Studio B, I’d worked at Love, Justin had worked at APT, we’d worked at Santos, Water Taxi Beach. We’d all kind of had these experiences of having to work with people who didn’t share our vision. And frankly, to be honest, didn’t really have any vision for nightlife — who just seemed to be business people who were in a business that they didn’t understand. Which to me — it’s kind of like opening a restaurant and not having any vision for what you’re putting on the menu.

JC: Or not having any real passion for it at all. I would like to say, though, that there are so many people involved in Santos that I don’t want it to seem to anybody that we’re bashing all the people that are involved in Santos. There are some really, really great people that are still involved with that place as owners, as partners, and they still have a good vision for that place. But there are forces that are larger than the ambitions of a few creative people in a big organization that made that place untenable for us to do parties.

EH: So we had to leave. Oh no, to be fair, they kicked us out.

JC: Because we weren’t drawing more than 800 people a night.

EH: They needed substantial crowds to pay rent. After that we just wanted to take the entire operation experience into our own hands and start afresh, and that was really the beginnings of the party as we know it now.

JC: We really said, “Alright, enough with clubs, enough with these places that don’t have the same vision that we have. We need to go to other kinds of places.” And around that time, we found out that Todd P at Market Hotel was willing to host dance parties and appeared to appreciate what we did. So we started to do Mister Saturday Night there. And that was really the beginning of Mister Saturday Night as it exists now.

How has it changed since then?

EH: We’ve developed a community. You see the same faces coming through, you see those faces interacting with each other, as a result of being at the party, and we interact with them as well. We’ve seen it grow and evolve. We’ve seen groups of people come for, like, nine months at a time and move on. We’ve all got busy lives and we’re moving around, but seeing that evolve is really satisfying.

JC: I feel like we’ve gotten a little bit tighter in our execution of things. You know, we — in the beginning when we were at Market Hotel, we did –

EH: Ugh, everything. We were bringing subwoofers upstairs at like six o’ clock before the party, and killing our backs.

You guys bought all the beer and all that?

JC: Yeah, yeah. Everything.

EH: Everything. Now we can show up at, like, 9:30, and it’s all set because we’ve got a team of people.

JC: A great sound team, a great lighting team, a great bar team. It’s all set up. This is something else that’s really satisfying — it’s not like we’ve handed these things off, and we hope that it goes well. We’ve handed these things off in a way where everything fits in with our vision. That’s a huge, huge thing to be able to say. Our sound guys are just, like, so on it. And Jeff, who does our lighting — every time we show up, it’s simple, but it’s special, and it’s warm feeling. He does such a good job. And our bar staff tells us when something needs to be changed or when something needs to be ordered.

EH: And our security guy tells everybody that walks through the door, “Welcome to Mister Saturday Night.” You know? He gets it. We’ve worked with him the entire time. It takes time to build that, but it’s quite amazing that we’ve gotten to that point in two and a half years.

Do you guys think you would ever consider going back to a club?

JC: Yes.

EH: Yeah. I still have a very soft part of my heart for, like, the clubs, you know? Like, there are the places that are the kind of “cathedrals” in the world where people go to. It pains me that New York has lost those. It really does.

JC: It’s not that a good club can’t exist. We’re going to play at Plastic People at the end of this month, and that is a club that totally gets it right. They have great security people at the door. I was talking to somebody Plastic People the other day, and they said to me, “You know, the first time I was there, I paid too much money at the bar, and I walked away and I didn’t know it, and a couple of minutes later, one of the bartenders had walked through the crowd over to me and tapped me on the shoulder to hand me my change.” Which amounted to, like, two pounds or something like that. It wasn’t a big thing, but they care so much. The people who run the place care, and the sound system is good — not because they want to be show-off-y about it, but because they actually care about how good it sounds. If somebody opened a place like that in New York, we would be there in a second because there are a lot of things that are a real pain about doing what we do in the way that we do. So if we could move it into a regular club, no doubt about it, we would do it.

EH: I admire Berghain, I admire Panorama Bar, I admire Fabric. I admire those clubs that have a vision from the top down, and then everything else is just putting the components in place to make it happen. That’s not what I’ve ever experienced in New York. The people that own the clubs, the people that are signing the checks are people that don’t know anything about music.

JC: And there are exceptions to that. I mean Cielo was started by Nicolas Matar, who’s a DJ, and there’s still good stuff that happens there. The tragic thing about that place is that it’s in the meatpacking district.

EH: That kind of proves my point: the reason it’s been successful is it had that consistent vision the entire time. Not a guy that’s sitting there that doesn’t understand what’s happening in his club, beating people up because they’re not bringing people in.

Eamon, tell me a little bit about your productions.

EH: Well, Steve [Raney] and I started working together about — I’d say about two years ago. Up until that point, I’d done some edits, and I released a 12? on Wurst, just when they were an edit label. We started sending stuff to James [Friedman] because he was an old friend, as James was kind of reinvigorating Throne of Blood. And it kind of went from there. The nice reaction we got was just really satisfying. The process of writing something yourself from scratch and putting it out there is actually quite frightening, because you live with it and you have no idea whether it’s good or bad. I mean you have an inkling, but even, like, playing those tracks was kind of a bit of a leap of faith. But to be able to dip into your bag and pull out a record that you’ve made, just as natural as your pulling out another record because you’ve built that confidence, was really satisfying this year.

Or to see Levon Vincent pull it.

EH: Yes. Yeah. That was pretty awesome it’s well. I really want to spend more on it — I’ve got an EP coming out in a month on Throne of Blood as well. Justin and I are starting a label this year. We’ve got our first 12? signed, possibly our second.

JC: Not “signed,” but we just got an email last night from this guy, who sent us a really, really nice track.

EH: So we’re working on a remix for the first 12? together, a Mister Saturday Night remix. And I have about half a dozen tracks that I just need to get mixed and get out there. So yeah, it’s a completely different thing trying to create music. We’re really keen to get the label up and running this year as well and see where that goes. We want to get more into production and putting music out and contributing something to the musical landscape above and beyond events.

JC: I think it’s a natural progression from us throwing parties, to release music. Eamon is fully immersed in producing music. I am not a producer, but I write music, and it’s a really important thing to me. I think both of us kind of want a potential vehicle for ourselves and a potential vehicle for the people that we have relationships with, whether that’s the people who are coming to the party, who are sending us music because they like the party and what it’s about, or if it’s people who are coming to DJ the party. We haven’t decided exactly what it’s going to look like — all we know at this point is that we’ve got two people who are sending us music that we are really excited about, who haven’t sent music to anybody else that we know of, and we’ll see where it goes after that.

Justin, you alluded to your own productions. How is that going?

JC: Yeah, so I co-wrote and sang on a Great Weekend track that was released on Wurst. But other than that, I grew up writing music, like I said before, and it’s funny: as I started to DJ, I stopped writing and stopped playing my guitar and singing as much. I always kind of assumed that at some point there would be this bolt of lightning that would strike, and it would inspire me to write that album’s worth of material that I always wanted to write. About a year and a half ago that I realized that that wasn’t going to happen, that I just needed to sit down and work, and create a schedule for myself that says, “You will write music five times a week for an hour a day.” That’s what I’m doing right now. I just sat down two days ago and wrote down my goals for 2012, and one of those goals is to finish writing and record a full album’s worth of material that may be released this year, but will definitely be released by next year. Cross your fingers that I can realize that, but it’s a real ambition of mine.

Where do you guys diverge as DJs?

JC: Let’s do it like this: I will tell you what I think Eamon’s style is, and I’ll let Eamon tell you what he thinks my style is. I think Eamon is very informed by where he grew up and where his formative years learning about music were spent. There is a much more austere quality to the dance music that took hold in Europe. You know, when I think of the origins of dance music in Europe, I think of bands like New Order, I think of clubs like Ministry of Sound. I think of, like, a dance music that’s less rooted in the black American experience. Even if it was inspired by that in one way or another, it’s certainly less influenced by that. When I hear Eamon play, it’s much more beat-driven music than the music that I feel like I play. I don’t know, what do you think? Feel free to disagree with me too.

EH: Ha! I think I probably would disagree. I think there’s a lot of overlap because we’ve been doing parties together for so long. I mean you’ll often find a lot of the same records in both our bags. I think where you kind of see differences is at the fringes of the party. Like, at the start of the night, Justin will often play a lot slower and play hip-hop. I love hip-hop, but I just never really choose to play it. I’d like to play, like, Philip Glass or Steve Reich — I guess that’s that austere sort of element that Justin mentioned. I definitely like things a little darker sometimes. So maybe that’s part of it. But Justin will play his dark, moody techno set often at the end of the night, you know? I think we were further apart when we started the party, and we’ve come closer together as a result.

JC: Yeah, I don’t think Eamon would have ever played, like, vocal versions of some of the house tracks that he has, but he definitely plays the vocal versions now, which is great.

EH: Yeah, possibly. I’d have played the dub or just played techno. But that’s the benefit of having a partner, and that fact that you can both grow musically by being exposed to each other’s tastes is great.

JC: How you would describe the way I play?

EH: Well, I think that you’ll sometimes play a particularly dark, moody set. Like, he was playing Tin Man records this year. I don’t even know if I would go that dark. But then he’ll play a particular type of disco that I wouldn’t necessarily reach for. It’s not like I don’t have that part of my spectrum, but there’s a happiness that sometimes comes through Justin’s set and I don’t go to that emotional part of the spectrum. I think that’s how I would best describe the difference in our styles – we both reach for certain moods which are unique to ourselves. Maybe I’m a slightly darker personality. Maybe it’s the Irish or something, I don’t know.

How do you guys keep playing together exciting?

EH: Well, Justin keeps buying all my records!!

JC: Yeah, I make Eamon have to work extra hard because I buy all of his records. It was funny — earlier this year I sent him an email, and I was like, “Dude, what was that record that you played that was black and white?” He sent me back an email saying, “I think we need to go on our own musical journeys.”

EH: I think that what’s great about a partnership where you respect each other’s musical taste is that you can learn from each other and you can challenge each other. I’ve learned a lot over the last three years because of the types of music that Justin has exposed me to, as well as the bookings. Booking is another kind of curatorial thing where I’ll bring an idea and Justin’s like, “Well, I’ve never heard of him, but let me have a look,” and vice versa. Justin was totally on the Floating Points tip way before me, and I was pretty gung-ho about bringing Rolando in. You’re on your own journeys, and you rub off on each other, so you absorb more as a partnership.

JC: Eamon is really good about how to make tracks work together; how to build a particular energy in the room. I still feel like I’m learning how to do that. That’s one way where I feel he’s influenced me in a really positive way — to think about how to build energy and not just play a good song and then another good song and then another good song. I mean I’ve always known that that was an important thing as a DJ, but hearing Eamon do that has been a real learning experience for me.

Is the fact that you guys play almost all vinyl at the party important?

JC: You know, was I thinking about this a couple of days ago. I try to be responsible about the choices that I make in general. I’m mostly a vegetarian, I try to buy things that are made in the States, for the most part, but vinyl is one way where I feel like my choices could totally be irresponsible. Because there’s a much less polluting way to do it. Vinyl is pretty toxic, and it’s creating these big plastic discs that are going to be around well beyond myself. So I was thinking the other day, “Is this the most responsible thing?” Vinyl is important for me because I have these big, physical things that I can turn around and look through. They’re like visual cues that remind me of a feeling or of what that song sounds like. That makes it easy for me to pick what my next record is going to be in a very basic way.

EH: The whole thing’s such a tactile process, and I’ve been buying records for so long that it’s just — I’ve tried Serato, I’ve tried more CDs, and it just doesn’t feel right. We don’t do it as any big statement, as part of the party. We don’t try to make a big deal out of the fact that we play vinyl; that’s just the way we started doing it. It’s a pain in the ass. Every single venue we’ve been at we’ve had to hang the DJ booth from the ceiling, and that’s a pain. But I think we’re better DJs as a result of it.

JC: Yeah, it’s just what we started with and what we continue to do. There’s definitely this nerdy kind of club that you get to be in when you play vinyl. You get to go to record stores, you get to talk to the other people who collect vinyl, and talk about how much better vinyl sounds than everything else. There’s something that’s really, really fun about that. And you know, it’s not like we are calling our party “Mister Saturday Night Plays Vinyl,” but we mention it. It’s part of what we do.

EH: I try not to be so prejudiced about it because I also try to look forward. We want to do things differently, and there is an element of vinyl culture that’s just a little bit nostalgic. I don’t want to be that. We don’t have any rule about guests not having laptops or whatever, but I think we’ve only had, like, three laptops in the booth the entire time. The guests we book tend to roll up with records. There’s a certain sensibility there.

How do you guys approach the booking?

JC: In the same way that we approach buying records. It’s purely based on who we’re excited about at a moment in time, whose music we’re playing a lot at the party. That’s really it.

EH: For the Sundays, where we book everybody in advance and we look at it as a 15-week thing, we want the entire summer to have a flow and momentum of its own.

JC: It’s kind of like programming a DJ set, in a way.

Are there any defining records of your party? Records that either always seem to find themselves getting played, or records that maybe only got played once, but produced a particularly special moment?

EH: Well, there’s a record that will be on the podcast because it was a big record for us this year. It’s “Lap The Music” by Alfabet, which is by Tom Trago [and Awanto 3]. I swear to god, every time our crowd just keels over for it. They absolutely love it.

JC: Yeah. That’s one that Eamon bought, and I was like, “What is that?” And next party I was like, “Check this record out!”

EH: Next party I’m at the bar, and there it goes, and Justin’s hands in air — “Look at my new record.” Another one is the third one of the Oni Ayhun, which is a big record for me. We played that the first Mister Sunday this year, right at the very end, and it just went bananas.

JC: Well, it kind of goes in cycles. At any given moment there could be one record that means a lot. But I’d say in 2011, for me, this Cece Peniston, with a Steve “Silk” Hurley remix on the back that I play all the time. And there’s one that I play a lot by San Soda called “Doorsnee.” It’s a little bit on that UK bass music tip. It’s got these big, crazy sub-bass melodies in it.

EH: You also played — I don’t know who did it, but it was on Philpot.

JC: Oh, that Arttu record? He released three records this year, and all of them were outstanding. Yeah, and I would play that first one every single set. Every, every single set. It’s very, like, very, very raw. Very Detroit-sounding. Very Detroit- [or] Chicago-sounding, like, you know, kind of big analog drums, very, like, spacious in its production. I don’t know.

EH: I mean there’s other ones that come to mind, like there’s a Martin Buttrich Carl Craig remix, anything by Roman Flügel, like “How To Spread Lies.” Cobblestone Jazz’s “Dump Truck,” Levon Vincent’s “Solemn Days,” the Frankie Knuckles remix of Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody,” quite a few Junior Boy’s Own records. And then there’s always a lot of Omar-S knocking around as well.

JC: Not to be forgotten: Floating Points. Every single time he comes out with a record, it gets put on regular rotation at the party. I’ve been playing “Myrtle Avenue” like crazy. When we were in London last year playing with him, after the party was over we went back to Sam [Shepherd]‘s house. We were just listening to music, and he was like, “Hey, check this out; it’s called ‘Myrtle Avenue.’ You know, like Market Hotel,” where he came and played the first gig with us. It’s such a good record.

What’s coming up in 2012?

EH: More parties — maintain the schedule. Two Mister Saturday Night’s a month. One with a guest, one without, roughly. Hopefully Mister Sunday again. There’s always — there’s probably a lot more heartache that goes in to producing Mister Sunday than most people would know, in terms of permitting and politics.

EH: That’s New York, you know? So that, and we’ll be in Chicago, London, Glasgow, Stuttgart, and Berlin. I think we’ll be out and about more this year. Also the label — just contributing to the musical landscape beyond doing events is definitely the next goal, and I think we do that through our own musical endeavors and the label.

What do you think about New York as a party-throwing city? It’s got such a history, and yet nowadays so many people have this sort of love/hate relationship with it.

JC: I love New York. I think that New York is a place where, when a party goes off, it goes off better than anywhere else that I’ve ever been. You know, people like to talk about Berlin as this dance music Mecca, but I was there for three months, and I feel like I got a pretty good lay of the land. I heard a lot of really great producers and DJs at very important venues, and I never enjoyed them as much as I have when I’ve heard them in New York. In Berlin things never close — parties can just kind of go on indefinitely. There is no beginning and no end. Michael Mayer came and played with us last year at the beginning of the Sunday series, and he said something that I think is so important: “I really love to play your party because there’s an end to it, and that’s really, really nice.” On Sundays, we’ve got a hard cut at nine o’ clock. That’s such an important part of that party. A lot of people stay, and the energy is so amazing because people know that in one hour this party is going to be done. People don’t stay even till the end on our Saturday night parties, at least not a huge group of people. We’ve got a crew — a good, like, 50 to 75 people, and it’s got it’s own specialness about it. But on Sundays it’s really amazing because people who might leave a party before it was done won’t leave because they know there’s only an hour left. You get a full-on dance floor at nine o’ clock at night, and you get to play those end-of-the-night songs to a super receptive and excited crowd.

Even though we go until six o’ clock in the morning on Saturdays, it’s different than in Berlin where you could just go on forever and ever and ever. Even if it’s just 50 to 75 people there, it still feels like, “Oh, it’s ending so there’s something special about this. We better squeeze every bit that we can out of this moment because it’s going to be done soon.” It’s kind of like when people talk about how they hate the weather in New York if they live in Florida, but the people who live in New York and have been here for a long time, will always say, “Well, I really like the seasons. I really like the fact that you get to see the seasons.” And I feel like that’s kind of what makes parties good in New York: you know that there’s something that’s finite about it. You know that it’s not always this good. You know it’s not always going to be this warm, or it’s not always going to be this cold. You know it’s not always going to be like this so you try to draw as much as you can from that particular moment because it’s going to change at some point. There are a ton of bad clubs here, and you’ve been to those bad clubs before so when you go to a good party, and it’s really, really awesome, it becomes even more awesome because in New York it doesn’t happen all the time.

EH: I mean, I’ve got a European passport; I don’t have to be here. I choose to be here because it’s rewarding. What we’ve created is really rewarding, and I really believe in it, and that’s because of what New York gives back to us. It really bums me out when I hear people talk disparagingly about the scene in New York. I actually read an interview with Juan MacLean, which angered me because he was just talking really adamantly about how bad the parties were in New York. And it was coming from a limited perspective. I don’t know what his experience is, but I know he hasn’t been to some of the parties that are great in New York. And I love Kieran Hebden to bits, and we’re friends through having booked him and stuff, but there’s this little Twitter thing that was going on this summer, and I actually kind of challenged him back. “Alright, so you had one bad gig at Public Assembly because you were booked by somebody who doesn’t give a shit about sound systems. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing good in New York.” To be fair to him, he said nice things about us, but there’s that limited perspective thing again.

JC: Well, but I think Kieran had a point. I thought what he was saying was, “Until Brooklyn gets a proper venue that can support the people who are doing the things that are vital in the community, it’s going to be an uphill battle.”

EH: I think that the people of New York who come out to the parties, really, really make the parties. I had a little bit of a residency at a place called Tape in Berlin, and I had some great gigs there, but none of them compared to the best gigs I’ve had in New York. And having lived in Europe and gone to Fabric a lot as well, there’s a real sort of dilution of energy that comes from being popular. It’s a little bit like New Year’s Eve.

JC: Yeah, that’s it, man.

EH: We benefit a little from being a bit removed from that and not having that club. It just makes for good vibes. The one thing I actually think about New York is that it’s a little fragmented sometimes. I sometimes wish there was a greater sense of community between some of the parties, but I don’t know if that’s just being too hippie of me, or whatever.

JC: You’re not going to get me complaining about people coming together and loving one another.

Guillaume’s initial musical forays were as a percussionist in a funk band, after which he studied latin and classical percussions in college before discovering electro-acousticcomposition, which he pursued  further atuniversity. It was during this period that he joined [iks], a contemporary jazz formation with whom he recorded two albums and toured for several months in Senegal. Upon his return to Montreal, Guillaume decided to focus his efforts on composition.

Influenced as much by concrete music as by techno, which he discovered one night in the midst of a lightning storm, Guillaume founded Egg (MUTEK_rec, Karat, Floppy Funk), Luci (MUTEK_rec, Morris Audio), Chic Miniature (Raummusik, Musique Risquée), Flabbergast (MUTEK_rec), as well as the artistic collective Racam. He has toured with one or another of these projects in north/south America, Europe and Asia.
Since January 2007, Guillaume has reached European soil. Like many other, he chose Berlin as his new home base. Traveling all around the block, he’s always looking to get the dance floors grinning with guilty pleasure. C’MON NOW SHAKE THAT ASS!

Now, the whole story comes full circle with a Tanner Ross & Soul Clap EP due out on Wolf + Lamb this month. It’s called the Shady Shores EP because we wrote or finished the music together during our retreat last winter in Miami Shores, which became known as Shady Shores for reasons that will go unmentioned  While Tanner didn’t make this mix there, it’s a mix inspired by our time together in different places. From years in Boston, to sessions in Miami, to the last month of mayhem at the Michelberger Hotel in Berlin, this is music that we listen to when we’re just hanging out, playing ping-pong or J’n-Oh. It’s the soundtrack to life, love and family being together worked together by a DJ at the top of his game. Welcome to Tanner’s world…

Expect an orgy of edits on the secretive duo’s mix for us.

What do we know about Tiger & Woods? Well, they’ve released three parts of an ongoing edits series that have surfaced through their own Editainment imprint. The squirming funk of “Gin Nation” has been marked as their standout track—one of the two cuts that made up last year’s Caddy Shag EP. They made their DJing debut at Robert Johnson in Offenbach late October and followed it up with a number of European dates throughout the remainder of 2010. And now we have this mix. Adroitly snatched samples are the basis for the duo’s trip through soul, disco, boogie and house music; if there’s a more feel-good way of seeing in 2011 we’d like to hear it.

What have you been up to recently?

We started touring Europe, we just finished the album, we did a remix for someone from Germany, and mainly we’d love to say that we’ve been playing in the Ryder Cup, but unfortunately we can’t really…

How and where was the mix recorded?

The mix was recorded somewhere in central Europe, but most of the music on it has been treated, sliced and dubbed on audiocassette in our lab which is somewhere else, way warmer than central Europe.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the idea behind the mix?

Most of the music on it comes from a kind of research we do in our studio, a sort of groove extraction that we need to regenerate those unknown and known classics. The idea of the mix is to blend those obsessive essential flavours with new and old tracks we love.

What’s the motivation behind your cloak of anonymity?

It’s so easy to get to know things nowadays; for once we tried to keep it spicy like it was back in the day.

Why edits?

We love it when you discover something new in a song you already know. If the edit is just meant to “fix the beat” or just extend it, then it’s not our cup of tea.

What are you up to next?

There’s a lot of music coming out from our side in 2011, and yes that includes an album (as you can read on Wikileaks). But mainly we’ll be looking for a new scandal to “ride”—and this time it won’t be based on the golf player, it will be just based on us.

We know what you’re saying, “soft rock, has the Clap lost their minds?!” But fear not loyal listeners, we promise this is the perfect mix to get you in the holiday spirit. No matter what holiday it is that you’re celebrating and whoever it is that you’re spending it with, Grandmaster 7L is going to Step you Into The AM in ways your pretty little ears never imagined. In the end we couldn’t imagine a better way to end such a magical year than with such a magical mix by one of our most magical friends from our magical home of Boston. So happy holidaze and a massive thank you for all the love in 2010 and here’s to many more adventures together, in 2011 and beyond.

This time crazy space mix made by our beautifull Moustache Mamas
you can find more info about them here:
http://www.myspace.com/moustachemamas
Let the love be with you!

greg and voit

Something a little different from me. Bringing the BMP and vibe down. A selection of a few favourite sounds and tracks from Hip Hop to Nu Jazz. Inspired by mushroom Jazz.
Come down to Greenwich Bar, Berlin every Thursday from 8PM. Deep House and Nu Jazz sounds.
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=157812177563475
Website : www.greenwichbar.de

Can you tell me about the mix? Was there a specific theme you were going for?

Daryl: It’s everything we grew up listening to. It wasn’t everything we heard, but a lot of big influences that took place in different eras in time, trying to compress it all in a small amount of time. But it wasn’t really shooting for anything particular, just taking it laid back, so to speak.
Shone: It’s more of a reflection of what influenced us doing different types of music. It’s representative of the Oliverwho Factory. You have Jimi Hendrix. Who doesn’t know about him and his musicianship? And then you have the Donna Summer vocals; she was really big in the disco era. Of course we like to display our (own work), we also like to display vocals. This mix was more to tell a story of our influences. And some of our own records to show you how you can mix our records with basically any style of music. So that’s the idea behind that mix. It’s reintroducing who the Oliverwho Factory is, telling a story about the Oliverwho Factory.

You guys are more known for your music rather than DJing. Your mix for Recloose’s Hit It and Quit It radio show from earlier this year was the first I heard from you. Do you both DJ?

D: We really don’t DJ. I haven’t DJed in years. As I told Matt [Chicoine, aka Recloose] it’s been a long, long time since I DJed. But we both pulled together some tracks that we liked and I told him that it was real rough. It was explained that we really don’t DJ.
S: And no I don’t DJ, no, not yet. Someone had suggested that I do that and I have been playing around with a few different programs. I’m always interested in learning things, especially the DJ aspect. I think that’s exciting. I think that if the opportunity presented itself, I would go for it. Daryl is not giving himself enough credit. He has the capability, believe me he does, but I don’t know that he’s focusing on it right now but he could do it.
D: What Shone didn’t tell us is “look out.” Because when she gets into it she’s gonna get into it.
S: If you’re going to do it. Do it.

Which DJs do you look up to?

D: There’s a lot. I recall when Shone and me went to an after party and Theo Parrish had thrown a party at a Loft. It was like raw, lots of percussion, totally deep house. From that point on it stuck.
S: I like Fabrice Lig too. He is really, really intense. We had an opportunity to see him when he came here to Detroit five years ago and he was really good. His interactions… I always focus on how the DJ interacts with the audience and I could see the way he was interacting. He was very approachable. I think that compliments a DJ. I know that you have to focus on your art, your craft, but just as he was having a good time, it made us have even more fun. And the selection of music. Also Derrick May, I like the way he works up a sweat. He works hard.
D: He makes me tired. But he sure works it.

Your productions have a gritty texture to them. Why is that grit important to you and is it a reaction to the cleaner pop of the Oliverwho? days?

D: I would say that’s probably 25% of it. Another 75% is… we were listening to old music, the way it was.
A: Exactly. If you listen to the early records that came out during the old Motown days you can actually hear the crackling. You know, the needle on the record. That’s what we were trying to capture with our music as well. And the fact that it is underground music. If it was cool and crisp people would say that it’s too commercial sounding.
D: Some have actually alluded to that on some of our records. It was almost frowned upon when the production got a little cleaner.
A: We just wanted to show people we knew what we were doing, that we could make a record sound clean. There were a lot of people that didn’t understand at first. It was muddy, but they didn’t understand that was what we were really shooting for. It gives it a warmer feel too.
D: I don’t know if you grew up listening to the Beatles. But a lot of their stuff was cut on four and eight track tapes, yet they were the biggest records ever made. Not really how clean the song sounds, if the song is a good song… We were more or less going for a feel. Not trying to keep up with a certain sound. It was more or less to create a certain feel…
S: A back in the day feel.
D: That wasn’t being presented at the moment.

That’s an easy thing to associate with, especially with house records that use vocals; they can take on a commercial feel. It seems like that’s a good way to keep you from falling into that trap.

S: That’s really the way we look at it. When you do hear house music with vocals, some people tend to commercialize it. For me when vocals are placed in the right area, it doesn’t have to be a lot, but it adds more impact and more soul. I just think that is how we approach each record, soulfully.

I hear a lot of jazz in your records too. Not overtly, necessarily, but using different instrumentation and phrasing.

D: Jazz is something that surprisingly left Detroit but jazz is something that never really goes away. Before jazz did leave, it went from a real vintage jazz to a more of a pop jazz, they started calling R&B tracks jazz.

Smooth jazz they call it.

D: Yeah. In Detroit we had a real jazz station, it was JZZ. That’s when you heard a lot of the real, pure jazz. At that time in my life that was one of the things influencing me and it stuck with me.

“Night Lights” recently came out on Planet E, your first release on a label outside your own. Did you feel any pressure to clean up the sound of the tracks for that release?

D: No comment. [laughs] When we wrote “Night Lights” we said to ourselves this is a different track than what we’ve ever done. It just so happened things were getting set up with Planet E unbeknown to us and this turned out to be the perfect track, for Planet E more so than us. It was almost a more mature sound for us. It is still maintaining our sound and with his remix Carl took it to a different level.
S: I think it has a broader appeal in certain aspects. People who knew us from the beginning may feel a little hesitant about it because it is cleaner. But by the same token Carl’s label reaches a broader audience leaning more towards that style than “U Don’t Know.” Not to say we did it for that reason, because what we do is what we’re feeling at that time. It’s a good thing. We’re willing to open up and explore our options. Nothing wrong with that.
D: When we saw the track and heard the outcome it was like. ‘Yeah, it’s Planet E meets Oliverwho Factory’” We met somewhere in the middle.

Do you have any plans to release on other labels or do any further remixes?

D: There are some things in the works but until they are finalized… we will bring out at that point.
S: We’re going to do some remixes. I’m going to be contacting some people. [laughs]
D: Do you know Lerosa? He’s been into some reggae lately and Shone has done some vocals with him.
S: I like all the tracks, one of which is featured in the mix. It was a wonderful experience working with him. He’s real passionate; he does it for the love of music. And Daryl actually did some vocals as well. Look for that, they are some hot tracks.

Daryl, looking back at the time when you were on BMG, do you see that as a necessary step to get you where you are as an artist today?

D: I don’t necessarily wish it didn’t happen because we all learn from our mistakes and experiences. At the same time I don’t think it was something that was necessary for what’s happening now to happen. It was something that happened and I said that’s just something we won’t do anymore and decided to take a left turn somewhere.

No regrets then?
D: No, I really don’t look back. You go through it and you find out that they don’t know what they want to do. You could practically run the label yourself and do a better job. That’s why I don’t look back because I get upset about it.

You guys keep such a low profile, no Facebook, Myspace, and your website is under construction. How are people supposed to find out about you and stay connected to your music? Is being underground the primary goal?
D: That was the first thing, keeping it underground. Usually when our web page is active that’s when most of the audience knows something is about to happen. And that creates a buzz in itself.
S: I had actually started a Facebook page but I took it down because I’m somewhat of a perfectionist and I didn’t think the way I did it was completely right. As far as the website is concerned I’m looking into having someone design it for us because I want that to be right as well. I really want to connect with people who are supportive of our music.
D: Shortly after Tama Sumo presented her Panorama Bar mix, we thought maybe because it was so hard for her to get a hold of us we decided that we should treat the site like a company would treat a site and not so underground. It’s starting to grow and we need to conform to a degree to the point where you feel comfortable. That’s what we’re in the process of doing. It doesn’t mean we won’t be underground, but we will be more accessible.

What’s one house or techno record that has inspired you in some way and when do you remember first hearing it?

S: I can say Lil’ Louis, “Club Lonely.” I remember hearing that at the Warehouse club in St. Albans. We both used to hang out there. In the Riverfront, that’s where they used to throw a lot of house parties there. Also, “Break for Love” by Raze and “Can You Feel It” by Mr. Fingers, the instrumental version.
D: Yeah.
S: What about Soul Night at the State Theatre?
D/S: Oh yeah [in unison].
D: They had this club night called Soul Night on Tuesdays. This was back in the ’90s when you used to club during the week. It got so out of hand that you would go out not only on Thursday and Sunday but Tuesday. And then they had one club downtown in Greektown called Mickey’s. Those were the good days I guess. People were out partying in the middle of the week until 3 am.
S: Dancing for house music.
D: Knowing they got to get up the next morning and go to work.

Daryl, were those some of your picks as well?

D: I remember those, but nothing really stood out in terms of individual songs. It was the whole atmosphere, the whole club. It was totally different than going to a cabaret, or a concert. It was more of a feel free vibe. I was just going to say we had fun in Hamtramck. The Motor Lounge.
S: That’s that techno place.
D: I liken it to techno, probably techno more so than house unfortunately, I hate to say it that way. But I liken techno to jazz, and classical. Because you get more of a variety, you have more people that appreciate the actual music than cliques.
S: I think what Daryl is saying as far as house music, it’s so scarce. Me, I would listen to the music but you could see there were groups of people, cliques. They would call themselves the preps or something. And Daryl has always been an individual and that’s why he shied away. I’m speaking for him. Techno is more free.
D: I don’t see any cliques with techno. I don’t see just one crowd listening to techno. I don’t see one age bracket. It’s all over. I don’t see one culture. I see everything, I see everybody listening to techno.
A: At least that’s what we see here. It could be different somewhere else, but I’ve also been to Chicago house parties and clubs and seen it happening there.

I hadn’t thought about that, but I think that is where you can get back into that commercial versus underground conflict. House becomes the commercial and techno is underground in that equation.

S: Exactly. That’s what really prompted us to do the things we do. Because here’s the house and the techno, we love both sounds. We’re trying to combine that, not just on the musical level but also the audience that listens to it as well.

Your music has a certain depth and complexity that seems like it would translate well to the album format. Might we see an album from the Oliverwho Factory at some point in the future?

S: We never limit our options. That is always a possibility, because we have tons of songs we still have. Who’s to say it’s not something we could look into?
D: It’s interesting because Matt [Recloose] mentioned the same thing when he was here last. He asked if we were going to do a compilation or an album. It just sounded kind of weird to me, because you see it every now and then, but from the heavyweights. The guys who’ve done, who have been doing it for years. But other than that it’s like… I never really thought about it to that degree, but if it works within certain plans then why not.

It would be good to hear what you guys had in terms of a full album spectrum and exploring some non-dance floor sounds.

S: That reminds me of that one group Minnie Ripperton was in, back in the ’70’s [Rotary Connection]. Really soulful funk.
D: She was with a group; it was like a project, an experiment. And she was with the group before she went solo. She was actually the secretary for this label and they heard her singing and they asked her to be in the group. The group didn’t last long obviously because the label wanted new music. But the group was bad.
S: They were ahead of their time.
D: It was a situation where the politics came into play.
S: And people shied away.
D: We’ll definitely keep that in mind. You said something interesting. You said “it would be nice hear some non-dance.” Because I envisioned some things.
S: That was one of the things we were talking to you about in the first interview with you, with the one division of Madd Chaise. We’re still branching out. It’s just that the techno, house, electronic side is accelerating a little faster than what we thought so we don’t have as much time to devote to the other side of Madd Chaise. But we do have some songs that we have done and a few people that we have worked with that we want to put out. But again since this is more in demand right now we have to follow the techno-house side and keep grooving with that.

A breath-taking regular podcast, hosted by LAZARUS, that features some of the special records he plays around the globe’s most happening parties, mixed up with the various different styles of music he likes to listen to at home; comedy moments spliced up with funk, latin melodies played next to soundtracks, plus cosmic disco, techno and rock… it’s all here in this fresh new show…

Subscribe, sit back, relax and welcome to Lazpod…

If, over the last 20 years or so, you’ve spent any time near a discotheque, radio, TV or one of those spangly new pieces of kit designed to listen to music digitally, you will have been privy to some of the quite marvellous sounds touched, in one way or another, by Kelvin Andrews and his younger sibling Danny Spencer.
Now, if those names aren’t instantly recognisable and feelings of sonic inadequacy have set in, don’t fret, Kelvin and Danny might not be household names, but rest assured, having written a number one single with one Robbie Williams Esquire, remixed the likes of Sister Sledge, The Doobie Brothers and Aretha Franklin and been lauded as acid house heroes (Kelvin was one of the first DJs pushing the incendiary sounds back in the late 80s, while Danny gurned his way onto Top of the Pops and the cover of Smash Hits thanks to his brief flirtation with proper high street fame as a member of Candy Flip), they have helped soundtrack some of the last two decade’s most symphonic moments. Not bad for a couple of lads from Stoke-on-Trent, who like a cracking bottle of red wine, Keith Richards or Steven Gerrard, just seem to get effortlessly better with age.

As well as being their first love, music was always going to be their saving grace. Their dad was a former singer and guitarist, who, having issued records on such iconic labels as Pye, Decca and Parlophone, released his last album in 1964 – coincidentally enough, also the year of Kelvin’s birth. Records of every hue crowded the house.

“Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, funk and jazz,” recalls Kelvin, noting the music which resonated through their Stoke home.

“Even the odd Kraftwerk album would be knocking around,” remembers Danny. “He dealt in quality.”

And when their dad began working behind the scenes – primarily for a company that specialised in bringing black American artists over for performances in the UK – he became fast friends with the likes of Ben E King and Junior Walker.

“My dad’s got lots of fantastic stories from that time,” says Kelvin. “It was a bit strange us being from Stoke. It soon became apparent that we were a bit different from the rest of the kids at school.”

“Yeah,” sniggers Danny. “For ages we thought everyone had soul singers staying in their living room.”

It was to take a cheeky incident with a can of blue paint, his father’s record collection and his own inquisitive mind to cement Kelvin’s passion. Having daubed half his dad’s records blue, in some proto modern art experiment, when he was still young enough not to know better, it was demonstrated to Kelvin what the circular pieces of shellac were really for. In typical youthful fashion, ‘that was it’.

By the early 80s, Kelvin was DJing in an underground club called, curiously enough, The Basement and soaking up the vast array of musical revolutions that seemed to be occurring on a weekly basis: hip hop, post punk, electro and early house were all up for grabs and Kelvin was devouring them religiously, as well as schooling his younger brother. For his part, Danny won awards for his breakdancing.

House music was their real year zero though. Kelvin got his hands on an early copy of the seminal primer The House Sound of Chicago and the pair were hooked. “Everything else was irrelevant,” they both proclaim. Indeed Danny went straight into the studio as an ebullient teen and fashioned Ride The Rhythm under his evocative This Ain’t Chicago moniker. It shot to number 41 with a bullet.

Both became disciples of Manchester’s famed Hacienda nightclub, and it was after one particularly messy night down there that Danny hit upon the idea that would precipitate his first brush with fame and notoriety. Buzzing off DJ Graeme Park playing Fresh Four’s cover of Rose Royce’s blissful Wishing On A Star as the last tune of the night, he and his studio partner Ric Peet decided to try and emulate such a scenario. In a moment of serendipity, The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever was the only song they could listen to on the radio while driving home. The temporary monster that was Candy Flip was thus conceived. A number three hit ensued, as did the aforementioned visit to Top of the Pops and that Smash Hits cover.

For their next project, the boys, typically, went underground once more (one defining feature of their careers, whether individually or collectively, has been their capacity to equally exist in the full glare of the mainstream or bury themselves in the dusty crevices of the leftfield). Having been one of the original residents at Stoke’s infamous den of iniquity, Golden, Kelvin was adept at reading his dancefloor and alongside Danny he transplanted these skills into the Sure Is Pure production team. Remixing the likes of Aretha Franklin, The Doobie Brothers, Sister Sledge, Lulu and Dave Stewart into dancefloor gold, it appeared the boys could do no wrong.

“We felt we could remix anything,” remembers Danny with a hint of mischief in his eye. “Then we got given Bucks Fizz’s Land of Make Believe. Our reworking was awful and it taught us a lesson – namely, that we couldn’t remix everything!”

During this time – the mid 90s – the brothers also initiated their Pharm imprint, in the process displaying another glimpse of their enduring ying and yang dynamism by sending the magical Remember Me by Blueboy from the nation’s dancefloors to the toppermost reaches of the poppermost hit parade.

It’s an ethos that in the heady days of acid house was termed Balearic – a strident belief that music should not be dictated by genres, rather the almost quaint notion that there exists only two types of music: good and bad. And that within this framework anything goes.

And so it went that the pair’s next project was arguably their most Balearic outing to date. Sound 5 were an experimental pop band attempting to locate the missing ground between the Pet Shop Boys and the Beach Boys. Although their ambitious undertaking never got the attention it so patently deserved – bruised egos and record industry machinations came into play – listening to the likes of Future’s Bright and Heavy Transit from their sparkling No Illicit Dancing longplayer today confirms the idea that their hotch potch musical quilt was just unfortunately ahead of its time.

From despair though came their greatest success. Robbie Williams had long been a fan of Danny and Kelvin’s due to their shared birthplace, so when the erstwhile ‘fat dancer from Take That’ (thanks, Noel Gallagher) suggested they get together with him in the studio, Danny and Kelvin could finally put all their stored wonky leftfield pop nous to good use. The resulting Rock DJ single gave them a number one single and even an Ivor Novello nomination.

Latterly, the brothers worked on Robbie’s Rudebox album, giving the title track in particular an added electro authenticity. Indeed such is Robbie’s admiration for Danny and Kelvin (they continue to work together – most recently on Robbie’s Inner Sanctum fan club releases), he has compared the duo to one of contemporary music’s most garrulous characters. “It’s like finding two Pharrell Williams in Stoke-on-Trent,” he has proclaimed.

This collaboration has continued with their role as ‘Central Midfield’ on Robbie’s new album, ‘Reality Killed the Video Star’. They spent the best part of the last three years camped out with Rob in LA and occasionally in Stoke, writing huge numbers of songs – some way too weird to make it on to a Robbie record as he himself has recently pointed out. However, the backbone of the latest album comes from those sessions with their guiding hand behind all but 3 of the album’s tracks. It has seen them truly extend themselves away from their house music roots to include 50’s Doo-Wop, Pet Shop Boys influenced 80’s pop as well as the Robbie staples of anthemic string laden balladry and puff-chested rock.

That’s not to say that they have left the house music underground for good though. Soul Mekanik is Danny and Kelvin’s latest missive from the dancefloor. Their most recent 81 album was charming leftfield house at its very best, doffing its cap to its myriad influences (seemingly every electronic movement since the titular year in question has been sifted into the mix), yet never beholden to one style or aesthetic. Very Balearic you might say.

Their involvement in the shadowy dealings of the Creative Use re-edits and bootlegs continues to inspire and Kelvin can still be found at the DJ coalface indulging his passion for all things cosmic.

Now that they have a little time to think of things outside their Robbie Williams role, they are working on finishing a slew of club tracks that they have had under construction during that period. 2010 sees them back as Soul Mekanik, showing the new kids how it’s done.

Make no mistake then, the history of all forward-thinking music, whether it be pop or underground, or both, over the last two decades is shot through with traces of Kelvin Andrews and Danny Spencer. Rest assured the future will be too.

Beginning with a gentle dub-reggae track from Rhythm and Sound, Vanese’s mix gradually melts into deeper and darker territory – via the likes of Dutch dubstepper Martyn – but without ever losing the warmth and soul that characterises her own music, some of which is thankfully present here. Other featured artists include talented electronica production duo Mount Kimbie, fellow jazz-experimentalist Jose James and Harmonic 313, whose considered glitch hop rounds off Smith’s mix perfectly.

Released earlier this year, Smith’s latest album, ‘Foxtrot Mannerisms’ is the result of this fascinating musical palette and considerable vocal and rhythmic talents, and comes highly recommended. Truly a one to watch, what better introduction to Vanese’s considerable skills than by indulging in the blissful, bassy tones of her Clash DJ mix.

Pursuit Grooves will also be playing at Fabriclive in London, on Friday 11 June, where she performs her UK debut live show alongside some Tectonic veterans, including Pinch, Skream and Kuedo. In Room Two, meanwhile, you can catch D&B talent Zero T – launching his ‘Fabriclive 52’ album – as well as Ed Rush, Wookie and a host of other names, while dBridge & Instra:mental head up Room Three.

mr smoughton is back with a new album on lo recordings that continues his love affair with pop music from the past by making pop music for the future. you can pick up ‘soft return’ now from all friendly record clerks.

as we said grovesnor’s previous mix for us was a classic and this new entry raises the bar even furthur. wide ranging, fun and beautiful it is heralding in summer round our way. we’re taking a few weeks off while we spruce up the site and this mix is the perfect way to leave you hanging.

Del Jardín Latino: -Tell us about the set.

dOP: -It’s a set of music we like and listen regulary,we’re not dj, so we concentrate on the selection. It’s music to enjoy in your car, in your bed, in your bath, and when you clean your house.

DJL: -Which are your future plans regarding releases?

dOP: -In june the watergate compilation will be release, with almost only new tracks made with friends. And in october, our first album will be release on Circus Company.

dOP: -Yes for sure !!! we never been there, we have some options, but we wait to plan a real tour there to have some time to meet the people, discover the landscape and the cities. We are very very excited about going there. We can’t wait.

To this end, we present a round up of this year’s Cross Section download albums. Each bursting with a month’s worth of tunes from the band’s we write about.

Check out your favourites and discover 2009′s wealth of great, new talent.

Visite www.clashmusic.com

One of Sydney’s finest steps up with a mix of techno, soul, funk and house.

Simon Caldwell is what you’d call a DJ’s DJ. A fixture in the Australian party circuit for nearly two decades, Caldwell can play sets in nearly any genre that you’d care to name—or all of them at once, if the party requires it. As part of Sydney’s Mad Racket crew—a group that has brought the likes of Moodymann, Andrew Weatherall, John Tejada, Jamie Lidell and more to the city—he has to constantly be ready to read and react to what the crowd wants and needs.

Caldwell learned the value of diversity early on in his career, taking on a radio show in Sydney in 1991 that specialized in house, jazz, funk, soul and hip-hop which soon led to a residency at a night called All Funked Up at the Bentley Bar. Caldwell soon held residencies on six of seven weeknights at the venue, working in a variety of genres to ensure that the Bentley’s sound was never stale. He’s done the same at some of Sydney’s biggest venues, Home and Chinese Laundry, as well. And on his RA podcast, Caldwell does the same as always, showcasing the many sides of his musical personality, moving effortlessly through dubby house, tech house, funk, acid, ambient, soul and disco. It’s a nearly ninety minute mix, and Caldwell takes advantage of every minute of it, proving that he can handle almost any DJing situation you throw him into.

What have you been working on recently?

Mainly working on the Mad Racket parties. We just had our 11th Birthday party with Chris Duckenfield, and now we’re working on New Year with Pepe Bradock and a show for Sydney Festival in January. Plus I’m always trying to make a living DJing in Sydney and occasionally in other capital cities around Australia.

Where and how was the mix recorded?

I recorded it straight through in one go at home, using 3 x Technics SL1200Mk2 turntables and a rotary Rane mixer on a hot and humid afternoon in Sydney.

Can you tell us a little about the idea behind the mix?

I wanted to do a mix that represented a bit of what I was about, rather than a really straight-up club mix on a single vibe. I am into a varied range of music, and I play all sorts of gigs in Sydney, from super-chill bars and funk gigs to big techno and house nights, so I guess I wanted to present some of that diversity in the set, while still keeping it house and techno-based. It’s always hard trying to compress a lot into 90 minutes, but hopefully the mix will convey an idea of what I am feeling.

You’ve been running Mad Racket in Sydney for 11 years. Tell us about the party. How have you’ve kept it going for over a decade?

Along with my three partners, I have had the great luck to be part of a crew of DJs and punters who keep coming back for more! It sounds clichéd, but we all really just put the parties on to be able to play our music to people who want to hear it. These days we do about nine parties a year, roughly half all-local, half with international guests, so it doesn’t get stale because each party is an event in itself. We hold them at a lawn bowls club outside the city, so it really does feel like you are escaping the nightclub world into a little private oasis when you come to a party. We bring our own sound and a few flashing lights, decorate the place and dance until dawn. Many of our long-term punters now have to get babysitters for the night, but they still come every few months, and we are always encouraging younger folk to join us to avoid the generational shift completely. Some punters have kids old enough to come along now.

You’ve also had a long running involvement in radio. How important is radio in Australia? What do you get up to on your show?

I think radio is always important, and has a part to play in spreading music to places it wouldn’t normally go. Particularly in Australia, where there is still only a fairly small electronic music scene, radio plays an important part in presenting new music to people and giving local artists a place to have their music heard. Unfortunately, most commercial radio has absolutely no idea about dance music, which I am sure is not confined to Australia.

Most cities have several community (not-for-profit) stations, each with a different focus. Over the past 16 years I have been on three different stations, and am currently doing a 6 – 8 PM Monday spot on FBI Radio. On my show I simply present music in a live mix each week, playing a variety of stuff, keeping the talk to a minimum apart from the odd interview. The station I am at now has a fairly young core listenership, so I try and give some context to the newer music by playing the odd set of ’90s house or some other “older” styles, as well as throwing in older tracks with the new, because I think it’s important for people to have some idea of the history of the music. Some weeks I will do a special on one style, but mostly it’s quite mixed. I also try and get guests on my show regularly, sometimes internationals that are in town and often local producers and DJs.

Finally, what are you up to next?

Summer is fast approaching here, so festival silly season is just around the corner, which has its good and bad sides. I’m currently in the process of moving to the beach, and then trying to finally get some tracks of my own together. Then planning Mad Racket for 2010 and thinking about doing a PhD one day.

http://www.avegasweb.com/podcast/Galaktika_Podcast105_40_Thieves_July2009.mp3

Based out of San Francisco, the 40 Thieves are a music collective, DJs and friends. Drawing on various superpowers the members combine forces to create their own brand of future/soul/dance songs and short comedy skits for Smash Hit and other fine labels around the globe.

For our podcast this exclusive mix that represents what they are currently playing.

www.myspace.com/40thievesahoy
www.smashhitmusicco.com

Source : Galaktika

http://ra2.residentadvisor.net/audio/RA151_20090420_Bill-Brewster-residentadvisor.net.mp3

Published / 20 April 2009
Filesize / 97.01 MB
Length / 01:20:48

DJ historian Bill Brewster digs deep for this week’s RA podcast.

Originally hailing from Grimsby in the North of England, Bill Brewster’s first passions were football and music. Already amassing a substantial record collection whilst he was writing for football magazine When Saturday Comes, he was then approached to write for Mixmag, eventually becoming the one of the editors at their New York branch. It was there that he met writing partner Frank Broughton, with whom he compiled the hugely successful How To DJ (Properly) and Last Night A DJ Saved My Life books.

The duo’s most recent venture into the literary world is a collection of articles and reviews by Rolling Stone scribe Vince Aletti, who was among the first journalists to write about disco. Brewster also runs the popular DJ History site, which apart from serving up interviews and features from some of the legends of dance music, acts as a hub for eclectic selectors worldwide through its forum. Where else would you get to read a dissertation from disco intellectual Daniel Wang, or have Ian Dewhirst school you on the history of the most expensive record of all time?

The popularity of the forum, especially in London’s disco-loving community, has contributed to the success of Brewster’s Low Life parties. But it’s the music that keeps the crowds—and guest DJs—coming back. (He’s even managed to coax the much-bootlegged French disco wizards Arpadys into playing their first ever live show at Cargo on April 30th, which coincides with the release of a compilation of their archived material on the Tubetracks label.) As with every Low Life event, Brewster will be taking to the turntables to showcase how a real veteran DJ plays (properly), but you don’t have to wait until then for a history lesson from the man. This week’s RA podcast sees Brewster jumping back and forth through the decades with a wide variety of disco and house treats, with a few curveballs along the way.

What have you been working on recently?

For the past year Frank Broughton and I have been working full-time on DJhistory.com our website, trying to develop it into different avenues. At the moment we’re just about to publish our first book (by another author): The Disco Files by Vince Aletti. It’s coming out in two weeks’ time. We’ve got another two books planned for this year and we’re currently working on about five book ideas. We’ve also got the Le Disco: Tele Music Remixed album coming out shortly and to celebrate that we’re bringing over Arpadys, the legendary cosmic disco band behind the original music, to perform live in London. It’s the first time they’ve ever played live as Arpadys!

How and where was the mix recorded?

It was recorded in a variety of ways. I used both original vinyl and digital files, I mixed some of it live on 1200s and an Allen & Heath XONE62 and then I did a bunch of editing on Garageband, I rarely do any mixes totally live now, I don’t see the point. Live mixes are for playing live and mixes on the net are a chance to add a bit of spice to the mix and do a spot of judicious editing where need be.

Can you tell us a little about the mix?

It’s sort of a representation of what I would play live, so the tempo changes quite a lot, but often gradually so it’s not noticed particularly. I’ve thrown a few classics from our Low Life parties in there and some proper old school classics like Curtis Mayfield, just because I can’t bear to just do a mix of obscurities, I find a bit dull, frankly. And it represents all modern dance music eras, from 1971 up to today.

Your Low Life parties have become a resounding success, selling out Corsica Studios with little or no promotion, and attracting a large female contingent. Care to reveal your secrets?

Ha ha. Yes we do have a strong female contingent. I’m not sure there’s a secret per se, but we’ve been doing them 15 years so we’re pretty confident as to what makes a great party: great people and great music. We’ve got both bases covered now. We’ve got brilliant resident DJs, we’ve got a great crowd, a mixture of loyalists who’ve been coming for years and a lot of new blood who have started coming in the past few years. And we try and do them in interesting locations. The last one was in a squat in Hackney. The next is in a warehouse in Limehouse. And we never do too many, so demand always outstrips supply.

What are your thoughts on the currently thriving edit scene?

I suppose it’s gone a bit ridiculous, really, but 95% of any scene’s records are crap. The job of a DJ is to sift through the avalanche and pick out the ones worth having and it’s the same with the current edit mania. Lots of rubbish, but some real gems in there too.

How did the Vince Aletti book come about? Did you visit Matthew Higgs’ “Male” exhibition?

We didn’t visit the exhibition but Matthew got in touch with me when he was doing it to ask if I was interested in receiving a copy of the Record World columns they’d reproduced as part of the exhibition. Frank and I thought it would make a great idea for a book (we were just in the process of setting up our little book publishing venture at the time) so we got in touch with Vince who we knew from interviewing for the Last Night A DJ Saved My Life we did in 1999 and Vince said yes, fortunately. We’re really proud of the results. I think it’s a great document of the 1970s disco scene, possibly the definitive document.

What are you up to next?

The next book we’re planning is Raving, which is a collection of raw but vivid pictures from 1989 raves around Slough in Berkshire done by Gavin Watson (who did the Skins book previously) and his brother Neville. That’s out in July. Then after that we’re hopefully just about to do a deal with Boys Own to do a Best of Boys Own book which would come out in September. We’re also presently licensing two albums: Secret Weapons and An Overdose of the Holy Ghost: Gospel Disco. Bloody Nora, we’re busy aren’t we?