with the dj duo

ANDYCAPP & ROD SKIMMINS.

with special host with the most

POOYAN…….

futureboogie, disco not disco, leftfield house, tropicalism.

THE BOAT
158 Augusta Ave.
Toronto Ontario.
$5.00 @ door.

A NEW BEGINNING

This month ANDYCAPP & Rod SKIMMINS are reeling it back in to give a an eclectic night combining new disco and worldly sounds with hypnotic projections and beautifully screen-printed art. There are a lot of new disco nights in the city and here at Bang the Party, we have consistently tried to inject new sounds over the past four years to differentiate ourselves from those nights.

MUCH THANKS

We want to thanks first and foremost POOYAN for helping keep crowd control and and for making sure all our guests are happy and making sure everyone gets through the door. Thanks to our January guests EROC and CODIS (Deep Red) for their house set and to JEREMY GLENN (Makeshift) for his carefully crafted nu-disco set last month for Andy’s Birthday.

Crate diggers extraordinaire Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell sit down for a chat with RA’s Dave Stenton.

Pastrami Man, Head Arse Fusion Band and the half-dozen or so other aliases they occasionally employ provide proof, if it were needed, that Dan Tyler (a Londoner) and Conrad McDonnell (who was born in Sunderland), AKA The Idjut Boys, don’t take themselves all that seriously. But the reputation the pair have established for themselves is by no means a joke.

As DJs they tour continuously and boast a diary packed with dates at the globe’s hottest underground party spots. They also have a production style that’s entirely their own. As a result, second-hand copies of their earliest releases command small fortunes amongst vinyl obsessives and major label A&R execs have requested that they sprinkle their deep, dubby disco magic on chart-topping artists including Dido and The Scissor Sisters.

From their HQ in east London, Dan and Conrad have also overseen four record labels—U-Star, Noid, Discfunction and, most recently, Cottage—that, alongside their own productions, have released the studio output of DJ Harvey, Prins Thomas (under his Major Swellings alias) and Maurice Fulton, amongst many others.

The Idjuts’ latest release, Desire Lines, an album recorded under yet another alias, Meanderthals, was co-produced with Norwegian DJ/producer, Rune Lindbæk. In order to discover how that came about, and to explore the duo’s musical influences and inspirations, RA gathered a bunch of their favourite records together and headed to their Hackney studio.

Black Cock

“Frog Scene”

Luna Party / Frog Scene, 1997

I thought this was an appropriate place to start as apparently you met at one of DJ Harvey’s Tonka parties? People still talk about those parties: what was so special about them?

DT: We used to go to a lot of those parties together with mutual friends, but we met earlier. [The Tonka parties were] just acid house, proper energy; all the obvious things that were going on then, I guess.

CM: It was new. And they were throwing parties that were better than other people’s. It kinda felt free. I mean the things at the Zap [a club in Brighton] and that were great but the stuff they did in odd spots…were kinda crazy; pretty much anything goes. And when you’re having a party: that’s good. Nightclubs are run by people with licenses so they have to toe the line…

DT: …and make money…

But these parties were different?

CM: It was just a load of like-minded people who wanted to go out and have a good time. And that hasn’t really translated all that well to now: Saturday night, you go out [you play records] and you’re just a soundtrack to people’s drug taking….I mean: you get people that go to nightclubs and just stand around: what the fuck are they there for? Or they’ll come up [to you] and want to hear records that they’ve got: “Can you play that one, ‘cos I know it?” And it’s just like, “Why are you even here?”

Are there exceptions to the rule?

Both: Japan.

Japan’s always the first answer when you ask that question! What is it about playing there that’s so special?

DT: For us, it’s amazing. We’re really fortunate to be able to go and play there. We have a really great friend, Hagi, who’s taken us all round Japan: from Yellow [in Tokyo] to the tiniest spots and it’s all almost universally good: good sound, good people. If you’re in the room where the music is, if you’re in that part of the club, it’s all about the sound and the dance. There’s no standing around: people participate. And if you’re playing there’s this “call and response” thing going on, which is really nice.

So it’s the original disco formula: amazing sound systems and everyone dancing?

CM: Yeah, but it’s not based on drugs. It’s based on music. And that’s unique.

DT: There’s attention to detail at every turn, which has so many benefits: people don’t go home deaf; you can hear things properly; it’s comfortable for people to DJ. I mean, take the lighting guys: [If you're playing] in a club in Japan the lighting guy will be in tune—he won’t be off powdering his nose [laughs]—he’ll be listening to what’s coming out of the speakers and reacting [to it]. Little things like that make such a big difference; it accentuates the highs and lows of what’s randomly happening.

The Black Cock records were changing hands for huge sums before the recent re-issues. The same is true for some of the early releases on Noid and U-Star; any plans to re-release those?

DT: No. The idea with those was make one [and put it out], get some money back to finance making another one and when they’re gone, they’re gone; we haven’t even got quite a few of them anymore. We’d rather concentrate on new music, really…

CM: …you’re as good as your next release rather than your last one.

DT: It’s cool if people are mad enough to buy them [laughs] but I’d rather spend my money on other records than them! It’s comical to us, really.

Is that because, when you listen back now: you can hear all the “mistakes”?

DT: Not really, it’s just that, back then, you would make the record but neither of us would play it [when we were DJing]. Not because we didn’t like the record…

CM: …it’s just because by the time the record’s been cut we’ve heard it more than anyone’s ever going to hear it, you know?

Is that still the case these days: you don’t play much of your own music in your sets?

CM: There are a few tracks of ours [over the years] that we’ve played. But I can’t remember the last track of ours that we played [in DJ sets]. I’m turned on more by other people’s music than mine. I keep hearing records and going, “Shit, I wish I’d made that.”

Erot

“Song for Annie”

Two Songs for Annie, 1999

This was on the first volume of your Saturday Nite Live mix series.

DT: We put it out [as well].

Really? I wasn’t sure whether Discfunction was your label. Let’s talk a little bit about Erot who, sadly, is no longer with us.

DT: What can you say? If you hear this song—or the song that’s on the other side, which is a Curtis Mayfield loop on the wrong speed with him just doing his thing—it just does you. Every time. I can’t hear this record—and this is one record that got played a lot [by us]—without it having some quite emotional [effect on me]. It’s weird. Erot was really good mates with Bjørn Torske and we met him a few times because we were going there a lot.

To Bergen?

DT: Yeah. And Oslo. Erot was really into it. He was starting to do a lot of stuff, and collecting lots of records. I remember when we had to give him some money for this record he just said, “Can you get me a load of records [instead]?”

So we bought him a load of disco records! [laughs] That was probably one of the last times we saw him: to give him 40 12-inches: “Here you go mate, here’s a bag of records.” And he was like, “Yes!” He was made-up. If you listen to any of his records they are properly out there, dub music. Rules are out the window.

Where do you think that approach came from, because he was only 23 when he died?

DT: God knows. And God knows what he would have done [had he lived], bless him.

Do you think he paved the way for the Norwegian scene that’s developed since his death?

DT: Yeah, both Erot and Rune Lindbæk.

CM: And Paul Strangefruit as well.

DT: Paul records as Mungolian Jetset and their records are starting to get recognition. But he’s been there since the start. He’s a great DJ.

What do you think it is about Norway that’s led to a modern disco scene developing there?

CM: No idea, really. It’s funny: there are twice as many people who live in London than the whole of Norway. And I can’t even count how many times we’ve been there to play records. We used to do a Thursday in Oslo twice a month at one point, and it was heaving and absolutely bonkers. But I can’t really answer that question.

DT: You always leave Norway with a rattling headache. There are loads of people there doing good music. Loads of good DJs. And they are open musically. The nice thing about all those guys is that, for example, when we first met Paul he would say, “Check Thomas’s track out, or check Rune’s track out, or listen to Bjørn’s new track.” There’s no competitive [thing going on]. They are all mutually [helping one another]. It’s a nice little melting pot; some of them share their studios and so forth.

Do you think that’s because it’s a much smaller scene than, say, London?

DT: It’s a bit hard to say really without living there.

CM: I guess so, because it was bit like that here in the mid-’90s actually. There was us, Faze Action, Rob and Zaki…

DT: …Crispin, Dom, A Man Called Adam, Harvey…

CM: And we all used to hang out and were fairly supportive of each other. I think when something’s small, you try and look after it. And then people get interested in making money and then it gets screwed. [laughs]

Harry Thumann

“Underwater”

Underwater, 1980

DT: Fuck, yeah. Pre-acid house, pre-techno. Fuck knows. What a mad record.We used this on a compilation and Sav at Tirk wanted us to re-edit it. And we were like, “Er, there is no point: what is there to re-edit?” [laughs] So our concession to that was to put a slightly mixable intro and an explosion on the end so that it didn’t just fade out. [laughs] That would have been our edit. And then it never came out, ‘cos why bother?!

CM: Music like this, to me, it doesn’t have an age. You couldn’t listen to this and pinpoint when it’s from. Although it was probably fashionable at the time, it isn’t fashion music. With ’80s stuff generally you just instantly know when it’s from: it has that sound, whereas this is just music.

And it’s music that’s undergoing a real resurgence.

CM: Shit is shit, right? I mean you might be into it for a year or two. But eventually most people just work out that it’s crap. And if you just try to make good music that isn’t particularly fashion-led then it stands a chance of lasting; of being as relevant in five years as it is today. I think that has something to do with it. But also, just about every bloody musical style has been regurgitated. There’s nothing more to do. Everything has been done. Every connotation of every style has been rinsed out of sight. The amount of re-issues, bootlegs, re-edits and all these people spending their energy on that whereas, back in the day, people would be making new music; not just harking back.

DT: You would listen to the old stuff to be inspired but that was it.

Do you feel that you are part of a modern disco scene?

I don’t know if there is a “scene,” as such. I think the internet propagates the notion [that there is]. I guess you could go online and find a worldwide community, for almost anything, of people that are into a particular scene.

So the internet has a magnifying effect?

DT: Yeah, exactly. You will go somewhere [and when you come back] and someone will say, “What’s the scene like in [wherever]?” and you could say we had a loft party and Herbie Hancock came and played and, if I put that on the Internet, and you don’t disprove it, then it becomes gospel. And that concept can be taken to any great city in the world and rinsed for all it’s worth. [laughs] I guess that there’s definitely an [increased] interest in disco, Balearic, etc. but it’s just box-ticking.

But why do you think London has had a proliferation of disco parties in recent years?

DT: I think it’s really good. And it’s part of a slightly different aesthetic, you know, “Let’s get a space, let’s throw a party and we’ve got a bunch of people who are gonna come down.” That’s sort of going back to the era when we first encountered [this music]. And it has a bit more energy [as a scene] than it just being another guest DJ on a Saturday night, in a nightclub that you pay “x” amount of money to get into that’s the same every time.

CM: But [it's like I just said], eventually people work it out, you know? People put on parties and the criteria for putting on parties is: Can they hire the nightclub? Can they get in touch with the agent of the DJ? And that’s it. They think now they’re a promoter. And they don’t do jack-all other than that. And we’ve just had too many years of that. It’s just rubbish….

When it was really popular people saw that they could make a few quid so on they went, without actually caring about what they were doing, or really knowing what they were doing. The amount of times we’ve been booked to play parties and they’ve been totally shocked by the music we play and it’s like, “You’re the promoter [you booked us], what the fuck?”

They’ve just saw your name somewhere and thought: “Let’s get them”?

CM: Exactly.

DT: It’s just ticking a box.

Are you more careful now about the bookings you take as a result?

CM: Yeah, [more] questions are asked, and stuff like that. But people know more about what we are like now….Back in the day when Mixmag, DJ, Muzik and all those magazines were about, and because we were in them, we would be booked all the time to play these stupid things and people would be like, “You’re not playing banging, rubbish music.” And we’d be like, “That’s right mate, we’re not. And we never have.” [laughs]

Len

“Steal My Sunshine (Version Idjut)”

Steal My Sunshine, 1999

You might recognize this one.

DT: [As the intro plays] That was the only bit of their [original] track [that we used]…It was a big record though [the original], wasn’t it?

Yeah. But it’s hard to recognize any of it in your remix.

DT: There’s nothing! We were surprised they accepted it. [laughs]

CM: It was a good situation: they offered us enough money to pretty much write them a track; so that’s what we did.

The obvious start point is that bassline: where the hell did that come from?

CM: It’s Andy Hopkins. He played it. And then we were playing with the Tremolo effect and we were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s it, that’s it!’ [laughs]

Dub’s obviously a huge influence on what you do. Are there specific dub artists/albums that were particularly influential?

CM: Francois Kevorkian.

DT: Him, obviously. But that sort of goes without saying. That era generally: Prelude Records, and all the kinda obvious usual suspects from that era. They were often working with orchestrated music but then synthesized things, and added drum machines and so on.

What about Jamaican dub?

DT: We like reggae and buy a bit of it. But it’s more from hearing those [dub-influenced disco] records, how they are constructed, hearing the space that’s put into them using effects, by people like Francois, Paul Simpson…

CM: …and Larry [Levan], and Shep Pettibone…

DT: …yeah, and Walter Gibbons, Tee Scott and so on. And also hearing those records when you’re actually on a dance floor. For example, I can remember the first time I heard “Powerline” by Double Journey. It felt like the drums were falling out of the speaker towards you. That’s like, ‘Huh?!’ I don’t think I was high. It’s just the space: it just jumped out at you because someone’s doing that [mimics twisting knobs]. Things just sound better, to us at least, opened out.

Tantra

“A Place Called Tarot (Idjut Boys Re-Edit)”

A Place Called Tarot / Hungry, 2004

This is an edit of yours rather than a remix. What did you do with Tantra’s original?

DT: I think there’s a little guitar break that we took out. And, from memory, the record’s about 15 or 16 minutes long.

CM: Doesn’t it drop off and go all ambient?

DT: Yeah, it has a full mood switch. So we reined that in a bit. It’s just a bit more concise.

Record stores are full of re-edits these days. What’s your take on that?

CM: The first music we did was on that tape machine over there: just edits of things. The marketplace decides: if nobody was buying those records, the shops wouldn’t have them; they wouldn’t be being made. I think it’s easy for somebody to be involved in making a record [now]. You can go and find a brilliant, old piece of music and create this new thing with it a lot easier than you can make a record from scratch. And also, it’s the fashion of the dance floor as well. The edits that I like are stuff I don’t know. And, if I do know: what have they done? Have they made it easier to play? Or have they made it so you can play the original with it: does it set-up the original? One of the things that we were trying to do was to edit records that you couldn’t play [as DJs].

Which was the original reason for DJ edits in the first place.

CM: Yeah.

DT: But certain things you just don’t need to go near.

CM: The thing I find a bit funny is people editing records that don’t need editing. They are absolutely brilliant [in the first place], so why have you put an extra four bars of stiff drums at the front? You’ve just made it worse. You know, they’ve put it through Ableton and you can hear the way the machine compresses it to make it fit the time code and it’s like, “You’ve just destroyed a great record; use your ears.”

DT: It’ll be something else soon because it’s reaching epic proportions. But there’s a demand for it right now. And there’s a hunger for digging out records [to edit]. It’s quite amusing how things change, people trying to make all these obscure records [more] danceable.

You went for the polar opposite and re-edited Phil Collins’ “I’m Not Moving” last year.

DT: That was a random edit for DJing that got put on a blog. It wasn’t meant to come out.

My broader point was that you don’t take yourselves too seriously.

CM: Christ, we’re DJs, man. We play other people’s music: how seriously can you take that? You’re there to have a party. I mean, all these earnest fuckers, they make me laugh.

Is there a danger though, with finding ever more obscure records to edit, that it goes down the northern soul route where records are prized for their rarity before the musical content?

DT: That’s just trainspotting at its worst: nerd culture. It moves away from the concept of “we’re at a dance.” It’s just stamp collecting. And it takes a bit of the energy, well a lot of the energy, away. You need a nice mix at a party: you need a healthy balance of both sexes [laughs], freaks, you know, you need all of that for it to be a happening thing.

There’s nothing wrong with being passionate and wanting to research things and find out more. But our schooling—if you like—in collecting music was going to parties, hearing music, going and digging crates; randomly finding stuff. And that’s probably the most pleasurable stuff you will find. You follow your nose a bit. That concept has slightly changed with the Internet: people can access, research, and, if you’ve got a credit card, you can buy all that shit. That’s cool. But it sort of dilutes it. It’s just a different thing and we’re from a different era. But who’s to say? If you were 20 now [you would probably have a different take].

Meanderthals

“Andromeda (Prelude to the Future)”

Desire Lines, 2009

Let’s talk about your new album then, which is where this track’s taken from. It’s a collaboration between you and Rune Lindbæk: How did that come about?

DT: We’ve known him for years. And he’s always been a source of good music…

CM: …and amusement. [laughs]

And you made regular trips to Oslo to record the album?

CM: We missed a flight home, right.

DT: And we called him up…

CM: …yeah, that’s right, and said, “Rune we’ve missed the fucking plane.” And he said, “Cool, let’s hang out.” So we’re in his studio, and we had some records, and the guy [from the studio] next door was there, so we said, “Come and play some bass.” And the track that’s playing, that was the first one that we did together.

Rune knew Joakim from Smalltown and played it to him and Joakim was interested in getting some more stuff [and that's how the album came about].

At first we went over to Oslo and, in the building where Rune’s studio is, there’s a couple of really nice guys, Lenny and Jo: Lenny’s a percussionist and also plays drums; Jo plays guitar and bass. So we did a couple of days with them and got some stuff recorded. Then there was another trip to Oslo after that. And then we came here, edited it all up and put it together. Then we got some London people’s input [as well].

So how long did it take to record?

CM: It was pretty quick…a couple of months…

DT: …once we had all the [rough] tracks we put them together pretty quickly.

CM: Rune had to go back and we mixed them all down again: because we mix live on here. [points at mixing desk] We might do a dub version of it, of the entire album. Joakim seems to be quite keen for us to do that so we might get round to that. But we’re doing an Idjut Boys album for him now so that’s kinda the priority.

Both the artist name and album title derive from theories. Where does the interest in theories stem from: you guys or Rune?

CM: It came from me listening to the radio. [laughs] The Meanderthals thing: I just like the name Meanderthals. It’s a bit earnest for us, to be honest, to call an album Desire Lines. I just thought it was an interesting thing: if you look at a park and see the trail that people create, that’s called a “desire line.” And I just thought, “Oh right, that’s a funny thing” and I just mentioned it. But I think if it was just down to Dan and I then it wouldn’t have been called that.

DT: We’d have maybe stuck with Meanderthals.

CM: Yeah, Meanderthals is quite apt really. But the rest of it, you know, we’re big believers in getting in first to take the piss out of ourselves before someone else does. That’s definitely a big part of our ethos. You can’t take it too seriously or take yourselves too seriously.

As some of your previous track titles attest.

CM: Yeah.

DT: Humour—or the hidden meaning—often bypasses people. But as long as it amuses two or three people—two of them being us—then that’s it.

CM: That’s absolutely it. The tag line on the album is a piece of genius from…

DT: …Harvey Keitel…

CM: …yeah, Dan saw this movie with Harvey Keitel in it and it’s got this line, “Breathe, just keep breathing,” [laughs] and no one’s gonna get [the reference] unless they’ve seen the movie.

And it’s not one of his finer cinematic moments?

DT: It’s during a moment of someone’s extreme vulnerability. He’s counseling someone, giving someone psychotherapy. So he’s counseling this woman and, as she’s exposing herself in the most vulnerable fashion, imploring him to help her, you know, he suggests that it would be best if she got to her knees and smoked him. [laughs] And she’s trying to talk to him whilst engaged in that act and he’s just like, “Keep breathing: just keep breathing.” [laughs] You’ve gotta see it.

There are just seven tracks, which is pretty short for an album. Was that a deliberate decision?

CM: Yeah. In the time we had, that’s what got made. The record is just what the three of us came up with in that moment of time. There’s no great thesis going on, it’s just a session.

Andy Nelson

“Lady Angie”

Lady Angie, 1982

A friend recently put me onto this and it’s my favourite musical discovery this year. I thought it would be good to end with.

DT: Is it a new record?

No, it’s from 1982.

CM: I know it. Or I know the chord progression anyway.

DT: [humming along] It’s like a record we play?

CM: It’s a Steve Winwood lick, isn’t it?

DT: Yeah, something like that. It’s definitely something we play. Isn’t it from “Night Train”? You know “Night Train” by Steve Winwood? I’m sure the chords are the same as that. It’s really nice: kinda camp electronica [in feel]. Those chords man, where are they from?!

CM: It’s definitely Steve Winwood.

DT: Either he’s been inspired by this. Or they’ve been inspired by listening to his track. But is it Steve Winwood?! It’s definitely something one of us plays. Those chords are doing my nut in. It’s not “Night Train.” I know it. It’ll come. It might not come right now, but it’ll come.

CM: I love records like this that have big ideas, you know?

DT: So, anyway, if you could send us a poor quality mp3 next week we’ll have it bootlegged and edited and spliced with phat kick-drums and no production values whatsoever and we’ll make sure you get absolutely no credit for it!

Disco is big yet again in London town, and Horse Meat Disco are largely responsible. RA talks to Jim Stanton and James Hillard, two of the DJs behind the party, to find out more.

Since its inception six years ago in a Soho basement, Horse Meat Disco has billed itself as “the queer party for everyone.” You have to go back as far as Trade for another example of a London gay club having such a significant impact on the city’s nightlife. But HMD’s reach and appeal now extends far beyond the capital.

The club’s promoters—and two of the four resident DJs—James Hillard and Jim Stanton recently returned from a grueling tour of Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and the USA. They were there in support of the club’s first compilation; a Strut-released, two-CD set (one mixed, the other not) that sees obscure electronic disco merge with the more classic, soulful end of the spectrum. The club also has an eponymous record label; an outlet for the special re-edits that, typically, make up part of the soundtrack of a night at HMD.

But there was never a master plan involving global tours, record labels and compilations. The original aims were much more modest: a weekly party with music as its focal point that would serve as an antidote to the cookie-cutter nature of image-obsessed gay clubbing in London in the early stages of this decade. To that end, James and Jim installed their friends Severino and Luke Howard (AKA Filthy Luka)—already established DJs on the gay club circuit—as residents and switched from monthly Thursdays in Soho to weekly Sunday soirees at The Eagle (formerly South Central) in Vauxhall.

It proved an enticing prospect, not just for London’s alternative gay scene but straight clubbers eager to sample disco in an authentic setting, as well as to check out the stellar line-up of guest DJs, including Daniele Baldelli, Derrick Carter, Rub-N-Tug, Daniel Wang, Prins Thomas and I-f. And it wasn’t long before the HMD residents were established on the guest DJ circuit themselves. They hold residencies at London’s Fabric and Tape Club in Berlin and, last year, took on their most ambitious project to date: the NYC Downlow; “the world’s first travelling gay disco” which saw a detailed reconstruction of a seedy, ’70s-style club at the Glastonbury and Lovebox festivals.

RA caught up with James and Jim ahead of this weekend’s Milk in the Park festival in London.

You’ve just spent five weeks touring. What were the highs and lows?

James: The only real lows were due to lots of flying and a lot of travelling. But we didn’t argue once. The highs were Melbourne…

Jim: …just Australia in general.

You sound a little surprised by that.

James: I admit I can be a bit snobby about Australia, but I get it now. And the gigs were all consistently good and attracted a really mixed, interesting group of people, even in places like Brisbane and Perth.

Jim: It’s funny because I’d been led to believe, by London crowds—not so much now as we’ve been going for six years—that when we play anywhere other than Horse Meat Disco [at The Eagle] if the crowd tends to be younger, they tend to be into techno or something that’s a bit more banging. But I think that’s really changing.

For some reason I had that perception of Australia, perhaps because our tour was Modular-controlled and Modular are an exponent of that particular sound, that electro-tech-French sound. And I always associate that music with quite a young crowd. But what I’ve been noticing lately is the young kids are just really into it and they’ll go with anything. And that was the big surprise in Australia: any which way you decided to go with music, they went with it.

James: Even to the point of being more open-minded than you get in London.

Jim: Or at Horse Meat Disco.

James: Exactly. [laughs]

Were you playing at established gay nights?

Jim: We played at two gay nights in Australia: the first one was in Perth and the second was in Sydney.

James: Well the guys in Perth used a gay club for the party, but they were straight promoters. But we’ve always been lucky wherever we go. We predominantly play in straight clubs, apart from when we’re playing at The Eagle, but we always manage to bring out a cool gay crowd as well and I think that’s why promoters like having us so much: because we get the gays out.

Five weeks away is rock band territory. I’m guessing you didn’t sit down six years ago and plan all this?

Jim: Never. We were just doing it because we loved it and there was nothing [similar at the time]. I know everyone always says that, so it’s a bit of a stock answer: “We weren’t represented.” Or, “We didn’t like what we heard around us on the scene.” But it’s kinda true. At the time [before Horse Meat Disco started] the gay scene was very much about tribal or tech house, or funky house, and cruising for sex, which there will always be on the gay scene.

And all those things are fine. But we felt there was a musical unity—a together-ness—[that was] missing. Those [typical gay] clubs are kinda mechanical and machine-like. And we had come to expect so much more from London because it has such a rich club history—going back to Kinky Gerlinky, Taboo, The Hippodrome, Busby’s when it was beneath the Astoria—all those amazing scenes that had all the big stars there. I guess we both came to London being quite enraptured with New York…

James: …and London club history.

Jim: And it kinda wasn’t happening. So that was it, we were just a bit disenfranchised. And it was in tandem with everything that happened at the end of the ’90s when gayness became commoditized, you know, the “pink pound.” And, at the same time, Gay Pride was being squeezed to the hilt; it was corrupt. And everyone was rushing in and taking advantage of it. And that really filtered down through the nightclub scene, which was a shame as it resulted in a hollowness and an emptiness. And we’re about playing crazy, whacked-out records from the ’70s through to the modern day and we would do our best to get rich and colourful and interesting and diverse people—which that sort of music naturally attracts—to come and listen.

James: What we didn’t think of at the time was the consequence of booking all these DJs: that they would go home and talk it up.

Jim: The only thing we’ve argued about over the years is whether we should book [certain] DJs. There’s always that question: What does that DJ bring? Apart from a crowd, when your core crowd always want a certain [style of music]. And we’ve tried to break that down as much as we can without pissing anyone off. Some guest DJs can really reflect what you’re trying to say, when the stars align or whatever. And a few people have done it really well. Some have failed, but it’s never been a fully negative experience.

James: You have to stand by that. I can go somewhere and play a really shit set. It’s happened. Or I’ve not quite clicked with the crowd. But that’s just what comes with being DJ. You can’t just expect everything to [always] go really smoothly. It’s kinda hard when you’re a promoter; you can get a bit worked up about it.

Jim: 90% of the people we have had play have been amazing. And like you’ve said, all those DJs have gone away and talked [about the night]: Rub N Tug, Todd [Terje]…

There was a huge buzz around Metro Area shortly before you launched Horse Meat Disco; was that any sort of inspiration?

James: Not from my point of view. I’d always been a disco fan since I was kid; my dad used to collect disco. So I knew if I was ever going to do a party, that it would be that kind of thing. And I ended up working for Nuphonic because I could get their references, and musical cues, and stuff like that.

Jim: I was much more influenced by that scene. I haven’t always been into disco; I was kind of a rock kid [growing up]. I think that’s why I got Severino involved because he’s always been a big inspiration for me. Seve was one of the first guys to be mixing up LCD, The Rapture and all that stuff. And it was important to me to have that element of newer music and contrast it.

Six years on and you can’t move for disco parties in London. Do you think that’s a direct result of HMD?

James: It’s difficult to say.

Jim: We did talk about it at the time, “Why is nobody else [doing a night like this]?”

James: If you think about when you were doing The Cock [a club Jim started when electroclash was at its peak], it wasn’t long before copycat clubs happened because it was in vogue.

Jim: But the music in that scene was…

James: …readily available…

Jim: Yeah. And quite restricted in terms of references and how much was on offer. It got tired quite quickly [though]. It was fun for a very short space of time and then very quickly got [boring].

James: Normally it doesn’t take long for copycat clubs to spring up. But I was really surprised and [remember thinking], “This club’s busy, everyone really likes it and no one is doing anything similar.” For a long time we had a good run of not having any competition—not that it’s competition—but no-one kind of imitating or taking anything from us. It’s difficult to say when you’re quite a modest person, but I guess we have inspired a lot of people.

Jim: That’s the great thing about this music: it can endure. It’s so rich. There are so many threads and styles and genres. It can last. It happened the first time around: there were millions of these clubs in New York and they were all full. And they all had their own particular take or brand. That’s the beauty really.

James: They are classic records for a reason and that’s because they always sound contemporary. You can listen to records made in ‘76 and still think, “Wow, that just sounds so modern,” or really fresh in comparison to modern pop music.

How rigid are you when it comes to record buying: is it strictly disco?

Jim: I buy loads of different stuff. I always have. I’ve always been really into rock, that’s been my thing. So I’m trying to feed that in where I can, along with newer stuff. I’m pretty across the broad. Whereas you are super specialist…

James: …I wouldn’t say I’m super specialist.

Jim: You are though. You have less than a decade range! [both laugh]

James: Well, generally. But that’s kinda like the best period! I don’t tend to buy a lot of new stuff. I go out and I listen to it, or I listen to it online and, generally, it doesn’t touch me in the same way as old records. I’m not that rigid but I would generally say that the best music comes from between ‘76 and ‘84.

You also play a lot of vocals, and that was a pretty decent period for singers.

James: Exactly. I like a bit of drama and a song structure, whereas a lot of the nu-disco thing I find quite tracky and a whole night of it wouldn’t really do anything for me. I don’t think it’s close enough to the sound that I like.

Jim: We would rather play house all night.

James: Yes. But saying that there are some really amazing producers that make records that sit really well with a set of older disco.

Jim: Which is why we work together quite well [when we DJ together]. I can take over and play deep house, Robert Owens records, Santana records and whatever and just see what works best. That’s quite natural.

James: Exactly, but I’m like Luke: Much more song-based.

Jim: It’s kinda like that, isn’t it? You and Luke. And me and Seve: us two are the modern kids. But I think it’s important to support all of that lot because they’ve been slogging it. You know, Pete Herbert, Felix Dickinson, Faze Action. I mean it’s all great stuff that they’re coming up with and it’s only getting better. So I fully support it. And I genuinely like it: I don’t think it sounds [too] repetitive. Obviously classic disco is so hard to recreate now.

James: You can’t. Which is why I love that period: there’s something about the warmth and depth and the production techniques that just overshadows everything else; everything else just pales into insignificance; which means that I become a bit blind to really great [new] stuff. Then Jim will play it and I’ll be like, “Ooh [that's actually really good].” I need to be a bit more open-minded, I think. But at the same time it’s what we’ve based the club on.

But, as Jim says, you have two of you from the more classic end of the disco spectrum and two from the more contemporary end. So there’s a balance.

Jim: That’s the beauty of it.

James: I think it could get a bit boring—for a weekly club—if it was always the same records. Although I can never get bored of Jean Carn’s “Was That All It Was.”

Jim: You can’t get bored of that record.

Is that on the compilation?

James: No. We deliberately didn’t put it on. If you get any Philadelphia comp ever, that’s on there. That was the tricky thing: [some of] the hits that the club is known for have been on a million and one compilations so it was about trying to find stuff that was a bit different.

You’re about to start doing Horse Meat Disco remixes. Have either of you done much production before?

Both: No. [both laugh]

So how’s it going to work? Is it going to work?!

im: Felix [Dickinson].

James: Yeah, Felix is our engineer; he’s the one that makes it work. At the moment we’re just giving it a go. It’s amazing to be asked to do remixes, I’m a bit like, “Really? Really?! We don’t know what we’re doing, do they really want us to do remixes?” I’ve done a few edits with Felix already—one of them is on the current 12-inch release—so I’ve got a bit more of a feel for structure and things like that. But Felix does most of it and we sit around saying, “We want it to sound like this.” Or, “Change that instrument to something nicer.” But I’ve really enjoyed it so, hopefully…

Jim: …more of the same. Get a bit more understanding of it and move on.

Could it potentially lead into original production?

James: That’s definitely something we think about. Or are thinking of. Definitely. I think it’s a natural progression. It’s weird, I think about this a lot: most DJs are DJs off the back of some production career or something while we’re based on the reputation of a party that happens once a week.

Jim: And there’s this kind of struggle, isn’t there? To continue as a DJ, or to be a bigger DJ, you have to have more reach, you have to have production. And that’s not been our thing. For us everything feeds back into every week at the club, you know, that’s the real joy. It’s all really a sideline at the moment but that doesn’t mean we’re not ambitious about it. But we don’t want to run blindly into remixing and come up with a whole load of shit tracks.

James: Just because people want to use the [Horse Meat Disco] name.

Let’s talk about the Milk in the Park festival, which is happening this weekend. How did it come about?

Jim: [The guy behind] Milk in the Park is Mark Oakley, who runs The Eagle. He’s always been interested in the Harvey Milk story.

James: He’s from that generation for whom it really meant something.

Jim: And this is his way of taking what’s happened, in terms of the film, the story coming back to life, and the anniversary of the Stonewall riots. And he’s been actively involved with the police in the community, as a spokesman at the business forum for all the surrounding gay businesses in Vauxhall and south London to sort of say, “We’re not just faceless clubbers who don’t care about the community.” And I’m not entirely sure how it happened. I think he had a meeting with the police as there have been so many hate crimes in London in recent years.

I think hate crimes have been rising in London despite the overall crime rate falling. Correct?

James: That’s true. It’s what you expect in a recession though.

Jim: So Milk in the Park is a way of raising awareness and giving something back to the community and trying to fight hate crime.

What’s your involvement?

Jim: We have a Horse Meat Disco tent.

With Candi Staton performing?

Jim: Yes, which is amazing! She’s opening the event because she’s also playing at Colours in Edinburgh. So it’s amazing, but we’ve got to make sure…

James: …that people come. Actually I don’t care, she can just sing for me. I’m gonna take all my Gloria Gaynor records and ask her to sign them and then go, “Oh sorry, are you not Gloria? I’ve bought them now, you might as well sign them.”

Jim: Then we’ve just booked some people that work in the club: Prins Thomas, Trevor Jackson, Faze Action and Crazy P. All the other events are things that go on at The Eagle: there’s a night called Deep Inside, which is early house and early ’90s…

James: …vocally, New Yorky stuff.

The Vasquez/Sound Factory era?

Jim: Yeah, all of that stuff. Chicago as well. Then there’s the bear area. And the Carpet Burn area…

James: …which is an ’80s, trashy kind of sound.

Jim: And there’s a cinema, and a tranny netball tournament. Nothing like this has really happened [on the gay scene before]. Nothing since Summer Rites [anyway], which I guess was 2000? Or 1999? That was the last gay, alternative park event. It was in Brixton, wasn’t it?

James: Yeah.

Jim: So I think people are ready for it. We saw it being a bit like Wigstock, in New York. A good old bash in the park with loads of trannies.

Morgan Geist’s first studio album in 11 years is a triumphant blast of pop electronics. So why is its creator feeling so fed up with the music business? RA’s Rich Juzwiak talks to the bald half of Metro Area to find out.

There’s a story there on Morgan Geist’s first studio album in 11 years (and second overall), though it might be hard to hear. Double Night Time rides on frequencies clipped by modern ways of commodifying sound. It whispers to listeners who could very well be going deaf from contemporary music’s incessant screaming. Inherently contradictory, it lays out its facts in the overlapping space between opposing forces (those concentric moons on the cover can’t just be a coincidence). It’s pop with little chance of widespread acceptance. Its sonic effervescence is cut with maudlin lyrical sentiment (Junior Boy Jeremy Greenspan’s sings on all five of the vocal tracks with a delivery that only adds to the gloom). Packed almost entirely with synths, it sounds like the future (or at least how the future seemed at some point), yet there’s something old-fashioned, quaint, even “standard-y” (in Geist’s words) about it.

And yet, there it is, the product of its 35-year-old, ready-to-bail creator-cum-label owner who speaks with equal passion and apathy. As a reflection of that struggle, Geist probably couldn’t have created a better character sketch. From all that I can gather as someone who knows the man personally, Double Night Time is the sonic equivalent of Morgan Geist, right here, right now in shitty 2008. The music industry is dying, but this album is alive.

How has the process of promoting this album been? Do you like talking about your work?

I did with something like Unclassics, but this album I feel really weird about. I’ve been venting a lot and that doesn’t come off as very fun. It’s hard to hold back. I’m ready to eject. I’ve been ready for a while now, but now I’m really ready.

Eject from music? Why?

The business side. Considering what music has turned into, releasing it today is like opening a transfat restaurant. I like doing recorded music. I don’t want to perform. I don’t want to DJ. I just want to record music and it’s getting increasingly difficult to do that. When I was 15, if there were an Internet that I could have posted tracks on, I would have been thrilled. But at 35, I would like to be able to make a living. Also, it’s easy to think about the art when you aren’t consumed by the business. Before I ran a label, I didn’t care if my records sold.

But then what do you do?

I don’t know. I’ve been trying to figure it out for a while.

Even if you aren’t releasing it, will you be making music? Aren’t you driven to do so on a primal level?

I don’t know. The problems with the business side have detracted so much from my creative side. So much of my energy gets used up by that that anything involved with making music just isn’t fun. It’s like, who am I making the music for?

Yourself?

No. Not only myself. I have to satisfy myself and then I release it to the public. I feel trapped. It’s like being in a bad romantic relationship. Even when you’re trying to be nice to each other, it’s not working. People write me now, like, “Oh, I love the new album.” It’s like saying, “Your mother’s so pretty. I noticed while I was fucking her last night.” Everyone who writes me about the album has taken it from somewhere and there’s no way they’re going to buy it. What do you say to that? “Thanks for complimenting my album that’s not out for three months”?

People are paying attention to my music, and I feel very lucky to be in that situation, but I can’t just sit there and be content with that. I have other people on my label to support. I have my own business costs. It’s all this mundane stuff, but it weighs on you. That’s why I don’t go to sleep at night. That’s why I wake up worrying. It’s hard to make music when that’s your outlook.

So, you’re in a rut.

Yeah, very much so. When I was making the record I was like, “I suck. I don’t have any ideas left.” So that paralyzed me. Then I’d be like, “The music industry’s collapsing.” That paralyzed me. I was coming up with all these reasons not to finish the album. And there was stuff that went down in my personal life that I don’t want to get into that made me not want to finish the album. It was a bad scene even after it was finished, because then, I didn’t want to release it. I forced myself, in the name of publish-or-perish. I didn’t want to die with one record under my belt from 1997.

But there’s a lot of sonic joy on this album. It isn’t miserable.

That’s nice to hear, because it would suck if I was just entirely miserable. Some of my favorite records are happy-sad soul records that are so upbeat but lyrically paint the opposite picture. Like a lot of Motown stuff.

The lyrics are pretty oblique.

They’re just not very good. [laughs] “Most of All” is a really sad song, at least in terms of what I was writing about. But the music is happy verging on dorky. I kinda wanted to be standard-y. It’s like listening to everyone being so cool and ironic, I just wanted to be honest. If you’re making a standard, it’s OK to be sad. It’s OK to be emotionally conventional instead of trying to do something cool.

What’s Jeremy’s input like? Did you write all the lyrics?

I wrote everything by myself except for “City of Smoke and Flame,” which he helped on.

So he’s basically a mouthpiece?

Sorta. Even when I’m trying to make something that works conventionally, I always try to sneak something obscure or weird in there. And Jeremy taught me that if something seems obvious, go with obvious. A lot of the time, he was right and I’d wonder, Why am I torturing myself? Why shouldn’t the harmony go in the obvious place?

Does embracing conventionality mean that you’re maturing into pop music?

I don’t think it’s maturing, it’s just accepting. It’s a matter of getting sick of what you do all the time. I was ready to do a record like this. I wanted to get better at doing pop music. But at the same time, there’s a balance. I’m not going to go “where music is going.” I’m not going to make a record for iPods or something that can slam as a ringtone. Fuck that.

You aren’t supposed to listen to this on your iPod?

Listening to music isn’t an event anymore unless it’s live. No one sits down and just listens. I think entertaining yourself on the go is turning into a huge problem. It’s like yogurt tubes versus nice Greek yogurt with honey drizzled on it. And it makes me second-guess everything. I’ve spent days setting up my home stereo, which transmits frequencies that literally do not transmit via today’s most popular ways to listen to music. There is no bass coming through earbuds under a certain range. Part of it is to feel it. You’re never gonna feel anything with stuff shoved in your ears.

How obsessive are you regarding the sound textures?

Very. I take them very seriously.

Nothing sounds like a Morgan Geist record. I’m too ignorant to even be able to verbalize why what you do sounds so crisp and nice and pleasantly tactile.

Maybe a little bit of the difference has to do with resisting going loud, like so much pop music does. If you listen to my record on your iTunes, it’s going to be a little softer than the rest of what’s on there. And it’s because I believe that you should have transients and dynamics. If you look at a pop waveform, it looks just like a block of sound. It’s crushed so there’s no room at all. It’s constantly loud, whereas mine looks like an actual wave. Part of it’s that I leave room when I master, and that’s usually when people crush the stuff, if they haven’t already crushed it when recording. They crush and crush so that the finished product is this loud block of noise. People think dynamics are a bad thing now. It’s sad, like if we just communicated to each other all the time without any inflection, always just yelling. That’s what music’s doing now, yelling at you.

You said you feel weird about this album. Why?

I’m self-conscious about everything I do. That’s just my personality. It’s the first time I’ve had vocals on an album and I’m self-conscious about people hearing my lyrics because I know they just aren’t great. It’s terrifying. But I hope people like it.

Do you like it?

I wanted to accomplish one thing when I started out and this album took me so long that by the end, I was bored with it. I felt like I lost focus. I am glad that it’s very electronic and synthy. I got to indulge my psycho, OCD programming/electronic side. And I do feel that it’s nicely at odds with what’s going on right now. It’s not sloppy disco and it’s not super-compressed stuff like Justice. It’s just kind of a soft album. It’s already a bad sign, I think, that both of my parents like it.

The ageless DJ’s Deep Space party has kept New York dubbing for five years now. So what happens when he gets to the main stage? Good question. We caught up with the legend as he prepares to return to his house roots for South West Four and other European festivals this August.

Dance music legend Francois Kevorkian has been manning the decks on-and-off for over 30 years. Three decades: a span of time that signifies a longevity seldom seen in the industry. And when you look at the course of his career, it becomes even more impressive. Kevorkian started out playing drums alongside Walter Gibbons, the man often credited with being the main inspiration to Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles, and soon became a regular guest at Studio 54, The Paradise Garage, and The Loft. After a short layoff to concentrate on small projects such as remixing now-classic tracks like Yazoo’s “Situation,” Dinosaur L’s “Go Bang,” and Musique’s “In the Bush”, mixing Depeche Mode’s epochal Violator and Kraftwerk’s Electric Café, Kevorkian returned to the heights of the DJ profession alongside Danny Krivit and Joe Claussell as a member of the Body & Soul trio. The group’s Sunday parties at Club Vinyl are still reminisced over in glowing terms.

Kevorkian’s current party, Deep Space, has been tipped as the heir to B&S’s legacy. Held each Monday at Cielo in New York’s Meatpacking District, the soiree drafts in an eclectic array of guests (Quiet Village, King Britt, DJ Spooky, to name but a few) and asks them to deliver sets that reflect Kevorkian’s passion for deepness. The five-years-and-counting party’s tagline says it all: “No dress code—just an open mind.”

It’s only been a short time since RA last caught up with Francois, but there’s a reason for that: He has no shortage of things to say. RA’s Todd L. Burns suffered through a choppy phone connection with a vacationing Kevorkian to talk dub, “beardo” disco re-edits, and his contribution to Grand Theft Auto IV.

You came to America when you were 21. Why did you originally decide to move from France? I read that you were drumming over there.

It was just a dead-end street. If you’re crazy about Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis and people like that, you’re not going to find them in France. You’re going to find them in New York, which is what I did.

Were you looking to become a jazz drummer when you first moved?

Yeah. Funk, jazz, R&B, those kinds of things. But, you know, it was a whole different scene back then.

When you started playing with Walter Gibbons at Galaxy, was it almost too easy for you because of your jazz background?

Not really, because he was playing records that I didn’t really know. I’d only know about 10 to 15%, the other 85% were completely unknown to me, so it was a bit of a challenge to play with them without any rehearsal. I would just have to immediately start playing along to whatever it was. It was a lot of work. I’d play for seven or eight hours on the dancefloor, so I guess I just figured that it would be a lot easier to be a DJ. There weren’t a lot of DJs in those days. So I decided to try my hand at it.

What did you learn from Walter?

He was mindblowing at that time, doing things that few people knew how to do. He’d go really fast between records or he’d do some crazy special effects. His selection, too, was very on-point. I didn’t know anything at all about DJing, but I picked up pretty quickly that there was a whole movement going on that was really incredible, really interesting.

It seems like there was a certain point in your DJing career where dub captured your fascination. What is it about deepness for you?

Well, lately I feel like I realized it’s more than window-dressing for me. It’s a really fundamental part of what I am doing, whether it’s in the studio or DJing. When I started Deep Space, it was with a clear focus on that aspect of music, but rather than just playing back a collection of records from Kingston, Jamaica circa 1973 – 1977, I was looking at it less in a dogmatic way and more as something with that same spirit. And how you can apply that to many types of music. And what I mean by apply is instead of just letting the records play back, you would apply it as they played. I feel a natural knack for that when I’m DJing.

In many ways, I think of it as connecting the dots and showing people that it’s all part of one flow. I guess the reason that I’m attracted to it is simply because I feel that it represents the most incredible stuff that’s happened in the past quarter-century.

What was the first dub record that you remember hearing?

I was late on all of that. I started to become aware of that in 1980 or so. There was this little record store on the Lower East Side run by these two women. When I got into it, I would go over there to buy these strange records. Of course, I was also aware of what Island Records was putting out, but it wasn’t as authentic as some of the real Jamaican stuff. I can’t say really which record it was specifically. Certainly there was Black Uhuru through Island.

The thing about it, though, was this aesthetic. There were these effects, processing, reverbs, echoes that I didn’t quite hear in other records the same way. So I was naturally drawn towards that. And, of course, I started using those same kinds of effects in the mixes that I was doing. Based on that, I guess a lot of people think that I was one of the first to do that to disco records. Back then it was great, because you would have a hit record and then I’d make a dub and they didn’t really care—they let me do whatever I wanted. I just thought it was good to bring out that crazy, demented, dubbed out side of things into the mix.

Fast forward 20 years, and I guess that I really wanted to bring that dubby music to a party, which is when I decided to put Deep Space together to really focus it.

Why did you decide to schedule Deep Space on Monday night? It was a conscious decision, I’m sure.

Of course. We’re not competing with anybody else, really. I figure that anybody that’s crazy enough to be out on a Monday night is going to be there for the music, not for other reasons. I respect those other reasons, of course, but in my opinion it’s not conducive to appreciating the thing that we’re trying to do. Obviously it’s not a super-commercial, chart-oriented, trend-oriented thing. We’re not inviting all these big minimal guests from Berlin or having someone play the biggest hip-hop tunes of the moment. I figured we’d just have a little slot away from everybody else, so we didn’t have to worry about it.

One of the times that I’ve been was just recently with Quiet Village, which was basically them pressing play on their record and projecting a video on a wall. I’d never seen anything like that at Cielo.

Yeah, and I think it’s been very satisfying for me as well, to bring in guests over the course of the five years that I’ve been doing Deep Space and cater towards that aesthetic. We very specifically make them aware of what the party is about and ask them to make a special thing for us, because obviously we’d like them to fit in with the idea of the party.

Some people could just look at it as old-school. Nowadays music seems to often be an accessory to whatever people buy. That people are so open-minded when they play at Deep Space, I feel, is something very old-school. And now that we’ve gone past the first five years, it’s given me confidence to try different things. Instead of trying to divide people, I’d like to show them that there a lot of uniting factors out there.

What do you make of the scene in New York these days?

I think the city has become very rich. The thing that made the city so incredibly powerful was the fact that there was this incredible mix of people. Recently, everything’s become about money. Perhaps in this coming downturn, things will become a little bit more manageable again. With falling real-estate prices hopefully there will be a good opportunity for some people to build some bigger clubs in the city.

“I find it really interesting that people are paying attention to records that were never hits when they came out.”

There’s been quite a few disco re-edits lately. What are your thoughts on these?

I find it really interesting that people are paying attention to records that were never hits when they came out—and making a much bigger deal over them than when they were first released. Undoubtedly, certain records were way ahead of their time, but I also think there’s this other aspect of this beardo…beard-scratching/never-dance/stand-outside-of-the-booth geek that digs a lot of these because they are very obscure records. While there are definitely some people that bring a lot of creativity to it, it’s like most things: 95% is forgettable, disposable stuff.

Do you ever think about going back to tape? Doing things the old-fashioned way?

I think that digital has a long way to go before it sounds as good as tape used to be. But it’s not going to go there if we don’t work at making it better. MP3s are not designed to be played in clubs. They’re made to be sent over 56k modems in 1995 for people to listen to on their headphones. I don’t know why people are making such a big deal over mp3s or bothering to play them in clubs. It’s very poor taste. Of course, that’s my personal opinion.

You know, we do have very hi-fidelity formats available, like SACD, which was a total commercial flop. It indicates that the majority of the population is not interested in high quality audio. So, as far as tape goes, yeah, it’s great. But who knows about it? The advantages of digital production far outweigh the sonic advantages of using reel-to-reel tapes. So, now, it’s just a matter of people working to get digital to a point where it is just as good.

Do you think we’ll ever get there?

It’ll take time, but I believe we’ll get there. But only when people champion those formats. Right now, people are more concerned with downloading something that is 14 MB in size, as opposed to the ultra high quality version which might be 300 or 400 MB. Maybe once Verizon puts fiber optics in every home and transfers of gigabytes become trivial, it will change. But I think that most people don’t have the patience to want quality; they want convenience first.

The last thing I wanted to ask you about was your mix for Grand Theft Auto. How did that come about?

The makers of the game came to me with a very specific idea of the station that they wanted to have and the type of music that they wanted to feature. I brought some ideas to the table, some of which they agreed with, and some of which they felt they had better choices for their vision. They actually turned me on to a lot of stuff that I should’ve been more familiar with. The recent electro stuff. It was truly a great experience.

Have you played the game?

Of course.

How do you like it?

Love it.