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Archive for the ‘INTERVIEWS’ Category

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“Last week I was physically attacked when I was with some friends on Hackney Road. It was by some narrow-minded morons who seemed to want any excuse to vent their anger. There is a real underlying tension here in London and it’s often targeted at the queers and dress ups.”

Chatting about his latest brush with homophobic thugs, Caligula promoter Jim Warboy is impressively insouciant, particularly since just two years earlier  20 year old London art student and ‘dress-up’ Olly was left crippled after being stabbed 7 times and left for dead by a Bengali street gang, yards from where Jim was punched.

Though random street crime sadly continues to represent a real threat for clubbers in Shoreditch and Hoxton, Jim and the hundreds of flamboyant fashionistas flocking to his club du jour Caligula remain undeterred and as Jim points out, local police are increasingly helpful.

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“The police responded very quickly and they are taking this kind of situation very seriously now. I also had a lot of help from the staff at the George and Dragon nearby and it’s good to know that there is some sense of community and support around the area,” he says.

“Dressed up people have always been targets of these morons and it’s always worth following your common sense in how to minimise the amount of hassle you get. The most important bit is that nobody should have the right to deter someone amazing from being themselves,” he urges.

12 months after it started, Jim’s club Caligula, (which he co-promotes with Brazilian stylist and man-about-town Leo Belicha ), attracts London’s most flamboyant and glamorous crowd (including Bjork last week) though Jim himself is remarkably quiet and unassuming. A constant fixture on London’s alternative queer scene since co-running Matthew Glamorre’s uber-influential club of the noughties Kashpoint, he’s dropped the latter’s (dreadful) experimental music emphasis and equally significantly its door policy which banned anyone who failed to dress to excess.

“The door policy is important at Caligula, as it should be at any club. But door policies come in all shapes and sizes,” he muses.

“Caligula has always been known for having a very mixed crowd. We have a very fashionable crowd but also attract many other people who aren’t that interested in fashion. One of the key ideas behind Caligula from the start was to create a diverse crowd. I believe that’s where the interesting things happen in London. It is too easy to end up with a club for of the same ‘type’ of people. Why shouldn’t we have a club which pushes beyond the boundaries? I love seeing gay boys dancing with straight boys, trannies getting bottles of champagne off City boys, and seasoned veterans swapping ideas with the fresh faced newbies,” he smiles.

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And music-wise they’ve also avoided the cheesy pop and achingly amateurish DJs booked by most of London’s club kid parties of the last few years, instead inviting guest DJs such as Secretsundaze chief James Priestley and uber-cool Brazilian techno god Renato Cohen, backed by residents Jim and London based Brazilian Monica Soldan.

Renato Cohen & Monica Soldan

“Renato had come to Caligula earlier in the year and wanted to play for us. He completely understood that Caligula is not a techno club and that the music policy allows a lot of freedom for DJs to experiment,” Jim explains.

“Although he’s known as a techno DJ he’s actually extremely versatile and has been playing sets in Sao Paulo that incorporate other genres like disco for example. His set at Caligula was incredible and he managed to take people on a real journey through a range of ideas.”

“The music policy at Caligula is broadly Disco, Hi-NRG and house but the fact we have a dancefloor club at our new home at Basing House means that we can now push it deeper. The music is not completely retro – we play lots of current new music too. There is a certain vibe at Caligula – usually involving a good amount of vocals – and we tend to have sets that mix things up a bit. There is no point in us trying to recreate a music policy that people can get at loads of other club nights,” he notes.

“Are we pushing dubstep or tropical? No,” he smiles, “they’re not really genres that conjure up the mood of Caligula. Our crowd aren’t really into that thing.”

“One of the amazing things about London is that it’s a big, diverse city and people can have the option to go to all sorts of nights. On top of the disco and Hi-NRG background to Caligula we are pushing in more acid and old school house that is reminiscent of older, sleazy New York City clubs mixed with that twisted East London vibe that brings it up to date.”

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“Fellow DJs take note – if you end up stranded in some country due to an airline fuck-up, find your own accommodation or sleep in the business lounge – you’ll thank me.”

16 years after he started his career spinning warm up sets at John Digweed’s fledgling Bedrock nights in his home town of Hastings, Danny Howells knows more than a little about travel snafus including his latest incident which saw him missing a headline slot at Ibiza superclub Space last weekend.

“It was a complete fuck-up and I’m gutted,” says Danny.

“I was flying in from Tunis, via Nice, and my outward flight was delayed by almost four hours. There was absolutely no other way of getting into Ibiza therefore I ended up stuck in Tunis for the night; in a -2 star hotel provided by the airline that was so vile I had to sleep with my shoes on. Stuff happens like this sometimes that there is absolutely no control over and it is an absolute pain in the arse,” he complains.

“On this occasion, it was my only Space gig for 2010 so it’s even more depressing,” he complains, “I’m not really an ‘Ibiza DJ’ and I probably don’t draw many punters to the club so I doubt I’ll be getting booked again next year after this.”

Grumbling (and false modesty) issues aside the progressive tech-house star is endearingly down to Earth reflecting his first job working as a psychiatric nurse in a semi-secure ward treating patients suffering from serious psychiatric disorders, including some who could be violent. 16 years on though, all is forgiven, he smiles.

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“Whenever I go back to Hastings, I always bump into at least one of my old patients. Some of the younger ones always tell me how happy they are for me, that I managed to get out of nursing, or that they’ve bought one of my CDs etc,” he says proudly.

“There’s even one that I once made a mix-tape for, and he always tells me that he’s gutted that he lost it, and can I make him another one. That’s really nice, and I’m always so happy to see them all doing well. There are a few who on occasion threatened to kill me if ever they saw me outside, but now we see each other and have a hug and a chat. I’ve never ruled out the possibility of going back into that profession one day – I won’t be DJing forever, and doing something like nursing is so rewarding, even though it can be so stressful.”

Death threats aside he has no immediate plans to retire, however, despite admitting he’s been suffering from an unusually intense bout of writer’s block.

“This year has been a strange one so far, gig-wise it’s been pretty fabulous, but production-wise I’ve been in a bit of a six month funk. I produced so much stuff over the last few years, and kind of worked myself into a block, so to speak.”

“But it’s a cloud that really does has a silver lining, as it’s given me the chance to open up the Dig Deeper label to producers other than myself, and right now I’m buzzing over some of the forthcoming tracks that I’ll be releasing. We put out a message for producers to send in their demos, and honestly it was quite overwhelming, both in terms of the quality of the material that was sent in, and the love that some people have for the label.

I never really think that many people are paying attention to what I do, but then something happens which comes as a shock – for example, finding out that Juan Maclean was into the label, and was going to use my “Laid Out” track at his DJ gigs was amazing.”

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“In the late seventies and early eighties the yuppies were total losers in New York club-land. By the nineties they had taken it over. I never saw that one coming. However, I think that they and Mayor Giuliani get way too much credit for New York’s cultural downfall. I think that they are symptoms of the decline but not the cause of it.”

Starting his DJ career at New York’s seminal downtown underground haunt the Mudd Club in 1980, Johnny Dynell rapidly became one of the City’s busiest and most popular underground DJs, going on to hold residencies at nightlife institutions including Danceteria, Tunnel, Palladium and later Crobar (between 2003 and 2007). A leading light and key player in the post-punk early 80s club scene that helped spawn both hip hop and later house music, he hung out with both Madonna (when she was a Danceteria coat check girl) and later David Morales, when the future house God was a teenage gang-banger.

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Spending his entire adult life DJing, promoting and producing electronic music in New York, he’s perfectly placed to identify the forces that destroyed New York’s once fabled nightlife, singling out gentrification as one of the greatest single causes.

“New York just got too rich. Kids can’t afford to come here anymore,” he points out.

“The only people who can afford New York rents are lawyers and investment bankers. That’s who lives in New York now. Today New York is seen as a great place to live and raise a family. That sort of says it all.”

Back in the early 80s, New York was seen as a great place for miscreants and misfits to mingle, party and pursue artistic alternative lifestyles, drawn by the city’s 24/7 notoriously decadent nightlife and lifestyle. With semi-derelict areas such as the East Side’s Alphabet City and Skid Row providing relatively cheap space for those willing to brave street gangs and assorted random crazies, anything was possible, and the City thrived as THE global heart of underground culture. 30 years on, the Bowery and Avenue D are uber-expensive banker infested quarters, though Johnny remains optimistic despite his assessment.

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“As far as club life goes, New York is very sad now and is nothing compared to the scene in Europe, sure, but as a city she is still the queen,” he insists. “Her reign will come to an end someday for sure but there is still nothing like it. I never underestimate New York. She always rises from the ashes.”

And though he identifies gentrification as the single greatest destructive force against nightlife he’s far from forgiving towards Rudolph Giuliani based on his own experiences running legendary alternative club Jackie 60 (with his wife Chi Chi Valenti) throughout the 90s.

“When we started Jackie in 1990 we developed a great relationship with our local police precinct,” he explains.

“They were affectionately called ‘Fort Bruce’ by the other precincts because they are located on Christopher Street in the gay West Village. Every day they saw it all.  We were always honest with them about what went on at Jackie. They knew exactly what we were all about. Jackie 60 was a wild place with crazy performance art but nobody got hurt and they knew that,” he points out.

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Hosting performance art pieces such as naked girls wrestling in paddling pools filled with chocolate pudding (‘we explained that it was our annual Brown Party.  “Oh, like the White Party?” they laughed’) the club thrived until 1994 when Giuliani headed for mayoral victory.

“One day our cops told us that if this Giuliani guy wins the election and becomes mayor everything will change. ‘He’s a Nazi’, they warned us,” Johnny recalls.

“They suggested that we get our cabaret license before it’s too late because this guy was going to come down hard on clubs. We did get our license and he did become mayor. He then created this special ‘Task Force’ to harass clubs. They would come in and give us tickets for things like hanging our liquor license on the wall with a screw instead of a nail. Things like that. When I would go to court the judge would just shake his head disgusted and throw it out saying ‘this guy (Giuliani) is insane’.

“I know it sounds crazy but it was actually a very clever, devious plan of constant harassment. The message was clear. We are always watching and we will kill you the second you slip up. His term as Mayor was New York’s darkest hour.”

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“Having a baby changed my life massively, I took myself out of the loop quite dramatically for a while and all I could think about was my gorgeous little boy Stanley. Although I started doing gigs again when he was quite young they were all local and I didn’t go out apart from that so a lot of people thought I’d disappeared completely. It takes a while to feel normal again and it’s only the past year I’ve been back in it like I used to be.”

Landing her first high profile residency at influential London night-spot Turnmills in 1999 and going on to regularly cover for Pete Tong on his hugely powerful Radio 1 show, DJ Lottie started the noughties as one of the few female DJs touring the world on the A List DJ circuit. 11 years on she remains comfortably placed within the same elite strata though she’s the first to admit becoming a mother four years saw her stepping back from the decks for more than a brief break.

“On a practical level, you simply can’t carry on playing three gigs a night or going touring for months,” she says. “There’s the breast feeding issue for a start, I breast fed for 6 months so could never be that far away, plus emotionally it’s unbearable to be too far away until they’re about two or three anyway,” she explains.

“I only did three gigs a month for his first couple of years and the furthest I think I went without him was Paris,” she continues. “I took him to Ibiza with me to play Space and Amnesia every summer, though. I have two mates now in the same boat as me, Jo Mills and Ayalah (Sister Bliss) and we have great DJ mum chats,” she confides.

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“Ayalah takes her little boy with her on tour and has help, there’s ways and means of doing it but it’s a lot easier when they get older. Now I’m going to Hong Kong this month, Dubai and Australia later in the year and generally travelling more and more and further afield again but I still wont go on tour for three weeks again unless Stanley can come with me.”

Staying closer to home she’s also launched Geisha, a biweekly party at East Village devoted to house music and more significantly female DJs.

“After years of not wanting to do all female nights I’ve had a complete U-turn on the idea. I used to think it was restrictive bunching us all together like we were a novelty but 10 years on, although there is an abundance of female talent out there, there is still a ridiculously large gap between the sexes in our chosen vocation,” she points out. “I have to say when I started I thought it would be more balanced between female and male DJs by now but it’s not.”

“Geisha is certainly not about excluding the boys though, it’s more about showing what great female DJs there are out there,” she stresses.

“We’re not getting all feminist about things we just want to get together, as girls do, and play some music. It seems everyone is a DJ now so the opportunity to play out is often slim. This gives us a night where we get to play together and control the music all night. It’s female driven but it’s for everyone to enjoy.”

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American trance star Christopher Lawrence chatted to Skrufff about his new compilation series Rush Hour this week and also revealed he’ll shortly be quitting Australia to move back to Los Angeles.

Chatting to Skrufff when he relocated to Australia four years ago Christopher stressed his preference for bringing up his child there, though this week revealed he’s found it ‘very difficult living in Australia and keeping up my touring schedule’.

“My life is complete chaos, I have no permanent time zone,” Christopher complained.

“It has also been difficult to find time to work on original productions and in particular I never see my family. For that reason we are moving back to Los Angeles. I love Melbourne but it is just too far away from the rest of the world.”

“I have to go out on tour from three to five weeks at a time. I am away more than I am at home,” he continued.

“Back in Los Angeles I could travel anywhere in the world overnight. I was home four days a week. LA is a much better base for my career.”

Ironically, his career since moving to Australia is if anything,thriving, in particular off the back of his heavily syndicated/ web distributed radio show Rush Hour. Focusing on upfront trance, progressive and techno the show has recently spawned a compilation (called Rush Hour) the first issue of which is out now via US label Moist Music.

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Ten years after he became the head booker at Ibiza’s most credible and critically important party (We Love) at the island’s most influential venue (Space), Mark Broadbent ‘s advice for landing a gig is impressively (if deceptively) simple.

“Make friends with us,” he recommends, “reach out.”

Well aware of We Love’s career boosting potential he’s equally conscious that every new booking means an established player loses out, a side of his job he admits continuing to find more than a little tricky.

“It’s a terrible thing to have to do to tell someone you’re no longer booking them and over the years I’ve dropped quite a few acts who were mainstays of our programming back in the day,” he admits.

‘You’ve got to remember that most of these people have become friends but at the end of the day you’re not doing anybody favours by just booking them for the sake of it. Everybody can tell when a booking has been made for those reasons. Still, it’s the worst part of the job and it keeps me awake at night sometimes,” he admits.

Pursuing a policy of mixing big name ‘underground’ names (this season’s stars include Carl Craig, Claude Von Stroke and Joris Voorn) with rising talent (notably Deepgroove and  Berghain’s Marcel Dettman this season), We Love is broadly centred around techno, though Mark’s keen to avoid being pigeon-holed by genres.

“We book acts from all four corners of the globe and given that we have six rooms to program you can often find lesser know genres like dubstep, for example Appleblim – being played in the club at the same time as big room house, for example by someone like Steve Lawler,” he points out.

“Music is our passion and we hunt it out in the best venues and parties and try to replicate what we experienced through our programming here at Space. This has also helped keep our parties very cosmopolitan in terms of our customers.”

He’s also impressively unflustered about the actions of rival Balearic clubs such as Pacha who made a dramatic move this season in signing minimal/ deep type Luciano for a season of Sunday night affairs.

“After 15 years living and working on Ibiza I have found that people who like to go to Pacha will go there but on the same token, if you don’t like Pacha for one reason or another, no DJ booking is going to make you go there,” he says.

“I think maybe we have lost the odd soul to Luciano this summer but if you’re a regular customer of ours, there is no competition really.”

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“In terms of making music – learn the rules, then break the rules and remember to just have fun in the studio – it shouldn’t be a struggle.  Failing that, make a deal with the devil; in terms of having a club hit – pay a PR company enough money to shout about you all day long.”

With a list of production credits including Dave Clarke, Chicks on Speed, Xpress2 and Alter Ego and as one half of acclaimed underground electro duo Product 01, Marc ‘01’ Adamo is amply qualified to give advice on how to make dance music which is exactly what he’s done in his new book ‘Secrets of House’. That the book’s giving away more than a few serious tips is apparent from both its euphoric reviews and the fact it’s already on a second print run and Adam admits he’s got more up his sleeve to help both sales and fledgling producers.

“I’m currently developing the concept into an interactive Ipad app,” he smiles, “So the book will soon be combined with audio examples and processes that will make it even easier to understand and more fun.”

So asking a devil’s advocate question seems fair. You’ve had a lot of success compared to the vast majority of people making tracks but haven’t had a worldwide mega smash such as a Timo Mass’ Doomsknight or a Soulwax or Crookers record: What’s the secret of their success? Could they know something you don’t?

“Like I said before- they must have sold their souls to the devil,” he responds, “Stay tuned though, as I might have a deal like that coming up myself in the not so distant future.”

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“Sometimes it’s hard to keep both sides going, to balance the nightlife with the day-life because I’m the sole owner of D-Edge so I have to be there in person to check what’s happened last night. I also like partying a lot; when I go to the club at night, I drink, I socialise and party.”

Sitting in his sumptuous Sao Paulo apartment, Renato Ratier smiles as he outlines the difficult balancing act he maintains running his uber-successful Brazilian club D-Edge against indulging the temptations from being one of South America’s most popular and successful house DJs.

“For example, on Thursday night I went to another club first, then D-Edge then after that some people said ‘let’s go to your flat and have an after-party there’. So we came back to my house and my friends ended up leaving at 4pm.”

“Then I had to go to the club to take care of some matters immediately afterwards,” he sighs. “That’s the difficult question for me: balancing everything. Of course, business is important and I need to take care of things but I really like the nightlife. So that’s difficult. Sometimes I need to go home early.”

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“If you want to break your name on the island you’ve got to do something innovative and original. A lot of people come to this island who aren’t particularly innovative or original and think for some reason that being in the most competitive club environment in the world will somehow make it easier for them to succeed. It won’t, it will be much more difficult.”

With a background that includes launching Ibiza’s most infamous club brand Manumission in the early 90s, and more recently the even more successful Ibiza Rocks concept, Andy McKay clearly knows a thing or two about both Ibiza and branding and he’s happy to share some basic tips.

“I guess I’d probably say, consider building your name somewhere else and then coming to the island,” he continues. “Building your name on the island is still possible, but I think certain times are better than others and I’m not so sure this is a good time to try. Though if you do have an innovative idea here and it’s successful then you can export it around the world.”

In fact, he’s also responsible for a third successful Ibiza brand, Reclaim the Dancefloor, a Wednesday night affair at Eden headlined by Radio 1 ‘s new generation DJs Annie Mac, Kissy Sellout and Zane Lowe plus dubstep favourites Rusko, Caspa and Doorly. Heavyweight DJs including Tiga, Switch and Boy 8_Bit also feature on the line-ups for a party that’s amongst the most experimental of any on the island, reflecting the confidence that oozes throughout Ibiza Rocks and from Andy himself.

“We’ve got a broader business now, with the shop, the hotel, the club and everything else,” he points out.

“We’re no longer reliant on whether we will or won’t make money from each particular event. Of course it’s not so great if an event loses money, but it’s the overall brand that matters to us now, we just want the concerts to be good.”

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