Steve Lawler Interviews

There you go! Some interviews that I love with Mr Steve Lawler aka The King of Space. Gotta love this guy! ;)

Nic Fanciulli Interview

This is an interview which I took to Nic Fanciulli back in 2006 that was never published. Use to work that time for a project that was suppose to be launched in Romania and never did - DJ Mag. Just found out that the license was bought meanwhile, but not by the brand I worked for. Was a pleasure doing that, but a pain in the ass the fact that we were suppose to send the same silly short questions to all DJs in the data base.
Wanted to ask Nic so much more, but now that I'm back on the track I will soon. Enjoy this since it was never published. :)

- How did your DJ career started?
- It started off by working in a record shop, and also by bombarding my local club with mix tapes week in week out.

- How do you choose your tracks for a live set?
- I pick a variation of records across the board, from deep house through to techno. Although some clubs you understand that there is a certain music policy so I always do background checks on the clubs to see what they are into.

- What’s your favorite club in the whole world and why?
- I think it has to be my residency in my home town. The night is called Club Class, I've grown up playing and going to this club for the last 9 years. Its always good to play at a club in your home town because you get to see all your mates enjoying them selves as well as the regular people that always come along.

- What makes a DJ/production/set being commercial?
- Commercial gets confused sometimes. I think there’s two types 1:where the dj or producer just goes down the route of wanting to make big records or to make people have there hands in the air for the whole night. The other is the producer who makes that record which is so good everyone across the board can play it.

- What’s your opinion about the Romanian clubbing scene?
- I've only played once and I had a great night.

- What makes a party great?
- Great sound, small venue, friendly people and, of course, good music.

- When and where did you make a marathon on the turntables? How
many hours?
- Space Miami last November I played for 11 hours – 9 in the main room and 3 on the terrace.

- Turntables, CDJs or laptop? Why?
- I think all of them, I find it hard to travel with vinyl, but when I'm in the UK I try and use all of the above. DJs shouldn’t be scared about trying new equipment.
Special thanks to lovely Beth @ Bullitt Bookings for this.

Alex Under Interview

Alex Under - brainy minimal

- You say your work resembles the collage technique in visual art. What kind of sounds do you assemble, in order to create a new whole?
- That’s exactly the point, the sounds I use are part of already made tracks, I mean, I first make a basic track or loop, then I use cuts, slices, clicks, and parts of this track as sounds to make a new track. That way every single sound has a whole world of sounds on it. It’s a very complex technique that needs a lot of time to make a track. Unfortunately I don’t have that much time, so I don’t use it always. You can listen to "collaged" tracks in the "Multiplicanciones" series on Apnea Records, some of my early CMYK Musik releases and the "Collage EP" on Plus8.

- You say there is something alchemic in your music. What is the purpose of your music?
- The purpose of my music is to evocate feelings in the listeners, probably the purpose of all the music, though. It depends in what I’m working on, but right now my aim is to make people dance with an ear-to-ear-smile in their faces.

- What’s the story of you making music?
- "When I was seventeen, it was a very good year" do you know that Sinatra’s song? It’s a good one! Anyways, I started when I was a teenager, I used to play in metal bands in my hometown, I spent all my youth in a hole we had rented for play, I played everything, guitars, drums, bass, but I didn’t sing ever, thank God. Then I discovered electronic music and I got amazed with it, firstly I tried to mix it up with the music we were doing with the band, some kind of (ha ha ha) techno-metal, but of course it was a shame. And then I kissed bye bye my band buddies, and started my solo career as a techno kid.



- Where is your studio, what is the sightseeing there?
- My new brand studio is in Madrid, we have a new place with 3 studios and the office, it’s a Paradise, we were working on it very hard, doing some handyman’s stuff after the professionals finished the hard work. The sightseeing (ha ha ha again) is not bad, I have a 2x1 meters window that connects my studio with the office, and so every time I see the face of my partner Jose, he is not that ugly, but the sightseeing could’ve been better. So, I have Jose in front and the rest of the guys, Tadeo, Imek and Damian in the other studios.

- Do you use any gear?
- I don’t use much gear right now, I got into the computer music very quickly because it makes my life easier and it permits me to make music in less time. My vintage favorite is my SH-101 and my brand new favorite is an MBase01 by Jomox, which is a very small analog machine to make only bass drums.

- How many hours per day do you work? How long it takes till a track becomes a good track?
- I don’t have a routine, I have a 2 years old kid, and I’m all the weekends out of home, plus the office work with the labels, so its really hard to me to have a fixed schedule, either for work or sleep. I didn’t spend too much time in the studio lately, but I have a good working plan for the next months so I hope I can make it for 5 or 6 hours everyday. Anyway is hard to say how much time needs a track, some of them need weeks, others just hours.

- Does your son react to any type of music?
- My son, Cyan is 2 years old, and he is the meaning of my life, he is my world. Cyan loves the music, especially funky; his favorites are Herbie Hancock and Earth Wind and Fire. Is amazing how he reacts with "headhunters" of H. Hancock, since he was 3 months old. I love to watch him dancing in my rear-view mirror when we are in the car.



- You come from Madrid. How was your childhood, what were your musical influences? Do you still have tapes or vinyl from that period?
- My childhood was very smooth; thanks to my parents I always had lot of freedom. It was in the old-times, so a 10-year-old boy could go out by night in the summer without any danger, so I loved the street. I was always "having bad ideas" as my mom defines my childhood, this is something nice of being artist, now those bad ideas are named as creativity :))).
I have a brother and sister (+4 and +5 years older than me) my brother was very involved in music composition since he was a kid, he had the very firsts synths and computers.
The first bands I liked by my own, after listening to my brother’s tapes, was Metallica and Sepultura, followed by a long tail of thrash, gothic or death-metal bands. Shameless I don’t have much tapes or CDs from that period, but I do have a lot of vinyl from my family collection, very miscellaneous collection.

- How is the clubbing scene in Madrid?
- I’m afraid I’m not the correct person to answer this. Unfortunately I don’t have a clue of what’s happening in Madrid during the weekends. I live here Monday to Thursday, but I know only the day life here. I can tell you we have great parks to go with the kids, but surely if you ask Richie Hawtin or Ellen Allien, they would know much more than me about the club scene in Madrid. In the last year I played 2 times in Madrid, in the whole year!

- Compare the West European crowd with the East European one. Where did you play in Eastern Europe except Romania and how was it there?
- Every club and every city is an absolute different world from each other in terms of crowd, but, in general terms, I think the crowd in Eastern Europe is usually younger, they have much more energy. Two of my favorite countries are in this region of the world, Romania and Georgia. Playing there is always a peak-feelings-time, I don’t need to be so technical as in UK, Germany or US (i.e.) the show is something much more passionate and the contact with the people is more direct and intimate. Something I love when playing in Eastern Europe is that I have the same feeling I used to have when I started clubbing, really cannot explain what the hell it is, but is something that goes up and down in the guts.

- Tell us the importance of a good sound in a club. Did it ever happen to you not to play your set because of a bad sound? What’s a perfect club for you?
- The happiness and enjoyment of a DJ is the same as the sound system he is playing on, so you can guess how important it is. I never said I don’t play, but it crossed my mind in a 20% of my gigs I played with so crappy sound systems, but is part of the game, though. A perfect club for me I think in Studio Martin in Bucharest, this is a perfect club for me.



- What is the story behind CMYKmusik. How did the idea appear? Where does it have the headquarters? How does it look there?
- CMYKmusik was the first label of the Net28 family. I used to have a record shop, there, it was the very first HQ´s, and I met there all my buddies, all my partners now in Net28. I was new in town, I knew nobody in Madrid, they also didn’t know each other, so we all started meeting at the record shop, and we became a close family. All the shop was handmade with recycled stuff from the streets and it looked very funny, all the record shops in Madrid were like the modern black/silver painting and CMYKmusik shop had colors everywhere, it was very warm.
Downstairs we had a cellar, very dark and with lot of humidity, really uncomfortable, but there was the beginning. After 5 years I closed the shop and we formerly moved the net28 office into a flat, nothing special, and now, since February ‘08, we have the best office in the world! It’s big, spacious, we also have the studios there, we play here darts, basketball, ping-pong, and we also do some work, sometimes.

- When did your other three labels come into the story?
- After CMYKmusik, I started thinking I needed something else, something like a platform to move with, I was lost with the label, I just made the music, but I didn’t have any distribution, any promotion department, anything else. So it was necessary to create a huge net around everything related with a label, as a manufacturing department, promotion department and booking agency, and of course, some more labels to build a proper musical scene. At that time, each one of my partners started a label.

- What defines each of your labels?
- APNEA Records - the word “apnea” refers to diving in the sea without any kind of artificial help, just the human, and that is exactly what Apnea is as a label too, deepness and humanity. CYCLICAL TRACKS is about something complex built from a basic pattern evolved on a loop basis.
Bemysheep is the label we use to release weird stuff, as bootlegs or freaky-versions of pop anthems as Shakira’s “Whenever” or Snap´s “I got the power”.
MUPA is the youngest of our labels, house music oriented and fine stuff, and CMYKmusik is all about personality, we don’t care what kind of music is released, just need to have the own personality of the artist on it.



- What do you think is unique to the first compilation of Net28?
- Is our first release in CD format, this for starters. Then, is also our first compilation of various artists, and we wanted to do it with unreleased tracks, we asked everyone to make a special track for the compilation, so all the artists had a common motivation to make a track. So that’s why the compilation has this "karma", you can feel the community concept when listening to it, all tracks are different, each one with it own style of each artist, but all them are almost-mystically connected to the rest of them. I think its a important break-point in all our careers, as artists and also for the labels, all we were working for some time and the compilation is something that had make us to stop, think and breath.
It took around one year since the first email asking for the tracks to the artists till we received the CD at the office, a long walk, but it was worth it!

- How and when did it start Musica Charlista, the project shared with Damian Schwartz? How is working with Damian?
I hate working with other people. I just cannot do it. But, one day we were just messing up in the studio and we got into a really good concept, the "conversationalism" between sounds, (“musica charlista” means something like "chatting music") and we made cmyk004 release. It was very fast, smooth working, everything came up almost by itself. It was very funny to do it, but unfortunately we don’t have much time now to work on this project now.

- What do you prefer most and why: to make a set as a producer, only with your tracks or to play as a DJ?
- I will try to not be too abstract with the answer, but is always complicated to choose one or the other in general terms. I’ve been playing a live set with my own tracks since I was touring with "Dispositivos de mi Granja” LP (listen here), in 2005, and I really feel comfortable with this kind of show, it has a negative thing, I get bored of playing the same tracks every time. Because is not easy to have a new live set every month, I use to add new loops, sketches and arrangements every week, but even with this is easy to get bored with it, and this is highly unrecommended. So, last year I was testing "Loopsi Driver", which basically is a live set but using tracks and loops produced by the artists on NET28 labels. During that time I had the chance to renew my life set in a 80%, and now I’m again playing only my own tracks and I’m enjoying it a lot. So, the bottom line is, the very best is to change things, set up, concepts, whatever that could bring yourself to a new adventure.



- What is the new trend Berlin will set this year? What do you think about new rave?
- Is so boring to me, I can’t even debate about it. Waiting for a new trend from Berlin? That’s sooo optimistic! I don’t know what’s this "new rave" you are telling me, but if it’s pumpin´, funny and kicking ass, I like it! Save the rave.

- Debate on this theme: vinyl or Ableton, digital or analog?
- About vinyl or Ableton, that’s easy to answer, talking about performance, Ableton is my choice. I love vinyl and I do collect them, I love all the magic surrounding a vinyl, although that has almost disappeared. When I remember the old times, when I had the record shop, and the customers came the day we had news incoming, it was such a great community moment. But times had changed and we must accept it, vinyl is now a collector item. Is not profitable for the labels and is very environment unfriendly.
Digital or analog, I don’t have preferences in here. .

- What is your set up for a live set?
- My actual set up is: Macbook Pro laptop, RME Fireface 400 soundcard, Evolution UC-33 midi controller, mini-Kaoss pad FX.

- You are a label owner, you make music, and you have a son. When do you find time for everything?
- Don’t forget I’m also traveling 3 days per week ;)
I was listening to that Japanese woman, 120 years old, the oldest alive person in the world, it was amazing how she looked like 60, walking, speaking fluently… so, she told her secret to the interviewer, she just sleeps 1 night in 2 days, that makes 40 hours awake / 8 hours sleep.
Now it could be really cool to tell you I do the same, but... unfortunately I can’t! I did try to, that story amazed me, and I tried it hard, but it does not work with me. I think the only secret to make things successful is to do it with all the senses on it, with the heart, the soul and the brain too.

- How do you see yourself in 20 years? What about music? Will the vinyl disappear completely?
- I see myself that kind of old man that doesn’t want to get old, so he wears "young" clothes and speaks the slang people used 20 years ago, drinking beers alone in a crappy bar and trying to get into the disco’s without any hope to achieve his purpose… Neah, I’m kidding. I see myself in my own Caribbean island drinking piña colada and listening Thomas Brinkmann´s "Rosa" in my own Martin audio sound system, placed in the beach.
In my point of view, music will be based in frequencies and noises; will be more something about sound than about music. And yes, the vinyl will be out of scene at that time, but also the CDs and DVDs and the kind of hard drives we know today.

- What means techno for you?
- Techno means the biggest motor of emotions and feelings known.

brought to you thanks to

Special thanks to Jose @ Net28 and Studio Martin ;)

Derrick May interview

Vania catch Derrick May for a short interview before his gig at Studio Martin in Bucharest. In the same night, Kevin Saunderson had a gig at another club in Bucharest. Derrick is as funny as always and the gig was ace as always! Enjoy

/

A little funny chit chat with Lee Burridge

This is an interview with Lee Burridge that I took after the 1st of May parties on the Black Sea Coast in Mamaia, Romania. He played with his friend Bill Patrick at La Mania club and then at the beach, over & over again. Even forgot to eat. Lee is always great fun so a "classic" interview would of been boring. Prepare yourself for a great laugh with Lee Burridge.




Miss Foggy: What was the most wicked night when u got the most fucked up ever?
Lee Burridge: So many to choose from. I remember once in Thailand, we had been rocking out for three days and had dropped loads of Acid. We were in a club called The Backyard' which is up in the jungle. It really is a huge shack that doesn't have walls, just pillars holding up the roof and a large balcony that looked down from the hill onto a beach. The decks and mixer are set up and a snooker table and the speakers regularly caught fire or blew up. It's really cool. I wasn't DJing but my friend was.I was with another friend having fun, laughing and hanging out. The acid was really strong and when I looked up everyone had vanished apart from their eyeballs. So I'm in the club with three hundred pairs of eyes surrounding me and I start to get a bit weird. I decided to concentrate on the back of the bass speaker for a while and watch it vibrating. Eventually everyone returned at which point I look at my friend DJing. He decided (unwisely) at that point to try and mix 3 records together. Bad idea! So there he is with his headphones all twisted round his head, straining, and the three tracks mixing badly together sounding like a drum kit being kicked down the stairs. He had this deranged look on his face which said 'please help me' when CRACK!!! the headphones broke and flew off his head in different directions. The drum kit continued to clank and clatter down the stairs and my friend looked wildly around him for the remnants of the exploded headphones. He found one side with the tiniest piece of plastic attached to hold on to and proceeded to try and save the mix. He pulled down two of the faders and then ........silence! The third fader he left up was the record that had just finished. I, as a concerned friend was rolling around on the floor crying with laughter. That was a rather fucked up day/night!

MF: Did u ever had sex in the DJ booth?
LB: Yes. It's on my rider that the promoter must supply one sex girl everywhere I play to do naughty stuff to me in the DJ booth.

MF: What was the craziest gift u ever received from Bill?
LB: He was one of the sex girls. That's actually how we met, while he was giving me his gift.

MF: If u would be forced to play in a club's restroom, what would u play?
LB: Trance, as that music belongs in the toilet.

MF: Describe Peanut in three words and tell me who loves her the most.
LB: Ball. Turkey. Sleep. That's her life. She is by far the cutest dog ever. Who loves her the most? Anyone who meets her apart from Mexican people as she's a racist and growls and bites Mexicans. We don't know why.

MF: What's your biggest dream at the moment?
LB: To help Bill make it and get the recognition he deserves. Also doing that weightless thing in a plane where they simulate zero gravity would be pretty cool.

MF: What do you think about Bill? Describe him.
LB: He has an amazing taste in music and is my favorite victim to pick on when we are partying. He has trouble pronouncing the two words "Iraqi War" when fucked up. He says...IWAKI WAAAHH. He is just as bad and irresponsible as me which is good. He really will be a famous DJ in the next few years. He loves Desperate Housewives and Star Trek the next generation and believes in Ghosts. He faints if he sees blood and is scared of mice. He told me once that he liked a Shakira song and always cries when he watches Mrs Doubtfire (just like Little Mike). His favorite color is beige. He joined the Scientologists because he wanted to meet Tom Cruise. When he was growing up he liked to pretend he was Maverick from Top Gun when he was playing vollyball on Long island beach and that lead to the life long obsession he has with Tom to this very day. He used to have sign that said 'TUNE!' on one side and 'It's not over yet' on the other that he put above his head at the Paul Oakenfold parties he went to. When him and his friends DJ'd under the name 'the 112 crew' Bill was the number 2. He never logs off of Myspace and has an unhealthy obsession with Beef Jerky.

MF: What was your last nightmare? (not in real life – but like dreaming nasty stuff)
LB: I don't go to sleep so don't have them! I actually had a DJ dream/nightmare that comes back every now and again. It's always me DJing in fromt of lots of people but all I can find are bad records and I spend so long looking for a good record that the one playing finished and it's silent and I then put on another bad one. Was that a dream?

MF: What have you ate at the sea side?
LB: E's, branches and leaves.

MF: What's the thing you dislike most at a hotel room?
LB: I'll tell you about the hotel at the Black Sea Coast. I'd been awake and partying Friday night in Dublin and then flew to Bucharest. I drove down to La Mania and played from around 3 am until 1 pm. We then ended up at kudos where Bill and I played for another 10 hours until 1 am when we decided to go out to Marco Corolla. Around 5 am Monday morning Bill and I realized we were very hungry but had no money so a very kind dance music fan purchased us some food in the super market which we then took back to my room. It was then I realized the sun was coming up...shit!...the curtains are so white in the rooms of the hotel that it's actually darker sleeping with them open!.I hate white curtains!!!

MF: What's the worst thing that could happen to you while playing? And what do you dislike the most while playing?
LB: I dislike nothing. I love playing. When I used to play in Thailand the equipment was so ghetto that I used to get electric shocks every ten minutes. That was pretty bad!

MF: Who's your current superstar?
LB: The man who bought Bill and I food outside the Supermarket

MF: Who's the worst DJ you ever heard playing?
LB: Hmm...so many to chose from. I would say any of the DJ's who play from the wallet not from the heart. If you want names I think Judge Jules is pretty terrible.