Gavin Mills and Sam Holt you are better known as Copyright, the international DJ duo. You have been rocking beats on dance floors for over 10 years. With a solid reputation as hot producers and skilful DJs, you have a Summer residency at Pacha, been together a long time…
Sam: “It’s been 10 years now, I feel like a veteran, I was chatting to Axwell the other week and he said “we are all now veterans of the scene”, so maybe we are. Gav is a veteran for sure.”
Gav: “‘I’m feeling like a veteran because you see all these kids out on the dancefloor and think, wait a minute, this is a whole new generation now, so yeah, I feel like a veteran of the scene.”
Sam: “About a year ago, someone came up to me in a club and they actually asked me what music we were playing. I said “it’s House music” and she said (she was probably about 18) “What is that?” and I thought, we all have a job to do here, we’ve got to keep on going, keep pushing House music so the young people get into it, but it’s true, they’ve never heard of it sometimes.”
Why do you think the Ibiza residency came about?
Gav: “We’ve just consistently put out records that other DJs enjoy playing, we’ve never had the big hit record, we’ve just released a constant stream of stuff that other DJs are into.”
Sam: “Sometimes, we get surprised when we play our own records at gigs and the whole room goes crazy and we realise “oh this is big in France or wherever we are -sometimes you surprise yourself.”
When you’re making records, what’s Copyrights musical philosophy, what elements should the songs you produce always have?
Gav: “The rhythm is always the starting foundation, and then when we’re working with singers, we try not to write throw away songs. When we’re thinking of a song we try to think of a subject and write a song with a bit of a story, quite often if you listen to our lyrics there is a deeper meaning in there.”
You’ve been in Ibiza constantly for the last 6/7 years, what do you think it’s got in store for you this year?
Sam: “Well first of all this year, it’s Saturdays at Pacha for Defected which is a massive step up. To have an Ibizan residency at Pacha for us is a massive thing and something we’re really, really excited about. There’s something special about getting behind the decks at Pacha, it’s got an amazing sound system and it’s got one of the best crowds who are there purely because they love the music. When we’re making records we try and imagine playing it at Pacha, that shows how we value it, that is almost as good as it gets.”
What are the differences between the two mixes you’ve done for your new album?
Sam: “We wanted to try and replicate the Ibizan experience and so one of the CDs kind of reflects the day and maybe the beach vibe and the second CD is a bit more about the club experience, hopefully people can put this CD on and get a taste of Ibiza.”
What is special about the new Defected mix?
Gav: “Well we bought Shovell into the studio. We try to catch little flavours of what it’s like when Shovells actually playing in the club.”
Sam: “We’ve all been contributing to the ‘Drum Warrior’ experience and we’ve brought that into the compilation. There’s little interludes of Shovell throughout the album and as far as we know, it has never been done before.”
You’ve gone to even further lengths than just having Shovell put percussion over your tracks. You’ve actually put together a special intro track, what was your inspiration behind that?
Gav: “We had this picture of Benirras Beach in Ibiza with all the drummers playing at sunset and I had this vision in my head of Shovell leading all the drummers down there and everybody joining in. So the whole track is just made up of the drums and with Shovell doing a little bit of chanting over it.”
Sam: “We’ve also re-edited Harry Choo Choo’s ‘Cumbria’, which is a massive record for us and there’s a bit of Shovell on that. Throughout the album we’ve used acappellas, it’s gone through two stages this mix, we developed the mix, then we did some trickery and then we put Shovell on top. So it’s not been just a standard sort of compilation process its almost like producing a record in a way, that’s how much time we’ve put into making this, it’s a sixty minute track in a way.”
How do you feel about your own tracks on the album, including your new track ‘Ready or Not’ with Yasmeen?
Sam: “Yasmeen was over for the Defected 10th anniversary party and we managed to get four or five days in the studio and ‘Ready Or Not’ is the result of that. So far the reaction to it has been great and it seems to be really working.”
What about Roots?
Gav: “We made this Afro beat tune and we needed a vocal that summed up the feeling of Africa and that original house feeling so we came up with the idea of getting Jazzy B to do a vocal and in just one take he dropped this thing about roots and the tribal expression and we said ‘that will do mate, that’s the vibe”.
Can you pick out a few out of the stand out tracks on the album that are not your own?
Sam: “The first track on CD1, Dennis Ferrer ‘Symphonia Della Notte’, which is coming out on Strictly Rhythm, it’s a total exclusive and a record we’re really excited about.”
Gav: I’m loving the Brian Cox track ‘The Wizard’, I’m definitely going to be looking out for some more stuff by him.”
Sam: P’taah ‘Dance Until We Die’ the Kenny Dope mix is something we’ve been playing in our set, so those three on a sort of more groovy tip. Also a track that has been smashing it out there is Gilbert Le Funk ‘African tastic’ – the David Tort mix.”
