House music all night with the American producer showing us love
Welcome to DMCWORLD towers dude, so refreshing to see some proper house music back smashing The Buzz Chart thanks to your ‘Showing Me Love’ track. Talk us through the history of the track…
“Thanks, and thanks for having me! This song actually has a bit of a longer history than most of my other tracks. I wrote the first draft over two years ago in about a day. Then it kind of sat there for a few months, I would play it for a few people, but it really needed a dope vocal, which it didn’t have at the time. Fast forward to about a year ago, and I was talking with Aaron Ross when he mentioned that he had this singer out in Atlanta named Neysa who he was looking for songs for. So I dug around and sent this one to my friend Sandy Spady so she could write a rough of the vocals, which she smashed! So I sent the demo to Aaron, who sent it on to Neysa… she did her thing on it, and it went straight out to Nocturnal Groove!”
You cut your production and DJ teeth in Queens, New York City – who were the US producers and DJs that were influences to you back in the day?
“Yeah man, there were quite a few cats in the early 2000’s that got me going. Too many to name really, but the ones that stuck with me the most were Sandy Rivera, Quentin Harris, Dennis Ferrer, Blaze, Timmy Regisford, Frankie Knuckles, and Eric Kupper.”
So what prompted the move to New York and what were the early months like?
“Well I was at university in Florida at the time, and I just felt like my life was wasting away there. All I knew was that I wanted to do music, my studies were boring, and I didn’t feel like wasting any more money. So I was deciding between New York and London, and I finally decided New York was the place, since I had been in and out of NYC since the early 90s. The early months were great, man. It was toward the end of the Giuliani era, so the city was much safer, but a lot of the funk was still there. The vibe was still there. The old-school clubs were still open, even if they weren’t at the heights they’d been in years past. But you still had Shelter, Vinyl, Wetlands, Limelight, all the staples. That was all pre-9/11 attacks. When that happened, a lot of the vibe in the city changed, big time.”
In 2006 you teamed up with ‘The Wizard’ Brian Coxx providing production and synth work on his Strictly Rhythm debut Soulgasm Sessions Vol 1 – how did that studio collab happen?
“For a while when I was still getting my feet wet in House production properly, and once I’d found my sound, I started just hitting up every House music party in town, bringing CDs of some bootleg remixes I did. One of the first joints I hit up was a party called Soulgasm, where this dude “The Wizard” Brian Coxx was spinning. I just busted down there when the doors opened, introduced myself and gave my man one of my CDs. We went for a while just chatting about a collaboration cause he had ideas and he was feeling my style. So a few months later we finally got in the studio and messed around with some ideas. Took us a few tracks to come up with something that was really special, and that track wound up being “Forgive Me” on Soulgasm Sessions Vol. 1.”
What do you think you learnt from working with Coxx over the next few years?
“I really learned how to approach a track from a DJ’s perspective, man. I’d DJed for a long time, but for some reason, I just couldn’t seem to take all my experience as a DJ and put it together with my production skills, like I saw it almost as two different entities, if you know what I’m saying. But being in the lab with him, he would like constantly correct me, like “nah nah man, we gotta do it like this for the dancers”. That still plays heavily in what I do today. I guess you can say he helped me connect the dots.”
Where were some of the clubs you were spinning at back then?
“Actually, when we were working on Soulgasm Sessions, and even about 3-4 months before that, I decided I wanted to take a hiatus from DJing. I’d been doing it in NYC pretty much non-stop for 5 years, and I decided I wanted to take a break to focus on production. At that point, I just couldn’t handle doing both. I was doing whole nights by myself and getting mad burnt out, like the last thing I wanted to do was listen to music. I knew if I wanted to master House production, I would have to chill for a bit, and I think it paid off!”
What is the current top 10 you are spinning?
10. Alton Miller feat Amp Fiddler – When The Morning Comes (Joyce Muniz Remix)
9. Donnie – Cloud 9 (Quentin Harris Shelter Mix)
8. Wookie feat Rachel K Collier – 2 Us (Ray Foxx Remix)
7. Blaze – Wishing You Were Here (Joey Negro Extended Mix)
6. Mistura – Smile feat Kendra Cash (Joey Negro Club Mix)
5. Sean Dimitrie – S’more
4. Attaboy – New World (Original Mix)
3. Candi Staton – Hallelujah Anyway (Larse Vocal)
2. Alias Rhythm – Showing Me Love (Vocal Mix)
1. Rose Rouge – Steady
2012 has seen you relocate from New York to London, what was behind the move over?
I just needed a change, man. I think a lot of musicians I’ve spoken to agree with me, you see a lot of us changing where we live and moving around for a new vantage point. I’m not trying to take anything away from the New York scene, it birthed me, you know, but for me it was getting a bit stale. I probably just wasn’t getting out of the city enough. Plus, a lot of the cats I was working with and talking to were on this side of the ocean, so I figured I’d see what was up over here. So far, it’s been the best thing I’ve done in my life! I’ve already had the chance to work and hang out with some people who I never would have had the chance if I’d have stayed in New York.”
Yasmeen Sulieman provided the vocals on your first independent release, your remix of ‘Gone’, and we hear you are now teaming up with her to form a group?
That’s right; it’s something I’m very excited about! Yasmeen and I met through Aaron Ross, who was both of our A&R at Strictly Rhythm. He suggested Brian Coxx and I do a collaboration with her and see what happens. She and I stayed in touch over the following couple years, and last November I suggested that we start a little group thing. I felt like I wanted to do something where every song wasn’t “featuring” someone different, where I could settle in and build a style. I wanted to have an old-school style group, like Inner City… something where you know what you’re getting when you see the name: good, soulful beats and beautiful vocals. So we recorded a bunch of songs and they came out even better than I could have imagined! We signed two of them, ‘Steady’ and ‘Take Me Over’ to Nervous Records, and they’re due out in October.
What was the best and worst thing about living in New York?
“The best thing was the accessibility of everything, from culture to food. For the price of one subway fare, you can pretty much go anywhere and see anything you want! I tend to look at the good side of things, so I can’t really think of anything that I would describe as “worst”. I know it’s a bit of a cop-out, but I’m sticking to it!”
The sounds of soulful house seem to be finally coming on strong again around the world, why has it taken so long to start to shine again?
“I think it’s simple really, everything moves in cycles. I think we’re still a few years off from a more soulful, really “musical” or song-based sound from making it back to being the “it” thing of the moment, but I do think it’ll come. At the end of the day, we all like to party and bug out, but the songs that stand out the most and stay with us for the longest are definitely the ones that touch you, that say something, that are more than just a collection of noises or mish-mash melodies. Pretty soon people are gonna get tired of tracks that are just tracks, and desire to hear real songs again, like what they were doing in the 60s and 70s.”
What has been your anthem of the summer?
“I’d have to ride with Flashmob’s “Need In Me”, just because I played the crap out of that record! I’ve been riding that bassline under so many other tracks, it just fits.”
What has been the highlight of your career so far?
“The highlight hasn’t really been one thing, man. I’m the type that looks at the bigger picture, and the real highlights have been seeing all the goals I’ve put forth get checked off, one-by-one. I cherish everything, from the smallest of achievements to the biggest, and I can’t wait to put check-marks next to the goals I have now!”
What has been the best club you have rocked in 2012?
“Since ADE in Amsterdam last year, I’ve had a tremendous time and been able to play at some truly amazing places, but I really had the most fun rocking this tiny spot in Scotland a couple months ago. The crowd was great, and you could tell they really understood music, like I could play whatever I wanted and they just “got it”, you know?”
Tell us about your studio set up…
“Even though I’ve only been a “House producer” for 6-7 years, I’ve been doing music for a very long time, starting with hip-hop and going up and through drum-n-bass, so I’ve collected quite a lot of pieces over the years. The heart of my set-up is still a computer and Logic, of course. But most of my sounds come from analogue or hardware pieces. My analogue synths are my gold, and to be honest I don’t know if I could really do production without them! My two babies are my Moog Voyager and my Roland MKS-80, both analogue synths. I also love my Roland MKS-50, which is basically an Alpha Juno in a rack format. I used to use the hell out of that thing on the Brian Coxx records!”
Who would be your dream studio collab?
“Well, here’s the part where I get to talk a bit about how blessed I’ve been recently, since I’ve been able to do multiple songs with Yasmeen, which has been a dream studio collab of mine since the first time I’ve worked with her. I’ve also been in the studio with Ray Foxx lately, cooking up some beats, which as far as new guys coming up, was a dream of mine as well. But if I had to pick more dream collabs, I’d probably say Sandy Rivera would be a dream for me. Vocally, I’ve always wanted to work with Lisa Shaw… she’s just got such an amazing voice!!”
And finally, what is the record that changed your life?
“Man, it’s easy to say “too many to name”, but the one that jumps out is definitely Kings of Tomorrow’s “Finally”. That was the record that, when I heard it in 2001, planted the seed for me and House production. So when I talk about soulful music and tracks that stick with you, it’s songs like that that I’m talking about.”
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