Quite simply, one of the biggest dance records of the year
Interview by Dan Prince
Dr Kucho! in the house! Daniel a huge welcome to DMCWORLD…where in the world are you today?
Thanks! I’m in Madrid my home town today, but I was in Malta last weekend and going to be in Poland the next one.
What was the first piece of music you heard this morning after rolling out of bed?
It’s name is “track number 4” (lol). Seriously, it still doesn’t have a name, I am composing music for a video game I am creating and when I say creating I mean really creating myself. I don’t use ghosts producers in music nor ghosts programmers in game development. And no, it’s not Ghosts’n DJs, I am making a new game, I don’t know what’s going to happen to Ghosts’s n DJs…
Next week is a big week in your diary with the release of the next installment of your now classic ‘Can’t Stop Playing (Makes Me High)’. Wow. The tune now comes with a Vocal Edit from man of the moment Oliver Heldens and a vocal from Ana Brun. Plus some A-List remixes! Please talk us through the history of the record, it’s been quite a journey!
Well, Gregor Salto and myself created the track 10 years ago and released it originally in my label Disc Doctor Records, it started to work very, very well in Belgium and Holland, everybody was playing it. I remember playing at a festival near Amsterdam, I finished my set and the next DJ asked me, “did you play Can’t Stop Playing?” I said “yes” and he said “I don’t care, I’m playing it again” (lol). It then was signed by News Records and became No. 1 in Holland for several weeks, it’s funny that in the rest of the world the track didn’t make much noise, but Spinnin’ knew it had a lot of potential and I guess that was the reason they wanted to re-launch it once the contract with News Records was finished.
The instrumental was picked up and hammered by the likes of Hardwell, MK and Afrojack. When your track was out there in it’s original format, had the idea of a vocal or big name remix entered your head?
Vocals? No, to me, when I do a track if it is an instrumental track or a vocal track from the very beginning, if a vocal is going to be there I’ll have made the music to fit the vocal and not vice versa. I agree it’s not the only way of doing things and in many cases adding a vocal to an instrumental track ends up with a good result, just like Anne Brun did with Can’t Stop, but it’s just not how I work. Remixes? No, I never see my own work remixed, mostly cause I spend a lot of time and energy on it, so when it’s finished I just want to think of a new one. Only when a lot of years have passed I might think in an old track of mine in a different way…
Over at DMCWORLD we love the voice of Anne Brun, she has worked with the likes of Peter Gabriel, Andrew Bayer and even Abba’s Benny Anderrson over the years. Why were you drawn to her vocal duties…
Okay this is the moment when most people would create some bullshit to make themselves look in tune with the world and cool…but not my case. I hadn’t heard of Anne Brun before Spinnin’ pointed me in her direction, but that is completely normal. I mean, I don’t know nobody! These days I don’t listen to radio, I don’t watch TV, I don’t speak to almost nobody…I am a hermit. I just want to be in front of my computer creating shit, the only “information channel” (note the quotation marks) I do is Facebook and I do it mostly to post stuff on my page. Sometimes I go to the news feed…maybe that is the reason I think the world is dominated by cats and puppies.
The remixes come via Radio 1’s Danny Howard, Joker and Riddim Commission…how much of an input did you have in selecting these artists for a rework?
I didn’t, Spinnin’ did. I would not choose a hermit to select anything anyway LOL
A little quote from you… “I swear to God that if I hear another break with a classic analog clap sound on the kick drum place, I will fucking kill myself”. Please discuss.
LOL, you picked a good one, there are a lot of things I don’t like from the “edgy” music of today (call it EDM or whatever). That clap thing is one of them, it’s like being 10 years old and you are on the school bus, the teacher is singing those stupid childish songs and all children are singing along and clapping to the beat…WTF!
Big props for speaking your mind on Facebook dude. Also a major high five for this little beauty…”EDM is making me think tech house is not that bad.” Tongue in cheek or straight from the heart?
All those music comments I do on FB are from the heart. Let’s get that straight right away. Before disliking EDM, my main dislike was tech house, I used to like and produce tech house many years ago, but it was different then. These days tech house is just a loop copy-pasted over 5 minutes, all the tracks tell the same story and it’s a story of 1 bar length. Some tracks are still okay to use it in a DJ set cause they have a nice groove, but people play entire sets of tech house!!! To me it’s like watching a compilation of pizza TV ads all in a row for 3 hours. No matter how much you like pizza, no matter how much you might like the “art” of publicity, you watch 5 ads and you realise it’s all the same shit and it’s not gonna change.
What are the 5 big tunes in your box this weekend…please give us a few words on each…
– Can’t Stop Playing!!!!!!!!!!!
But…the Dr. Kucho! Remix (lol). Yessss! I did my own 2015 remix of it!!! Do you know it? Try it if you like a more funky approach.
– Croatia Squad, Me & My Toothbrush “Scream for Pleasure”
It’s a super smart copy/inspiration/whatever of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance”, loving it.
– Jaques Le Noir “I Wish “
If this is not funky, I don’t know what funk is.
– The Pressets “Fast Seconds”
There is some kind of evil in that baseline and vocals, a kind of evil that turns me on…
– Der Dritte Raum “Swing Bopp” (Dr. Kucho 2015 rework)
Swing music is the business class of dance music, this one just needed a little bit of touch to make it fit in a house floor of today.
Okay let’s rewind for a minute. As a child, what is your earliest musical memory?
…holy moly!…let me think…the…”Smurfs Go Party” CD?? Besides kiddish music, I think the first serious music that made impact on me was the Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, my dad use to play this at home a lot. I don’t know anything else that comes close to this, unique!
What was the first record you bought?
Royal House (Todd Terry) “Can You Party?” (the album). Before this, all the music I was hearing was from my brother and dad, I have to thank them all the good influences they brought me: Boney-M, Michael Jackson, Police, Queen, Alphaville and many others…but when i started to buy music it was house music and the first one was “Can You Party”, I ‘ve met Todd Terry few months ago in a festival in Holland, we played in the same scenery and i was so happy to meet the guy who made me start in dance music, he was also very friendly but i think at the end he got sick of me cause i was chasing him everywhere like a groupie … LOL
At what age do you first encounter dance music and who were the first producers/artists/DJs that first grabbed your attention?
I was 18 I think. As I said, Todd Terry and also Tyree Cooper, Inner City, Bomb The Bass, Fast Eddie, West Bam and S-Express…
When did the idea of a career in music first pop into your head?
I was using a Commodore Amiga 500 computer to play games and learn programming, then a friend of mine came up with this software to make music “Fast Tracker”, by then we were listening all those Acid House records that we were buying…two years later I was sending my first demos to record labels.
What did your family think of your life path decision?
They instantly loved the idea, they saw a lot of future in it! Every time I crossed the main door of the house holding a new synth or rhythm box the conversation with my father would go a little something like this…
Dad: …what!!?? another one??!!…
Me : yes Dad, but I’ve got it very cheap, the previous owner didn’t know what he had.
Dad: … I don’t get, it…you already had one!
Me: but this makes different sounds Dad, it’s not like the other!
Dad: aaah! this one is better, so you going to sell the old one?
Me: #facepalm.
An album in your collection we’d be surprised to find there?
Conan The Barbarian (1982) Movie SoundTrack by Basil Poledouris, the best movie music ever.
3 bucket list adventures you wanna do in your lifetime?
1.- Finish my video game.
2.- Finish my video game.
3.- Finish my video game.
…sorry, there is no music related bucket list…
And finally – what is coming out next from you studio wise?
I just finished a remix of “Some Kinda Feeling” by Nightgeist, that will be out soon. Other productions are not so clear, I have lots of unfinished projects, others are finished but looking for the right labels…so…I really don’t know what would be the next one.
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DR KUCHO! & GREGOR SALTO FEAT. ANE BRUN
‘CAN’T STOP PLAYING (MAKES ME HIGH)’
(OLIVER HELDENS VOCAL EDIT)
MINISTRY OF SOUND RECORDINGS – RELEASE DATE 12 APRIL
https://soundcloud.com/spinninrecords/dr-kucho-gregor-salto-featuring-ane-brun-cant-stop-playing-makes-me-high-vocal-edit
