Were you worried about what the response would be from the audience at the club?
“Totally, the first night we were terrified, absolutely terrified. I don’t know if you’ve been there but it’s an enormous space, it’s terrifying. But the way we figured it was that the people who run the club had given us their blessing and got behind it, and so we thought, OK if it’s good it’s good, if it’s not it’s not.
“[Berghain's] the perfect room, I think, for the music – it’s got such an amazing atmosphere, and then the system as well. So yeah, it’s gone really well, which is amazing.
Has the audience changed much over the time you’ve been doing it?
“I guess the reason it was successful from the start is because dubstep already had a solid following here, they were just waiting for someone to put something big on, I think. So not really, in that respect.
“The other thing is, I keep talking about dubstep, but really it’s not a dubstep night. The one negative thing that we get is people complaining that not enough actual dubstep gets played there!
There’s not really been a big wobble night in Berlin, but I think if someone put one on it would be absolutely rammed…
“Drum ‘n bass was big here for a little bit, but there hasn’t been a big ‘urban’ scene here for a long time, and I think there’s enough people here who want to hear it and go out to it.”
“There’s not really been a big wobble night in Berlin, but I think if someone put one on it would be absolutely rammed…”
Did moving to Berlin cause you to reconnect with house and techno?
“Well, I think it was already well on the way to happening anyway… so I wouldn’t say I was consciously affected, but by living here, I’m sure it’s had some effect, even if only on an unconscious level. And the house and techno project that I’m doing, SCB, I doubt I would have started that if I’d still been living in London; it’s a direct result of going out to Panorama Bar at 11 in the morning, you know…
“London doesn’t really have a scene in quite the same way. I mean, house is huge there, but there isn’t really what I’d call a house and techno scene. “
How did you approach the mix CD?
“I wanted it to be as representative as possible of the kinds of sets I play at the night – that was the intention. Obviously I wanted it to be a good home listening CD as well, there’s a certain amount of trade-off between those things, but it’s pretty much reflective of the kind of sets I’ve played over the last year or so. Simple as that.
“There’s a lot of Sigha stuff there, Joy Orbison, Instra:mental – the kind of stuff I play. I did make an effort to make it up-front; I had to mix the CD last August so I was tapping up people and asking them if they had any stuff that wasn’t going to come out for ages, ‘cos I didn’t want the mix to just be a bunch of releases.”
What’s can we expect from your SBC project this year?
“There’s a 12” coming out next month, the first proper 12”, and that will be part of a series. Originally it was just a studio experiment, but I’ve been playing more and more house – well, house for want of a better word – DJ sets, and I’ve really been enjoying it. You get to play to a completely different crowd, and it’s a completely different thing, I find it really refreshing. So to begin with SCB was just a case of making tunes to play in those sets, you know? And it’s as refreshing in the studio as it is when I play out, a nice break from making dubstep, or the kind of weird dubstep, that I make under the Scuba name.
“It’s just fun. That’s generally what I’ve been trying to do throughout my musical life, just make things fun, and have a laugh doing stuff. Because at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about – not having a proper job and just doing what you want to do.
“I’ve also been doing quite a lot of – I don’t know quite how to say it – drum ‘n bass-type stuff, the kind of thing that d-Bridge and Instra:mental do and present on their podcasts. On the album there’s a couple of tracks like that, and I’ve been working on that kind of stuff quite a lot, because again, it’s just fun to do something different. ”
“Being a drum ‘n bass fan from quite an early stage, and watching it get more and more shit over the years, to hear something creative and interesting being made in its name again is a nice breath of fresh air.”
Do you feel that the minimal d’n’b sound of Instra:mental, Spectrasoul et al is going to grow and develop further?
“I hope so, yeah. I really like what they do, love their podcasts, and we’ve actually had d-Bridge and Instra:mental come and play at the party. And being a drum ‘n bass fan from quite an early stage, and watching it get more and more shit over the years, to hear something creative and interesting being made in its name again is a nice breath of fresh air, you know? So it’s great, I love it.
“There’s always been this supposed thing that drum ‘n bass is all kind of controlled by this central cabal of people who let people in, or don’t let people in, and all this kind of stuff [laughs]. And the upshot of that was aways going to be that it got narrower and narrower and narrower. I find it quite amusing really…especially having seen people try to do the same thing with dubstep and just failing massively [laughs].”
Tell us about the title of the album, Triangulation…
“It’s basically it’s the three central musical ideas of house/techno, dubstep and this weird drum ‘n bass stuff. These were the three inputs, if you like.
How did your approach differ to that for A Mutual Antipathy?
“The approaches didn’t really differ, in the sense that both of them I wrote a whole album and then scrapped it and then started again [laughs]. I wanted the first one to be sort of like a DJ set, consistent tempo, smooth transitions, more like a mix CD than an album. What came out at the end of it was sort of like that, but not quite. So I wasn’t thinking like that at all with this one [Triangulation]; I wanted it to be coherent and to hang together well as an album, but I wasn’t going for something specific like I was with the first one.
“The way it’s come out, it’s sonically pretty different to the first one, but the way it’s put together is quite similar, in the sense that the CD version is all kind of seamed into one thing. It’s hopefully the kind of thing that you’ll listen to the whole way through, you’ll get more out of it that way than picking out individual tracks. There are a few tracks on there that are club tracks or whatever, but it’s not a connection of ‘tunes’, as it were; I hope it works well in a line, if you see what I mean.”
Are there any collaborations on the album?
“I haven’t actually collaborated with anyone musically since I was in a band, about fifteen years ago [laughs]. I can’t really stand all these guest vocalists and collaborations on albums and that kind of stuff.
“There’s a couple of vocal tracks on the album…On the last album I was kind of messing around with vocals and seeing if I could get melodies out of vocals without using words, that kind of stuff; so there’s a bit of a development of that on a few of the tracks, without going down the diva route…[laughs]
“I worry about what’s coming, all the major label dubstep records and guest vocals. It’s definitely happening. The less said about it the better!”
Kiran Sande
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CSK