“I definitely haven’t got a plan for it. I’ve never had a plan for it and I don’t think Coki or Loefah ever had a plan for it. So it’s become something that… well yes, I guess in a way it does run you.”
Can I just go back to what you said about it not being your choice which of your tunes you release… Kode 9 has talked about Hyperdub controlling him rather than vice versa. Is that something you might say about DMZ, or do you have a plan for it?
“I definitely haven’t got a plan for it. I’ve never had a plan for it and I don’t think Coki or Loefah ever had a plan for it. So it’s become something that… well yes, I guess in a way it does run you. How can I put this? It’s going to sound abstract, because it’s abstract to me: I don’t understand it, I just connect with it and translate and express and communicate it. But it’s almost like when you’re writing a piece of music, each sound you’ve just found that’s the right sound to fit in a particular slot actually tells you the direction to go next. And I still don’t know if that’s me directing, or if it’s some sort of energy I’m able to tune into that directs me and I’m just channelling that direction. I think for me personally that it’s more the case that it’s directing me; I’m not really a planning person. So DMZ is this thing that just moves, it always surprises me, sometimes it makes you feel really good and sometimes it’s work, it’s hard work and it’s a bit of stress and pressure – but that’s just how life is, it’s an up and down thing, it’s a journey, it’s a ride, it’s an experience, and I believe a good experience and a bad experience can be equally as beneficial.”
So you’re saying that DMZ – the club and the label – are like a musical improvisation on a large scale?
“Yeah… the label is definitely spontaneous. Really spontaneous. More spontaneous maybe than the dance – although the dance, even to this day we book the lineups late. We’ve got an event in, what, three weeks time and we still haven’t decided the lineup or even spoken about it. But that’s the way we’ve always been, it’s not a planning thing, it’s more of a vibes, more of a feeling and we’re happy with that. Same with the music, I still feel like a total amateur when I go in the studio and switch my computer on, I still haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. That’s how I feel – but I keep doing it anway, because it’s something that’s just a necessity to me.”
Do you just mean that you’re not a very technical producer, or that you actually start every track with no idea what it’ll sound like?
“Oh very, very rarely do I have any idea what I’m going to do. There’s only one track that comes to mind where I knew what I wanted to do before I made it, and that was ’10 Dread Commandments’ the VIP. I remember I was sitting with one of my good friends, on holiday in Spain, on the balcony having a barbeque; we were listening to a Trojan tape and all of a sudden the original ‘Ten Dread Commandments’ track by a guy called Mr Bojangles came on and I was just like “yeah!” and I knew what needed to be done with the track. Actually, the same happened with ‘Alicia’ when I heard the original track – not in the sense that I knew the drum pattern I would use or anything but just that as soon as I get in I had to use that sample. But that doesn’t happen to me at all often, hardly ever at all really.”
And do you play any instruments?
“I’ll play whatever’s in front of me, Joe! It’s one of them ones – I can’t read music and if you asked me to sit down and play a piece on the piano it would be a one-finger symphony…”
So not to the point where you could play with other people in a band?
“No, though I would love to. To tell you the truth that’s the one thing that frustrates me, that I would love to be able to play music in that way – and I think if I could my music would be very different. I would love to go in a more musical direction at times, musical in terms of chords, scales, chord progressions, I would love to get my head round all that.”
“I’m one of those people who works best on my own, so though I love to work with good vocals it’s gonna always work best if the vocal is recorded then I’m left alone to do my thing.”
Talking of song structures, you use a lot of voices and vocal samples in your tracks – any plans to work with actual vocalists?
“No not really. In the studio I’m one of those people who works best on my own, so though I love to work with good vocals it’s gonna always work best if the vocal is recorded then I’m left alone to do my thing.”
So when it comes to songs, you actually prefer to be like the original Jamaican dub producers, to take something pre-existing and rebuild it into something fresh?
“Certainly in the past with things I’ve done that’s the way I’d go about it, yeah.”
Talking of working on your own – have you done any co-productions with Coki of late? The ‘Return II Space’ tracks are credited to Digital Mystikz but are all your solo work, right?
“Yeah they’re all mine, but the Digital Mystikz thing is still very much alive; me and Coki still play many shows together and we’re writing lots of music. But sometimes life and circumstances take you, not in different directions, but we all get older, you have to look after families and have different responsibilities and commitments so you can’t jam like you did when you were eighteen or nineteen, or even twenty-one or twenty-two. Still, over the years we always get in the studio when we can, but I think the Digital Mystikz thing is a vibe, an energy, a connection that’s just present regardless of whether or not we’re making music together at any particular time.”
Obviously DMZ the night is at the heart of that continuing relationship too… You just celebrated five years of the night – do you have any sense of how long that can last given the changes in life you just alluded to?
“I don’t know – I didn’t even think it would go on for any length of time, I had no idea when we started that this is how things would turn out, so where it will end I have no idea either; it really is a blank canvas when I think about that.”
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