Francois K
“[Francois K]‘s telling me about the club: “we don’t really have the music too loud, it’s a chilled-out vibe, we don’t have rewinds…”, telling me how it runs in the dance. And I remember thinking to myself, with no disrespect at all, that I just knew that certain tunes were going to get pulled up…”
OK I want to drag you back to the question of influences, or if not influences then musical connections. When I first interviewed you in 2006, you mentioned contacts you’d made with very interesting people with deep roots in music that made it clear then that your horizons were wider than just the dubstep scene. Now, I gather you’ve maintained those connections – with [Public Enemy producer] Hank Shocklee, with [disco / deep house veteran] François K and with King Tubby’s son Keith Ruddock… but initially, did you seek these people out, or how did these connections come about?
“Well I can tell you about all of those, they all came about in New York… I met Keith Ruddock, also known as Digital K, the first time I played Dub War, which was, I think, the second or third Dub War event they’d held. It was mad, there was this article in Time Out New York about me and the experience was surreal, but I enjoyed the show, and then some guy came up to me at the end and we was chatting, chatting. He knew about the music and said he’d been checking it out, but why we ended up chatting even more was that he come over to cut dubplates at Transition [in South London], but he’s from the states and he speaks with a hard Jamaican accent, so I was just interested in what he was about. So we just got on really well, and then after a bit we were with this crowd heading off to some after-party somewhere and someone just came up to him and went “oh, you’re King Tubby’s son aren’t you?” So that was just funny, there was no seeking anyone out or anything, and he still sends me music, we’ve tried to get some things going on, he’s talking about getting me to Washington DC where he lives… And it’s just surreal because he’s a dub man, like literally born and bred, so it’s always interesting to hear his take on it. People call us “dub”-step but it’s not just dubby, it’s got all the UK sounds in there and all the rest of it.
“Hank Shocklee I met again at Dub War, about a year later when we did a DMZ session – only Coki didn’t go, it was me, Pokes and Loe. And if I remember this right, I think I got a call from the Shocklee camp, like “he wants to meet you guys, can you meet him?” And it was just “uhh, yeah of course!”, so we all went out and had chicken teryaki, and we just sat down and chatted about frequencies. And I’ll tell you what, to this day I have never ever met somebody who understood in so much depth where I was coming from just by listening to my music. As it went, I actually got stuck in New York that trip because the airline I was flying went on strike – I should’ve been there for three days, I ended up staying for ten days or something. And I actually hung out with him pretty much the whole week, we went to a couple of other events, and I just had the most interesting conversations with that man about frequencies and about the universe in general. And he understands my shit, man – he understands what I’m dealing with. That was the first time I’ve really been silenced by somebody talking to me about my music and where I was coming from because he just got it exactly, on a point, unbelievably. You know when you’re passionate about something, and you put your all into something, you can’t necessarily analyse it yourself, because it’s just you, it’s just what you do – so if you’re not someone who analyses everything but just does things you might not have that detailed perception of it. You feel it, you know it but you can’t necessarily explain it…”
Well, that’s especially the case with music, musicians don’t feel the need to explain with words because they do it with the music.
“Yeah exactly. But when someone stands there and tells you it, and you go “what??? you got all that from like ten pieces of music of mine that you’ve heard? You heard them and you got all of that from it?” and they get it so on-point, well it really, really took me aback, it astounded me to be quite honest. So give thanks to them, we’ve kept in touch, we’ve had Hank and [his brother] Keith over here to play DMZ, and Hank invited me over to play a show in Miami a couple of years ago… So again, it’s one of those things where you meet someone who’s worked with some amazing and groundbreaking musicians in really interesting times and circumstances in the industry, and it gives me that hope when you meet people like this because you realise that there are actually people who are still level-headed, still kind of reasonable and not corrupted by the general madness that often takes people in the industry.
And had Public Enemy been an important thing for you growing up?
“Well not really actually, I mean of course I knew them, everyone knows tracks by Public Enemy but it just wasn’t my particular era – and then hardcore and jungle always came first for me, but as far as hip hop, I was really into the UK side of Jehst, Klashnekoff, Chester P, Lewis Parker, Roots Manuva, early Blak Twang, Karl Hinds and stuff, and then Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Snoop, Biggie, Dre, Jay-Z and especially I’d listen to a lot of Wu Tang when I was younger: I was really into the energy of it, not really so much the content if I’m honest with you, same with Mobb Deep, I really like Mobb Deep but not so much into what they’re saying. You listen and you hear that those guys are for real in what they’re saying, and I appreciate that, but it’s really the music for me, you listen and it’s this strange kind of chamber music, I really love the production on all that stuff. But yeah, I knew Public Enemy and how important they were to music I guess, and it was just a really nice moment to meet Hank and then good to have been able to stay in touch with him and Keith, just to have conversations with them is a really positive thing.”
Well there’s a great headline: “TERYAKI WITH THE BOMB SQUAD”
“Hehe seen. It happened man, it happened, I think I’ve still got the photo of it somewhere. It’s a weird thing I can even remember what I was wearing. It’s funny how that happens, clear memories of a moment like that … it was just an interesting part of this journey, it was significant I guess. He understands frequencies, Hank, he understands frequencies!”
And what about François K? He’s someone else with a soundsystem history, someone who’s clearly concerned with the finer details of sound, even if it is a radically different music style to the Bomb Squad…
“Yeah well I’d always known Body & Soul stuff, ‘cos I love house music, so I knew to some extent of his history. One day I just got an email from the woman who sorts out the booking for Deep Space, the club he does in New York, saying “François would love you to come down and play!” I was like “okaaaaaay… shit… um, I don’t really play that type of music, but I’m really up for going down there”. So I remember it’s on a Monday night, François’s place, at a club called Cielo – I got there early to soundcheck, and went in and this place is kind of like a spaceship: it’s square-shaped room, with the dancefloor recessed into the ground in the middle and the bar and DJ area and smoking area on different sides…
“So yeah I’m soundchecking and François turns up a little later, just “alright, how you doing?” – he speaks really softly, he’s just this easy, chilled-out sort of guy – and he’s telling me about the club: “we don’t really have the music too loud, it’s a chilled-out vibe, we don’t have rewinds…”, telling me how it runs in the dance. And I remember thinking to myself, with no disrespect at all, that I just knew that certain tunes were going to get pulled up, and after about half an hour into my set… [laughs] It’s amazing though, I absolutely love playing at Deep Space, it’s one of my favourite places in the world to play, I’ve played four times now over the past few years – whenever I’m going to be in New York I let them know, hoping I can go down and have a session with François. But yeah I remember playing and François would be standing next to me, and while I’m mixing he’d get on the effects machine or on the reverb, just adding some effects and stuff – and I remember playing Coki ‘Burning’ when that tune was still fresh and on dub… now you’re playing that tune to people who are going to an experimental deep house kind of night, so women in big old high heels, looking slick, I’m sure I’ve seen guys in suits in there, and people go to dance – but they had it!
“Now the reason I say Deep Space is such a favourite place to play is that it aint this thing – this thing that’s happening everywhere nowadays, of “let’s quickly put on a dubstep night, right, book him-him-him-him-and-him and we’ll have a good night”. François K puts this night on every Monday, and some nights it’s not full and some nights it is, but it’s another of those things that isn’t about the end product, it’s about the doing, about building something and not being bothered whether it takes one year or ten years or fifty years, it’s about the building and the doing and being honest and being true to what it’s about. That’s why I love playing there, and why when I go there my approach to playing is totally different; I can’t explain to you how and why… or rather I can tell you why and it’s just because it’s Deep Space and it brings it out of me. So I remember that happening and pulling up Coki’s ‘Burning’, and François K was making the most amazing bass faces – and nobody had played at Deep Space from what they would call this genre before, so maybe it opened up some doors…
“François sees it though – one thing I totally admire and respect in this generation slightly older than me, these sound guys they totally get the axis point. François sees the axis point between what he does and what I do so the two can meet together, and I don’t necessarily see it myself – but then you go there and you hang out and you talk and discuss and see and where he’s coming from and how he plays his music, you totally see it. So it’s been a real blessing to be able to play there and speak with him. I was very lucky the last but one time I played there; Erica who does the booking said “ohhh we’d really love you to play but we’ve already booked someone, so you’d have to do the first set” – now I’m not one of those people who minds what time I play, I’m just happy to play, so I said “no problem at all, I’ll play the first hour, two hours, whatever”. Then they sent me the flyer and I see it was just me opening and this other guy playing all night… it was me and Theo Parrish! For me I was just [laughs], ah it was crazy, I’ve listened to Theo Parrish for years, any time I can I’ll go and check him, he’s without question one of the most interesting DJs to listen to with his sheer ability to make me move to music that I know if I was to play in my house I know I wouldn’t be feeling it. Some of the disco tracks he plays, I’m just not into that sound, but the way he presents music to you is just outstanding. I’ve never heard an uninteresting Theo Parrish set, so to play on the same bill was great and we talked quite a lot… then again later we played next to each other at SĂ“NAR, and that was mad – I ended my set with the track ‘Return II Space’ and he mixed out of it into something outrageous, I think it was an Outkast track or something and it was something nobody else could have done but he just did because he’s Theo Parrish. Some people like that, I would love to be able to hear what they hear, just for ten minutes.”
“I do have a fascination with outer space, yeah – just the vast, indescribable beauty of it, the wonder of creation which kind of happens constantly.”
Yeah the way he uses EQ, you feel like he is aware of every frequency and harmonic within a track.
“That’s it – he has his isolator, and when he starts using the EQing and filtering and stuff, taking out the bass and the tops and just leaving the midrange of the sound in because that’s where the trumpet line is or something, and he just leaves that playing for two minutes because he just wants you to hear that one amazing trumpet solo… there’s nobody else playing music like that, nobody.”
Back to your release: what is the appeal of the space aesthetic? ‘Return II Space’, playing at Deep Space – obviously your music has that dub spaciousness in it, but you don’t seem like what one might call a space cadet… if anything you seem pretty grounded.
“Thinking about space doesn’t have to mean head-in-the-clouds though, does it? For me, ‘Return II Space’ was a track I wrote when I was literally trying to do that, trying to return to space. Not space in the sense of I want to go up with the moon and the stars, because I’m always with the moon and the stars – but in the sense of how when you feel out-of-body, you don’t feel yourself for some strange reason and you can’t pinpoint what it is, you want to escape from that. So when I wrote that track I was just trying to find myself again with my sound, I think, to find the space that I operate in. And I do have a fascination with outer space, yeah – just the vast, indescribable beauty of it, the wonder of creation which kind of happens constantly; these things interest me and inspire me all the time. The cover of ‘Return II Space’ kind of represents the universe, and there’s just something about space, about time and space and its relevance to the here and now and to the past and the future; it’s just something I think about all the time and which is relevant to me for all kinds of reasons…”
I get the feeling we’d need another interview this long to even start getting into this…
“Yeah that’s right [laughs] But yeah, it’s not just abstract, it effects the present moment, and that’s interesting to me, and that’s why ‘Return II Space’ came about.”
Well I hope we can get into that some day – but for now thanks!
“Thank you.”
Joe Muggs
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