When Numbers became a label as well as a clubnight, that obviously became a whole new phase for you. Was it a hard decision to make – shutting shop on the labels you already owned? Or was it like they’d reached some level of natural conclusion for you?

“It was a really easy decision to make in the end, even though we probably made it difficult for ourselves [laughs].

“It should have happened a lot earlier but I suppose the legacy we built with the previous three labels are what makes Numbers what it is today so had we stifled that too early then it could have gone the other way. It was really Calum [Spencer] who had been pushing for ages that we should all join forces together – Stuffrecords, Wireblock, Dress 2 Sweat – but we just didn’t know how to go about it. It seemed like it would be so messy. After a big session at Bloc festival in 2007-ish, someone realised that the answer had been staring us in the face all this time. Let’s turn Numbers into a label.”

How did you guys set out your approach with Numbers the label? You put out a big variety of stuff last year, and I think I’m right in saying there’s things you signed early on that still haven’t come out. Was it hard to adapt from running a label yourself [or with one other person in Wireblock's case] to running it with a few of you?

“It has been hard to adapt at times, yeah, but then in other ways we couldn’t have continued to go on the way it did. We would have killed each other because we were all arguing over the same artists and remixers.”

“A classic earns its title for a reason.”

The house and techno music that soundtracked a lot of your formative years seems to have gradually returned more and more to your sets in the last few years – and that’s obviously been made more concrete by the selection on the Fabric CD. Was it a hard decision to go down the route you have done with it?

“Yeah I think the way the scene is going now has been kind to the music I grew up with. I can easily get away with putting that stuff into my sets because of the way we are all shifting towards 4×4 and the way that Swamp[81] is bringing back the electro 808 side of things. These are also reasons why we have the most exciting scene in the world right now I think.

“When I was first asked to do the CD by Shaun and Geoff, I immediately emailed all of my favourite producers and asked them for upfront stuff to include. You mix the CD in January and it doesn’t come out ’til May so it’s really a big ask to be sent stuff that far in advance. For that reason it is hard to come with a fresh mix CD if you’re not making your own music.

“I spoke with David [Pearson Sound] about his process and he told me he was putting it together as a selection of tracks he really hammered over the last year alongside his own stuff, which I thought was a really cool route to go down rather worrying about super upfront dubs. If you do an online mix no one is really interested unless you cram it full of dubs. That doesn’t really give any of the up and coming DJs a chance which is a real shame.

“I was also talking to Richard [from Stuff Records and Numbers] and he pointed out that people probably see me as a party DJ rather than a heads DJ, which is probably right although it sounds like a dirty term to people who take music too seriously. I wanted to make a CD that girls would put on at house parties rather than boys sitting in their bedrooms smoking weed to it, so in the end I kinda went for a mixture of both those guys’ advice.”

Was there anything you wanted to get on the mix but couldn’t? I imagine there’s quite a lot of older artists/labels that it’s now hard to get in touch with.

“Oh man there was a load of stuff. Janet Jackson, Jay-Z, Kraftwerk, all the major label stuff really. There was some old rave and Chicago tracks as well that we couldn’t get in the end. The girl who handled all the licensing said it was the hardest job she’s ever done, or something along those lines. I guess I was fortunate I had inroads with a lot of the labels on the mix otherwise it would have been even harder. Stuff like the DJ Funk track and those UR ones were nailed at the very last minute with a lot of personal emails back and forth. Literally another day and I would have had to take them out and start again.”

“It seems to me like you can’t get dubs unless you are recognised, and you can’t seem to get recognised without the dubs.”

Why do you think you ended up having such a strong ratio of old to new material on it?

“Although I was quite clear with what kind of energy I wanted in the mix, the ratio of new to old stuff just kind of happened. It wasn’t really planned. Once I started dipping into the older bits I couldn’t stop. In a way this process reminded my how much I love tracks like Fix – ‘Flash’ or ‘Jupiter Jazz’ by UR.

“I was aiming to come up with something that was honest to my musical upbringing and where my head is at currently. A little taste of everything that I love. From disco and pop through to UKG and Grime. There are a fair few classics in there. There’s another dirty term but I don’t really care to be honest. A classic earns its title for a reason. Because it’s an incredible tune. And it’s about what you put on either side of it, and how you work it in there with the new stuff. There’s a time and a place for everything and this is something I want to be able to listen to in five years and still enjoy.”

In the press release for the CD you talk about the fact you don’t produce, and that you think there are people making tracks because they want to further their own DJing career. That’s definitely true, but equally, you admit a couple of answers ago that it’s harder for up and coming DJs to stand out unless they’ve got a ton of new tunes. And even with yourself and Ben UFO, who’re pure DJs that don’t currently produce, you did make a decent chunk of your name on the strength of the labels you ran (likewise Brackles and Bok Bok – it wasn’t til their productions/labels got out there that they started becoming bigger names). It seems harder to get recognised as a pure DJ than ever before – do you think it’s gonna continue to swing that way, and do you think future DJs are going to need to be able to multi-task?

“Yeah, I don’t think it will change in the near future. It seems to me like you can’t get dubs unless you are recognised, and you can’t seem to get recognised without the dubs.

“There’s the start your own label option like you mentioned. Or you could be lucky enough to be intrinsically linked to the next new and emerging genre, if anything as globally recognised as dubstep is ever gonna come through the UK in the near future. I’m sure it will eventually but that might take 10 or 15 years. Even still you would probably need to do something quite unique like Oney [Oneman] did with dubstep and garage, and back it up with huge talent like he does. But bags of talent isn’t gonna get you anywhere unless you know people, which is a shame but that’s how it’s always been in this industry.”

Tom Lea

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2011 at 1:39 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.