You've got a new album out, how long did it take you to put it together?
It took a couple of months, most music compilations take about 24 minutes to make, and then you can go and mix it for fun, but we tend to do with our compilations is, we pretty much mix every track, we edit each original track just to make the compilation a bit more special than the average, usual mixed DJ comp you find in the shops. We try to make it unique and we almost put as much time into the mix album as we do into an artist album. It's quite a gruelling process but one I think that pays dividends, and we create something quite special at the end of it, we hope.
How did you start off in the business?
I've always been involved in music from a very young age in school, I would promote parties, and DJ, then I worked in a record shop, radio station, PR company, A&R for a record label, and then worked at various music companies. Then I wanted to DJ, and that progressed into making music, becoming the artist, and that's about it really, apart from working at Pizza Express for a week when I was about 21, apart from that it's always been music.
You're currently residents at Fabric can you describe the venue for those who have never been?
Very loud, it's dark and moody in a good way, as in not all flashy, the main selling point of Fabric is its sound system which for us as artists and DJs is paramount. So many clubs we go to around the world have million pound state of the art lasers and god know what, but their sound systems are shit. They've spent a lot of money, effort, and time on their sound system which is the best sound system in the country, probably in the top ten in the world, which makes it a great place. You have this big room which just has blue lights in it and nothing else, it's all the sound system it's amazing, and it's definitely the strongest feature of the club.
You've just mentioned other countries and clubs which ones around the world do you most enjoy playing?
In recent memory, because my long term memory is pretty bad these days, Zouk in Singapore is quite special for me, and their sound system is even better. I played a club in New York last week, a tour club called Love in Manhattan, the system there was fuckin' amazing, I was blown away by it. The guys who built the sound system for Paolo's Garage, the first ever house club, they built their system, it was all analogue and had these mad rotary mixers and stuff, it was all old school the kind of place you'd imagine old disco DJs playing, that was pretty incredible. We've been to so many clubs though, that it's really hard to think of them all without missing some.
When you go to other countries do you get a chance to look around? Or is it just land, play, leave?
It's land, sleep, rock up, play, party, drink, feel ill, airport, trainer shop maybe, airport, sleep, see some fields, club, after party, be sick, back to the airport, and that's pretty much how it goes. You can see the places you go to sometimes, you get the odd day off here, and there. For example, the tour we've just come back from we had two days in San Francisco, that was lovely, it's a beautiful city. We had a day off in Vancouver, we had a day of in L.A. to recover, so it's not too bad. We're our own bosses, so we can chop and choose what gigs we do, and make it a bit more palatable.
How did you go about selecting the tracks that you put on the album?
Basically when you look around the whole music scene, searching for things that are fresh, new, innovative. There's more than enough good music out there to make a comp out of it. We hear tunes from really friendly French House at the moment like Digital Dylan Getting Ready, or there's ghetto mah up from Yo Majesty, or Brian Cox from America, or bigger scenes like Plump DJs, and Chemical Brothers.
We take the tunes that are good to our ears, get all the parts to them, do our version of them, not mess the record up too much, but just re patch them so that they can fit into our set, and change the beats and stuff, and chop them around a bit. Then put them all into the mix, that's one of our angles as Stanton Warriors, it keeps our sets interesting and varied, and not stagnant. If we played the same sound for two hours of hardcore raving, or hardcore techno we'd find it boring. We like to have the old school concept of mixing it up. Anything you hear that's new, fresh or free we get the Stanton Warrior scalpel out, mash it up, and chuck it in the mix.
Anybody you consider a hot tip? Have you had any good musical finds?
DJ Dee Kline is doing really fresh, beaty stuff at the moment. Out of America are some young up and coming artists who are ripping up the rule book. From around New York there's some really interesting stuff, which is dub step meets techno meets something else. Bassment Twins in California are doing something which can only be described as ravey, techno, hip hop, step which defies classification and is certainly fresh and new and has that wow factor to it. We basically like to look out for stuff like that which is fresh on the ears.
Who were your musical heroes when you were growing up?
Very much into that early electro kind of funk stuff like Herbie Hancock, and George Clinton through to early hip hop, and early club house. My favourite tune back then was Mr Fingers with 'Can You Feel It' and classic tunes like that, ones where you'd go 'wow, what is this music?' it was so emotive and new. All these styles had a massive influence on me and the sounds I make today.
You played quite a few festivals this year, which ones did you enjoy?
We did so many festivals this year, it was ridiculous, I can't even remember all of them. Glastonbury is always a stupidly big festival for us, that went off. Bestival was good although it was very rainy down there. What else did we do? We did a few abroad, I can't remember where they were now, but they were pretty mental.
I think the best festival we've done in the last few years, which really stand out has to be Exit Festival in Serbia which we did last year. They had us on the main stage, but closing both days. That main stage had Groove Armada live, Basement Jaxx live, Snoop Doggy Dogg live, Wu-Tang Clan live, Lauryn Hill live, Beastie Boys live, it was ridiculous, it was the best line-up I've ever seen, and it all ended with us. We were only supposed to be doing an hour set, which we were booked to do. We ended up doing three hours on stage in front of 40,000 people until the sun came up, they had to drag us off. That has to be one of the high points of our festival career.
Glastonbury every year is good for us, because we come from that part of the world anyway, and The Burning Man festival in America, in the Nevada desert, is pretty out there in the world of festivals, definitely.
Do you have to alter your set to play to a festival crowd?
Not massively, but to a certain degree, we play the bigger tunes because we are playing to a different audience. We're lucky that we can edit all these big tunes so that we make different versions of them, which means all the people who are into Stanton Warriors like it because all they can hear the tunes in our set. But all the people who may not know Stanton Warriors or the sound we play they get say a Chemical Brothers tune, they know the riff they're happy but the beat is all changed anyway so the heads are happy. So we've got a good equilibrium of being very accessible to a lot of people at the same time being underground and not commercial.
Do you play a lot of the new album when you play live?
We played a lot of tracks off the new album, but we make a new edit, and new tracks, and new remixes every day. So, we'll have new stuff to play out, we're constantly making new stuff, now the album is out, those tunes aren't so rare any more because everyone has them on the album. We'll start with a whole new load of other tunes, anything to keep it all fresh.
Do you ever get to meet any of the artists you remix?
Yeah, sometimes when you do a big festival and they are all back stage, there's a lot of artists there, you've got a bit of common ground because you've done the remix. so yeah I meet some of the artists.
Who has been the most fun to hang out with?
Basement Jaxx we've got a good bond with, and Fat Boy Slim, we've hung out with a lot of tours with him and they've been a lot of fun. I think in general everyone at underground parties in the wider world, are pretty cool. As opposed to rock world or indie world there's a common thread which hold it all together and that's a pretty cool thing.
What's the best floor filler?
The version of the Chemical Brothers 'Saturate', we put over a speech of another track of ours 'Hope Time' which is a speech by Jesse Jackson it went over live over the breakbeat version of 'Saturate' and the whole place went mental. It gave the tune a whole different buoyancy because of the vocal about no war, and we made it into a tune, and you can hear it as one of the last tracks on the album, and when we play that it creates a kind of hysteria sometimes. So, I think that's the biggest thing we have in our box, which is really touching a nerve, especially in this day and age with war. It's quite a good ending tune, quite a good, positive tune.
There's a one hour DJ remix of the new album Stanton Sessions Vol.III (out now) available for exclusive download from their website.
article by: Scott Williams
published: 14/11/2008 17:36
FUTURE GIGS
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