Interview: DJ Harvey

You’ve been away for a quite a while now.

Yes, almost ten years since I left England. The reason was not by my design. I was enjoying America so much that I overstayed my visa. If I was to leave, I would have not been allowed back for another five or ten years and I was planning on making my life there. And only a year and a half ago I got married and applied for my green card. And I now have the green card, and my work visa and my right to travel and re-enter the States. So here I am, back in the world. I recently completed a big tour of Japan and I’m on a major tour of Europe right now.

You got married and still it took such a while to get your green card?

Well, actually the process is a lot quicker now than it used to be. From the time I put my application in it was actually only four months until the card came through. Since 9/11 the background check is a little more stringent, but the whole process is now centralized, instead of the department in Washington, and the department in Detroit and so on. There’s one computer, and if you fit the criteria then it’s all good.

So you spent all those years of your self-imposed exile just playing in the States?

Yes, but on a regular basis. America is a big place. And I have a regular circuit. Starting on the Northeast coast, Detroit, Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, then skipping over to the other side, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boulder and Seattle. And that’s not even including Hawaii. So that’s plenty of work, even if I do that once every couple of months.

But your main bases are Hawaii, Los Angeles and New York City?

Basically yes. My most regular gigs would be there.

Would you say that these are also the cities where your music fits best? Is there a better scene for what you play?

Everywhere I play people come to hear me play. I regularly play in Miami for the Winter Music Conference and Art Basel, that’s my two gigs a year mainly there. Towns like San Diego and San Francisco have a scene, too. Most of the places have a scene as such. It’s not the biggest scene, but with all the internet communication and stuff like that it’s small but healthy.

And since you are allowed to travel again, is it some kind of relief and you accept many gigs abroad?

Not really. It is nice to travel and just to have the freedom. I haven’t been around for ten years so it’s nice to pop out and go to Japan and Europe again. But I don’t plan to spend the next ten years on the road. There are a lot of opportunities, basically everywhere I ever played before plus twice as many places again.

How does it feel to get out again? Has the scene changed in the meantime?

I don’t think it has changed at all.

Is that disappointing?

No, that’s not disappointing at all. I always had a good time. There are certain focuses on particular kinds of music over the years, whether it’s Electroclash, or Minimal, or Drum ‘n’ Bass, but in general the dance music scene still goes bang bang bang between 110 and 130 bpm. And I don’t really see boundaries between the so-called genres. I play the music that I like, whether it’s a Techno record, or a Disco record, or whatever. I think more than the music has changed the people have changed. Kids that weren’t born when I was DJing in the mid 80’s are now in their mid 20’s, there’s a whole new generation of people who have come through as well as the survivors from the old school. The formula of a dance party is still very similar. I suppose communication via internet had an impact. Even though I have been away for ten years people know exactly what I have been doing. It’s not like I completely disappeared during that time. The networking has made sure that my influence via production or gossip has been maintained.

I think the internet helped to keep your status alive. All you did was thoroughly discussed on specialist websites and message boards. I guess this is quite different to how it was before.

Yeah. Scenes used to be localized, and now it’s globalized. Which is good and bad. If something fresh happens in a small area it doesn’t have time to develop, it is instantly global. Early Punk or Hip Hop had two to five years a hardcore scene as such. Whereas now, as soon as there’s a bright idea it’s everywhere in the world and everyone’s had a piece of it before it maybe manages to have a big foundation.

Nowadays it might also be easier to get influenced by another DJ, or even to imitate somebody. In pre-internet days you could maybe get your hands on some mixtape, but it was difficult. Maybe you read about DJs, but you never had the chance to hear them. And now you can download tons of sets from legendary DJs, and from legendary clubs, too.

Yeah. I think that’s good and bad, too. These days I don’t let people record my sets. I suffered from heavy bootlegging. And a lot of the time when I play it’s for that moment. Maybe you’re sitting in your car, listening to a set, but you have no idea of the atmosphere or the climate at the moment when the record was being played. The tape might sound bizarre or disjointed or strange and it might not particularly work in the car or the boutique or at home. But at the particular moment, that was the right thing to do. So I try and keep my sets for the people who were there and it’s for memory banks only.

So you think it gets watered down?

It’s a double-edged sword. Sometimes there’s a little bit too much access. Some of the mystery is gone. If you think of DJs like Ron Hardy, I’ve only see one small grainy photograph of him, and you wonder who this guy is and what his character is. If you want to find about me, just hit Wikipedia, DJ Harvey images, and you know what I look like, my style. But there is a little mystery to who or what I am and I quite enjoy that. Luckily the personal appearance still counts for something. Because they have had absolutely everything besides me physically. And here I am, in the flesh, I actually exist. I’m not just this digital entity. Read the rest of this entry »

Playing Favourites: Joey Negro

Rinder & Lewis – Lust (Pye Records, 1977)

The first one is by Rinder and Lewis – “Lust”, which is kind of a space disco prototype so to say. For 1977 it was kind of a landmark record I guess.

For 1977, yes. I suppose Rinder and Lewis were a very prolific production team in the 70s and 80s. They made an awful lot of records, a lot of albums. That’s probably one of their most moody tracks. A lot of their stuff has got a 1920s, big band, Charleston influence to it. But I like a lot of their stuff. But some of it is unusual in its arrangement. That one’s got a slightly more mystical vibe to it.

Would you say they tried to explore their field a bit further with this record? You mentioned that a few of the other productions had certain influences, like the latin stuff for example. But this one is really something different, almost science fiction.

Yes, but that’s quite different from the rest of the “Seven Deadly Sins” album. I reckon it wasn’t a track that was made to be a hit. It was probably considered an album track. But with that weird bit in the middle with the glockenspiel, it goes into a sort of devil bit about two thirds of the way through. Which is very out of character with the rest of the record. But what I think is interesting about that is that you don’t get those sort of unexpected bits in records now. I guess when musicians are making records, it’s very different to when DJs are making records. Now, when DJs make records they just tend to have the same stuff going throughout the track, it just loops round and round. Maybe there might be some changes, but there’s nothing drastic coming in really loud. A bad DJ produced record might just be a bit boring, whereas a bad record from the 70s might have a great verse and a really terrible chorus. Or you might have something really cheesy. A lot of records now are just rhythm tracks made by DJs for mixing and whatever, whereas then you might have records that have got loads in them, maybe too much. But the reason that they’re not great is maybe because they’ve got too much in them. They might have some great musical parts, but the vocals are crap. I think I’m digressing a little bit. A lot of Rinder and Lewis stuff – have you got that album “Discognosis”?

No, I know the THP Orchestra stuff which I found really good.

Yeah, and there’s El Coco and Le Pamplemousse. I like that track. It’s always very well orchestrated, they always had a bit of money to make the records. It wasn’t done on a shoestring budget, they must have sold pretty well. I think El Coco’s “Cocomotion” is one of my favourites by them as well. Obviously a lot of the stuff on AVI was produced by them, they were putting out a lot of music. They must have lived in the studio in 76, 77, 78, 79.

This is also a really good example for what you can do if you’re a good arranger – the arrangements they did are really complex and beautiful. Is that something you miss? You talked of modern rhythm tracks and functionality – I think it’s hard to pull off these days because you don’t have budgets for studio work…

Yeah of course. I suppose you have to think, this is now and that was then. Record sales were much higher, I suppose disco was like r’n’b was 5 years ago in terms of its worldwide popularity. So there was a lot more money, obviously there weren’t downloads or people copying CDs. I don’t know what the sales figures were like of something like Rinder and Lewis, but it probably sold half a million or something like that. It’s a completely different time, in terms of being able to get a string section in for your record. I’ve paid for string sections before, but to be honest with you what I’ve found is a string section with 30-40 people is so different to a string section with 7 or 8 people. I’ve only been able to afford 6 or 7 people. It isn’t really a string section! Nowadays, with CD-ROMs and whatever you can make something that sounds pretty good – not the same – but pretty good with just samples. To really make it sound a lot better, you need a 30-40 piece, big room orchestra. People at Salsoul and a lot of them classic disco records had that big proper string arrangement. Also, paying someone to do the arrangement isn’t cheap if you get someone good. Very difficult to do that now. So yeah, I do miss it. But there’s no point missing something, it’s like saying “Oh, I wish they were still making Starsky and Hutch”.

As long as a glimpse of an orchestra won’t do, it doesn’t make sense?

I think the only it could make sense is if George Michael decides to make a disco album, or someone like that. He could afford it. Or Beyonce. Some big star. But your average dance record – I suppose Jamiroquai had some live strings on some of his stuff. But then again, he was selling a lot of records.

Doobie Brothers – What A Fool Believes (Warner Bros. Inc., 1979)

“What a Fool Believes” by the Doobie Brothers, which is a merger of rock and disco.

There’s other tracks, like the Alessi Brothers “Ghostdancer”… I suppose that just shows how popular disco music must have been at the time when people like The Doobie Brothers and Carly Simon were actually making disco records. I suppose it’s the same as nowadays people making a record with a more r’n’b type beat. Or at the beginning of house music, there were lots of pop acts making house records. I was listening to a best of ABBA a few years ago. It started off sort of glam-rock, sort of sweet, like Gary Glitter, that sort of production. And by the late seventies their stuff had got pretty disco-ey. And by 82 it was folky. So I think the disco beat was just featuring on a lot of productions by acts who just wanted to make a contemporary sounding record. That’s probably why a lot of the American rock establishment hated disco so much. It wasn’t just that it was there: their favourite acts were making disco records! They hated the fact the Rolling Stones made disco records, it just wasn’t allowed.

But the thing is, that when the disco boom ended, a lot of the rock acts who made disco records acted like they never did! They deserted it pretty quickly.

Yeah, once it became uncool they pretended they never liked it, it wasn’t their idea and all that. I tried to once do a compilation album of that sort of stuff. But it’s too difficult to license it all. They’re all on major labels, they’re all big acts, and it’s very hard to license that stuff. In fact I’d go as far as to say it’s impossible: just too difficult and expensive.

Was it just because of budget reasons, or because the acts didn’t want to be reminded of what they did in that area?

I think often those big acts have to approve every compilation album license. A lot of the time, for the people who work in the compilation album license department, it’s easier for them to say no than to write to the management of Supertramp or Queen. And often, if they do see a title that has disco in it, they will say no. And a lot of them won’t license the Rolling Stones to a comp that’s got a projected sales figure of less than half a million. There’s so many reasons why it’s problematic. You could do it, but you’d have to leave off so many tracks, there would hardly be any point doing it. I did have a chat with a major label about doing it and that was one that owned quite a lot of them. But it’s just so difficult. They want to see a big marketing budget, they want to see you spend a hundred grand on television adverts. Otherwise they just go, why are we on this compilation album?

I think it’s a shame really, there were so many good disco records done by major artists…

Yeah. I like a lot of those things. I’m doing this compilation for BBE which is maybe a similar thing, just it’s not all well known acts. People like Fleetwood Mac, they did that track “Keep On Going”, those sort of things. I guess it’s blue-eyed rocky soul. Quite danceable… it’s not all disco, but it’s not really rock either. More black music based. I always think, if you look at the back of a rock album and it’s got someone playing bongos on it, it’s worth checking out. Read the rest of this entry »