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I see DJing as a sharing of my own enthusiasm for music and that started in 1980 when I bought my first record with my own money. I was aware of music before that for, through parents’ collections and stuff you grow up around, and stuff that's in the charts filters through into school. But in 1980 I was 7 years old and I bought Adam Ant, Kings of the Wild Frontier.
I’ve recently seen the track again on YouTube. It's been on these old Top of the Pops programmes and compared to a lot of the pop music of today that children are exposed to, it's quite post punk tribal. That sense of rhythm’s there that, and it uses two drummers, like Burundi, African tribal beat. You can trace it back to that. And then there was also a lot of great pop music then, people like Human League, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, Soft Cell. I love that electronic and synthesiser sound that was coming through, sequencers. It was embryonic dance music, pioneering the house music sound that developed later in the 1980s when you read about what the kids in Chicago, Detroit and New York were into. The British journalists couldn't believe that they were listening to Depeche Mode and Kraftwerk and Human League and playing it in sort of black gay pubs that developed house music sound, from a very European sound. I didn't realise it at the time, but the pop music that I was watching on Top of the Pops each week would go on to create this thing later on that became much bigger.
Then in the mid ‘80s it was technology driven, and electro and break dance music became really popular. I remember at primary school, some kids turning up with some lino one day and they'd probably seen Beat Street or something, one of those sort of early break dance films. It spent my first few years in the Lune Valley in a village called Arkholme and then when I was 7, we moved into Lancaster cause my dad had a photographic business, a camera shop here. It was easier to get to and we didn't get snowed in up the valley. We went to Dallas Rd School in Lancaster which was, in hindsight, a good thing because it was much bigger, much more diverse and you’re mixing with lots of different cultures. There was a big Asian community around Blade Street. I still see some of them around town today, although they’re now middle-aged men. So somebody brought some Lino into the playground and got bollocked by the teachers for trying to spin on the head and do crazy legs in the playground and stuff. This was about 1983 or ‘84.
Stuff like Herbie Hancock, Rock It and Rocksteady crew and although I was never a dancer or anything like that, I like the fashions and things that they wore. The sneakers and the cagoule tops. But more importantly, I liked what they're doing with the music, with the drum machines and the sharp electro beats. So I probably became more interested in what was going on sonically than the moves that the kids are all trying to copy from these American films.
So I carried on my interest in music and buying records. I'd go back and discover who was producing the bands that I liked and what was influencing the bands that I liked. And you could trace like a sort of Duran Duran or Thompson Twins record back, and see it was produced by someone called Alex Sadkin in Compass Point Studios. I’d read interviews and record sleeves.
You’d see Compass Point Studios and then producing also Grace Jones. Nile Rogers was producing bands and you trace that back and discover the Chic back catalogue. This was just through an enthusiasm in music and a hunger to devour every minutiae of detail I could find.
I was also really into David Bowie, and he'd been produced by these people and worked with all these other incredible musicians, and then I’d traced those lineages back and I’d discover who he worked with over the years. And Prince from the mid-80s onwards, was releasing an album a year in his most creative phase. Through that I discovered P-funk, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, people who had worked with and influenced Prince. And then there's Wendy and Lisa in the film Purple Rain. I was probably about 13 or 14 by this point. Sign of the Times was released in ‘86 / ‘87 and Prince was really massive at this point. We went to see him in ‘88 when I was 15 at Wembley Arena with a mate of mine. We got a coach, one of these concert trips from Dalton Square where you get your concert ticket and your coach ticket all in one. In the summer holidays we went down to Prince at Wembley arena. Music has always been the driving force in everything else I'm doing in life.
Also around that time, you're aware that alongside these electro beats, there was also a more ‘four to the floor’ sound coming through as well. There were early house records in the charts, although probably not thought of as house at the time, things like Colonel Abram's ‘Trapped’. And then, of course, Steve ‘Silk’ Hurley with ‘Jack Your Body’ went to #1. Farley Jackmaster Funk with ‘Love Can't Turn Around’. You'd see them on Top of the Pops creeping in this sound from America. Nitro Deluxe, This Brutal House, things like this and I'd hear it on tapes from friends. We’d make each other tapes alongside other sort of more soulful, pop records, stuff like Luther Vandross, Alexander O'Neil as well as the electro pop stuff. Around ‘88 I noticed how big house becoming.
I used to watch this programme on a Sunday night when I was meant to be doing my homework. It was on late on at night, after 11 sometimes on ITV Granada area, called The Other Side of Midnight presented by Tony Wilson of Factory Records. It was an art show, half an hour I think. You'd have an exhibition on there, it was coming to Manchester, there’d be a quirky 5-minute film piece and then he'd also promote what was happening musically around Manchester. It was on this show that I saw a very young A Guy Called Gerald and my ears prick up. He’s using all these drum machines and sequencers and this young kid from Hulme in Manchester making music that sounds amazing. Then Voodoo Ray came out, became massive, and the whole acid house thing exploded in 1988. I was reading the music press; The NME, Record mirror and they were all picking up on this thing that was happening. It was the sound had come over from America on a lot of these imports and it had been bubbling away, and it exploded in ‘88 into the sort of the ‘second summer of love’, the Acid house explosion. And after that I was hooked.
I had to wait another year to start going to clubs. I started doing that in ‘89. I was 16 and done my GCSEs. It was much easier to get into places then because you didn’t need the ID that you need today. If you knock a couple of years off your birth year without stammering or having to think, you were in.
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To start with, I just went out locally. That's How I Met Ducky (Andy Duckmanton). He put on a house night in 1989 at the Sugar House. It ran for a few weeks and then the police got wind of what was happening. I think they had words with the Sugar House and it got put a stop to and also around that time were the warehouse parties that took place around Blackburn. You’d get in a car, set off from Lancaster at 1:00 in the morning and meet at motorway service stations at around 2:00 AM when they kicked out, and there'd be somebody leading a convoy who knew where the warehouse was that’d been broken into earlier that day. There’d be a wagon and a sound system in the back of it, and like it was basically a party ready to go - ‘just add people’. So everyone turns up in these huge convoys stretching across motorways and moors in the middle of the night, you know? That was my embryonic experiences are going out in that in ‘89.
And did you go out in Manchester?
I was already going to Manchester record shopping in ‘88. Actually, I was doing that probably even earlier on a Saturday afternoon going looking around. There was like Spin In, Expansions Records by Victoria Station. Later on I discovered Affleck’s Palace and Eastern Bloc was in Affleck's arcade at that time before they moved across the road on Oldham St, so you'd go and come back to Saturday tea time with a bag full of new tunes. We’d have a trip down every few weeks at that point, if you had a bit of spending money.
I didn't drive at the time, but I had a friend who did, a mate of mine who was a couple of years older and we’d go out of town to clubs in 1990. We’d go to the Hacienda if you could get in. The queues were big, the bouncers were strict. If one of you get knocked back, you’d go somewhere else or home. That was it.
And there was also stuff going around this area at that time as well.
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Tell me about what was happening in the Lancaster and Morecambe…
The people who put the night on at the Sugar House, had also got a night going at The Carleton in early 1990 in Morecambe. That ran for a few years under different promoters. But at its peak it was probably pulling at least, you know, it could be a couple of thousand or more in on a weekly Friday night, probably peaking about ‘91. It was more house, rave, techno and it was absolutely rammed at its at its peak.
The music had gone a bit more ravey by that point, I don’t want to use the word ‘mainstream’, but it was ‘out there’. It was a big thing. Earlier on it felt like a nod on a wink. You knew who your tribe were, like in Eastern Bloc on a Saturday afternoon. It was a youth movement of clubbing. People previously would have been in a different club in town, just dancing to the pop music. And then they discovered dance music.
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And how did that feel to be around during that shift?
With hindsight, I guess it's natural that nothing good remains a secret forever, probably less so now with social media. It did grow in an underground way and I guess it looked exciting to those on the outside wanting a part of it.
And at what point did you think about being the one to play the records?
By this point, I'd teamed up with my friend Ducky ‘cause he was a DJ and was into very similar music. It was only a sort of a few dozen people in in town, who were into it for a while.
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And the development of the DJ. DJs were perceived in a different way then…
Yeah, for example at the Blackburn raves it was all about the music. DJs today are often on a stage or a pedestal, but to me it should be always about the music and not the ego. At the raves it was a table behind the speakers in a dark warehouse. All that mattered was what was coming out of those speakers, and nobody was watching the DJ.
I think I believe in the early days of the Hacienda, the DJ booth was under the stage and they had a little window to upstairs. Then later on it got moved up onto the balcony like ‘the altar’. I cringe now when I see some of the clips on social media. I saw one of Steve Aoki throwing cake at people and that's so alien to what I grew up with. That's not dance music, that’s just showbiz. To me, it's nonsense.
What was your first gig?
Every now and again at the Carleton, the promoter would get PA on and maybe an out-of-town band or DJ, to boost the numbers. I remember K-Klass came and played in ’91, N-Joy, Shades of Rhythm played, Orbital came. John da Silva also played. Sasha came and played at Harvey's nightclub on Thursday night, back in 1990.
It was mainly Ducky’s domain as a resident. I was just a young kid that also liked the records. But then I hooked up with Ducky, tinkering at home with drum machines and synthesisers. Ducky would want to come and help, use his skills and knowledge of dance music to make some tracks with me. He didn't have any equipment, but he had thousands of records and the skill of working a crowd. Me, him and another mate of ours, Mark, who sort of had some good chops, he was like a trained piano player. He had a more musical background. I played by ear and I like the dance records. Ducky’s an expert on the DJ side, Mark was an expert on the music side. So the three of us set about recording some music down at the Lancaster Musicians Co-op.
So what was your experience of the dance scene in Lancaster at that time, which?
It was really healthy actually. I say Lancaster, but it was more Morecambe at that point, probably just down to venues and logistics. After the brief foray into acid house in ‘89 and house music at the Sugar House, I think they wanted to steer clear of it as it was gaining a lot of tabloid headline headlines at that point. It was negative press about ecstasy, drug-crazed teens and all this sort of stuff. It didn't really have a very good public image to the mainstream. Your Daily Mail readers and your Sun readers. They thought were all wild druggies and all. A lot of venues would stay clear of it, and although they would play some of those records on say a Saturday night alongside other indie sort of records, they would never advertise themselves as that kind of music. It wasn't something they wanted to promote and associate themselves with. The Carleton was one of the few places in the area that saw it as an opportunity. There was a lot of destination clubbing then. When the Carleton really got big, you'd have people down from Cumbria, Barrow, Millom, coming up from Preston, Blackburn, all over the North West, further East, Skipton. It was a big draw.
I was born in 1980, so I was just a bit late to the party. I was 16 when it closed.
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​But after the Hacienda closed down for a few months because there was issues with gangs and drugs, other good things sprang up in Manchester as well.
Then it reopened out of the ashes of it, things that were a bit more eclectic and different, like the Balearic scene that Justin Robertson and Greg Fenton were involved in at that time. It was the Most Excellent nights and Spice. And that sort of Balearic network as well, that was a bit of an offshoot of the original acid house. It was nights like Venus in Nottingham, and the London Boy’s Own nights, post ‘91 / ’92 it spawned different bits.
Some of it went harder and more break beat. Some of it went the Superclub route, like your Creams and later on, Ministry of Sound. It got a lot more splintered. I don't think it's better or worse, it was just different.
There was a techno route that became Orbit at Leeds. I like some of it, but it's like it was quite ‘tops off, lots of blokes’. It had to explode somewhere and it ended up going off on different tangents which is interesting. Then there’s the Old Skool. Some people just want to listen to the same 30 Italian house records from 1991 forever.
What does being involved in club culture mean to you personally? What did you discover in that scene?
Hearing new music that's new to my ears. It might be a record from 1970, but if I've not heard it before, it's new to me. The current quest to find your next favourite record. The next record you hear Ginny, might be the best record you've ever heard in your life. The quest never ends.
Everyday I hear something new, by just digging or scrolling and listening to mixes and I’m like, “Oh my God, what's this?” It never ends for me. Then you dig it out, you find its name, you look on Discogs and if it's not on vinyl, is it a digital download?
Does that still drive the nights out that you choose? I'm sure it does in terms of which ones are going to.
Yeah. And it's not about hearing classics all night. Although there’s a bit of that as well. When you get an unexpected classic thrown in, I really like it and think it works. I'm not into all retro. You've got to move on. There's a good Nile Rogers quote: “ You don't want to get stuck in the past, but it's a nice place to visit.” You’ve got to move it on and keep it interesting and keep the hunger there, the discovery. And along the way you pick up ones that you want to take with you, that’ll stay with you forever.
What do you think is important about this scene more widely, maybe for society. Have you any views on that?
It's good to so good to get out isn’t it, to socialise, and hear the music played as it's meant to be played through a good sound system, with appreciative people having a good vibe.
Just to revisit your DJing journey for a moment…
Well, I can sort of tie that back in, in that with having records sort of at a young age…. I had younger sisters. You're about 14 with a load of records, and your little sister wants to have a party with friends. She’d say “Andy will bring a load of his records around, and some turntables.” They weren't 1210s or anything. I probably borrowed my dad's turntable and a tape deck and hooked them up through an amp, to like create a sort of seamless, unmixed stream of music for round at my little sister’s friend’s house and 20 of their mates.
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That was probably the first foray into playing music for other people, and then as I say through Ducky, we were constantly looking for venues because nobody really wanted to touch house. One of the places we got was through some friends who played rugby at the Vale of Lune, and so a few times a year, they got to put a disco on. So we planned to just basically make it a house night. They were in charge of so playing the music so we gave flyers out and so that was probably one of the first forays of me playing music out to a crowd. And that would have probably been about 1990 or 1991.
On a slightly bigger scale, one of the promoters at the Carleton had parted ways with the club. Ducky and I took on the promotion for a few months. And we DJd ourselves at the Carleton as residents by this. We’d made some records and we had a bit more of a name as a group. And so we DJ’d as Analysis DJs and we signed actually also from 1991. Took a tape of what we've been messing about with myself, Ducky and Mark in the studio to the Eastern Bloc Records in Manchester. And they'd have a listen in the shop whilst there were 30 strangers in the shop all buying records, and your music's coming through the system in the shop. People started saying “What's this mate? Can I have a copy of this?” And he's like, “oh, it's this lad here. It's his tape.” John, behind the counter, who was the owner of Eastern Bloc with Martin Price from 808 State said “yeah, I'll sign this, I'll put it out, give us your number and I’ll give you a ring”.
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We went and did some more recordings at a better standard. He said “Just invoice us, we’ll pay for it” and so we ended up releasing some music through Eastern Bloc Records, which was at the time the same label as K-Klass from the label. Rhythm is a Mystery was put out by that label. 808 State’s early recordings - Pacific State came out on Creed Records.
Is it on Spotify? Can you listen to any on YouTube?
It's probably not, but then those records have gone on to be licenced by other labels. So the music's available, but not on Creed. That banner’s long gone now. Ariel, Sea of Beats came out on that label and Ariel was a band which was Tom from The Chemical Brothers, and he'd often be in there in the shop on a Saturday afternoon.
What were your tracks called?
Oh, my track names? The first record was quite unimaginatively titled The Euphoria EP. We were young, you know. But we’d end up going there a lot, taking tracks down and buying records. It almost became a weekly thing on a Saturday afternoon to get the train down to Manchester, hang out in the basement at Eastern Bloc Records for a bit. You'll be down there and Sasha could walk in with a stack of records from upstairs to listen to in the basement. You'd be just chatting and they'd be the records he would then take out that night to play at his gigs. Half the people working in there DJd around the city, eventually further afield and were producing records. So it really felt like you at the hub of sort of something going on.
So to bring that back home… we released some records, we promoted nights at the Carleton weekly, and also DJd around Blackpool.
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I’m sad I’m not older and I missed out on this.
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I think we all feel we've missed out on something just before our own lifetimes.
I was talking to DJ Gripper and he's a few years older, and he was going to Ibiza before the acid house explosion in the early and mid ‘80s, when it was just models and pop stars and going to Ku club and dancing under the stars. You know, Bohemian people.
So there's probably people younger than you wish they'd had the experiences that you'd have.
Haha I don’t know about that!
Think about Kaitzy. She wasn't born, but she loves like discovering stuff that went on in the ‘90s.
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Yeah, I know. But I feel that bit when I was DJing was a weird time. Everything was changing to digital and it was the early era of the superstar DJ. Everybody had to kind of stay in their lane for a bit, it wasn't that eclectic. Like you say, all these musical babies spawned.
Yeah I guess so. You had to pick one and then you look back and think “did I pick the right one at the time?”.
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And why did I put myself in a lane?
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Yeah it got to about ‘94 and I thought I didn't like the way that a lot of it was going. I stepped back for a little while.
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That's my next question…Did you lose the love for it? And what happened there?
I didn't like the way some promoters were acting. By the mid-90s, perhaps I went up a cul-de-sac and felt like it wasn't the right one, so I took a complete step back and just went back to playing a bass guitar with a few mates in a band at the Coop. I did like a lot of the music but just wanted to step back out of it because I've been doing it since I came of age and it first exploded, and it was all getting very commercial.
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In the later 90s, I got back into it again, having had a couple of years away from it with a friend of mine locally who used to come to those nights at the Carleton, but wasn't a DJ at the time. He'd become quite well known and successful towards the late 90s, early 2000s, a guy called Andy Jared who's no longer with us. He was a good friend and he worked in ‘Ere ‘Ear Records in Lancaster as their dance music specialist in the mid to late 90s.
Andy started making tracks of his own with engineers and he was going over to produce a lot in Sheffield. He knew I was into music and I still had recording gear in a studio, and so he and I did a few little bits together locally. He used to pop over and we've got a few little productions we did together.
I'd sometimes go out with Andy to some gigs. By this time it's the late 90s and everything was very progressive house - Sasha and Digweed, Nick Warren, those sort of DJs. So there's some cool stuff about and they would put some nights on and that's when I got back into it.
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Koma & Bones were doing the breakbeats stuff. Koma was Ducky, Bones was Chris Kirkbride. Chris set up his proper records shop in Lancaster. Chris worked in HMV before that and then set up his own shop with a friend. There was somewhere to focus again, Proper Records it's called. Give them a name check. They put nights on at the Town hall and had DJs on. Were you going out around then? ’99 / 2000?
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I was at Uni in Newcastle at that point and so it was later that I came back to Lancaster.
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Well, they signed to Rennie Pilgrim's label in London. I engineered and recorded with them. Koma & Bones did a Y4K compilation, a double, triple vinyl pack, CDs and all this. And so yeah, that I did that in my studio in the flat with Chris and Andy.
Also through them I got to remix a New Order track. Arthur Baker, who was in the 1980's, the New York producer that that produced Afrika Bambaata. he produced some music with New Order. He produced a couple of tracks while they were over in America, and one of those was Confusion. Arthur was now living in London and involved in the breaks scene that Koma & Bones were part of. They got asked to do a breaks remix of Confusion for the track’s 20th anniversary release. Chris said he could ask Arthur Baker if he wants a house mix doing too. So I said, “oh, yeah, nice one”. Anyway, I had a phone call with Arthur Baker, “so hey, man, how’s it going?”
So Chris passed on these multi track tapes of New Order; the bass track and the drum track, the synth tracks, the vocals, the backing vocals, the guitars, so I spread it all out in Logic and did a remix and sent it off and Arthur Baker. He said “ hey man, I dig your mix. It's great. We're going to put it out”. It came out on two 12” releases of different styles including Koma & Bones’ mix and mine, the Asto - Dazed & Confused Mix.
Asto, which is Andy Stoddon. I say Asto and then you see the penny drops haha.
I was back in it then. I’d tinker for years and never actually finished projects.
I love what you sent me the other day by the way. I listened to the first 3…
Did you like the long one… it's sort of like very ambient intro that it's almost like funk flamenco and then it goes into like Pink Floyd at the end.
I did. I remember I had to look to see if it's the same track as it had evolved.
Yeah. Well, that's what DJ Sam had said. She loved the way the track developed and evolved and built, broke down and built again. You could have parts 1, 2 and 3.
Yeah I love it.
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Thank you. I've had loads of stuff recorded over the years; files, unfinished ideas, sketches, but now I've got a wealth of material to draw from. It’s frustrated me for years and now I've got more ideas than I can finish!
I've none of the pressure that I felt when I when I was younger and doing the Analysis stuff. In those days, the music was changing so quickly and you had to make record that were better than the last record, and all this lot. It was all just a bit much. I’d signed to a different label at that point, in about ‘93. We did a single for that different label and it got to the point where I was submitting music to them that was trying to push things on in a bit, advance it and leave behind what we've done before. They’d say it's not commercial enough. They'd had some pop hit, some dance records that crossed over into the charts. I just felt like I was hitting a wall and not getting anywhere and in the end I said, “you know what, I've just had enough”. I felt that creatively, you shouldn't be getting told what to make musically. Do you know what I mean by that?
Yeah. Have you watched the Louis Theroux interview with Raye? She talks about that.
​I’ve been reading the Rick Rubin book about creativity and there’s been so much penny dropping. I keep thinking “that could have been written about me!” They’re things you knew subconsciously. Creativity isn’t a tap. Once you start making it to order, it's commerce, it's not art, which is fine as long as you know, that's what it is. It’s not art if you're having to do it to order…
Unless it's New Order. Haha
What's one of your career highlights on the music front? Is there anything that comes to mind?
​Hopefully it's not happened yet. .
I am still working towards it. I still have that feeling, you know?
And I guess that's what drives you on and keeps you going, isn't it? It's sort of it's when you feel you've achieved everything, then it's time to give up so.
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Did you have goals in terms of your progress? Did you want to progress beyond the local area or were you just taking it as it came?
I guess when I was younger, that was always the ambition, you know?
When you're 18 and it felt good going to Manchester, and you're on a label based out of Manchester and you have wider recognition and you look much further than your own town. The landscape’s changed so much now because you can self-release now and release globally via the likes of Bandcamp and Spotify now. So geography is not as crucial now because you take it for granted that you've got the reach. It's getting it played and out there from the right people that help the music. But at the time, Manchester felt like a big step because you come from Lancaster. Manchester was the epicentre of where it was all going on. Liverpool to a lesser extent.
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And were there advantages of coming from somewhere like Lancaster when you were first sort of starting out and exploring that scene?
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It was good that it was close enough to get to those places under your own steam. You hop on a train and in an hour you'd be there. But you weren't so involved in it and you could come back up here and create your work and then take it back. You had an outside perspective on it. I think if you lived there, worked there and everything, it could have almost been too much at that age. You might have just partied out and not survived. In another way, it might have been amazing, but I’ll never know!
However, what were some of the disadvantages? Some of the challenges?
It’s the other side of the coin isn't it? You had to make more of an effort to do or achieve what you wanted to.
But I still feel we're quite well placed. Because it wasn't just about Manchester, you know, there was stuff going on in Liverpool and in Blackpool and in other towns. Lancaster's quite well connected via the motorway and rail-wise to get to all these places. Nowhere is out of reach.
It matters less where you live now. You could be on a remote Scottish island, or in the middle of London and still have the same reach.
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Yeah, I guess production wise.
Yes, probably from a DJ side of things, you probably get more work if you did live in a big city because you're just there, you're handy. You'd probably be playing a lot. I probably at the moment I don't really push myself for gigs because it's getting the right life-work balance. I also need time to work on my own music. So it's nice to be asked to play and I try and only play the right gigs. I've said no to gigs if I felt it’s wrong for me or the wrong crowd, or they wouldn't get what I'm doing. I could push it, but when you've got a day job and a family and young children and other creative outlets, you don't want to be out every weekend playing three nights a week. Much rather do one I really enjoy, every few months. I'm not saying that will be it forever. If gigs start rolling in and it’s something I want to do, then who knows?
What do you think of the local scene at the minute?
There's good things going on. I feel there could be more. We could probably do more. But we've both got families. It's been a bit weird post-Covid. I've noticed that it can be a bit hit and miss crowd-wise. Initially, after the lockdown there were really busy nights, but I think a lot of people have got used to being at home. And there's a lack of taxis apparently, it's hard to get in and out of Lancaster. So people just don't bother coming out. Lancaster Music Festival has been a wonderful thing, and some of the other music festivals in the area. It’s great when that scale of event can take place. And lots of people come out for Highest Point. That's a brilliant thing for the area. That's really healthy. If they put on a more regular event in Lancaster, maybe they’re the people who could do something and make it happen. If I was still 20 with the drive that I had then and the lack of sort of other distractions and commitments, then we'd look for putting something on weekly. Now it's just about getting the right balance.
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What advice would you have for DJs and producers starting out?
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Just stay true to yourself and try not to let others make you deviate from what it is that you want to create and achieve.
Make music that you love and are passionate about. At the end of the day, it always comes back to that.
And anything about living in smaller places in particular, is there anything that would help do you think?
It doesn't hurt every now and again to go and have nights out in bigger cities and open your eyes and see what's out there and come back. Bring it back, you know? There's amazing stuff out there that it's definitely worth going and experiencing. Maybe the next big promoters will go out and get inspired by seeing something in Manchester or London or wherever, and bring it back to Lancaster.
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And what do you think would help to nurture a local scene like Lancaster and Morecambe?
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Having a focus if the night did get off the ground, or a venue that could be the hub and the focus for that. Kanteena has done it to a certain extent. Obviously that's a lot more seasonal, more during the summer months when there's more people wanting to go out. But January is a bit of a lull, isn't it - the long, dark, cold nights.
I'm quite excited about what's happening at the Lancaster Musicians Co-op. Famously a few years ago, there was a council meeting at Morecambe about the future of the Co-op and loads of musicians rallied and went to the meeting. I went down, basically to save its future because some of the Council wanted to develop it for other uses and kick the musicians Co-op out, but it was saved and as landlords, the council have had to spend money now doing up the building and giving them a long term lease. But it was a catch 22. They couldn't get grants while they didn't have a lease on the building and the council won't give them a lease so they couldn't get any work done. Now they've got a lease, councillors, landlords are having to spend hundreds of thousands on the building. I don't know if you've seen it, it's been totally stripped back to bear brick work. Some of the plans were to have, rehearsal rooms in a recording studio as they did before, was to have a community sort of area for live music and a bar. I'm not sure whether that's part of the plans, but if it was something like that, it could be a creative hub for musicians in Lancaster and a live space. It would be incredible because there is an upstairs there that's never been used because it was always unsafe. If they put a mezzanine in or an upstairs area that could become much more focused on giving the people of Lancaster somewhere to go and and be creative. So I'm keeping my eye on that project. That's where I jammed in my first bands when I was about 13 and when I went on to record my Analysis demos and even in later years, I've been there with the original engineer Mike Armistead to master tracks that I'm doing.
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Yeah, we need affordable, accessible places to meet other people.
It is quite a creative little area that, because it's back-to-back with the Grand Theatre and you've got Kanteena across the road, the Golden Lion at the end of the lane, which is probably the best pub in Lancaster. John puts some amazing nights on and he will take risks. He'll put interesting artists on. It's one of my favourite gigs in town to play there on the Saturday of the Music Festival every year. It's a great little place. Good crowd, really mixed crowd. Really appreciative.
That part of town's got so much potential. I know it's been renamed the Canal Quarter, some sort of marketing gimmick, and eventually it will probably change massively over the next few years. It's been a rundown area, and historically, rundown areas attract low rents and lots of creative types. I'm quite happy for it to not get too much gentrification.
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Although the plans suggest that they're keeping the arts as a focus...
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Yes I'm a bit concerned though, that on the car parks, they're planning to put housing. You see the problems they've got with Night and Day in Manchester. People complain about noise pollution after they've moved next to a well-known music venue. So we'll just have to see, but hopefully with the money they're spending on places like the Co-op, it’ll be properly sound proofed and so noise shouldn't be an issue. Definitely one to keep your eye on there and certainly I'll be supporting massively. I'll do whatever I can there to help them.
Another thing I should mention, it might not make it to the interview, but the chap I mentioned Mick Armistead, local engineer, and he ran the studio at the Musicians Co-op, he's an absolutely amazing person. When we were teenage lads, we wanted to make a demo and he was a few years older with the equipment and the expertise to make it happen. He was a guiding hand and just charged an hourly fee, with very little credit on what he's done over the years. But he's had such a hand in live and recorded music in Lancaster and he's the most unassuming modest chap you've ever met. He does Space Lounge Sound and they do sound for a lot of gigs. He used to play keyboards in James when they were on Factory Records in the 1980s, but you would probably never know that because it's not something he would shout about. But that just sums him up. Even now he's my go to ears for like if I've got a track that I need mastering or help mixing down and I need to take my stems to. He's just the loveliest chap you'd ever meet.
He played a huge part in helping us create something that was musically listenable and sticking it all together with the right levels on those early records, and things that we made and getting them signed.
Is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you think is really key?
I think Lancaster being a university town is quite key to the success of a lot of the nights that happen. It feels quite a vibrant city, almost waiting for something to happen. It's as well as the people that are at the university currently a lot of people come to Lancaster and stay here and appreciate the creative things that people are doing. Just in general, you imagine it without the the students and the investment that the university brings to the town, it would be a ghost town, I think. Some locals complain about students but take all that away and it's like some of the Northwest towns that don't have that, the ones that people describe as ghost towns. Now it's a true flow of influences. I think that's one of the things that keeps Lancaster quite vibrant.
Is that OK?
Yeah. It's brilliant. We could definitely chat for longer, but I'll stop it there. Thank you.