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Radio Slave - Live @ Hyde - 2007
http://www.blentwell.com/mp3/Radio_Slave-LIVE_Hyde.mp3
http://www.blentwell.com/bookmarks.php/mr.blentwell
Getthecurse Interview
How do you feel now, as 2007 is about to end ? It has been a pretty good year for you.
Yes, an incredible year, from the start actually. Lotsa music, lotsa releases, and most importantly, I feel like I’ve finally been accepted in a lot of peoples hearts, you know ? More and more people know about my music, come and ask me about it or just pop in the booth to make requests, and not stupid requests at that (laughs). I don’t play music that is particularly easy or commercial, and a lot of people seem to have developped a real interest for darker and more hypnotic sounds lately, which is great.
After such a year, I suppose we can expect your first album real soon.
Yeah, hopefully ! But it won’t be anything conventional, more of a cross between a mix, a compilation and an album, like a snapshot of both my DJ sets and my own productions at the same time. I actually asked a few different artists to give me a track to remix and those remixes put together in some kind of DJ mix will become my album. I see it as a challenge, you know : take other people’s music, remix it and make it instantly identifiable as a Radio Slave track. It’s pretty similar in a way to what Andrew Weatherall did with Primal Scream back in the 90’s. Still, it won’t come out on Rekids, cause i don’t wanna release my own stuff on my label, plus we already have a lot of forthcoming releases to focus on.
How has it been for Rekids this year ? I know you recently had problems with you distributor.
Yeah, we lost our distributour. In England, 800 people in the music industry have lost their jobs in the last two weeks. Hard times. It’s a shame we lost our distributor, but it’s been a very positive year in the end, very productive. We already have six albums planned for 2008. 2 Luke Solomon albums, 2 from Tobby Tobias as well, one in april and an other one in october, an album by Jack Logan which is this great hip-hop band, a new CD compilation of 12 inches in may, and a few other projects we’re working on at the moment.
And what about Quiet Village, the project you run with your long-time friend Joel Martin ?
The Quiet Village album will come out in may on !K7 records. We’re actually just about to sign with them. We have been signed to a major label for a year but nothing was happening and there was a lot of difficulties so we had to wait to get our music back and go somewhere else. But now, it seems like the whole thing is finally on track. I’m really looking forward to it cause Quiet Village is something totally different from what I do with Radio Slave and, after a whole year focused on my own stuff, it’s great that we’ll be able to develop Quiet Village a bit more in 2008. We have 14 tracks ready, 10 of which will be on the album I guess. I think we’ll do in & off shows, but the live set will only be definitive by 2009. We’re trying to build a whole visual concept for our live shows, we’re working with a friend who does collages of films and stuff.
You recently moved to Berlin. What has it changed for you ?
There’s a lot of music everywere in Berlin and there’s really incredible shops where you can virtually find everything you want, but I haven’t been there long enough so i can’t really say. The only very positive thing so far is that I now have much more time to make music.
How do you feel about club culture in England these days ?
There’s been a lot of changes. It’s very very different now. The good thing is that London has become very cosmopolitan. Lotsa spanish, french, italians… It’s for the better. But crowds and clubs were more open-minded back then. People don’t mix anymore and it’s the same for music, there’s a club for any specific crowd or sound and it’s a shame. I feel very lucky to have discovered club culture in the late 80s and early 90s cause back then you could hear a house track next to a rock track and a hip-hop track. Now, it’s almost impossible.
Is it something you try to bring back yourself ?
Yeah, well, whenever i can. It’s hard to do it in clubs but I play a lot of festivals and it definitely works very well that way in festivals.
People often wonder what your musical roots are. The whole Radio Slave thing seems so mysterious and your sound so personal and unique that it’s hard to nail any influence.
Well, I’ve always listened to lotsa stuff. Rock, hip-hop and techno, mainly. I’m really into soundtracks too, which seems a bit more obvious when you listen to Quiet Village. My very first record was actually a James Bond soundtrack (laughs). I bought it while shopping in Covent Garden, when I was 6 or 7. My father was an art director for a few big labels and we had those amazing record covers at home, and that’s what attracted me at first. Soundtracks always had the best covers. Another soundtrack that was really important for me was “Blade Runner” by Vangelis. My father took me to see the movie when it came out, and the music really blew me away, it was like the most amazing thing, you know ?
There’s a big difference between your first records and the most recent ones. Did you think about changing your name at some point ?
It’s a good question. I don’t know… It’s just the way my sound developped and i don’t really thought about it at the time. I just assumed the name didn’t mean much so I could keep it anyway. My sound was obviously very different but it will probably be very different in the future too, you can never tell.
http://www.getthecurse.com/2008/01/07/radio-slave-rekids-interview/
Last edited by SuperJimbo on Jan-12-2008 at 01:14
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