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Cheers Anf. Yes very excited about White Label 3. Apparently it will be a triple CD.
*drools
This is his recent interview with Three D World. Very interesting read:
| quote: | John '00' Fleming: Digital Psy-Man
If the Queen was giving out knighthoods for services to dance music, then trance-cum-psy purveyor John ‘00’ Fleming definitely deserves a look-in. In an industry full of carbon-copy imitators, Fleming is breaking the mould and making trance music interesting again.
The Brit’s record label, J00F Recordings, is flying too. The imprint has become synonymous with quality, genre-defying productions, as J00F releases typically straddle trance, progressive, techno and Fleming’s new pet sound of psytrance.
'I’ve become disheartened with the regular trance scene. I just can’t find good music – it’s just not doing it for me anymore. It’s too predictable.'
While Fleming’s love of psychedelic trance may seem like a recent acquisition, he’s long been a fan of the twisted sound. “People think that I have just stepped towards it recently but, if you look back at my history, my roots are more with Goa trance back in the early '90s,” he says. “I was bang-on into it - stuff like Astral Projection back in 1991/92. My old record partner (Russell Coulfur) also owned Transient Recordings - he was the man who got me into it all those years ago. As it was called psytrance, it was just too weird and trippy for me and I didn’t like it. Now it has sort of grown up and come back and now I’m really getting into it. Not full-on psytrance though – I don’t like that, it scares me.” [laughs]
Fleming’s increasing embrace of psychedelic sounds has seen him billed for some of the world’s biggest psy events, including Anti World and Global Gathering. He admits that his move to erase the divide that has separated trance from its more underground psychedelic counterpart has challenged purists of both sounds. “There are naïve people on both sides; some don’t realise that they’re experiencing psytrance when I’ve played it to them and then there’s the other side – I’ve played some psy parties and you get these real purist people who expect me to play commercial trance. After they’ve seen me play I get so many people coming to my message board or to me in person and saying – “Wow! I’ve got to apologise because I’ve been saying bad things about you! Now I realise that you actually play good music!”
On the whole, Fleming admits his recent leanings towards psy have been brought upon by the uninspiring state of the trance scene of late. “I’ve become disheartened with the regular trance scene. I just can’t find good music – it’s just not doing it for me anymore. It’s too predictable. When the regular trance sound I knew came about in 1998-99, it was new and exciting. Now five, six, seven years later, it still sounds the same. It doesn’t seem to have moved on or grown up. It still has that formatted sound; big euphoric breakdown, big riff, big cheesy female vocal – it’s just not doing it for me,” he states. “It’s really why I’ve moved towards the whole psy thing, because it’s giving me ‘the hit’ I’m looking for. There are a number of artists in this scene that are producing melodies that aren’t full of psytrance, they’re sort of veering away from that full-on psytrance sound. It’s weird, as time goes on all these new genres come along, so it’s really hard to pin-point what everyone plays anyway.”
Indeed, if one was to choose one word to describe Fleming’s J00F imprint, then ‘indefinable’ would be quite fitting. The Brit likes this. He has no desire to categorise himself or his label. In his opinion, dance music has the tendency to get too caught up in genre boxes, a mould he aims to break through J00F Recordings.
One man who’s helping Fleming spread the J00F gospel is Finnish producer Miika Kuisma. John calls him “my little gem” and anyone who’s heard Kuisma’s Atmosphere EP that was released late last year can understand why. “In his home country of Finland they’ve just had the music awards, which is a massive thing for their country. He won ‘Best Producer’ and ‘Best DJ’. He’s starting to make waves now – he’s a good guy,” Fleming beams. “He’s working on an album at the moment – I pushed him to do it, so hopefully we’ll have one of them soon!”
Another of the J00F imprint’s recent acquisitions is trance legend Oliver Lieb. Fleming recently licensed the German’s L.S.G classic Netherworld to the label (with some cracking remixes courtesy of Oliver Prime, Fleming, Lieb and co.) and has more plans up his sleeve to keep Lieb involved with the label. “I’ve got a close relationship with Oliver now. On J00F Deep [the new prog trance sub-label of J00F], we’ve got a couple of new Paragliders tracks – you know, more like a deep techy sort of trance thing. We’ve also got a new L.S.G single coming up,” he shares. “You’re going to be seeing lots of Oliver Lieb productions on J00F!”
One thing that’s also come to characterise J00F has been Fleming’s unbridled enthusiasm for Digital Downloads. Talking to the Brit, you can’t help but be caught up in his passion for a technological format he believes has the capacity to breathe life into the flailing dance industry. Fleming’s new ‘J00F Deep’ imprint is shortly due to be launched, with the first track set to be available as an exclusive Digital release.
In Fleming’s opinion, vinyl is a dying format. “Vinyl is disappearing – it’s an old format. It’s something I don’t believe in anymore and I haven’t played vinyl for 3-4 years now. All of us are at this stage where we don’t make any money from selling vinyl – it’s a lot of hard, painstaking sweat to actually get it to the shop. Digital just makes complete and utter sense,” he says.
“I’m lucky to be in the position where I have traveled all around the world and in countries like Brazil where the economy isn’t as strong as some of the Western countries, I will sell one of my vinyls – a J00F release, it will cost about $20. The average wage over there is about $80-$100 a week, so if you want to buy four or five vinyls, then that’s a lot of money you need to save up. Whereas, with Digital Downloads, you can buy a track for 99 cents,” he explains. “If you go to Brazil or Turkey, all the DJs there are playing off CD because it’s a lot cheaper and makes sense. If no one wants vinyl, then why are you concentrating on selling it? It’s just crazy, you have to offer customers what they want.”
Fleming also believes that Digital Downloads will essentially give record labels and artists more freedom to experiment with releasing underground productions. As it stands, labels have to release tracks they know will sell, otherwise they stand to make a loss. “That’s why we see so many cheesy anthems because, when the record label signs it, they know they’re guaranteed to sell ‘X’ amount. They’re not taking a risk with something more underground, because they think to themselves ‘oh I’m not going to sell that, it’s too much of a risk’. That means that track will just die – it will never see the light of day,” he explains. “The Digital world is going to completely change that – there’s going to be some fantastic music going around. It will be like the old days where bucket loads used to sell; you’d go to a record store and you’d be swamped by so much good music. That’s what it’s going to be like soon – it will all be good, it will be!”
Catch John ‘00’ Fleming at Platinum Gold Coast on April 15, The Arena Brisbane on April 16, for a psytrance set, along with Triptych at Space on Friday April 22nd, at Black Caat Nightclub in Adelaide on April 23 and at Room 680 in Melbourne on April 24
Clare Dickins
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