The sound engineer of Wave Music, the man behind Phantom Power and Floppy Sounds, a friend of Deep Dish and Danny Tenaglia speaks about the most interesting US label Wave, it's plans and it's history. And we try to find out whether progressive house is still in demand.
What’s going on at Wave Music right now? How’s the label feeling itself?
The label is doing good. The industry is changing right now, so are the labels, we are seeing less vinyl sales and more digital online things, so with the market reality the label is adjusting to that. But we’ve got some really good stuff coming out – Beat Pharmacy’s new album, also my new Phantom Power album, which is sort of a Phantom Power records collection, a compilation of singles called “Patterns”. We also have a few new singles: Tony Lionni, and Tedd Patterson has a new record to come out – he is a fantastic new york DJ, he has his own label Vibal, but this is the first record he’s done for Wave, and it’s really good, tech-house.
What is the main formula of Wave’s success?
The label is done well because it’s diverse. In the beginning of the label’s life there were more releases with music centered around Body & Soul sound. Sure, there was my album, which was more electronic, but the main releases were based on percussion and African sounds, jam-based sort of music. The Body & Soul releases were really successful, but I think that over the years things moved to more electronic again for us, but ultimately they try to put up things that they like. François K has a good ear for the things he wants to develop. And I also think that the label treated its artists fairly, there is a lot of labels, especially in the States, which it’s not so good to work with (laughs). I’ve been very fortunate, my works with Yoshitoshi and other people have been very good though!
Well, which labels are worth working with then?
Well, let’s see…I just did a remix of Danny Tenaglia’s “Music Is The Answer” for Twisted America, which was Tribal America years ago. It is run by Rob DiStefano, he’s a great guy. And 2 records for Yoshitoshi with my friend Rob Salmon. The Deep Dish guys are really terrific. There are some good American labels… But I think that Wave is actually emerged as one of the long-standing American labels at this point.
Don’t you think that, to be honest, the Yoshitoshi sound became a little bit… old right now? It happens with every kind of music though…
Well, it all cycles around. Even progressive house does. But I think that some of the records they put out are really good quality records. When I worked with Danny Tenaglia as an engineer he would play trance records in the studio for me, and some of them were great records! But some people might’ve said: “Err, trance, it’s so terrible!” I think in the meaning of Yoshitoshi, I’ve been following the records by Dubfire and Sharam, and those are amazing records.
But the records you’ve been doing also recall that old sound, I don’t mean that…
Well, I am a little old (laughs).
Okay, what I was actually about to ask, in what kind of music are you more interested in right now?
Well, though all New York DJs are interested in minimal now… The Winter Music Conference this year was really interesting because a lot of New York producers were about minimalism. I found it kind of funny, because that scene has been going now really strongly for several years. But I think it’s good, because what I would like to see about Americans doing in minimalism is to inject more funk into it, more black sound with disco element, give it a little more of a flavor. I love minimalism, but a lot of records can sound similar. And the American take on it with its groove may be a healthy thing for the music.
Everybody is getting bored of minimalism in Europe, I guess.
Yeah, I’ve been hearing that. I don’t know, I still gravitate to the simplicity and the repetition of those records, but I think the key is to find the ones, which really stand out. I see a lot more European records that have an exciting flavor, that aren’t just kick drum and a bass line. And some American records tend to have too much music, to many solos, and as for me, sometimes they lose the groove. So the minimalism for American music should be a healthy thing.
Yeah, America has always been the main source of new tendencies in music, but by the turn of the century this rule has gone. I think it might be not so good for Europe, since a lot of people there started to replay things which were already developed in America…
I’m seeing a lot of American producers going back to the sound of Public Image Limited and punk-funk sort of things of the 80s, the DFA influence is rather strong. It’s something that Americans can understand. I have a party that I play in a very small gay bar in the East Village, and I play a lot of rock and punk records, and it’s so much fun! I like that sound, I think it’s good. I’m still influenced by Talking Heads – the new Floppy Sounds single is going to come out in January, and it sounds very much like Talking Heads. It’s a new direction for me, it has guitars and vocals, and it was fun to do it! So it’s more contemporary, though it sounds like 1980s, but without being totally derivative – we’ll se what people think.
You had a break, a period when you didn’t come out with music production at all. What happened then, and what had changed during that time?
Let’s see… The second Floppy Sounds record came out in 2001, and the whole time I was making Phantom Power singles for Clicktracks. A couple of things happened in my personal life as well. I was listening to the music I was doing, and some of the stuff was okay, and something was not so good. So I would make tracks and play with them for a long time, and if I don’t like them, I would just shelve them and come back to them later. The ones I liked the most were the Phantom Power records, those were for me a way to explore minimal things. And meanwhile I was working in television a lot for an American cable news company called MSNBC.
You’re still involved into that, right?
No, I’m not doing that any more.
So no music for television now?
Well, a little bit. It’s fun to do, because you have to put your head in a different mindset. When I worked for television it was more about editing music. The nice thing about it was that they paid very well. And projects don’t go on forever. I learnt a lot, but now with the economy crisis I’m doing less music for TV and much of my own which is fun, so we’ll see.
You’ve done quite a lot of remixes. It’s doesn’t stand high for many producers and djs, because you don’t get the money and copyrights for the track and etc. So mainly it’s a way for unknown producers to show themselves. But you still do remixes and you’re still much into that…
Well, I’m doing a little less. “Music Is The Answer” record was the first one I’ve done in a while, but all through the early part of this decade I’ve been doing a lot, and I enjoyed it, because you don’t have to create everything. You have the vocal or any other element to focus on. When you do something by your own, you have to think what you want to say, what’s the track about, and with the remix you don’t have to do that, you have the thing to start with anyway. And sometimes I think some of my best work was remix work. I was very proud of the X-Press 2 remix, for example. I always try to respect the original material, and what I think is now involved is to take a tiny element form the track and just make a new track. But it was never my approach.
What do you think of the idea of bringing up the old disco records and sampling them into something new?
I think it may be fantastic! I did one a couple of years ago, when I came back from Berlin, I was inspired by some Carl Craig records by that time, and I took an old Larry Levan production, the track “Vicious” by Black Mamba, a real disco vocal, but very angry, and I just took the acapella. It took a long time for me living in New York to start appreciating disco. I came from the more new wave sort of sensibility like Depeche Mode, New Order and all of that. So it took me time to appreciate black dance music.
How is François K? What’s he doing right now?
He’s great! It probably has been the busiest year for him for a long lime. He gets incredible reaction from crowds and I think it helps him stay eternally young! Now he has some time for studio work, so he’s doing great.
Why didn’t you release a Phantom Power album earlier?
All those singles have been out for a while, and we wanted to draw attention to them, because the singles get overlooked because there’s so much singles coming out. I think it’s just a nice little package to have at one time. I know you might say that the minimal techy sound is already behind the curve, but I think that the tracks are really solid. I believe in the music, I think it’s good, I’ve been making the records between 2000 and 2007, and when I listen to them, they still sound so good to me. And I would’ve bought the record! If they sounded really dated, I won’t bother them with the compilation. But ultimately the listeners will have to judge by themselves, I can’t do that, because I’ve written the tracks.
Okay, then obviously I should ask you if your work as a sound engineer shade your feeling of music?
Yes and no. I’ve been deejaying for the last few years, and it helps me to make tracks – you really see what works. I think sometimes as a sound engineer I would get caught up in the textures and forget about the groove. Unfortunately, yes, there are tracks which don’t sound do good, but right now, because of what’s happening with the technology, there are some really good sounding records there, which are made by those kids in their bedrooms. So it’s just a process, like anything else.
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1 comments:
great interview!
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