The Re-Groove: Villa

The Re-Groove returns to speak with Belgium production trio, Villa. Hailing from Ghent the group are purveyors of high quality dance music and have mixed one of the year’s best compilation: Cosmic Balearic Beats Volume 2 out on Eskimo Recordings The group have also remixed for the likes of The C90s, The Golden Filter and Moby aswell as dabbling with disco edits with a release on seminal edit label Mindless Boogie’s 20th release.

Winston: Where did you grow and where do you live now?

Villa: We all come from a different place, but Villa as a music project is originated from Ghent. That’s a little town in Belgium with a vivid music scene. The studio is based at Seba’s place. He lives in a little village in the countryside.

Winston: How did you guys meet? Read the rest of this entry »

Fromage Disco

Fromage Disco are Nate B and Travis H ( Dr Disconyx) – two melbournites with a keen love of synthpop, post punk and disco. Apart from their eponymous Club night the two have been working as a production duo with future and present releases on Lightspeed Recordings and Sean Bronson’s (of Future Disco fame) Need Want label.

Winston: How did you guys first get into electronic music and in particular your brand of disco and house music?

Fromage Disco: Well we both listened to a lot of hip hop when we were young and I guess it was a natural progression into more beat driven music.  I got into US house such as Doc Martin, Farina, etc and UK tech house like Terry Francis and Craig Richards.  Travis always liked experiemental music, house and disco a bit of rock and funk. Attending clubs like Durr and Trash and a couple east end clubs like bar22, Mother Bar. The mixing of indie, house, disco and club has been going on since 2000 and he wanted to do that, in his dj sets and productions.   Then we ended up meeting on a love of the disco/nu disco scene a few years ago now, inspiring us to find great music both new and old and leading to us starting the Fromage Disco parties back in 2006. We’re big fans of DFA, Eskimo, Permanent Vacation, Tirk, Wall of sound, Delusions of Grandeur, Running Back, and all that and more ends up going in our sets.

Winston: How did you hook up with Lightspeed recordings? Read the rest of this entry »

Launch Me Into Space

The Juan MacLean are one of the greatest electronic acts of this decade – hands down. They are touring Australia again around New Year. As I said in the last interview I really want to hang with Juan. Probably his biggest achievement this year is remixing Sidwho?’s Bowie For President.

Winston: First off I would like to say how amazing I thought your show was last year with Cut Copy.

Juan MacLean: That was actually or first bit of touring that we did in almost 2 years – that was sort of the warm up for the album tour.

Winston: You were playing the theremin a lot is that something you still do?

Juan MacLean: I put it through a lot of delay and wah wah pedals sometimes on  the record – live I play it quite a bit. It’s a hard thing to stay away from actually – I find myself playing it more than I should. I have been playing it since I was a teenager.

Winston: Are you still touring with the guys from Holy Ghost? Read the rest of this entry »

Lightspeed Recordings Part 2

The finally installment of our chat with Agent 86 of amazing Lightspeed Recordings. They have recently put out 2 more singles since our first installment (great read if I do say so myself) – Go Chic Lightning by Bodie Lee and Acid Strings by Fromage. Checkout their launch party at Cuckoo Bar on the 12th of December.

Winston : How did hip hop eventually came into your music or was it all just music to you- irrespective of genre?

Agent 86: It is all just music to me. Hip hop has influence me more than any other form of music. Having said that hip hop is just one angle of my music. I play rock and disco – it is just music to me. I kinda have a certain sound that I like – and when I say sound I don’t mean a particular instrument or type of sound. It’s kind of like certain melodies and keys that I like. I guess in strange sort of way they all connect together even though they might be different genres Read the rest of this entry »

The Gallery

Winston: How did the Gallery begin?

Nicky Siano: It began out of the passion to want to provide a place … I wanted a place that really blew my mind. The only way to do that was build something that I had in my head that I thought when I am dancing. It was really about pleasing me more than anything.

Winston: It’s the type of thing where if you are having a good time everyone else is

Nicky Siano: Exactly

Winston: What was your fist inclining of the disco craze beginning?

Read the rest of this entry »

Lightspeed Recordings Part 1

Lightspeed Recordings is a an amazing record label started by Adelaide’s prodigal son – Agent 86. Recently their Late Night Tough Guy Edits EP shot to the top of the Juno disco charts. We chat about the label, edits and the early Adelaide house scene.

Winston: How did Lightspeed records begin?

Agent 86: I was running a few parties last year,  that were new disco orientated and I guess I was kind of moving in that direction as a DJ for a while. My productions were also on that disco tip. After doing a few parties I thought maybe I could expand it by putting out my own music. After talking to a few people it seemed like a good idea to make a label to put out any sort of music that I really dig. It’s on the disco tip at the moment, like everything that I do it’s not limited to one genre. For the time being the disco scene is probably what I’m feeling and that’s the direction that Lightspeed will be taking for the immediate future.

W: How did you get HMC (AKA Late Night Tough Guy) involved?

A: I DJed with him back in Adelaide in the 1990s, we have been friends ever since. It was really just a matter of having a chat to him; he was producing and doing edits and when I told him about my plans for Lightspeed he was really into it.

W: On the subjects of edits is it hard to put them out do you need to clear them? Read the rest of this entry »

Woolfy

Woolfy is pretty amazing. I’m not going to going into a hyperbole like I did on the Onion Interview, even though it was well deserved. Suffice to say if you like electronic music or just good “indie guitar pop” check out his new album If You Know What’s Good For Ya!!!

Woolfy is DJing tonight at the Edinburgh Castle Hotel in Adelaide.

Winston: Do you consider yourself part of an international “cosmic disco” scene or do you just do what you do without any outside influence?

Woolfy: I look at myself as an international DJ cause I probably get more of my gigs overseas. When I think of myself as part of a crew I think of myself as part of my LA crew and a couple of heads in New York. Like Eric Duncan, Harvey and all the Sarcastic (Disco) guys. Basically that’s what I see myself as fitting within a family of DJs. I have heard incredible things from people like Todd Terje and Prins Thomas. To be compared to those guys is amazing.

Winston: How did you first get into electronic music?

Read the rest of this entry »

Jupiter

Quarles Baseden and Amélie de Bosredon are Jupiter. To write like the NME they have the enchanting vocals of Sally Shapiro combined with driving energy of Fred Falke. Hopefully my lazy comparison doesn’t put you off as these guys are amazing. Their debut 12” Starlighter comes out Monday (the 14^th) and is already out digitally with a cool remix by Bottin.

Winston: How did you guys first get interested in electronic music?

Jupiter: We were more into rock initially, and we didn’t feel so attracted to house music but when Daft Punk started getting big around 96/97 we changed our minds.  They were all over the place in France, there was no way you could miss them. And upon hearing their first few singles, you couldn’t help but fall in love with the mix of influences and the novelty of their sound, so we could say that Homework first got us into electronic music.

W: What made you start Jupiter and how did you two meet?

J: We met on holiday through a mutual friend, but we hated each other at first. But we both happened to be studying in London the following year, and we somehow bounced into each other and had a very different feeling than the first time

At first we were making electro-folk music, with no apparent reason as we were both really into electro, funk and disco. I guess we both played guitar and wanted to get into electronic gear slowly but surely, and it was the best way to do it. Anyway, we quickly realised we had way more fun playing the sort of music we most enjoyed listening to, which sounds pretty logical now hahaha

W: How did you get involved with Valerie Collective?

Read the rest of this entry »

The Loin Brothers

The Loin Brothers are a pretty sweet act to coming out of Sydney. So far they have released Heavy Helmet a space-y Moroder-like jam. They are playing Saturday the 5th of September at Sugar, which is probably worth your while dropping by to check out.

Winston:How did you guys first get into electronic music?

Saliva: I think the first time I heard synthesizers in music was listening to “War of the worlds” when I was about 8 or so, and was always intrigued how the space sounds were made. When I was a bit older I used to hang out at a studio this country and western band had set up. (the town i grew up in had a population of about 150, so I took what I could get One of the guys brought in this little Korg synth and let me play around on it, and I think from there on i started obsessing about them.

Silvio: An intersting question to answer for me as there are few tunes that I like that are purely electroinc. There is usally a live intrument component to the stuff I like. I got into dance music say 12 years ago tho and have not turned back. Nothing Earth shattering really, just found myself at a dance party, dug the hypnotic grooves and got my dance on.

W: Really love the new single are there plans for anymore?
Read the rest of this entry »

Erol Alkan

I think it may be safe to say that Erol Alkan is a ’superstar DJ’. But instead of playing the same back catalogue of post-rave dance  hits with an ever increasingly eleborate laser shows to convince a new generation of impressionable drugged out youth that he is in fact some sort of ‘Ecstacy God’, he releases an album of obscure psych rock re-edits. This interview mostly focuses on his beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve project which is worth checking out. I didn’t include the part of the interview where he gets pissed off with me for asking about his 7 year old Kylie Minogue and New Order mash up.

Winston: What was the idea behind the Beyond the Wizard’s Sleeve project?

Erol Alkan: The idea began when me and Richard decided to come together and do a dj set where we played more weird avant garde music which led to us producing music together. We did about a dozen remixes which leads us to this album. It was very natural, jus the enthusiasm for the music that we both had. Just coming together and just putting our creative minds into force and seeing what happens.

W: Did you set out to make a distinct type of music?
Read the rest of this entry »