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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?

Villa: That depends on who is telling the story. Seba met Fredo on a party in Make Up Club, but Fredo was so drunk that night he thinks he met Seba on a music fair.

Anyway, from the moment we got in the studio together it went all very nice & easy.
Winston: How did you first get into electronic music?

Villa: The eighties were a great time for electronic music. Lots of bands were experimenting with these new instruments called synths, effects and drum machines. One could hear electronic sounds in the hit parade in a very acceptable and fresh manner. That is how it happened to us. Separate from our personal preferences, it sure has something to do with the era we grew up in and the novelty of electronic musical gear at that time… First there were Quincy Jones/Michael Jackson, Prince, Moroder and Vangelis. Later, as for many people, Chemical Brothers, The Prodigy, Daft Punk, Leftfield, Orbital opened our ears for electronic music.
Winston: What is about a song that compels you to edit it?

Villa: The feeling we have something to add to the piece, a fresh angle or the feeling to get more capacity out of the parts provided. A nice front lady always helps of course. It is a bigger challenge for us to edit a known track than an obscure hard to find one where no one actually knows what you did to the track. Take a guilty pleasure and make it credible again, combined with our approach and sound.

Winston: What sort of gear do you use to produce?
Villa: Seba has been collecting numerous classics from the memorymoog, cs60, rhodes 73, linndrum LM2, full system 100, sherman qmf, prophet 5, OBXA, EII, omega 8, banana synth, SY1, Expander, prophet VS, DX7, Andromeda…we could go on for another while here… to a Tascam M600 mixer and some vintage channelstrips…Oh yeah and a Pentium 3 oldschool PC

Winston: What’s your favourite edit you have done?
Villa: The first edits were very easy cut/copy paste edits of disco and house tracks, for example DMX Crew with Cold Heart part 2 on Gigolo Records. Emphasis the good groove and take out the bad parts. After those kitchen edits we evolded to a more active form of editing and started adding new elements to the tracks. A nice example is the Agneta edit we’ve done… So we are very delighted with our diva edits of last summer on Mindless Boogie…

Winston: Is there any song think should never be re-edited?
Villa: Too many to mention…  Every artist will think different about re-editing, do’s and don’ts.  So it’s hard to say.
Winston: How did you end up getting together with Mindless Boogie?

Villa: We’ve known the guy from Mindless Boogie for a long time. He was there from the start of Villa and years before that he booked the first big Fredo & Thang gigs in Ghent. He is also the man who brought the three of us together (after that music fair experience).  The mood was right, the setting was perfect, and the start of the summer and Mindless Boogie was celebrating their 20th release.
Winston: What do you have planned for 2010?
Villa: Have a chill, relax a lot…  No no, we ‘re gonna work even harder than we did in 2009, making good remixes, edits, mixes, sets, doing some co-productions and last but not least, come out with our own material. We are really excited to finally release them because we’ve just been working on remixes for the past six months.

Villa - Agneta

Villa - Anita

Villa - Tina

Courtesy of Mindless Boogie

I have spent the past couple years falling deeper and deeper in love with Arthur Russell’s music. It seems to transcend a time period and is so nourishing to one who is in need. His voice hugs the centre of your heart, the cello rocking the very core of your spirit. His history is nothing short of amazing and i feel like a better person to have his music in my life.

It may take time for it to unfold, perhaps a lifetime, but once it does, you’ll wonder how you survived with out hearing his love lullaby’s and meditative mantras.

( DLOAD…. email us at adultartsclub@gmail.com )
WIld Combination
A Portrait Of Arthur Russell

there has recently been an increase in the flow of amazing re-edits of perennial classics and forgotten gems along the lines of those done by pioneers Larry Levan, Shep Pettibone and Francois K. With our new regular  Re-Groove series we try and get to know the crate diggers and splicers behind these tracks.

Our first interview comes from Brisbane resident Youth. you can catch him DJing with the Swiss at Rhino Room or at the Touch Party at The Ed Castle Hotel on the  23rd in Adelaide. He can also be found out and about in Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

Winston: Where do you come from?

Youth: A French woman and an Australian man hah. No I was born in Sydney and grew up on the outskirts of Byron Bay in Northern NSW.

Winston: How did you first get into electronic music?

Youth: I first really got into electronic music through hip-hop. Buying DJ Shadows Endtroducing pretty much blew my 14 year old mind and encouraged me to buy a stack load of vinyl (most of it being op shop junk) but that kick started my passion for creating music.

Winston: What is about a song that compels you to edit it?

Youth: There can be a few defining points to choose a song for an edit. I personally like to take something and create something new out of it that I can fit into my dj sets; generally they’re tracks I already feel are pretty perfect but could do with a little spicing up.
Being able to ‘break’ apart the original enough to create something new without it sounding like hot garbage is also a pretty defining point in the production side of things.

Winston: What sort of gear do you use to produce?

Youth: I began making songs around 2002 by sampling records onto my computer in Sonic Foundry Acid and then sequencing with one of the early versions of Fruity Loops. In 8 years I’ve upgraded my home studio quite a bit, added new software and hardware. But I still love the simplicity of arranging in what is now FLStudio, although Acid has now been superseded with Ableton. Warping is such an amazing tool.

Winston: What’s your favourite edit you have done?

Youth: Personally my favorite edit would have to either be my Stevie Nicks re-edit (which is kind of technically a remix I guess because I only used the vocals) or my take on Arthur Russell’s How We Walk on the Moon, which happened to coincide with an album featuring a number of re-takes of his tracks but not that one.

Winston: What song do you think should never be re-edited?

Youth: Hmm I think anything is free game as long as it’s done tastefully. A lot of people make unnecessary edits though or make edits chock full of digital artifacts (one of the downfalls of warping).
I guess in this day and age you can tell if something’s done well if it’s released. Otherwise you’re only wasting a small section of bandwidth and a couple of minutes of time before sending it to the recycling bin.

Winston: How did you end up getting together with Fragrant Fowl?

Youth: I’ve been a fan of Pocketknife and Cousin Cole for a few years and have traded music on a few message boards with them. I met up with Cole when he last came out to Australia a year or two back and gave him some tracks. One of which he found to be perfect for a FF release (which is still pending).

Winston: What’s in store for you in 2010?

Youth: Hopefully if all bodes well the FF release will be out sometime mid 2010. Catcall is hitting the studio with her band soon and a few of her songs are based off my production. Other than that I’m still working hard on some demo tracks of new wave’esque disco with a few collaborators.
I’m also planning some US shows when I visit midyear.

Arthur Russell – How We Walk On The Moon (Youth Return to Base Edit)

Stevie Nicks – Smile At You (Youth’s Going Home Dub)

check out his website for more quality edits.

Teenagersintokyo - Peter Pan (12″ Mix)

Teenagersintokyo –  Peter Pan (Horrors’ Remix)

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?

Fromage Disco: Well we know 86 fairly well through the scene here in Melbourne, having him play at our Fromage parties and also having had a residency at his Sweat night.  He was digging our edits and thankfully found he was digging our original stuff as well and that resulted in him remixing our ‘Vicious’ single for Needwant and with the upcoming release of Acidic Strings.

Winston: Whats the story behind your European releases with Need Want?

Fromage Disco: Bit of a needle in a haystack kinda thing.  Thanks to some dutiful e-mailing by Travis the track fell into the hands of Sean Brosnan, fresh from having mixed the first Future Disco release for Azuli and ready to launch his own label.  He was keen as soon as he heard it and managed to get Runaway on duty for the mix.  Thankfully it all came together well and with a great remix.  It’s been a bit of a labour of love but great to get a record out after having had a few digital releases.  The vinyl thing and the Future Disco affiliation were two big perks with going with a brand new label for us, along with the fact that the next few releases include The Revenge, Ron Basejam, and various other artists we rate highly.

Winston: What’s next for Fromage an album , more singles or psychedelic rock opera like The Who’s Tommy?

Fromage Disco: More singles for the time being, a couple of remixes in the works, and later in the year a live thing.  Not exactly sure on the format but I know we would love to get Jack Byrnes (the Vicious vocalist) back on board if we do.  Upcoming releases are of course Acidic Strings on Lightspeed, with a Pete Herbert remix; followed by Repeight which is coming on Smashbang early next year with a Jamie Stevens remix and a host of talented aussie artists which we’re really keen on promoting. Working on another remix right now too for a great Aussie 3 piece that seem to do pretty well for themselves both here and abroad.  Cant reveal much more than that at this stage but keep an eye out in late Jan/Early Feb 2009 for more news.

Winston: What sort of a studio set up do you guys have? is it mostly computer based or actual synths?

Fromage Disco: My studio is computer based, with a Novation Remote midi controller, running Ableton with various VSTs and plugins.  Trav has a MicroKorg, Korg Kaospad and a MS20 Midi controller in his studio, going a bit of both.  While we would like to delve into hardware we don’t really have the room for it and when you can get such great sounds out of softsynths I don’t think it makes that much difference.

Winston: Your European label compiled the superb Future Disco compilation which recently got released here in Australia by the clubbing behemoth – One Love. Do you reckon it might be an example of a shift in clubbing trends toward the more disco oriented end of the spectrum of house music?

Fromage Disco: I think that’s probably the case, if not yet then certainly within the next year or two.  There’s been a lot more exposure for some of the big disco acts coming to Australia in the last 12 months (How was the hype for Tim Sweeney?) and appearances booked by several for some of the big summer festivals.  At the end of the day that doesn’t really bother us though.  As long as I can keep finding good music in this genre then I will keep playing it, but neither of us have ever played an entire set of just disco or just house.  There’s always something else that’s getting thrown in there.  That’s probably more indicative of our own tastes being so diverse and that will continue to keep djing fresh regardless of what happens in clubbing trends.

Winston: Which seminal disco re-editor/remixer would you most want to remix one of your tracks: Walter Gibbons, Tom Moulton, Shep Pettibone or Larry Levan and why?

Fromage Disco: It’s a tough one for me between Levan and Pettibone.  Levan just because he has so many great remixes and is such a legend of the early disco scene.  Pettibone because he always managed to turn in a good remix, even of a really bad or cheesy track.  There’s at least a couple I can think of that I can’t stand the original but he reworks into magic. Travis would kill to work with Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, those buys are uber talented!

Stocking Stuffer edits

The Supreme’s – High Energy (Fromage Mother Edit)

Silver Convention- Fly Robin Fly (Fromage Red Robin Edit)

Northend – Happy Days (Fromage edit)

I’m always dubious about covers especially if it’s a song as big as The Blue Oyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper. The utter lack of cowbell in both tracks is a bit disconcerting. However, the fact that both the Van She’s version and Holy Ghost’s reinterpretation are very different from the original allows me to enjoy them. The effervescent synths, sequenced drum and vocals of Van She’s version makes it sound like the original made a decade later. Holy Ghost! go in their DFA trademark slo-mo space dub direction to great effect for the remix.

Van She – Don’t Fear (The Reaper)
Van She -  Don’t Fear (The Reaper) [Holy Ghost! Remix]

I have always have had a soft spot for New Young Pony Club. Yeah – they were pretty trendy when they first appeared but they have a sort of Tom Tom Club feel to them that’s really endearing plus they are fucking fun. their first single was released on Tirk which only adds to their appeal. This is the new single from their upcoming album that will be released on their own label The Numbers.

New Young Pony Club – Lost A Girl