James Holden - Coffee and cigarettes - "In the Mix" Exclusive Interview (15.07.2010)

It’s a little over a decade since James Holden first catapulted himself into the collective consciousness with his debut, Horizons, which was released whilst he was still in his teens. In those short years, he has been at the forefront of several genres (although perhaps not by design), has championed DIY music production methods that are now commonplace, created the label that has brought us Nathan Fake, The MFA, Ricardo Tobar and Luke Abbott, remixed a who’s who of producers, bands and even pop stars, and is finally returning to Australia after what seems like an age. His third mix CD, for the left-of-centre DJ Kicks series, came out a few weeks ago and represents another departure for a DJ and producer who is not afraid of evolving his music. We caught up with him on the eve of his DJ Kicks tour to ask him where the bloody hell he’s been…


- I gather you have to do quite a few interviews?

Yeah they’ve been broken over two days. It made it a bit easier than doing 6 in a row and getting progressively grumpier.

- The guys said you were in a really good mood yesterday, but it must get a bit boring answering the same questions over and over again.

Yeah exactly! It wasn’t too bad – I’m grumpy anyway.

- Are you in a better mood today?

Yeah I think I am, I’ve had a cigarette and a nice coffee so yeah, better.

- So how is the tour going?

It’s alright, it’s been quite hard work. I don’t normally work that hard in terms of touring. It gets in the way of everything else, so we’ll all be happy when it’s over. I’ve switched to Traktor for it because that’s what I used on the CD, so it was quite a traumatic couple of weeks getting used to it. Now I’m into that I’m actually really enjoying it.

- I heard someone say that your DJ setup has something that looks like a circuit bent ricotta, is that some sort of magic piece of kit you’ve got to help control Traktor?

Yeah it’s a controller that me and my friends have been developing for years now, it’s finally nearly finished and I’ve got the test version. It doesn’t have the buttons, so I can’t have the lid on – I just have to have to have the lid off and jam the microswitches. It’s going to be 3 or 4 months before we get the buttons… I haven’t had an electric shock or anything yet so it’s going alright.

- Have you been pleased with how the DJ Kicks CD has been received?

To be honest I try to avoid reading too much of anyone’s opinion. I think it’s really bad for you to do that. I read a couple of reviews that seemed to get it so that was quite nice.

- Pitchfork seemed to be happy with it!

Yeah the Pitchfork one was nice and the first comment on Amazon was pretty good so I’m happy about that.

- It’s quite a different mix, and it occurred to me today that it the thing it reminded me of was almost a Steve Reich composition in the way it flows and has all those subtle shifts…

I see what you mean. That’s nice… I get what you mean with the dynamic and the shifts. I love the way he only changes one note in an arpeggio and it’s like suddenly a whole different thing, a whole different place you’re in or something. But I’m not that good!

- What inspired the mix, and how did you go about putting it together?

I sort of felt like it was the right time to do one, because the scene is quite interesting at the moment, although I haven’t taken a huge number of brand new records. A lot of good music that people are making is music by people who have sort of grown up with dance music in the background, and grown up with Warp and everything, but they’re not really part of the dance music scene. They’re just making music and you happen to be able to dance to it rather than it being the stock clichés of traditional dance. Especially in England at the moment, it’s all coming together, which is quite nice, so it’s super exciting at the moment. I thought I’d just draw a line through it to sort of make this point that it’s music for dancing to.

- It kinda felt a bit stale 3 years ago, Australia is a bit different too so I don’t know how you’ll find it here…

(laughs) It’s different in Europe as well, I don’t think that the dubstep thing translated particularly well to all of Europe at all. The Germans have their own sort of variant of it. But even the straight dubstep here is not really for me, but the edge of stuff, people all over Europe seem to be excited about Caribou and Four Tet.

- Yeah the Four Tet album was really good, I like that one…

Yeah and the Caribou one as well

- I’ve not heard that one yet…

Go shopping, it’s really good, really good (laughs). I know what you mean about when England got stale and everyone was just looking towards Germany… and moving there.

- People are still obsessed with Berlin here so maybe we’re still going through that phase.

It must be hard being such a long way away… even with the internet. So I’m happy that I’m coming – I’ve left it too long a little bit.

- Has anything been keeping you away?

I just don’t like flying very much or spending time away from home, so that means Australia is quite hard to visit.

- You could get a boat…

Yeah maybe I could put my studio on a boat, rent a little cabin on a freighter or something

- You’d be pretty much free of any distractions!

Yeah – I might go a bit mental tho, being locked in a cabin. I heard Eric Prydz does that, like he’s actually scared of flying so he takes three day boat journeys instead.

- Is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to about coming over to Australia?

I haven’t really thought about it actually, I haven’t made any plans for my trip. I’m so far behind – we’re going to America next week, this weekend, and I haven’t even planned that yet and Gemma and I are meant to take a holiday while we’re over there. I haven’t really thought that far ahead.

- It doesn’t look like you’re here for that long

Is it the weekend, I’m not even sure? It’s embarrassing not to know, it’s embarrassing – my life is like look at tomorrow’s Google calendar and don’t look too far in advance because it’s intimidating.

- I can imagine – how long has the tour been?

It started at the end of May so I’m halfway. I’ve been trying to tick off all my favourite places to go, all the places that are awesome. It’s quite good, because you sort of make a list of your favourite clubs and see which ones you can play.

- Border Community is 7 this year I think, how do you view what you’ve achieved with the label?

I don’t really think about what we’ve achieved. It’s nice seeing where the artists have got to, that’s the thing that makes us happy, that we see that we put some people on the road to where they are now, it’s really nice, but you feel more proud of them than of yourself.

It’s been like a bit of a trip somehow running the label, and you see how your position changes, how we started as outsiders and then sort of got accepted and now I think we’re back to being outsiders again and actually I feel happier as an outsider. Yeah definitely actually! Just to have something to fight against is more inspiring I think. The point where people started ripping off our old records in a really tasteless crass manner – that sort of gave us the impetus to move forward I think. I think we would have moved forward anyway but it definitely prompted me to work really hard at finding a new way of making, like the same music that I’m doing now – it’s still hypnotic and melodic and whatever – but to put more distance between the things I hate and myself.

I’m quite happy, it was quite a hard couple of years – I was just sort of working in the studio trying things and trying to work out how to combine the things I’d recently discovered that I love, like the Kraut thing and whatever, and sort of trying to make it work, sort of working out a sound. It’s the hardest bit of being a producer I think, and it’s why I don’t have very much respect for most of dance music because no one’s worked out their own sound, they’ve just dialled up the clichés of what was already worked out over 15, 20 years of evolution. And the people I really respect, and quite a lot of the artists on BC, have just sort of sat down and worked at it and they’ve got to their own unique thing, and I’ve sort of had to do that again over the last couple of years – that’s why I haven’t really done any records for a while. But I feel like Triangle Folds and the remix I just did for Caribou, the Radiohead remix as well, and the Mogwai one, that’s like the start, like I’ve found my feet again. The new stuff’s got an identity and it knows where it’s going and I’m quite optimistic about the future – it’s good. Got things that we hate, got things that are really inspiring and sort of got a direction again.

This year’s records that we’ve got to release, like the Avus, which is the next one, and Margot probably just after that, and Luke Abbott’s album – they’re all quite big records but also quite big statements as well. I was playing the b-side of the Avus one, and it’s completely unique, it takes something from early 80s minimal synths, a bit of Kraut and a bit of early techno and sort of makes some new hybrid sound of his own. It’s amazing, I’m really impressed with how Scott’s come on with that stuff.

- We’ll look forward to hearing that!

It shouldn’t be long – it got delayed, we’ve had all sorts of nightmares with artwork and other delays, and it went on and on. It’s been what, seven months since we did a release, but I don’t think it’s important really.

- Well if you can keep your label profile going without thinking that you have to release every two weeks then I guess you’re likely to get a better quality product…

Yeah, I mean we don’t have any financial pressure to release records because my DJing is our rent, so it means the label can release when it’s ready, which I think is better than the label as a self-sustaining business. It’s quite hard for a label that wants to release interesting music to be a self-sustaining business nowadays, that’s sad but I have to deal with it.



http://www.inthemix.com.au/features/47384/James_Holden_Coffee_and_cigarettes