Tipping its hat to Detroit and Chicago classics, Medlar’s brand of tastefully jazz-infused house music has pricked the ears of critics and discerning listeners alike. Last month he released his debut album Sleep, an absorbing late-night journey permeated by vintage crackles and soulful, murky soundscapes.

We caught up with the Londoner to discuss the current overabundance of 90s house, his inevitable comparisons to Moodymann, and of course that excellent LP …

First let’s get the obligatory ‘how’d you get into music?’ out of the way…

Medlar: A couple of school friends and I started learning guitars and would jam on a crappy old drum kit, the usual ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ stuff! And then I became interested in making music on computers when I heard some old jungle records – the first electronic/dance music I was really into.

Was jungle your introduction to DJing as well?

Yeah, I was into the broader scene of jungle and drum and bass, and it took me a while to figure out what I liked and didn’t. I actually missed the whole garage thing at the time, maybe living in the countryside had an effect! But I started attempting to make jungle-inspired stuff on a PC and then buying records shortly followed.

It was about 2001 that I first starting playing around on a computer I think.

Garage seems to be going through some ongoing hybrid with house at the moment, some good some bad. But what do you make of the drum n bass scene these days?

Yeah it all escalated quite quickly! Drum and bass has been quietly doing its thing in the background and there’s some really interesting music. It’s funny how when a scene ‘dies’ it’s generally at its most creative – as no-one’s in it to cash in. It seems some of the sound palette of jungle and some pre-2000 drum and bass is working its way into a lot of house tracks at the moment – ‘Think’ breaks all over the place!

It’s interesting how the house scene can only be defined by incorporating elements of different dance music scenes from the past, in varying combinations, rather than any one sound it seems!

Speaking of which, what do you think of producers’ current fascination with 90s house – yourself included?

I don’t think a lot of us expected it to become so trendy. It can be frustrating trying to write music that falls within a UK-dance scene, as it’s such a progressive thing that there’s really high expectations of production and dancefloor appeal. So I initially found house as a sort of break from all of that. I decided to leave the overtly 90s NJ-inspired stuff behind with ‘Can’t Stop’, which is my only original that really falls under that sound.

As with a lot of other people now though; I’m exploring house and disco culture from various eras and so I have lots of inspiration from quite disparate sounds: at the moment I’m really loving early 80s disco funk (or ‘boogie’), electro and Chicago house; as well as a lot of weird early electronica stuff. So a lot of my track ideas are currently based around those sounds.

But I still find garage house tunes that blow me away quite regularly.

Me too, but mostly the old ones. There’s so much 90s stuff I keep unearthing that is great. But producers mimicking the sound I think might have done it to death now…

As you say, it seems to be about incorporating other sounds in house music, not just one.

Yes, definitely. I think for a time it could be excused because the younger generations – mine included – weren’t exposed to the original 90s tracks, and it made a lot of sense to them. But to exclusively use sounds from one era and not really subvert them in any way can get old a bit quick.

You’ve fashioned a fairly distinctive production style. But it’s clearly indebted to the smoky, experimental house music of artists like Moodymann. Do you get fed up of the comparisons?

It’s funny because I’d never listened to any Moodymann before I’d made quite a few tunes. But definitely the rougher approach that a lot of the great US producers seem to possess. I’m trying to move away from samples now, at least for some of the time, but want to keep things a bit odd in terms of sonics and the way sounds come in/out. To be compared to Moodymann I don’t think could ever be annoying!

Haha fair enough. The album has a raw soulful sort of feel. Is it all done on computer or do you use any analogue equipment to create that sound?

I’ve only just started playing with hardware except for a JUNO-60 synth and a RE-201 tape delay which I’ve had for a year or so. They feature on the album a bit, but generally everything I’ve done so far has been made within a computer.

I’m starting to write some stuff which is composed ‘live’, with a weird old Roland MIDI sequencer I recently got, which is proving to be a lot of fun, so we’ll see where that goes.

Tell us a bit about how you approached the album. Were you aiming for a happy or a melancholy disposition? I sense a bit of both.

Nice! Yeah I think you summed it up: melancholy without out being too bleak… so there’s something positive there. I like a lot of music that has a sense of nostalgia about it in some way. It’s nice that that comes across to you.

And it’s notoriously tricky to produce an engaging house album but, tellingly, yours sounds great when listened to in one sitting, from start to finish.

I think I’m at risk of becoming a bit snobby and saying to everyone “you need to listen to the whole thing!” I made the final edit with all of the tracks and skits (and some other samples) in one project so I was moving them all around, overlapping ends and so on, until I found something I felt worked. I knew where some tracks would go as I was writing them, and others I made with the intention of putting them in a certain part of the album (e.g. the middle or the end).

I thought a lot about the structures of DJ sets and the structure of pop songs on a smaller level. It’s very roughly based on a macrocosm of a song structure, but that sounds cleverer than it really is!

It certainly worked – it has a great flow and progression.

Thanks. I would’ve felt guilty expecting people to listen to 10+ tracks, each with intros and outros.

You live in South London. Any favourite haunts?

I haven’t been going out much recently aside from gigs, but there’s a brilliant record shop called Rat Records in Camberwell that I try and visit every week. It’s all second hand, and while generally there’s not much to find in the specific genre sections, they put out a few hundred 12″s and LPs in a big rack every week and I always come back with some cool stuff.

Ok on to a bit of a clichéd question, but where do you stand on the digital versus vinyl debate? People seem to get all hot and bothered about it.

Haha yes, I’m a firm believer of ‘whatever works for you.’ So if you’re really comfortable DJing or producing with a certain software then there’s no issue with it really. I play mainly records but use CDJs for certain things because they’re better at it. It’s the discovery process of vinyl that appeals to me most – not the tactile feeling or whatever – and I frequently end up somewhere where I wish I had more of my record collection digitally available. I’ve tried ripping records but am yet to get it to a quality I’m happy with, but I’d like to digitise a lot of stuff which I can’t buy as WAVs online – you can do some really cool stuff with CDJs. I’ve seen fantastic digital DJs and terrible vinyl DJs, but I think the thing people get fed up with is a combination of dance music culture seeming like a cool thing to do, and DJ technology that’s really easy to learn, so people will become a DJ overnight.

How did you get involved with Wolf Recordings? It seems like a pretty tightknit family.

I did a year-long internship at a label called Mr Bongo, which is based in Brighton. Greymatter helps in the running of the label there and Matt from Wolf was working in the same office a lot of the time. I learned a lot of amazing music during my time there which no doubt turned me onto house music. It was shortly after I left Brighton that I sent them Terrell and it’s all progressed from there. I really look forward to when we can get together (usually at a booking we share). Each time we meet the whole thing’s grown to another level, it’s amazing to think how far the label’s come.

The quality of their releases has always been pretty strong. Do you have a production you are particularly proud of?

Probably still ‘Terrell’, because it was after several years of trying to get records out without any success, then that track was me thinking “fuck this I’m gonna make something just for me, for fun”. Then when it did reasonably well it convinced me of the way to approach music!

A few quick-fire questions now:

Which five records haven’t left your bag lately?

DRESVN – Acido 14

Patrice Rushen – Number One

Hugh Massekela – Don’t Go Lose It Baby

DJ Chunk-A-Bud – Zig Zag

Laszlo Dancehall – Whip What

Any artists we should be watching out for?

Ishmael

What can we expect from Medlar in 2014 and beyond?

There’s a full length video accompaniment to ‘Sleep’ which Letty Fox has spent most of this year working on, it will make its way online sometime soon. We’re hoping to do a small screening in London too. Aside from that I’ve just overhauled my whole way of working and expanded into using some hardware, so I’m having fun with more synthetic sounds at the moment. I’m planning to write some semi-themed EPs to put out over the coming months. There are still some ‘Sleep’ launch parties to go, all of them have been great fun so far.

***

You can catch Medlar headlining Noshun at Soup Kitchen this Friday in Manchester. His remix of James Fox’ ‘Holding On’ is out next month here.

Fresh from his excellent second album Country City Country (read our review here), we caught up with Eddie C for a quick chin-wag about the Canadian’s early crate-digging habits, his modest recording equipment and Berlin’s multifarious music scene.

Hi Eddie, what was it that first introduced you to music?

I was an avid late night listener on the weekends when I was a kid growing up near Toronto. My favourite show was Deadly Headly’s All Night Dance Party on CFNY in Toronto from about 87-91. I still have all my old tapes. I started buying records around the same time.. heard about the shops in adverts on the radio. It was incredibly exciting to find the records.

And what kind of music did the show play?

Everything… radio in the 80s was amazing. All styles of music: hip hop, industrial, acid house… etc. I remember particularly loving anything with drum breaks and scratching especially. I loved the early Coldcut records, Richie Rich, Steinski, Public Enemy, Cash Money, Bomb The Bass… that sort of music.

So hip hop was a big influence. Would you say that’s where your love of sampling comes from?

Of course! I was really into hip hop, but I was also really into dance music from an early age. But the sampling – that definitely came from hip hop. That’s how I later learned how to really dig. First for samples that you would recognize that someone else had used and then for oddities for yourself. Sampling with dance music is a recent endeavour for me!

And there’s a bit of a hip hop feel to your records, upbeat and playful…

Thanks! Yes, certainly hip hop production methodology is a huge inspiration.

Which brings me on to my next question. You recently moved to Berlin. How does your often warm and breezy disco go down in a city associated with the darker shades of techno and house?

I’ve always loved techno. I grew up not too far from Detroit and used to go to parties there with my friends. There were actually really great parties in Ontario too. Seeing it here is amazing too, however I would have loved to have seen Tresor in the early 90s or something. Berlin is full of all kinds of music. It’s of course famous for techno – and it’s what a lot of people are visiting for. Believe me there are some educated diggers here as well. And such great record shops!

So have you found all sorts of parties in your time there?

Yes, it’s really very inspiring! They do like the bass drum though… haha!

Not a fan?

Oh, I’m a fan of the bass drum. Always will be… but it must be used correctly!

I’m also super surprised about small scenes in Poland, Ukraine, Russia. Amazing!

Turning to your second album Country City Country, it sounds like this album is almost autobiographical – sketching a map across your various sounds…

I have lots of unreleased music – much of it hip hop inspired. Originally I wanted to do maybe a 100 press 45 series or something… maybe later. The album is a rough spectrum of the general type of music I’ve been making for the last decade or so.

And who is Mike Roma? I loved the two tracks he featured on.

Great dude, a highly skilled banjo/guitar player. He currently plays with the Electric Timber Co. We knew each other from Banff. We both moved to Victoria about the same time and recorded a few jam sessions at my place there. “Every Life Under The Invisible Hands” I wrote here in Berlin and samples a bit of his guitar work. “Jam on Dallas Rd” is quite close to the actual session from around 2005.

Can you tell us about the equipment used to record CCC? It sounds raw, but authentically raw as opposed to some of the current ‘retro’ house floating about at the moment.

Authentically raw machinery and instruments! I’m pretty cheap. I still use the same $30 microphone. I bought a rainstick once at a hippy yard sale on Saltspring Island. I have a vibraslap and a Boss PC-2. The rest I’ll leave to your imagination!

What are your thoughts on all this retro music around at the moment. Last year, it seemed particularly trendy to sample 1990s stuff. Is it a good thing?

It’s great because if you have the records from then you don’t really have to buy much new music right now. The old stuff still sounds better anyway. Having said that, there is some killer music being made now, but like any time in history you just have to be selective.

Are there any new, up-and-coming producers you’re particularly excited about at the moment?

Crabskull in Winnipeg. Ptaki and Zambon from Poland. Vakula and Pavel Plastikk from Ukraine. Not new but Daniele Baldelli is making some insanely wonderful music lately. Being Borings and Kent from Tokyo. Really enjoying Bird Scarer, L.I.E.S. and Weatherall. Too obvious? There are so many!

Do you have a favourite Eddie C track that you’re most proud of?

‘Space Cadet’ is good. ‘Iceline’ and ‘Aesthetics’ are probably the most ‘me’. But I’ll change my mind tomorrow.

And finally, what do you have in the pipeline production-wise?

Working on a B-Boy album with Hrdvsion that will never come out… haha! Lots of great new stuff this year set up for my 7″ project Red Motorbike. There are a couple of remix 12″s for my album coming out in the next couple of months featuring Marvin & Guy, Tornado Wallace, Rune Lindbaek, Young Marco and KZA.

I have another EP on Crue-L with a fantastic Backwoods remix coming soon. I did some remix work myself for them on Tomoki Kanda’s forthcoming EP. As well as other remixes for Noodleman from Toronto and Volta Cab in Moscow.

Thanks for your time Eddie, much appreciated.

Thank you for the support!

2012 in particular was a big year for Session Victim, with their first full-length album dropping on Delusions of Grandeur – a sample-heavy, colourful exercise in deep house, typically drawing on their obsession with vintage soul, funk and jazz.

Duncan Pelham caught up with the pair for a quick Q&A over email.

How did Session Victim come about?

Matthias Reiling: It started the week after christmas 2006, when Hauke was at my flat and we made our first two tracks together. It was so much fun that we started to meet every week sequencing and listening to records.

So many labels’ quality control diminishes as time goes on. How have you managed to keep Retreat’s output so fresh?

Hauke Freer: Retreat is run by Quarion and me and includes a very small circle of artists like Iron Curtis, Quarion and Session Victim. We only release a record when we are totally convinced that it’s as good as it gets. That also means that releases are rather infrequent, but we aim to improve on that this year.

There’s a certain hip hop aesthetic to your productions. Can you tell us about those influences?

H: We both grew up listening to 90’s hip hop and got sucked into the sampling aesthetics. Digging records in dusty shops is our favourite occupation. Often we start out jamming with a sample that we’ve found from on one of those old records.

What about modern hip hop – is there anything current that’s taken your liking?

H: Not too many things right now – if you’re talking about the US stuff with euro-dance sounds. I really enjoyed the Figub Brazlevic LP from 2012, but that sounds as if it could’ve been made in the 90’s…

It’s great to watch you guys DJ. You bring a real party spirit to the decks. Do you think this is an important part of any DJ’s performance?

M: DJs should aim to play their best records in the best order and present that in their own best possible way, but they should first of all feel it. If they don’t, why should a crowd? It’s sometimes easier for us because there’s two of us. We try to try to get each other in the zone, because that way we DJ much better and enjoy it more.

I sense your tracks are heavily influenced by your experiences behind the decks? There’s a party spirit that shines through your productions – is this something you are always conscience of ?

M: No, definitely not always. Crafting a one-loop DJ tool can be as exciting as writing and arranging a song. If we try to plan what to do too much, it doesn’t work out that well. The secret is to preserve a certain naivety combined with enthusiasm.

You are known as avid crate diggers. Do you ever get protective about those gems you unearth?

M: Sometimes, but not really, you know. Plus no one stumbles into real gems that often, and that’s a necessary part of the magic.

H: I know if I find a real gem I am often a little reluctant to let it go.. haha!

You spend a lot of time in record stores and no doubt have a burgeoning collection. What do you think lies ahead for vinyl? There’s been a revival lately for sure, but will it last in say 20 years time?

M: Our collections aren’t that impressive yet, but we keep building… Right now, especially the younger DJs we meet tend to play all vinyl. Many people look at laptops all day, at work, while shopping – some of them don’t want to watch a dude with a Macbook when they go out to dance. If you’re 16, how many of your classmates have some sort of Traktor program at home? It feels random, and I don’t think that’s a revival issue.

I hear you have day jobs?

M: Yes, and it’s a good feeling to have them. The problem is that we have reached a point where it’s really hard to fit it all into seven days a week.

Have you got a favourite release of yours? And can you tell us what you like about it?

H: One of my favourite Session Victim tracks is ‘Time To Let You Down’. When I listen to it, it doesn’t feel like I was involved in making it. It’s like the song is detached from us and on its own now. I remember the time when we were jamming on this after a Delusions of Grandeur label night in Hamburg on a late Sunday afternoon. Suddenly the loops just came together and it was pure magic. These moments are the reason we are doing all this, you get addicted to it, but it gets harder to achieve this after every track…

Can you tell us a bit about your live set?

M: Well, we play with a computer, drum machine and bass. We try to be as live as we can with that setup; to be able to build up songs in different ways and react to each other, which can lead to quite chaotic situations sometimes, but we have great, thrilling moments with crowds when we’re playing – and that makes it all worth it.

Finally, what’s next in way of release?

H: We will contribute a track to an EP by our friends from Wolf Music and you can expect 12”s on Delusions of Grandeur and Retreat as well as some remixes.

The young Swede continued to confound expectations with a slew of distinctively nonconformist releases. His edit of Steve Reich’s ‘Nagoya Marimba’ saw him cut a dark bassline under Reich’s chirpy marimba melodies. He also released a 90’s throwback EP on Local Talk in late 2012 to much acclaim.

Tom Rae caught up with the up-and-coming house producer to discuss UK garage influences, the often hostile reactions to his Mariah Carey edit and why digital DJing isn’t such a bad thing after all…

Tom Rae: Hi HNNY, thanks for taking the time out to talk to us. I wanted to start by asking about the sort of music you grew up on?

HNNY: Well I started making and listening to music a lot around the age of 12, so I started kind of early. Then I was really into hip-hop and then a few years later started listening to electronica, people like Four Tet and Manitoba – who is now Caribou and Daphni.

Those two in particular both focus on a certain ambient, atmospheric sound….

Yeah I suppose I didn’t really think about dance music in that way. I didn’t start going to clubs until I was 13 or 14, so I’d listen to electronica just for enjoyment at home, a lot of WARP records and stuff like that, but I didn’t know anything about genres. I mean, when I listen to some of those tracks now I hear 4×4 and house, but back then I’d just think ‘this is cool, this is funky’ and I liked it.

So on the hip hop side of things, were you listening to the US output or stuff coming out of Scandinavia?

There were actually a few Swedish bands, I think that was kind of the start, a few Swedish rappers .From that I moved on to American stuff, mostly the ‘nice’ hip hop: De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest, Pharcyde… I wasn’t into ‘gangster rap’. I liked the smooth, nice music – but all sorts of genres.

Are there any old haunts you hung around back then?

Yeah one of the guys who owns Studio Barnhaus – the label I release on – was a manager at a club and it had this really cool name ‘Spy Bar’. He’d play techno and electro – that was about seven years ago. It was a little harder than it is now – but they still play house music.

I recently bought the 10” on Studio Barnhaus with your Maria Carey edit and it gets some mixed reviews, I love it but some people hate it…

Yeah that’s the whole thing! Everywhere I play it, there’s always someone who goes mad or just leaves… they ask whether I’m gay for playing it out … (laughs)… but you know it’s just nice that people have an opinion on it, that’s a good thing.

Was that release meant for club play or just a bit of fun?

It was the first one I did as HNNY so I just did the song very quickly, it was just an idea. I saw the video on MTV and heard that phrase and I don’t know why, but I just wanted to try to do something with it. I just played it myself for about a year – I’d either start or end my sets with it. And then somehow Kornel Kovacs [the Barnhaus owner] found it. I didn’t know him at the time, but he played it in almost every DJ set and one day my friends heard him playing it out and told Kornel: “that’s our friend HNNY’s song!” He said he’d been playing it for a good six months! He later emailed me and said: “I’ve played this so much, do you want to release it on vinyl?” So I was like “yeah!”

Just vinyl?

I think it’s mainly because of the sample, you know… plus they have this 10” coloured vinyl series so it worked well with that.

Do you shop for many records?

Well, when I DJ I only play CDs, so I buy records from time to time but I don’t buy dance music. I only buy other types of music on vinyl, mostly for some kind of sampling process. I just don’t really buy new 12”s.
We’ve seen a rise in vinyl sales in the scene over the past few years. With Local Talk are you releasing on both vinyl and digital?

Yeah with Local Talk we release on both, but at least for me there’s the whole copyright on vinyl: it’s easier for labels to see what goes on and what slips through the cracks.

Moving onto DJing, you’ve had a lot of bookings lately. In terms of preparing for a gig do you go with a preceded idea of what you want to do or…

I find new music of course but I don’t ever have anything planned. Five minutes before the set I’ll have a think about which song I’m going to open with, then I just go from there. If you play in a new city, you try a few different songs and gauge the reaction. I have friends who just bring two CDs and it’s all thought out, but for me it’s more fun to search through my case and stumble across something and think ‘I’ve got to play this!’

Do you think availability and easy access to music these days degrades the value of music?

From the DJ perspective I think it’s great to be able to have a huge array of music, plus you can now be sent tracks via email, or do small edits of songs for DJing purposes – but of course none of that can be done with vinyl. It makes things easier. But at the same time, there isn’t the magic that came with buying music 10 years ago – that’s sad – you know, you’d buy an album, go home, put it on and just look through the booklet and listen. That doesn’t happen a lot anymore – I think it has a lot to do with the easiness and the quantity – you want to listen to 500 songs rather than just one album.

When it comes to your own productions I can hear a lot of 90s UK garage influences. Do you draw any inspiration from any artists or DJs from that era?

I try not to be influenced by anything in particular when I produce. So I try to listen to something entirely different. If I put on a house mix and then start making music, I fear that my track will sound just like whatever I was just listening to.

I think a lot of my sounds come from stuff I listened to years ago… it just sits in the back of your head, you know? I listened to a lot of UK 2-step seven or eight years ago: Artful Dodger and all those smooth, RnB influenced artists. And I’m really inspired by Chicago house music as well as all the UK stuff.

Are you set to release on Local Talk again soon?

Yeah in a couple of weeks there’ll be a new track and a B-side – a DirtyTwo remix of ‘For The Very First Time’.

Your Steve Reich edit is really something. People who listen to your music may not know who Steve Reich is but…

He’s really one of my greatest idols… I saw him live once and I actually cried…

So I wanted to ask you, do you know the BBC?

Yeah sure.

Well they have  show called Desert Island Discs: people choose the records they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Which three would you take?

Well I’d take a few different genres. A Bob Dylan album, definitely. Um, a Steve Reich box set – or is that cheating? And the Four Tet album ‘There Is Love In You’.

Some good choices. And when you’re DJing, if more people are heading for the door what record would you pull out of the bag to get people involved?

Well two records sort of stand out for me at the moment:

Genius of Time – Tuffa Trummor Med Synt

Nick Nikolov – Come Down

‘Come Down’ is a great house track that was released on Liebe Detail a German techno label and if you play it at the right time it just does the trick.

I heard you’re also releasing on Let’s Play House, when is that happening?

It’s all got to be finished… a few remixes we’re waiting on, so hopefully this summer. And then I’ve also got a track I played on the Beats in Space radio show called ‘Boy’ and that’s going to be out as a white label pretty soon.

Well thanks very much for your time, for any people wanting to catch you I know you’re playing your first UK gig next week at the Dance Tunnel?

Yeah it should be good fun!

Have a listen to HNNY’s recent Beats In Space mix here.

Pelski: What was it that first got you into electronic music? Any early experiences that stand out?

Gold Panda has been inadvertently labeled as the glo-fi sunshine sound of our yet to be ephemeral summer. However, as Derwin explains, much of his music has been misconstrued by the vanguard of self assuming music critics like myself. I was lucky enough to conduct an exclusive interview with Derwin just before his gig with ‘Caribou’. I met a modest and unassuming musician, bemused by his popularity…

Note: this is an interview from the Pelski archive carried out by Charles Darkly and was recorded on 22nd August 2010

Darkly: How do you describe the genre co-ordinates in your music?

 Gold Panda: I am not sure what genre I’m supposed to be in. I’ve been making tunes since I was about 15, and some have described it as Post-Dubstep in Japan, and Glo-Fi was another, due to the shimmery effects. Others have made comparisons with Washed Out and Neon Indian, but I don’t know much about those guys. I was really into hip hop when I was younger, so I guess that’s had an influence.

How do you feel about the left-field hip-hop and dubstep like Hudson Mohawke and James Blake for instance? Or do you display interest in other areas of electronica?

Yeah what I’ve heard I liked, definitely. However I’ve been listening to a lot of minimal techno recently, a load of bleepy stuff. Theirs a label called ‘Raster-Noton’ in Germany and another in the States called 12k run by ‘Taylor Deupree’ that I’ve been listening to. They have these really hi-fi sounds that I really like, they capture a lot of the glitch vibes that were around in the 90’s.

I noticed there was slight undercurrent of minimalist tendencies in some of your songs. For instance, the drum patterns in ‘Police’ have quite a sharp techno vibe. Would you ever consider branching out into minimal techno?

Yeah I could do, I wasn’t really into techno when I was younger. However at one point when was living in Japan I was living with a mate who was a DJ, and she used to play a lot of minimal stuff, and I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Then I started to get more into it, subconsciously I guess. The sounds are so clean, so yeah I guess it’s a possibility, I’ve always been interested in minimal.

Your music was once described by the BBC as – ‘…an instrumental soundtrack to half remembered, dreamy summers days…’ Now it seems that people often attach a random summer’s day to music that they consider fitting to a bucolic context. However, we all know the imagery that one attaches to music can be quite far from the emotional incarnation from which it was made. For instance, I was listening to ‘You’ today, could you reveal any of the emotive aspects behind this track?

I often attach the emotive content afterwards…but it’s weird what the BBC say about a ‘dreamy summer’s day’, because I fucking hate sun, and I generally hate happy stuff. So I always try and make depressing music, but it turns out happy. My Japanese friend pointed out that maybe I’m trying to be happy through my music, hence my music turns out that way. It’s funny because I’m always trying to make something sad that soundtracks how I feel about life in general, and maybe a lot of it just turns out happy, when I really want it to have a sense of loss in there and a feeling of loneliness.

Yeah I had a feeling that the quote from the BBC might have misrepresented you to a certain extent…

Yeah I think its very easy to write that, most people probably don’t even listen to the music, and just copy and paste what the BBC said into another description elsewhere, which can be quite annoying. And yeah, ‘…the half remembered summer days…’, I don’t really have any that i can really think of. I think my stuff is more representative of a wintery or autumnal climate. I guess I’m just not too great with heat really, it just gets too hot.

I dunno really, I’m 29 now and I got a bit depressed when i was twenty and it lasted for the last 8 years. I was thinking…I’m rubbish, I’m shit, i’m a loser – what the fuck am i doing with my life? But I had a mate doing Techno or just music in general really, and then he passed away, and he was always telling me to do music. So when he died I just thought I should do it. I wasn’t really enjoying anything else I was doing, and I didn’t really have a job I was interested in, and my only other passion was Japanese.

Do you speak Japanese fluently?

I’m supposed to, I’m on the highest level, so I’m gonna try and knuckle down and take my final test. When I completed the course and I graduated, I thought I’d be able to get a job working in a bank of something. So I went to all the interviews and whatever, and then I realised I’m not interested in a city job, and I couldn’t really find anything I wanted to do with it.

But why sell your soul to the 9 to 5 anyway when you could do something awesome like this…

Well yeah it’s turned out that way, but I didn’t see it coming at the time though, I had no idea it was all going to go so well. I don’t know how it came about to work so well, I mean I just did a couple of remixes for mates, and then ‘Wichita Records’ asked me to remix ‘Bloc Party’.

I think it’s quite self explanatory – your music is innovative and original it’s own right, and people are always looking for something new.

Cheers, but the thing is i don’t hear that, I just hear rubbish. After I’ve made it I just think God what is this!

Well I guess that’s what is just so intriguing about your music, it’s a mish-mash of different sentiments, genre and various ideologies within music. I mean, everyone is taking a pure concept and throwing everything into the mix these days, people often screw it up, and you’ve managed to create your own sound without sounding like everyone else whilst doing it. For instance, one track that sticks out in my mind is ‘Triangle Cloud’, can you tell me a bit about that?

As for ‘Triangle Cloud’, it’s just a loop really, and I think it repeats three times. So I just got a drum beat, slowed it down…and I’ve got this Yamaha organ that i got for 99p, it’s absolutely massive looks like a Hammond organ, with two levels and pedals and everything. Then I just played a melody over the top, I mean I can’t play anything but I just made it up and that was the melody. So yeah, it’s just a loop three times, with a sample of someone saying ‘Alright’, and that’s it!

You make it all sound very simple, which I’m sure it is not the case.

Well I think it took about ten minutes to make. If I make a track over a couple of weeks I end up hating it, so it has to be done quick and a lot of it is just mistakes.

So is the average track made in a day or something?

Yeah I’d say two days max I think. Anymore than that then it just ends up somewhere in my computer and no-one ever hears it.

You must have a back catalogue of a ridiculous amount of tunes then?

Uh yeah I guess so…

How many would you say roughly?

Somewhere around a thousand.

(Mild exasperated gasps made by me)

Do you have any plans for some of the back catalogue? Do you ever dig stuff out the archive again?

Sometimes I go back and listen to tunes again, and think to myself that ‘this might be good’. But the thing with that is…that those tracks had their time and it didn’t work out, and I don’t really want to keep going back to try and make it work. I think that if a track hasn’t worked, then it just hasn’t worked, and then it becomes rendered on the hard-drive and then you might listen to it now and again and think to yourself ‘That was alright’. And then you don’t bother finishing it, or whatever…

You played with ‘Caribou’ a while back, who must have been great to support. I read somewhere that he uses mathematical theories to correlate patterns within his composition, then applies them to his song writing. Which is an interesting approach to say the least…

I noticed the sounds of the Orient are very apparent in some of your music. Are there any particular aspects of Japanese lifestyle that have influenced you?

Well when i was in Tokyo, and Tokyo is really busy -I mean there’s so many people and it’s really quite a mental place. But I think it’s really easy to feel lonely there. I had this overwhelming sense of loneliness which was probably due to being a foreigner. You never really become accepted into the culture, due to always sticking out like a sore thumb, no matter how well you speak Japanese. And as much as their culture is becoming more and more Westernized, I just got this feeling of loneliness, and i get it in London too when I’ve lived there. You just feel really lonely, I mean you’ve got your friends around you and a million things to do, but there’s still this underlying sense of solitude. I mean maybe that’s just me being a bit of a nutter. When I stay at my family’s house in the countryside, I don’t feel that at all, it’s a different sort of loneliness, like being secluded and cut off, but it’s not like the loneliness you can feel in a city. So yeah I guess I work with those kind of emotions when I make a track, where I’ll use different vinyl to represent how I’m feeling. So i guess the emotions just kind of get lost in the tracks, but if you stripped a track like ‘You’ down to it’s basic parts, there would be some sounds in there that would be really quite melancholy.

A degree of your music revolves around sampling, which you then arrange into your ‘Gold Panda’ format. This removes you from the instrumentalist approach, helping you avoid standardised computer settings in music production software, allowing you to create a rare and personalised sample bank. So where do you go to sample your sounds? And how does it become to be arranged in a ‘Gold Panda’ fashion?

I can’t think of anything too weird…but I wouldn’t say my music was arranged by the way. I write most of it on an MPC Sampler, where i write all my sequences. I really hate arranging stuff, I just can’t be bothered to do it. So normally I’ll just press record and play through the track in different orders, so it’ll normally just be done in one take, and then I move onto the next sequence and then the next one until I think it sounds right. Then when I’ve got a vaguely basic structure I just throw other sounds in. So I don’t sit around thinking about arrangements, I just make loads of sequences, then do it again, put them in a different order and then think ‘That’ll do - but I don’t like that bit.’ If I can’t be bothered to re-record it, I’ll just edit that bit out, and put something else in there. That’s how it works really.

With sampling, I’ve got loads of old records, loads of old tapes with crap that I recorded when I was younger – like cars going past, or my Dad talking. Sometimes i use the sounds of things going wrong which sounds weird. My organ is really fucked up for instance, and when you turn it off and on it crackles. So I just record that, turn it up and make drum sounds out of it. Just stuff like that, lots of mistakes and bits of random thought, I haven’t got the concentration to be too meticulous. I mean my live set is a total mess, but I don’t really know how to do it any another way because I don’t really have another way to do it. I guess I could just turn on a laptop and press play, but I can’t really think of another way of making it less messy. Even if I practice I’ll never get any better, so fuck it, I just do it. I’d be quite happy to do an improvised noise set for half an hour to be honest, I like abrasive sounds with jarring noises, the kind of thing that makes people think ‘I wish he’d stop doing that!’

Any Gold panda future plans you can let us know about?

There is an album, which ‘You’ is on, but I’ve kind of taken it apart, because I wanted to put some other tracks in there instead, so I think there’s gonna be an e.p first and then an album. Because I want the album to be a body of work, rather than just a collection of tracks, or just a load of radio singles. I want it to be a piece of work from start to finish, like a novel or a short story or something. I would like if you could hear a certain theme or sound throughout it. So that’s how I want my album to be – I’ve got no reason to rush it, I’m not signed to a label or anything. I’ve got no-one telling me what to do, I’ve got management but they’re pretty cool with everything and just give me guidance. So that’s just how it is really, it’s more for me than anyone else. I just want to be happy with it, and have it in a vinyl in a really nice sleeve. Then I’m gonna write another one.

And when can we expect the album to drop?

Probably after summer, with an e.p soon. There’s a twelve inch coming out on ‘Ghostly International’ which is just ‘You’ with two other tracks, it’s for the States mainly, but it’ll probably be available over here. And the ‘You’ 7 inch was released on May 10th, and the mp3’s are already out.

Awesome, and lastly…this is a bit of a random one. Whilst I was smoking some inter-web fag ends, I read an alleged rumour that you worked in a sex shop at some point. I think I’ve only ever been able to venture into a sex shop for a few minutes, being the prude that I am. But I was interested to hear about the experience – any weird encounters?

Ha! I got quite used to all of it really…but I guess it’s just stuff like when people come in and buy stuff they’re gonna put up their arse, that’s pretty weird I guess! And then old people inviting you to an orgie and stuff like that. Some guys would just come in and try on woman’s shoes! They would ask for size 12 stilettos, which we used to stock – and they’d come in and try them on standing at the back of the shop saying – ‘Oh Yeah!’ Get their fix, take them off again and walk out! You would have to be really careful to not let people get too mad in there – but all in all it was a pretty normal thing, with people trying to have sex and masturbating on a daily basis! But what could you do? I needed a job, I couldn’t do anything else and all the people who worked there were really nice.

I guess it was a quick veneer into the sexual undercurrent of Britain – why the hell not? I’m sure you must have found some inspiration to make a track out of there somewhere.

Yeah I guess so – pornos and sex feature in a lot of peoples music. And as a job the hours were okay, it wasn’t hard or difficult…ah yes, so many jokes!

And just out of interest, when you leave a joint…do you eat, shoot and leave?

Ah the Classics!

I’ll leave you with one of my favourites….

Interview by Charles Darkly

He’s the Big Mac of the low end, and he’s thriving on a healthy dose of worldwide dance-floors. His ‘Entrance Song’ topped the charts this summer, and he’s just unleashed his new ep on Dirtybird. It’s looking good for the man that Eats Everything. We caught up with the man of the moment for a little supersize chat… 

Note: this is an interview from the Pelski archive carried out by Charles Darkly on 2nd November 2011

Darkly: Your basslines pack some weighty rump. Your king sized marketing makes msg feel bloated. You go by the names of Tubs, Fats and Chubtop. Would it be reasonable to say your a man of consumption?

Eats Everything: It would be more than reasonable to say that. It would be rude not to in fact.

This year has signified a lot of things for Eats Everything. What’s changed the most? Apart from your socks. 

My hair has changed, I have more of an gown up haircut than I used to have, which is nice… I also have loads of gigs, which is really nice! I’ve also recently got engaged so it’s definitely been a year of transition.

M6 traffic jams are a perfect excuse for tuning into Tong’s show on Radio 1. Once locked in, your knowingly expecting that wonderful amalgamation of Genius-Ditz track selections from Tongey himself. But every now and then, Tong pulls out an “Essential Tune” which can only be described as head tilting-ly destructive. Such a moment of clarity was Tong announcing your forthcoming Dirtybird release ‘The Size’ as Essential Tune of the week. This must have been a full circle moment for you. Tell us a bit about the release. 

The release was out today on the 26th October and I’m hoping it will be my biggest to date. It is a two track EP, ‘The Size’ and ‘Whatever Whatever’, both very different from each other and from a lot of stuff that is around at the moment. Both tracks again somehow seem to have that crossover appeal throughout the “Bass Music” guys and “Underground House” guys like my track Entrance Song. I don’t set out for my records to have this appeal, it just seems to turn out that way!

How does it feel to be a fully fledged hatchling of the Dirtybird community now? 

It actually feels really good to be a part of it as they are great, great people. They are all so down to earth and friendly and have all given me a lot of advice encouragement etc. They are also a lot of fun all of them and like to party as well as make great music which is the perfect ethos within this industry I think.

You’ve sited 90’s house as a major inspiration to your music. Many 90’s house records were heavily laden with samples, and in a recent Future Music interview with Rhythm Masters maestro Steve Mac, he sited vinyl sampling as a truly ‘fun way of making records’. How does sampling play a part in your production process? 

I just want to say firstly that Steve Mac/Rhythm Masters and MK are the reason I got into house music in the first place, he/they are the ultimate producers who have delivered for over 20 years, were setting the standard then and still are now. With regard to sampling, my tracks are all heavily sample laden and most of the hooks in my tracks come from a sample to be honest. I don’t think electronic dance music would a). exist without sampling and b). be as appealing or anywhere near as exciting if it weren’t for sampling.

Your native Bristol receives a lot of worthy attention. The recent ‘Real Scenes: Bristol’ documentary on Resident Advisor, really charted the uncompromising sounds of the city. Do you seek a lot of inspiration from local producers?

Yes and no. I don’t think that musically I have been inspired per se by any artists from Bristol but I massively respect what each and every Bristol artist has done for the city’s musical culture. There has been A LOT of great, great music come out of Bristol and is really amazing and a huge honour that I am now considered to be one of the artists that is pushing this particular Bristol renaissance.

Are you considering any collabs with any of the local talent? 

Me and Matt (Julio) Bashmore are talking about it, it’s just a case of finding the time. I have collabs in the pipeline with a lot of the other Bristol House Music artists in the offing at present, the likes of Waif & Strays, Lukas, Christophe, Rio Prest, Bowski etc. In a couple of years there will be 10 times the amount of house music that there is currently coming from this city I think.

Pepper makes people hot tempered, chamomile makes them bitter, Vinegar makes them sour, Barley sugar makes one sweet tempered.

What food puts you in a certain mood?

Most food makes me happy!!!!! It’s only parsley that really f*cks me off! As soon as I taste it that’s it, my meal is ruined. It always sneaks into the most un-parsley like meal and ruins everything. I like Pizza too. A lot.

Biggest tune in your record bag right now? 

Thats a toughy, and I hate to do this as its shameful but is probably my secret rework of Adam F – Circles, it kills it every time without fail. Also Murk’s new one, ‘Amame’ which I think has just been signed to Defected of all places, which is also pretty massive but for different reasons.

Besides food and bass – what’s Eats Everything’s other hobby? 

I like football, partying and long distance running. That last one is a lie.

 A track that changed the way you heard music. It can’t be a dance track though. 

 Paul Simon – Graceland is a track that I remember as a kid really vividly. It sticks in my mind and every time I hear it I can remember listening to it as kid.

Who’s more hungry? The Hungry Hippos or Ronald McDonald?

I would go for the Hippo’s purely because Ronald McDonald is a mere proprietor/mascot/face of/vendor of a rather shit food products, whereas the Hippo’s job is to eat and eat. That’s it. Ron is there to look pretty and balance the books.

Haha. If you wanna see Ronald McDonald balancing the books while duelling the Michelin Man, then check the link here. 

Thanks for your time Dan, it’s been a pleasure. 

Eats Everything’s ‘The Size EP’ is out now on Dirtybird.