Music > Interviews

Interview with DJ Format

10/09/13

DJ Format continues to hold the torch for funk-fuelled Hip Hop in an age of processed beats. Outline spoke to him ahead of his up coming gig at Open about being a bus driver for Jurassic 5, the annoyance of Record Store Day and new material.

So you’re coming to Norwich Open on the 29th September, supporting Masta Ace and Marco Polo. You’ve done a remix of one of Masta Ace’s songs, but never collaborated with him. How did you first meet?Actually it’s funny because my friends, Aquasky, did the remix and I seem to have been credited with it. I didn’t do the remix, I just did the scratches on it. But I’ve played on the same bill as Masta Ace first of all at Fresh 98, which was a Hip Hop event in London in 1998 - that’s when I first met him. Then in Brighton a couple years later, that’s when I actually got the 7” that I did the scratches on, for said remix and got him to sign it. I also met him whilst I was on tour in Australia and our paths crossed over there, so a couple of times now. For me he is an extremely important figure in the history of Hip Hop, he has made the transition from the golden era into a current artist in 2013. He is one of the rare artists to bridge that gap and maintain a good career.

You’ve played all over the world, but keep returning to Norwich for various different events. What makes you keep coming back?I’ll be honest, it’s two things: first and foremost, it’s wherever I’m invited to play gigs. But I do have a real soft spot and affection for Norwich; I’ve got some really good friends there. It’s a place I would come to a lot more frequently if it weren’t for the horrendous transport links; it’s a pain getting in and out of Norwich. But like I said, I’ve got some really good friends there and any excuse to come to Norwich, I’m back in an instant.

Your live shows are a mixture of DJing, and visuals. Do you have any input in to what goes on visually?Well, I’ve only ever really had visuals when doing the show as thesimonsound and we put together the visuals ourselves, almost painstakingly so. We put together a set that combined my old material and my new material as well as the stuff me and Simon had been making which was quite space themed, so a lot of the visuals were mixing the space stuff with old B-Boy footage of people break dancing and old Hip Hop stuff. And we literally synchronised it all to the music that we were then going to be performing. But that’s not something I’m doing now, that was only for that specific tour that I did.

Since your debut album Music For The Mature B Boy in 2003, you’ve never really stopped doing albums, mixes and also your side project thesimonsound. Are you a type of person who constantly has to be doing something?As long as I’m inspired, I just aim to keep working and making more music whilst I’ve got that inspiration. There was a period after my second album at the end of 2005 and beginning of 2006, where I lost my direction a little bit; I didn’t want to make the same old Hip Hop with Abdominal and D-Sisive, we’d toured together a lot and obviously we were really happy with the music we’d made together, and had a lot of fun touring, but I didn’t want to just repeat that. I wanted a change of direction, but I wasn’t sure what, so that was around the period I did the Fabric Live mix, and that enabled me to reach a lot more people that could hear “oh right, he’s not just a Hip Hop DJ, he plays all this Soul and Funk” and it just sort of opened me up to an even bigger audience. And that meant I could have more of just a solo DJ career, just going and DJing at clubs, which is pretty much what I have continued to do, up until the tour with thesimonsound. I just like working as much as the inspiration’s there, and like I say after having a period of not knowing what direction to go in musically, I went off and did the album with thesimonsound and that was when I sort of recharged my batteries, and then I was ready to make Hip Hop again with a new energy.

It’s been over a decade since your debut album - has anything changed in the way that you make music?If I’m honest, not a great deal. But if something ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I probably over-think things a little bit more. When I made the first album, it was very much a kind of innocent process, where I wasn’t really thinking that many people were ever going to hear it, I was just making the music I wanted to make and just sort of thinking “it would be nice to finally get a record out”, whereas now because I’ve been fortunate to have some success over the years, I always think hard about what I’m doing and I’m always aware that once it’s pressed to vinyl or CD, that’s it, it’s committed to the time. You’ve made that record and you can’t then go and take it back and go “oh I’m not happy with that song”, it’s too late, it’s out there, you’ve made it and I’m more aware of that now and it’s made me more of an OCD perfectionist. I want to make sure everything I release, is something I am absolutely proud of and I can stand behind and say “even if no-one else likes it, this is something that I wanted to do and is exactly how I wanted it to sound". And with the last album Statement of Intent, it had been a long time since I’d made a solo album, I wanted to make sure everything was just how I wanted it, which is why it took my so damn long.

 I read that you met Jurassic 5 by being their tour bus driver in about 1998. How does a guy from Southampton end up driving a bus for an American hip hop group?That came about by a series of fortunate events. I was in a rap group with a guy from Darby called Mick. As well as being an MC, he was also a guy who had his fingers in many pies, he was always promoting events and also sometimes manage artists and put together tours for certain artists. He did a big event in Folkston called Fresh 97 and that was the first time Jurassic 5 had come over to the UK and Mick brought them over and obviously everyone was blown away. Well in 97, Jurassic 5 released their first EP, and that’s right when Mick organised their UK tour. It was just a case of it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Mick just said “I need someone reliable, that could drive the guys around, it’s a bonus if you can take them digging” which for me was a pleasure. That was how that came about; just being the guy, in the right place, at the right time. There’s also a large slice of luck involved, but I would like to point out that I had always been a real passionate, dedicated music person, I’d been making music years, I wasn’t just one of those jammy bastards who didn’t deserve it, I’d worked hard and I was just lucky that I got a few breaks, but ultimately I just kept plugging away and I was lucky.

Your style of Hip Hop is very old school. Do you listen to modern Hip Hop and Rap artists?There are a handful, but I’ve got to be honest there’s not many. It’s not so much the MC’s that I have a problem with, it’s more the producers, I’m just not excited by the kind of Hip Hop that I hear nowadays. I prefer big heavy, crunchy drum breaks rather than boring kicks and snares chopped up and programmed in the same predictable patterns, with just a stab played on a keyboard, that’s the way that Hip Hop has gone over the last fifteen or so years. That’s not my sort of thing, I still draw inspiration from the Hip Hop I grew up with in the late 80s and early 90s, the rest of my inspiration comes from the music that I’m always searching for. I’m always digging for records to sample, usually from the late 60s, early 70s, obviously Funk and Soul, but also Jazz, Blues, Rock and really weird 60s Psych records and I think that’s where I really get my inspiration from, it’s not so much from other people making new Hip Hop records nowadays.

You’re known and respected as a vinyl-only DJ - have you seen a resurgence recently as vinyl sales are on the rise with things like Record Store Day?I think the whole vinyl resurgence thing is somewhat of a trend, even the whole Record Store Day idea, even though it is a well-intended idea, for me personally, I completely hate it. I don’t need a special day to be told to go to a record shop, I’m in record shops all the time, no matter what day it is and unfortunately this thing with Record Store Day is, it’s mostly people just repressing old records on coloured vinyl, quite often records that aren’t even rare or expensive or desired in the first place. Then what happens is, there’s a massive backlog at all the vinyl pressing plants. So people like me who make vinyl all the time and buy vinyl all the time, we’ve got to wait months to get our records pressed because the pressing plants are prioritising the business for all these big labels that are just repressing their classic catalogues for sixteen year old kids to buy at bloody Urban Outfitters and put on their mantelpiece to look cool. For the real people who just buy vinyl all the time, there’s no massive resurgence. For me as an artist, pressing and trying to sell me own vinyl, there is no resurgence, there’s just a loyal audience that still care for vinyl and buy it because they want to own that vinyl not because it’s just a trend that they’re made to do and they’re then putting it on their coffee table. I’m not believing the hype around this vinyl resurgence; I don’t mean to sound bitter, that’s just the reality of it.

How long does it take you to create one song?It’s a bit like how long is a piece of string? Some songs come together really quickly and others can take months, and then other songs for me personally can take years. There was a song on the last album, called Mayor of a Ghost Town, which I started thirteen before. I’m not suggesting I was worked on that song everyday for thirteen years, it was just something that I kept revisiting because I always believed that it was missing something and I didn’t want to settle for something that was second best, I wanted to wait till I felt like “that’s it I’ve cracked it and it sounds as good as I can possibly make it”. That’s an extreme example, I’ve never taken so long to do one damn song and thirteen years is insane. Generally speaking it’s the instrumental stuff that takes a lot longer because there’s a big difference between making an instrumental version of a Rap song and an actual instrumental song that is entertaining from beginning to end as a piece of music. Whether it’s an uptempo B-Boy track, or a DJ scratch track or a moody downtempo instrumental harking back to what DJ Shadow made acceptable and made possible for artists to do later on, and still be considered a proper piece of music rather than just labelled as Trip-Hop or something like that. To make genuine pieces of music using samples it takes along time to get that blend right and to make a decent song. Anyone can throw together a bunch of loops, but to actually craft a proper piece, especially out of samples, it can take a bloody long time.

Are you working on any new material at the moment?       I’ve just finished a new album; it’s a collaboration with Phill Most Chill, a legendary old school MC from Philadelphia. We basically made this album relatively quick, by my standards it’s insanely quick! That’s more to do with the way Phill works, than me, I just decided I needed to adapt my style to the way that he works, so I didn’t dwell on tings too much. I did perhaps in the end, once we got the songs to a point where we were both happy, I did then spend a period of time going back and fine tuning and tweaking and the OCD started to kick in a bit more. But originally most of the album was done in a matter of months, which is not usual for me to do that amount of stuff so quickly. I found with my last album, as much as I was happy with it, some of the rap stuff on it was downtempo and I wanted to make something a little more club friendly and uptempo and this album with Phill does have a good variation of tempos, styles and moods, but it's predominantly a party orientated album. It’s called The Foremost and we wanted to keep to our artist names rather than coming out as a duo called ‘The Foremost’, because in this day and age, people only have a five second attention span, so you’ve got to make sure they don’t miss a trick, you’ve got to hit people with “it’s DJ Format, it’s Phill Most Chill, they’ve come together, this is the name of the album”, you can’t take any chances with people getting it straight away.I’m hoping to get this new album released by the end of October, I’m literally waiting for the test pressings of this album now, but there’s probably some sort of backlog at the pressing plant because of bloody Record Store Day, but don’t get me started on that again!

DJ Format supports Masta Ace and Marco Pollo at Norwich Open on the 29th September. Buy your tickets online at www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk