| Interviewer |
Karl Riukas |
| Date |
06.26.02 |
| Weblinks |
Atomic
Hooligan Beats Page, A.H.
website, Botchit |
| Interview |
Terry, how do you and Matt compliment each other as producers,
artists, and DJs? Where did the name Atomic Hooligan come from?
Atomic Hooligan first came about from us messing around. We used to
be called a couple of different things: Mudskipper, Subsonic, Butt
Sniffers, but we’ve never really had a concept behind the name
Atomic Hooligan.
As for me and Matt, Matt is an amazing studio engineer. He spends
all his time in the studio. He never really leaves. So I go out on
the road and do all the Djing kind of stuff, thus me being here [New
York]. I get to see what’s going on in the scene. Matt’s
got that separation from the scene almost. He can make wikkid beats,
but not be overly influenced by other producers. He gets to hear certain
bits that I get, bits on the internet, and stuff like that. But he’s
got that separation from the actual scene so he can come up with fresh
stuff every time, rather than being flooded with everything else that’s
out there. I think that’s how we compliment each other.
How did the two of you get started as a duo? How
did you meet and how did you start working together?
Originally Atomic Hooligan was a three-some: myself, Matt, and James.
We used to be a kind of live act, going out on the road, taking the
studio to all these different venues. James and Matt needed a scratch
DJ so I got involved that way. We used to go around and I used to
scratch over sets and it just evolved from there. James left to focus
more on his design stuff, and it just became a two-some really.
What so far in your life have been your biggest
musical influences, and which ones made you decide you wanted to dedicate
your life to music?
We’re both really heavily influenced by Leftfield, and how they
do their live show, how they make their music, and the kind of sounds
they get. Their music’s very valid and dance floor. It’s
quality dance music that for all intents and purposes isn’t
meant for the dance floor. It’s meant for music listeners. That’s
what we try to do, to put a bit of quality into our personal music.
What are the top records in your box currently?
What are your favorite records of all time?
Breaks-wise, one of my favorite tracks of all time is Koma & Bones’s
"Morpheus," Rennie Pilgrem & Uberzone’s "Black
Widow," and Aquasky’s "Sure Shot." I take those
three everywhere with me. The album I listen to continuously is the
Roots’s "Things Fall Apart." That’s my favorite
album of all time at the moment. It’s gonna change probably,
but that’s what I listen to. Also Public Enemy’s "It
Takes a Nation of Millions."
Since the "4 Vini" album was a tribute to Vini’s influence
on Botchit and so many other kinds of music, how did he influence
you personally, musically, and professionally?
He wasn’t an intimate friend of mine, but musically I think
he gave us a lot of inspiration for the first EP, "Serving It
Up." We sent him a few tracks, "Serving It Up" was
one of them. And there were another two tracks he wasn’t that
into. He said, "No, go back. Start Again. Give us another two
tracks." So we came with another couple tracks, and he basically
helped us mold the entire first EP. He’s been a big influence
on us on that level, and he’s been a continuing influence on
us really because of the legacy he’s left behind on the label.
Every time we do a track we think, "would Vini like this?"
because he had a standard he maintained at Botchit. Hopefully we can
carry that on in his good name. That standard’s been set, and
hopefully we can live up to it. And I think we have so far. We were
actually the last act that he signed before he passed away.
On the mix that you constructed for the "4 Vini"
compilation, what musical themes or vibes were you trying to create
or convey?
Alot of the guys who contributed to that were personal friend of Vini’s,
so there was a certain kind of melancholy to the whole project. All
the tracks were quality tracks from quality artists, but they were
all quite downbeat. You can definitely feel the vibe of what all the
producers were on when they were producing or contributing those tracks.
So what I basically tried to do was make a flowing theme to the mix
CD. It was a hard because the tracks that were submitted for the album
weren’t really dance floor tracks, and I’m a dance floor
DJ. That’s my number one thing, hitting the dance floors. So
I tried to approach the mix slightly differently. I tried to create
a feeling from beginning to end. As the album has got a theme in Vini,
I tried to make the album kind of atmospheric. With the breakdowns
and crossovers between tracks, I tried to make it as a solid unit,
rather than lots of individual tracks all thrown in together. That’s
the best way to describe it really, as a continuous piece of music.
The Vini project also has a heavy Asian musical influence in it, deeply
rooted in dance music, but also South Asian traditional music. And
some of the tracks on there seem to draw on feelings rooted in the
deepest depths of human sorrow, like the Mee track. How did that strike
you and influence you?
A lot of the people who recorded for the Vini project weren’t
just artists on the label or in the scene. A lot of them were personal
friends of Vini’s, so they really did draw from their souls
and the deepest, darkest feelings of sorrow and missing him. They
say that great music comes from great hardship, and it shows on this
album because there’s some great music on this album.
With the Asian music, it conveys a feeling, and there’s so much
Asian music in the UK. If you go to any High Street, there’ll
be the Asian breakfast shop there and tons of Asian music playing.
So you’re influenced by it consciously or unconsciously really,
in the breakbeat scene or any scene, since it’s such a large
part of English culture. On our latest track, we’ve used a Persian
vocalist, named Maz. It’s just to add that diversity. We’ve
used so many vocalists recently, so we wanted to have something different.
He’s using a poem his father wrote since his father’s
a famous Persian poet. He’s big in America apparently as well.
England’s like America, a big melting pot so you’ve gotta
be stupid not to use those influences. You can’t blind yourself
to other influences and cultures that can ultimately enrich your own
music.
Speaking of vocals, does Atomic Hooligan
ever wanna do a vocal track with anyone in particular with whom you
haven’t worked before?
We’d love to work with Ian Brown from the Stone Roses. He’s
an amazing vocalist and amazing lyricist. We wanna work with people
who can write their own lyrics, have inspiration, and can help us
construct the track with their own song writing. We’d love to
work with the girl from Portishead. There are a few MCs the Taskforce,
Rodney Pee, Roots Manuva, Fallacy from Fusion and Fallacy. They just
did a track called "The Groundbreaker," which is one of
my favorite tracks at the moment. It’s 135 bpm hip hop. There
are so many good vocalists out there. Ian Brown is number one for
us at the moment. He’s brilliant, and epitomizes the Manchester
scene in the early 90s and his voice has got so much quality. He maintains
such amazing lyrics, he’s an absolute poet. The vocalists we’ve
worked with so far, Ziggy and Cousin Vini, have been absolutely amazing.
We haven’t used Ziggy to the fullest of his capability yet.
We’re gonna be working with him again on a more kind of singy
vocal for the album. And we’re gonna be
"Larger
Than Life" strikes me as a monster track. How did it come together?
We thought about Vini’s personality, and we thought "what
best describes it?" And it was larger than life. He was the kind
of man who, if he had a strong believe in something, would not be
talked down on it. He would argue his point very eloquently. It came
from that. If you listen to the lyrics, it’s a shout of "I
will not be held down. I will have my say. I will talk my piece."
It’s a real song of rebellion. That was our intent behind the
track too, to give it that reggae feel to it, not as in the music,
but as in the ethic behind it, like the poetry of great reggae artists
such as Bob Marley and the feeling behind the music.
Botchit seems to be one of the most soulful breaks labels
around, from the heavy hip hop and funk influences, to the passionate
vocalists and MCs you use, to the inspirational song writing. What
does it mean to you to be part of an artistic enterprise with so much
heart in it?
Artistically it spurs us on and helps us. Because the label’s
got such a legacy, you don’t wanna let yourself or the label
down. You’ve gotta be very self-A&Ring. The number one ability
any DJ, producer, or musician should have is to self-A&R. So you
should really say to yourself, "Does this stand up to the rest
of my material? Yes or No?" That way it’s good to know
there’s a legacy behind you so you can be slightly more strict
when you self-A&R. There’s no taking away from what Botchit’s
done and what they’re gonna do. Their back catalogue for an
independent label is second to none. For the amount they’re
released in the short time they’ve been around, the pure volume
and quality of releases, there’s never been one Botchit release
I can think of that hasn’t lived up to the quality of the label.
So you’ve really got to carry on and be willing to put time,
sweat, blood, and tears into your music to really be able to say this
is worthy of being a Botchit release.
What
projects does Atomic Hooligan have coming up? Do you have an album
in the works?
We’re working on it at the moment. Our initial plans for it
are to have two of versions: a CD version, and a vinyl version. The
CD version is gonna be a lot more for the CD buying crowd. We’re
gonna put some down tempo stuff on there, a lot of vocal stuff, and
work a lot of our other influences into it really. The vinyl stuff
is gonna be straight up pure dance floor for the DJs basically. This
is all to be confirmed, but we want to put together a double CD pack
of a few remixes of our old stuff and a mix of all the dance floor
stuff. So you get all the down tempo stuff, all the eclectic stuff,
and all the dance floor stuff on one CD. It’ll probably be out
next year. We’ve also got some stuff coming out on 2S2, which
is 2 Sinners’s label. We’re working on a few remixes at
the moment, which are quite under wraps. We’ve just finished
a remix for Unstable, which is Paul Era’s label. We’ve
just done a remix of his new tune, "The Truth." We just
finished our track for Botchit Breaks 5.
What’s the Botchit Breaks 5 project
panning out to sound like and who’s mixing it?
I’ll be mixing it. The tracks I’ve heard so far are all
sounding very very nice. I haven’t heard Soto’s track
because they’re still working on it, but we’ve just finished
ours. I’ve heard Three B and Loki’s track which is really
nice. It’s gonna be out in September or October and that’s
when we’re gonna start the tour. It’s gonna hopefully
shape up to be quite a diverse album. Botchit get a bad rap for being
too hard and too dirty. But it’s all a load of shit. Botchit
are very diverse. If people actually took the time to look through
the Botchit back catalogue, they would find a hell of a lot of good
music. It comes from people who don’t dig under the surface
to find out the jewels Botchit releases. If you listen to the "4
Vini" album alone, you’ll find out it’s an amazingly
diverse project.
I hear you have a track in
the works with Sunz of Mecha. Can you say anything about it?
It’s sounding tough. The Sunz spent a couple days around our
studio and it’s definitely a nice mix of our styles. It’s
gonna be on the next Collision EP which is truly a collaboration-based
project. A bit of remixes and stuff on there. We’re looking
at 2003 probably for a release date.
Your
style as artists, DJs, and producers seems to be constantly evolving.
Do you feel there’s a natural progression there?
Totally. Any artist should grow in their art form. If you stay the
same for too long, you’ll become stale, and you’ll not
only be doing an injustice to yourself, you’ll be doing an injustice
to the people you make music for. I want people to believe in our
music and to be able to start from our "Serving It Up" EP
all the way to our seventh album and to be able to say "I can
see where they’re going with this. I understand." When
we finally stop making music when we’re 100, I want people to
see a life line in our music and to be able to chart the progression
of our lives. So hopefully people can relate that to their lives as
well. We’re not even half way there. We know we haven’t
achieved everything we’re going to by far. This is literally
the first stepping stone on the path to where we want to go. You’re
going to hear a lot more from us and a lot of change.
 How
does constructing a hip hop set differ differ for you from putting
together a breaks one, and vice versa?
My whole sound is based in hip hop because I was a hip hop DJ a long,
long time before I was a breakbeat DJ. When I play hip hop, it talks
to me in a way that breakbeat doesn’t. Hip hop is one of the
fathers, and breakbeat is the son. It’s definitely one of the
forerunners to breakbeat, along with a lot of other stuff. I feel
breakbeat is one of the forms of hip hop for 2002, for the next century.
I don’t see a massive difference between when I play hip hop
and when I play breakbeat, because I draw so much from my days of
spinning, cutting up, juggling and battling. I used to go around and
battle other hip hop DJs. I go very easily from breakbeat to hip hop
and back, because I see it as one music really.
What’s your favorite party or club to play anywhere in the world
and why?
The End in London. The back room has got the most amazing sound system.
The front room is great, but the back room is so much more personal.
It’s a big room, but a really small dance floor. So if you get
down there and rock, it kills. If you have a good night down there,
you’ll be buzzing off it for weeks afterwards. Great club.
How would you compare the breaks scenes in the US,
the UK, and Australia? What makes each stand out for you? Where would
you like to play in each country?
As far as Australia, I can only go by the people I’ve talked
to. I haven’t actually been there, but I hear it’s amazing
at the moment. I think Kid Kenobi won the Australian DJ of the year
award, at the Australian version of the Brits, the big award ceremony.
They’re drawing big crowds and I’d love to play anywhere
over there, especially Home in Sydney or an outdoor event at dusk
with Sydney harbor in the background.
Spain too is drawing 5,000-6,000 people, festival size crowds, to
some breaks events. I’m playing over there in July. There are
people there like Garbage and Ben Folds 5 on the main stages. But
I’m playing there in the dance tent, and it’s exclusively
breaks. It’s myself, Freak Nasty, Future Funk Squad, Madame
Breaks, and Phantom Beats. I was talking to Neil from Phantom Beats
the other week and he went over there and there were a load of kids
with a massive Phantom Beats banner, just waving that about while
he was playing, which is just amazing. I heard the first Phanton Beats
EP, "The Drop," was one of the biggest selling dance tracks
over there of all time.
In London the breaks scene is big, though people would like to tell
you it’s not. See we need to get over this stigma of saying
it’s a new art form, because if people stop saying that, it’s
gonna establish itself because we can’t always be the little
brother. Compared to everything else it’s seen as the new boy
on the block. And the breaks scene’s been around for a little
while now. It’s got some very established artists like Tayo
and Adam Freeland. Adam’s a superstar DJ so it can’t be
that small of a scene. So if we can get over that, it’ll be
the best day for breaks ever. It’s a popular scene, but we’ve
still got to get a hard core crowd like what drum and bass have got.
Drum and bass have got people who live and breathe it 24 hours a day,
and would die for drum and bass. We’ve got to get that kind
of enthusiasm for the breaks scene. I think it’s there, I just
don’t think it’s being exposed to enough people. As soon
as we can stop people from saying "the burgeoning breaks scene,"
we’ll get that.
In the US, I’d definitely like to play at the Dragon Lounge
with DJ B Sides in San Diego. I’d like to work with the Incredible
Melting Man and 2 Boys and the Revolution in Canada. Miss E and Doveye
in San Francisco, Boombox in LA. I’d like to play in Florida
and cut with Draco and play about with him. Sodapop in Vancouver.
What does the tatoo on your left arm symbolize?
It symbolizes my addiction to the turntables, and my addiction to
music. The artistic outlet for my whole life is through the turntables.
I got it through the Mofo magazine competition to design your own
tatoo. It was meant to be.
Shouts?
Ceos, Drunken All-stars, Paul Era, Aquasky,
Soto, Matt, Ed Hickey at Nubreaks, Alchemedia Records, "Son of
Electric Ghost" on Bliss Records (I’m really feeling that
track), Sunz of Mecha, Breaks
FM Crew, Mechanoise, Sara Walker, Andy Price, Jason Sparks, Royce,
Mikey, Ilmino. |
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