00:00I'll give you my number, but I'm giving you one shot to give me something great.
00:05And if I don't like it, I'm blocking you straight away and I'm never speaking to you again.
00:08Dance music producers are kind of like that.
00:10You can literally give us like a scrap of vocal from a great artist and we'll just like
00:15loop half a second of it and make it sound like a whole song.
00:20Well the best thing about the album is you've absolutely got a choice of whether you want
00:23to listen to it or not.
00:24So I wish I had a really fancy explanation for why I called this album chemistry, but
00:37it just felt like the right word for the collection of the songs.
00:43It was one of the songs on the album, chemistry that I made with Vera Blue, one of my favorites
00:48and I just thought it had a ring to it, so I ran with it.
00:54For like the last seven or eight years, I've been on a really good run with my songs and
01:04my tracks and they've become really like effective in the clubs and like, but also like increasingly
01:12more simple and less and less and less like melody involved in them.
01:18It works really well in clubs but I just had a vision of what I could be doing instead
01:23and so that was one of the missions that I had for the album was I really wanted to reconnect
01:29with the musicality that I often write but don't release.
01:36I got to work on that with Amber Mark.
01:43That was one of the songs I didn't actually work in the studio with the artist.
01:48There's not that many of them.
01:49I got given the acapella by a couple of the writers that worked on that vocal with Amber
01:56and as soon as I heard it, it was an R&B track initially and I kind of begged them.
02:01I was like, please give me that vocal.
02:02I got a vision for it and I spoke to Amber and she agreed and allowed me to mess around
02:09with my vision on it and yeah, just kind of, the vocals are bop.
02:13It's really, really fun and yeah, just kind of like locked in on a groove and just sent it.
02:27That was one of the other ones that I wasn't in the room writing the song.
02:31So I was actually reminded of a quite funny story about this.
02:34So, you know, in dance music, there's a lot of great artists that are, you know,
02:40writing songs to try and get the songs used by other artists.
02:45So I was over in Amsterdam last year and I was at this big drinks mixer or whatever.
02:52There's loads of people come like, you know, into England, you know, meeting,
02:55introducing themselves.
02:56And this woman comes up to me and she says,
02:59Hi, I represent a bunch of singers and songwriters and producers and I've got some unbelievable vocals
03:08and I'd love to get your number and send them to you.
03:10And I was like, I don't know why I was feeling really boisterous at this time.
03:14And I said, okay, I'll give you my number, but I'm giving you one shot to give me something great.
03:20And if I don't like it, I'm blocking you straight away and I'm never speaking to you again.
03:24We were just having a laugh and she's like, okay, challenge accepted.
03:29And she sent me Savannah.
03:31That was the acapella she sent.
03:33I was like, okay, I've got an idea.
03:35And then I lay down the tracks.
03:37Pretty funny how I was really a cheeky piece of shit to this woman and it worked out okay
03:42and I didn't get punched.
03:43Ease my mind.
03:51That is completely the other end of the spectrum.
03:54That song was an absolute bitch to write.
03:56Am I allowed to swear?
03:58Fuck.
03:59Shit.
04:00Testing.
04:01Okay, cool.
04:02We're good.
04:03No one's arrested me.
04:08Ease my mind was such a fun journey to work on, but it was really, we did a lot of days
04:16of work on that one to get it to where it ended up being.
04:19I worked with Abel Balder on that.
04:22He's the singer.
04:23He does the guitars and a couple of other bits of production on that.
04:28And he actually, he was with a friend of mine in Malibu like a year and a half ago.
04:34And my buddy said, well, my name came up in conversation and he contacted me and he's
04:40like, Abel's in town.
04:42He wants to work in the studio with you.
04:44So I was like, okay, great.
04:47Can he work tomorrow?
04:48He's like, no, he's actually leaving tomorrow midday.
04:51I'm like, get him to change his flight, which he did.
04:54So he changed his flight and stayed.
04:56And that's when we wrote Ease my mind.
04:58He was really like, he was like loosely into the dance stuff, but he felt like,
05:03a lot of the beats in my scene were quite heavy and overbearing.
05:08He's quite a man with a guitar kind of guy and was looking for something kind of dancey,
05:15but not too, not too intrusive.
05:17And that's where I was like, okay, I've got an idea.
05:18I made that beat, put that all together.
05:20And he was like, and I just watched him go from kind of like, like timid and nervous
05:26and a bit unsure if, if he was going to, if he was in the right place and doing the right thing,
05:30being in that room to just opening up and just feeling like, okay,
05:33I've got a vision of what this can be.
05:35And, um, and the song just flowed from there.
05:38We got asked to play, me and Fisher got asked to do our back to back at Coachella.
05:51This was in 2023.
05:52We were asked to close the outdoor stage and we were really excited to be doing this.
05:58This is something that we've wanted to be doing for a while.
06:00And we were, we, we normally up until that point,
06:05the shortest set that we'd done together as a back to back was like three hours.
06:09And we didn't plan anything, but because it was Coachella,
06:12we begged to allow them to, for us to play an hour and a half,
06:16which is kind of not normal at the time.
06:19Um, they agreed to the hour and a half, but that we, we realized
06:23we're going to have to do a bit of work to actually condense what we normally do
06:27into such a short timeframe.
06:29So we, we did a lot of work, uh, preparing the show for that.
06:32Um, and we were, we were working on some moments and there was a, there was,
06:37I'd heard of a version of, um, the Gauthier, the Gauthier track.
06:43Somebody that had been done by a kid called Sante Sansone.
06:46I don't want to live that way.
06:49Feed him into every word you say.
06:52I really liked it, but it was sort of,
06:55it, it needed, it needed some work to kind of, to, you know,
07:01to sound great on a, on a big sound system.
07:04And so, um, we, well, Fisch and I, we, we contacted Sante and asked if it'd be open
07:10for us to work on the project, if it'd send us the project and we could, um,
07:14basically redo it.
07:16We said, well, that's what we did.
07:17We said, we, we redid it all and we got the original stems from Gauthier.
07:21And then we played it.
07:22We played it at Coachella.
07:23It was a massive moment in the show.
07:25And then we were approached by the label if we would be open to doing it as a,
07:30as an official, um, remix and get it all properly cleared.
07:34That's how it came about.
07:35But it was, it was initially as a DJ tool and edit.
07:46It's pretty relaxed.
07:47Well, when I'm working in the studio, it's pretty relaxed.
07:48I'm kind of, I'm always pretty goofy.
07:51Uh, you know, that's, that's part of my character.
07:54I, I, I work with a lot of people.
07:56Um, I probably like 50% of the time I'm working by myself.
08:0050% of the time I'm working with, uh, musicians, other producers, singers,
08:04uh, all sorts, depending on what I'm working on and what I'm trying to achieve.
08:08And, um, yeah, I just, I goof around until I, until I lock onto something
08:15that just feels exciting to me.
08:16And then I, and then I get a little bit possessed.
08:20And lock in and work very, very fast and move from point A to point B.
08:26Um, with a lot of intent.
08:29And that's normally when people say that it gets a bit intense in the studio,
08:33but I don't notice that I'm focused on something else.
08:35You were talking earlier when you got here about your wife.
08:37How often does she come to your show?
08:39Less and less. I think she's over it.
08:43Um, she, she comes to the, she comes to the main ones.
08:48And, um, but she's obviously still heavily involved in, in the music making process as well.
08:54She's fantastic. She, she, you know, she just...
08:57What's easier for you guys, working in the studio together or deciding what's for dinner?
09:01Deciding what's for dinner.
09:03I like the, I like the initial part of working in the studio with my wife.
09:09The initial part.
09:12It's in a healthy state.
09:14Currently.
09:15Um, I think there's fantastic beat makers out there.
09:21There's, there's great DJs.
09:23There's what, there's some unbelievable shows being put on.
09:25There's a, there's a whole world and culture built around.
09:28So the music, the scene, you know, the like press will talk about music.
09:35Whereas I remember being, you know, being here in America, no one was talking about dance music.
09:39No one was, no one was interested in doing an interview with a, with a DJ or a producer making a house record.
09:45That would, that wouldn't have happened.
09:46And those things exist now.
09:48Um, on a, on another level, um, I think like this may be kind of,
09:57kind of, there's a little bit of work to be done.
10:00There's, there's maybe just not as many musicians making original music.
10:06There's a lot of, there's a lot of, uh, remixes and rehashes and, and that's like, it's very rewarding short term,
10:15but it, it, it, it sort of, um, it, it could definitely do with more people, maybe writing something original.
10:24I got to work with, uh, Bonobo on the, uh, on the closing track of the album, uh, on the track called Falling.
10:35And he's one of my favorite artists.
10:38Uh, he's probably my most listened to artists in the last 10 years.
10:42So that was really fun, uh, working with someone that I thought would hate me.
10:48So, um, that was great. Very, uh, proud and thankful of my career.
10:52I, I, uh, you know, I'm English, but I, when I started getting into music production, I was, um, a teenager in Scotland.
11:00I was living in Scotland at the time.
11:02I lived in a very remote part of the, of the country.
11:05Um, I had dial-up internet.
11:07There was no real clubs around me.
11:09And my, my love and obsession of dance music really developed via the internet and through message boards.
11:18And listening to very, very low quality, uh, music via dial-up internet.
11:23And, um, so I was kind of like very disconnected and quite voyeuristic in like my learning and understanding of, of music.
11:30And I genuinely cannot believe that I somehow figured out, uh, or just stumbled into having an actual career where this is my life 24-7.
11:42And that's what, that's what it is now.
11:43And, uh, it's, it's my passion.
11:44It's been my passion since my early teen years.
11:47And, uh, yeah, it's actually pretty mental.
11:49This would be, uh, my 14-year-old me.
11:53Very, very happy seeing this.
11:55The worst part is that, um, people might hate it.
12:01But, you know, if you do, honestly, fuck you.
12:07And that is the end of the podcast.
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