Revered electronic icon and Border Community head honchoJames Holdenis on his way to Australia this month, set to play two gigs over the NYE period; Strange Fruit NYE in Sydney followed by Melbourne's Let Them Eat Cake festival on New Years Day. Here Morgan Richards chats with James about his DJ style, his recent album 'The Inheritors', shamanism and dealing with artists signed to Border Community who saw the label as "a fucking retirement donkey factory where they could churn out lame records".
Pulse: Hey James! You're due back in Australia pretty soon for a gig on New Years Day. Will you be playing a live set? James Holden: No, I'm DJing. Once you start playing with a band, you can't do your live show everywhere because travelling gets a bit more difficult. There's at least me and a drummer [doing the live set], but also my modular synth, which is a bit heavy for a lot of airlines. But I never wanted to stop DJing. I've worked really hard to be a good DJ. So now I just want to do both things.
I read a recent interview where you were talking about big-room DJs and hands-in-the-air moments, saying that those moments are often the only crowd reactions you actually can see from the DJ booth in a large venue, but there's actually a lot of other reactions going on that the DJ won't necessarily notice. Did it take you a long time to get confident to play to that other stuff? Yeah, it took a long time. Well, I pretty quickly found out that I didn't like the records that had a hands-in-the-air reaction. But It took me a long time to realise where my strengths are, and where I’m going to have the best gig and where people are going to enjoy it the most. It took a really long time of learning and getting more confident in the process.
Even more recently, doing the all-night sets around the [latest album The Inheritors'] release in Europe. Because I was playing all night, you feel like you can go up and down a bit more because you've got everyone's attention for the long haul. I'd play records that previously I'd been too scared to play and they worked brilliantly. I’ve come back from doing those really long sets to approaching short sets a bit differently. And I got better, I guess!
When people are doing those really long sets, it mostly seems to be Berghain techno sorts of guys, all playing much the same sort of music. It's designed to fit together quite easily and I can see how it would be a lot easier to play a whole night of that stuff. Whereas the music you've been making lately is almost the opposite - like it's trying to be difficult. Well... being deliberately difficult, I never understood the point of that. It just seems perverse, or you're trying to be elitist. It's not really about that. It's more trying not to be facile or trite and really just avoiding things which you think are lame. Is that a tricky distinction to explain? Have I managed it? [Laughs]
I'd like to explore it a little more. I'm talking specifically about 'The Inheritors' now. A lot of the sounds that make up this album are really difficult to listen to. It's complex and challenging and as a listener you can't just dive in head first. Do you make music like that to challenge yourself? To challenge your listeners? I suppose I like everything to be kind of clouded or complicated, so that you have to figure out exactly what's going on. Because when stuff's really obvious, it's boring! And being in music and learning about it continuously for - I don't know, quite a long time - the things that are obvious do get really tiring to me. It's not really to be difficult, it's just trying to make what I like. Which is not obvious music.
I think The Inheritors is a record you can listen to a lot of times and still hear new things. When records present everything they've got at the front, all sort of pushed up in your face, then after two listens you've heard everything. But I wanted to hide things in the background and underneath. If you listen to it from start to finish a few times it will make more sense to you. I’m not a very good pop musician. [Laughs.]
I think that's pretty clear! I have a question about the name of the album. It's named after a William Golding novel [author of Lord of the Flies]. I've read a couple of Golding books but not that one. What's it actually about, and why did you choose it as a title? It's fairly tenuous, to be honest. The novel is about a group of Neanderthals. Well, it follows one in particular as his little tribe dies out, and what he does to survive. They're an evolutionary dead end. They're fluffy, confused little men and they don't really understand the humans, who are cunning and devious and unpleasant in comparison. You side with the evolutionary dead end in the book.
Music's an evolution process too, and lots of the things I loved from the past evolved into... rubbish. So I wanted my record to be an alternate evolution. Ideas from the sixties and seventies, hippy music and spiritual jazz, Krautrock, that sort of stuff, extended into the modern age with some influence of what's gone on in the more recent past and also with the technological influence of what's gone on recently. It's like an alternate evolution into a parallel world where the Neanderthals survived and the humans didn't succeed.
He's an interesting writer, Golding. Such a strange brain. Yeah. I think to some extent I share his misanthropy, depending on where I am in my life.
You started Border Community in 2003. What have you learned about running a record label over the past ten years? Quite a lot, I guess. It's a difficult thing to do, definitely. What's that old expression about a rolling stone gathering moss? You sort of pick up detritus, baggage - yeah, baggage is the word - along the way. So many things about it have been brilliant and continue to be brilliant. Meeting with people, both the artists and the people who've really enjoyed the music and it's meant something to them. It's lovely. That makes it worthwhile. When you meet someone really inspiring like Luke Abbott, when you meet an artist on that level who's unique and totally driven, that is really inspirational and that part of it is totally brilliant.
But then also with a thing like that comes expectation from all different angles. From fans who have a certain moment of a record as a pivotal part of their life, and then want us to carry on releasing that same record because it was really important to them. They have to understand that's it's not practical and it's not what's going to happen. Also, there were the expectations from artists. There were artists who began to see Border Community as a fucking retirement donkey factory where they could churn out lame records. If you want your retirement, then piss off and go run a pub.
I sense a bit of vitriol here, James. Well, there was a point where there were so many people with expectations that it almost made you want to destroy the whole thing. I started to realise that it was really getting in the way of my music. That I was telling other people how to write music instead. "Listen to my thirty half-finished demos, pick the good ones and tell me how to finish them." Fuck off! [Laughs.] I could write a song in that time and it would be much better. So once I learnt that, everything got a lot better.
I’m afraid I can't tell you about the next thing we're working on, but I’m so excited about it. I’ve got that excitement from the start back and that idea of pushing off into the unknown again. It's like the start again. It's funny how cyclical life is. I know the next records we're doing will be a bit challenging, but also completely new. No-one's ever done them before.
It's also been ten years since your Balance 005 mix. I think for a lot of people, those two discs really captured a moment in time... and even though that sort of music is not really popular any more, a lot of people still are quite fond of them. Do you ever listen to them out of nostalgia? I’m not sure I’ve listened to them in eight or nine years. I haven't yet listened to The Inheritors since it came out, either. I listened to it a lot before it came out. At home, we just listen to random play, always. Occasionally I put an album on when I’m driving somewhere. I don't listen to a lot of mixes, though. There must be a reason for it; I have to be interested.
I find that really surprising that you can listen to music on shuffle. I'd imagine you'd have a fairly wide array of genres on your hard drive... having banging techno one second then obscure 70s psychelic rock the next. Do you skip through a lot of the songs that come on? Like, eww what a buzz-kill, I don't want to listen to that right now. Dance music gets skipped, because if you've been listening to something really nice then something else with a really over-compressed kick drum comes on, it sounds jarring. But that's really it. [Laughs.] Random sixties psych rock or whatever, I’m quite forgiving of, even if it's mediocre. Then dance music I’m really bristly about. I don't know why that is.
It's just strange to hear stuff like that... I mean, let's face it: you are quite a weird DJ. "I listen to music on random play, then some dance music comes on and I just skip it." [Laughs.] There are some things [in dance music] that come on and I don't skip them. Like if it's Hieroglyphic Being or something...
Oh, I’ve just started getting into that guy. Pretty talented stuff. Yeah, he's such a legend. I saw him do an improvised live thing in London. It was just fantastic. Such a presence. Just the way some of his records are so "wrong" as well. Not actually wrong, he's just made these choices to make things wonky in a certain way.
It's like...when you make music on a computer, everything is in time and everything happens in one-bar increments. It's not a decision; it's the absence of a decision. When someone's record is basically default settings, that's the reason I get so negative about it all - half the decisions have been made for you, because you haven't thought about it. I think it's really important that people think about that stuff. Your production choices are part of the meaning of what your music is and who it's for. It frustrates me that people don't understand that. By making the same production choices, or failing to make the same decisions that David Guetta failed to make, you're making the same music. He has to make his music all pumped up and simple and obvious and straight to the point and default, nothing challenging. But people who make techno don't have to. That's the point that Hieroglyphic Being is illustrating. You don't have to make everything tight. And it's why vinyl DJs stuff up and sound more exciting than someone on Traktor.
But you DJ with Traktor yourself. Yeah, but I play a lot of records that Traktor can't handle because they change tempo. I have to use Traktor otherwise I couldn't do what I do, with the key matching and looping and all that. I use the sync button whenever I can, because what's the point of not using it? But so much of what I play is going to drift out of time and I’m going to have to correct it anyway. There's still enough of those almost-a-trainwreck moments in my sets to keep it almost a failure. That's really important.
In Bill Brewster's book Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, he talks about the DJ as a shaman, evoking the vibe for the night. You're creating magic, manipulating these hidden sonic instruments and conjuring up the mood. Have you ever looked at your profession like that? Yeah, in a way that's a bit of an inspiration to the whole sort of pagan ritual thing going on in The Inheritors. A good night out is like that. From a sort of hypnosis or mythology point of view, a club isn't very different from this sort of ritual. Just all of these things that have been structured to help make a club a sort of cave for people to let go in, to make each other free by being relaxed. It's a rare thing, though. A club has to be pretty perfect for the magic to really work. You can't have idiots there, you can't have idiot staff, the sound's gotta be good and the right atmosphere has to be in the room. There are so many variables that have to be just right, and then everyone lets go and it's the best. It's an experience you can't have on your own. You need the other people there.
And the DJ? If you read about shamanism, the role of the shaman is not entirely an easy one. The way the shaman is outside society, the DJ is put outside of the rest of the club; you're sort of on your own the whole time you're there. I think it's a good parallel.