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Though no longer actively producing as Metro Area, members Darshan Jesrani and Morgan Geist (aka Storm Queen), remain at the forefront of dance music culture. Respectably endeavoring into their own side projects, both members continue to travel, performing live gigs and exclusive DJ sets in cities worldwide. Years after their inception, Metro Area is still laureled as a current day lynch pin between the old sounds of New York’s disco scene (which Jesrani grew up in), and the modern ever changing landscape of house music influenced by New York in the 90s. We recently chatted with Jesrani from his home base in the city to talk about the genesis of their hit track ‘Miura,’ September 11, and of course, much, much more.
Let’s just jump right into it: In 2008 Simian Mobile Disco released their Fabric compilation. I was in college and was just getting into electronic music. 'Miura' [well known to many] appeared somewhere in the first half and I instantly went digging for the original. What is the genesis of "Miura?" Morgan found the drums on a 12” copy of ‘Stars on 45’ and put together a sketch of the drum track, bass line and vocal, which is pretty much the whole song. The production stuff came later at my studio where we recorded and arranged the strings and percussion, and did mixing and effects.
To put it into context, ‘Miura’ was the fourth of an initial run of 12” EPs. We released the four of them - ‘Metro Area 1-4’ within 3 years. ‘Miura’ came out in November of 2001 and, I guess, was influenced by a couple of different things. The first thing was that it was a reaction to the record we had released before it, called “Caught Up,” which was very sweet. Miura, in contrast, was sparse and angular. Then, secondly, and only by chance, the record was mastered on September 10th, 2001 and we made the label black to acknowledge what had happened the following day.
Since Metro Area isn’t actively producing, how much is Metro Area [the group] still a part of your day to day? I’d say we do a bit of Metro Area-related business every day. There’s always work to do that revolves around touring. We continue to get booked for DJ gigs and live sets. We initially decided that we were going to do the live tour this past summer and some fall dates. I’m not sure what we’re going to do next year. We’ll see what happens.
Sources have sighted ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Whip It’ as catalysts in your interest in electronic music. How did that distinguish your role in Metro Area vs. Morgan’s stated, early, interest in house music? Good question. Those influences of mine - Rush and Devo - were some of the first things I heard that drew me to the sound of the synthesizer, when I was a kid. I think Morgan has a very similar musical timeline to mine. For both of us, house music came much later - during college in the mid 90s. It wasn’t like Morgan was into house and I was into rock & roll synths while we were making Metro Area, but I think all of our influences, individual and combined, definitely got thrown into the pot.
Going back to ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Whip It,’ then fast forwarding to a Goa Trance-inspired 12” on ZoëMagik Records (followed by two more in ’95, ’96), what most defined this time for you? Ha! I was, basically trying to figure out what I wanted to make. The Zoëmagik records were pretty cheesy in hindsight and were inspired more by some weird contemporary US house/rave sound than they were by Goa trance. Basically it was music that was unaware of its roots. The rave scene was in full swing in the US and I was kind of following along from my first experiments with synths and sequencers, not really connecting any of this to disco or the R&B that I’d heard on the radio.
The couple of records that came out around ‘96 were me trying to zero in on a sound. I was into funky techno records at the time, Detroit stuff, and Basic Channel, but my tracks came out a little amateurish-sounding compared to those. Yeah, that whole first few years was me figuring out what I wanted to do.
The name Manish Sehgal is a name that appears on all the releases above. How did the two of you come to co-write that material? That’s my friend whom I was talking about earlier. We were a couple of the only guys in town who were into electronic instruments and music. We became friends and started producing together. I don’t think he’s making music anymore.
Before Metro Area came into fruition, shortly after the releases you co-wrote with Sehgal, where were you cutting your teeth? Is there a club from the early years that’s still significant to you? Around that time I was going to a party in the city called Sugar Babies. I think it was on a Monday night. I had just graduated from college and was living at my parents’ house and working part-time in my hometown of Poughkeepsie, NY. I had some friends who were students at Columbia at the time, and sometimes I would get them to come along with me. We’d end up crashing at their place uptown afterwards. The DJ was Troy Parrish. It was proper New York underground house music, and I even heard some Chicago stuff there that I was into - like Cajual records, Prescription Records… In a lot of ways, Sugar Babies really cemented what house music was supposed to feel like for me.
Then there was Danny Krivit, Francois K, and Joe Claussell’s Body & Soul party, which I went to pretty faithfully for years, until it eventually became huge and ended. I would say those two parties were really big for me. I didn’t really know how the music functioned until I started going out, where I could see how people reacted to the different parts of the songs, and at different times in the night. I guess that’s one of the symptoms of being exposed to club music primarily through the radio - you don’t actually get to see it in action.
During those early years and afterwards, once you had begun collaborating with Morgan, were those the people you were looking up to? I guess in the sense that they were some of my favorite DJs and I was being in-spired by their knowledge and way of playing music, yes definitely. They were the guys working on the scene, which was completely new to me at the time. They formed my first experiences and opinions as a regular club-goer and dancer in NY in the late ‘90s and early 2000s.
It’s funny because both Morgan and I were really heavily influenced by early 80’s boogie records and productions in our music, but there weren’t many parties you could go to hear weird, old underground records from the ‘70s and ‘80s. It was all deep house with some old stuff thrown into the mix.
And what about today -- are there new artists making history or is that era of house music over? I don’t think I listen to as much new music as I should, just because there’s so much. But I do hear good, if not timeless, records pretty regularly. To answer your question, yes - I think there are, but only time will tell what records actually become historically important. I guess you could say that every special record has that potential. Who knows?
In terms of DJs, I have a lot of admiration for people who have a musical way of playing. I can’t see any other possible way to make history. You have to really give people something unforgettable with your music selections. For example, DJ Harvey isn’t really known for making records, he’s known more for his DJ sets, but in that way I think he’s really exceptional - carrying the torch from the first few generations of disco DJs and translating it for the younger dancers. This is so sorely needed and I don’t think anybody but he is really doing it right now. Most other popular DJs just play contemporary music and don’t connect it to anything deeper, musically or historically.
What about Levon Vincent? Did you see what he posted on Facebook? No, I didn’t, but you can always kind of hear who has an imagination when you listen to a record, so I think that’s really nice of him to offer to impart that to someone who’d like to learn. That’s a real apprenticeship. It’s not just about technical shit - how to engineer sounds – but about the style and philosophy of how stuff is actually put together.
How do you feel about the modern DJ? Do you think the role as selector has been replaced by the producer? I don’t know, to be honest I think yeah, they’ve become conflated, but I’m not too impressed with the developments in either.
Everybody seems really enamored with the technology available to DJs right now. People who fancy themselves trendy like to see a DJ show up with a computer, or almost nothing, and bang out a set that sounds super even, perfectly volume and beat-matched.
And then on the producer side, what kind of production can you make on the spot? I mean, production of a record can be a very serious, time-consuming, carefully considered thing. Unless it’s just quick tracks, then yeah, I guess that’s fine if that’s all anyone wants. I personally appreciate tracks for what they are, but music can be so much more, and I feel like convenience sometimes threatens to undermine that.
People also seem to be into doing stuff to the songs while they’re playing – live re-editing, or looping certain parts. Sometimes that works really well, but I also think there is a serious art to playing songs in sequence and not touching them. A real DJ should basically be making some sort of musical connection from record to record and creating a narrative on the fly. I don’t want people to lose sight of that.
Anyway, none of this is really the point, to me. I’m interested only in the music, so whatever gets the job done best is cool.
It’s a delicate balance. You don’t want people to get so impressed with the tech-nology that they forget how to play records for somebody.
I think a good lesser-known example is Al Ester from Detroit... I don’t know him, but just watching now, yeah, someone like that can be really moving because they really get behind the music and get into presenting the song.
That’s why there are so many records getting made at the moment - people re-lease them so they can get their names out there, but what they actually, really want to do is to DJ.
Who else? Well, here in New York, people like David Mancuso were successful at just DJing and building their party at home. Eventually someone like that will get invited to play out of town, and the main priority is still simply just DJing. Danny Krivit and London’s Horse Meat Disco in are two others I can think of who work primarily as DJs with the occasional edit or remix.
It seems so tough to throw a great party here without getting bothered. Harvey played three weeks ago and the cops came in and kicked everybody out. They were doing a “sweep” that night in Brooklyn, going party to party, ending them. So when you have all these obstacles to even get a party going it becomes harder to focus on just DJing.
What’s next? Still working on Funn City’s first single “All-Night People,” lining up the next few releases for Startree, making plans for next year. Like the Funn City record, it’s all going to be very different from what the market is doing right now, but hopefully all very danceable and enjoyable. My whole mandate with Startree is just to be imaginative and to create our own lane, otherwise I might as well just fucking quit and do some other kind of work that doesn’t pretend to be art.
Listen to Metro Area on Pulse Radio.
