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Leeds based DJ and production duo Audiojack may be well known with the robotic techno they pushed in their formative years, though as the winds of electronic music have changed over the years, the pair have flowed with it, today pushing a warmer house sound. A new upcoming disco project with Gomma Records which has vocalist Nancy Whang (of The Juan Maclean and LCD Soundsytem fame) attached to it would suggest that their ears were always open to more than just minimal techno anyway. Not the underground pop sound, though, as we discovered.
In the lead up to their impending arrival in Australia, we caught up with James and Richard, who have also just dropped a the very first Mantra Collective podcast - the crew the duo will be playing for when they touch down in Sydney.
[Tracklist below]
Pulse: You guys first met in Ibiza back in 2002. What do you remember most about that summer and about each other? Audiojack: (Jamie) It was a great summer, I remember Rich was incapacitated for a large chunk of it having fallen off a wall and breaking both his ankles. He used to have to DJ sat on a bar stool and I had to piggy back him to the toilet.
(Rich) I’m not really sure why Jamie carried on being my mate actually, aside from my incapacitation, a friend of mine managed to get us (and Jamie and his girlfriend at the time) literally thrown out of our apartment for accidentally spraying the owners elderly parents from the balcony with a water pistol! We have lots of memories from that summer, most of which we can’t really share! Of course we’re a lot more sensible these days, but that summer really did plant the seed for what we want to do and where we want to be in life. Funnily enough that 10 year journey will lead us back to Ibiza next year to make our old home our new one again. It’s really a place that’s impossible to leave.
Your sound has changed quite a lot since you first started producing together – from a kind of ‘robotic’ techno to a warmer house sound. What instigated the move in direction – was it a fairly conscious decision? If your choice in the music you want to be involved in is a conscious one then you’re probably not doing it for the right reasons. The reason the music we’re into / make / play changes is because we feel the sound has become stagnant and we’re literally sick of it. Then we hear something new that sounds fresh and exciting and we’re naturally compelled to seek out more.
This is what happened with techno in 2008; every one wanted to copy the latest big techno hit to try and “make it” and during the digital revolution of laptops and sample packs that was literally thousands. Minimal techno was a pretty simple concept so it got very monotonous very quickly. The same thing has happened with deep house now, “that” deep analogue bass line that was so fresh two years ago has been milked and overused to death by kids trying to make the next hit but sadly 99% of them fail and we’ve ended up with thousands of tracks that sound alike.
Our only conscious decision now is to make music that, whatever it maybe, steers well away from the current underground pop trend. Electronic music has always been the anti-pop to us and it’s a little bit devastating to hear some producers try to merge them like this. We’re talking cheap trick vocals, obvious copycat music which sounds like it could have been made in a music production factory here by the way, not the commercialisation of high quality electronic music - that’s something totally different.
Are your tastes in music outside of the electronic sphere similar? We’re mainly into a lot of the same things these days but growing up (when we hadn’t yet met) there were differences such as Jamie listening to a lot of hip-hop and Rich liking more bands. There’s very little music we dislike these days though. Generally we’re not into anything commercial or country and western but as long as it’s good quality music anything goes.
Can you fill us in on your upcoming project with Nancy Whang? How did it come about and how did you come to know her? We were asked to be involved in the project by Gomma Records for whom we’d done a remix in the past. They have acquired the rights to the Casablanca records back catalogue, a label that put out lots of the disco hits of the 70s. Their plan was to license new versions of some of the tracks from their favourite producers in their own style. We love disco anyway and we were told Nancy had agreed to do vocals. Being big LCD Soundsystem fans we jumped at the chance. They sent us a list of tracks from which to choose and Dennis Parkers 'Like An Eagle' stood out as one we could get the most from.
What have you got coming up on your Gruuv label? Our next release scheduled for late February is an EP from Tom Budden and Forrest with remixes from Coat Of Arms, X-Press2 and OOFT! Then we have EPs in the pipeline from Coat Of Arms and Hugo. We’ll be doing another EP ourselves too, hopefully for a UK summer release. We’re certainly not in any rush to release new material; we’re only interested in quality and at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a lot of that on offer.
Fill us in on some highlights from 2012. It’s been a great year in general, perhaps our best to date; everything has just gone really well. We’ve had lots of really cool gigs around the world, we’ve been very happy with how our music has been received and how the label has progressed. We were nominated for Best British Producer in the DJ Mag awards and were the 6th most charted artists on Resident Advisor in 2012. Generally though we prefer to live in the moment rather than look back or ponder the future.
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Are there any plans to create a live show to perform your music? We have had a lot of pressure in the past to put a live show together and even got the equipment and made a start. We were DJs long before we started making music, the productions were a platform to become professional DJs and DJing is still where our hearts lay. We love making music but we’re not driven by a passion to play live. That said it might happen one day, just no immediate plans.
How do you go about DJing together? Is it a case of “let’s see what happens,” or do you prepare your sets? We get together for a day (usually Thursdays) to discuss our new music and what tracks we’re going to play that weekend. We’ll then mix for a few hours and see what works with what and which tracks fit where during the course of a set. When we turn up to a gig we have a loose plan of what we want to do but then if we feel the crowd isn’t going to be into certain tracks or elements of the music we can change direction. It’s important when there are two of you playing back to back that you have a good understanding of each others ideas and directions to get the best results.
Name your favourite track of 2012. Martin Dawson & Jay Shepheard – 'Kinds Of People'.
Who should we be looking out for in 2013? Our favourite act to emerge at the back end of this year is Copy Paste Soul, who’s making music with elements of deep house and UK bass.
You’re in Australia soon! What are you looking forward to about the trip? We’ve both been lots of times before, all of the gigs sound exciting and getting to hang out with one of our mates who moved over for a year last May will be great too.
Tracklist: Mantra Collective Podcast 001 - Audiojack
Audiojack - Ode To K [CDR]
Deep Future - Let Me Go (Dirty Channels Remix) [Gruuv]
Audiojack ft. Kevin Knapp - Stay Glued (FCL Remix) [Gruuv]
Audiojack ft. Kevin Knapp - These Days (Jimmy Edgar Implication) [Gruuv]
Mark Henning - You're Diggin' Into Me [Soma]
Audiojack - No Equal Sides [2020Vision]
Klankarbeit - Fat P [Hey!]
Mike Mago - Galactic (Broke One Remix) [BMKLTSCH RCRDS]
Jacob Phono & Jens Bond - No Cure (Audiojack's Jam on Mars) [City Fox]
Kevin Knapp - Like This (Audiojack remix) [Leftroom]
Audiojack - Plastic Dreams [Gruuv]
Audiojack play Sydney's Abercrombie Hotel on 19th January (tix here) and in Wollongong on Australia Day, Jan 26th (tix here).
Listen to Audiojack on Pulse Radio
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