Classics is an interview series on Pulse where we take an in depth look at some of the most influential and best loved albums, tracks and mix compilations in electronic music by chatting to their creators.
For our third instalment, we go in depth with celebrated DJ and producer Stuart Price, who in 2003 under his infamous Jacques Lu Cont guise, crafted one of the most seminal mix compilations of the decade for the Fabriclive series. A rough and ready mix of pop, electro-house and rock, it perfectly encapsulated the changing sounds of the time.
Pulse: When did you first start DJing? Stuart Price (Jacques Lu Cont): It was when I was producing as Les Rhythmes Digitales around ’97 or ’98. I was touring live shows and I didn’t want to just perform for an hour each night – there was a lot more music I wanted to play. When you’re touring a live show, it’s like, here’s the 10th song from the record and that’s kind of the end of the story. But DJing is a really different way to communicate with an audience - you can cover so much more of your own musical ground.
You were obviously exposed to a lot of pop music in your youth. Were you DJing with the music that inspired you growing up, or was it more the stuff that was fresh at the time? A lot of it was the music I grew up with. When I was young I didn’t own a lot of stuff because albums were really expensive and I couldn’t really go and get them. Then I discovered charity shops to dig through and all the cool stuff - or what people thought was hip at the time – would already be gone, which was actually great because it meant all the stuff that I really liked was still there; like Level 42, Nik Kershaw and The Human League. All those guys were a bit out of fashion at the time but it was there. So when I started DJing I’d play that stuff alongside house and electronic music and figured out that they went together pretty nicely.
Did you have any DJ idols back when you stared DJing? I didn’t really have idols when I started playing because I was just excited to be doing it. Though when I was starting to release music there were a few DJs who I was hanging out with like Roger Sanchez and Junior Sanchez – if they were playing in London I’d go and hang out with them see their shows. Technically Roger Sanchez was just so far ahead of what anyone else was doing; stuff with multiple copies of records…he was just super advanced. I really watched how he played and wanted to be as fast and creative as he was behind the decks.
The reason I ask is because of the quote from you that’s in the Fabriclive.09 sleeve notes: "I don't think DJing is that cool. I don't like the image of the silver boxes and the hooded jacket and crappy sunglasses. I don't like the supposed glamour in DJing and I even hate the name!”. What made you feel that way at the time? As much as I’ve just said how much I looked up to Roger Sanchez that quote sounds like I’m describing him! [laughs] What I didn’t like is…there was this first wave of superstar DJing where there was this image that had to go with it that was so restricted and limited. Like, if you are a DJ you have to wear these clothes and you have to be seen carrying your record boxes into a gig with a whole lot of attitude. I guess I thought it wasn’t very cool, it was non-inclusive and all about the DJ and not the crowd.
Actually to a large extent I still believe that – DJing shouldn’t just be about the DJ and what he’s wearing or how he looks. DJing is about music. It’s about new music as well and not playing the same stuff over and over again. Although to be honest I can be guilty of playing the same stuff sometimes! Some songs become so entrenched with your style - or they’re records that you’ve personally made – that you feel you should play them because people love them.
So around 2003 when the Fabriclive.09 mix came out, were you playing at the club often? Yeah, but it was a really big surprise when Fabric asked me to actually do one of their mix CDs because I had played at the club a few times, but I thought of Fabric as being a London superclub that was more mainstream. Sure they’d just started making their Friday nights a bit more interesting and diverse and began booking people like myself or Erol Alkan, but I still thought it was a big risk to do something different to what every other mix compilation series was doing at the time. Risky, but very cool.
These days eclectic DJs are a dime a dozen, but back then guys like yourself and Erol Alkan were sort of breaking the mould a bit compared to the sound that was prevalent at the time. It think we just wanted to do something different. Around the birth of house music in ’87, Erol and I would have been around 10 or 11 at that time, so we weren’t teenagers experiencing it on a dancefloor as such. We fell in love with it a little later, around the age of 16 or 17. But it felt like around 2001/2002, by mixing in these more eclectic records, or records that could almost be considered bad taste – and that ‘s not because I think they are bad taste, I liked them, but they just weren’t deemed very cool at the time – I think we felt like we were making something that was our own. We were integrating our tastes into house music.
Was the Fabriclive mix based on a particular night you played at the club? How did you decide to put it together? It was a mixture of two things. It was music that I was playing at Fabric – things like Chicken Lips or the Mirwais remix. And then I also saw it as an opportunity to go even more leftfield with tracks that wouldn’t have worked so instantly in a nightclub. So things like putting the Richard Strauss in there or the Eastern Palace track from around ’85 or ’87 – I’m not sure I would have played them at Fabric. I wanted to go even further leftfield but still keep at the core of the mix music that you’d hear if you came to see me play. What I wanted to stay away from was making it too banging. I thought if it was too heavy or hard then it’s just going to blend in with everything else that’s going on in mixtape land.
On the topic of ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ by Richard Strauss – did you always plan to use that? Was it one of those, “I’ve always wanted to use this in a mix, it has to go in there” type of thing? When I was making the mix I remember I didn’t have that much space to set everything up, so I took my decks, some CD players and a mixer and put them on the floor. I was piecing together the mix that way, jamming and seeing what worked together. In those days you didn’t piece things together on a computer on Logic or Ableton. I had everything lined up once I figured out what I wanted to do - records and CDs leaning up in order; a visual plan of the mix. Then I noticed that the Richard Strauss LP was under the couch in the studio, so I put it on and realised that ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’ was in key with the Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’. So things like that just kind of happened on the fly, which is exactly the same way the Brian Eno track ended up on the end of the mix too. That was an album I was listening too a lot at the time; when I was setting up my decks that record was sitting on the platter so I thought, fuck it, I’ll try and mix it in and see what happens. So it was a little bit planned, a little bit chaotic…somewhere in-between! It was all music that I grew up with or meant something to me. Just records that I loved.
I have to say, that mix from Strauss into Eurythmics is one of my favourite transitions on a mix CD. I remember thinking at the time how brilliant it was. Electro house was starting to get pretty popular in Sydney around that period and I remember all of a sudden everyone was playing ‘Sweet Dreams’. I’m convinced it was because of Fabriclive.09. [Laughs] It’s funny you should say that because after I put that track in the mix I started hearing it in DJ sets in different places around the world a lot more. I didn’t want to flatter myself thinking I’d created a resurgence in that track, but now that you’ve said that, maybe I did!
Yeah it’s kind of like one of those things where you don’t want to be the guy who says they invented wearing jeans with thongs [flip-flops], but I really do think you can claim that one. [Laughs] Well that’s pretty cool then. You can be my expert witness when I’m arguing over it.
When you submitted the mix to Fabric and you had tracks from old bands like Steve Miller Band and the Strauss tune on there, was it a nightmare for the label to get them cleared? You know, the mix wasn’t very well received by Fabric at first. When submitted it and there was a guy called Steve Blond who was my main contact there and he was really super supportive of it and loved it, but some of the other guys who I guess owned the club weren’t exactly jumping up and down about it [laughs]. I think they just didn’t get what I was trying to do, but I didn’t back down and kept on insisting. Eventually something happened, I think they started playing the mix to people and they really liked it, so it all started to turn around. I think as a compromise I might have edited four bars out of ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ just so I could say I changed something for them.
I think it’s interesting that you mention that Fabric weren’t totally into the mix at first. That seems to be what happens with a lot of music or films that wind up standing the test of time. I think it’s because it was made up of old and new tracks and everything in-between. Every track on there conforms to this attitude of we’re the new generation at the moment and we’re listening to music that’s so diverse and all over the shop, yet it all fits together. And that really sums up what that crowd was all about. And no one really knew exactly what it was all about, it was just trying something new. People were trying new clothes and new looks and the music had to fit that in some way by saying this isn’t your run-of-the-mill 4/4, straight-up house music. I think the Fabric mix works because it uses dance music as a vehicle with different elements.
A lot of people have said to me over the years that they heard the Fabric mix when they wee at college and it go them into dance music and from there they got deeper into other electronic stuff. I guess it bridged a lot of genres and brought people who were into rock music into dance because they all of a sudden saw the connection.
I think what’s interesting too is that at the moment it’s rare for a DJ to come up in the scene without being a producer as well. You kind of bucked the trend by almost a decade! That whole situation is a broken scenario though. It puts up this weird barrier to the potential entry of so many talented DJs. Not every great DJ has to have their own track to back up what they’re doing. Great DJs can come along and be different and have their own voice purely from their track selection. Also I think the notion that technically everything has to be completely pristine for you to be taken seriously as a DJ isn’t right – it’s not sexy, you know? A good DJ is when there’s soul coming out of the speakers because the guy or girl playing really loves their records and is into that they’re doing. I think that makes it far more interesting for people to go and experience a night out.
It’s a shame that everything feels so boxed in and limited right now. There are so many rules of what people must be if they’re to be a part of dance music, which is completely at odds with why dance music started. There’s this really cool old interview with Derrick May or Juan Atkins, where they’re talking about old Detroit and Chicago parties saying how there was 30 or 40 black kids partying in someone’s basement because no one would let them play that music anywhere else. They were completely freed because of that. If you contrast that with a lot of big dance music shows today, it’s almost like if you don’t play within a certain field then it’s like you won’t be taken seriously, and that’s a real shame.
Agreed. I think when the hype that’s happening in America dies down a bit, it’ll hopefully return to people realising that DJing in itself is an art form. You can never have everything and the American explosion has been positive in exposing dance music to millions of listeners, but at the same time has made it very formulaic. But I think you take the good with the bad and like you say when the hype dies down, hopefully something really good will come from it.
[Jacques Lu Cont plays Melbourne Music Week on Friday November 22 and Harbourlife in Sydney on November 23]
In the second of Pulse's Sticky Labels feature, we take a look Berlin based record label Odd Socks. The exciting young imprint are rapidly making a name for themselves with their unique and forward facing approach to electronic music. Pulse's own Sam Jacobs caught up with co-founders Dickon Stone and James Creed ahead of Dickon's November 22nd Saints Don't Sleep show, which you can buy tickets for 
