Streetlife DJ's Interview

Streetlife DJ's consists of Stewart Rowell and Louis Gaston. DJ Mag called them 'the UK's very own 2ManyDJs'' and Mixmag touted them as ''the most exciting DJ duo to emerge in a long time''. We catch up with the pair to ask them a few questions. . .

1. Having both worked in the music scene for many years, what inspired you both to start working on the Streetlife DJ's project?

S: Well, to kick off with we both wanted a new challenge. About 4 years ago we became really quite disillusioned with house music and the way the scene was going. There were way too many records being released and most of them were just plain rubbish. Vinyl was still the way to get your music out there, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to sell enough to cover the costs of manufacturing. So we took a year off from producing, and thought about trying something new, a different direction. And we soon found that our love of music, of all kinds, was the common ground between us.

L: Although we do have a very similar taste in music, we've both been influenced by so many different artists over our 30+ years, and we basically came up with the idea of taking all those influences & knowledge on board and turning it into something aimed straight at the dancefloor. Our Nevermind The Balearics mix cd was one of the first things we did as Streetlife, and pretty much kick started the whole thing. It's a cut n paste mix with over 50 of our favourite tracks from all different genres in 80 minutes. My biggest inspiration for that mix, and a lot of what we're doing now, is probably the Dirtchamber Sessions by Liam Howlett (from The Prodigy). It's pure genius, he's got an amazing taste in music and the record collection to prove it.

S: Alfredo has always been a big inspiration to me. I first went to Ibiza in 1988, and I remember going to a then, open air Amnesia and hearing this DJ mix up music like no-one I had ever heard before. From early Chicago house & acid, to 80s stuff like Duran Duran & Roxy Music, to old skool hip hop like Big Daddy Kane and Eric B & Rakim, into stuff like The Cure or The Smiths. It was totally insane! I know it's a tired old cliché, but it really was a life changing experience for me, and I think that Alfredo's influence really showed through on this mix cd. We actually got to DJ before him at Danny Ramplings retirement party at Turnmills in December 05. That was a special night.

L: We should also mention Soulwax, and the huge input they've had in opening up dance music to different styles of music, especially rock & indie. We've been following them for several years now, and yeah, of course they've had a big influence on us. They're very talented guys, we love what they do, and to be touted as The UKs answer to 2ManyDJs is very flattering and means a lot.

2. The Streetlife ethos seems to be about having fun and entertaining the crowd with a cross section of music. Would you say that some music over the last several years has become a bit stagnant because it has just stuck to its particular genres?

S: Most definitely! Personally, I think that dance music has a habit of disappearing up its own backside every couple of years. New fads come & go so quickly, and people seem to get sucked in real easy, and to be honest, the music press doesn't help. We're just trying to show people a good time, without taking it all too seriously. We really don't feel like we have to conform to what he or she is playing, or what this or that magazine is writing about. Sure we're into pushing things forward, and we wanna find new music to play out as much as anyone else, but at the end of the day it should be about having fun and enjoying yourself. There's definitely a certain amount of irony creeps into our DJ sets. We try to surprise people with some of the records we play. We want people to think'I remember that record, I can't believe they just played it'I love it!' And I think that over the last few years, an open-minded attitude has developed in clubland once again, which is how it all started anyway (think of Larry Levan at Paradise Garage, or Alfredo in Amnesia for example), that's how it should be.

3. What is the most interesting and unusual gig you have played since starting as the Streetlife DJ's?

L: Well, its still early days for Streetlife DJs, we've played some wicked gigs already (and some bad ones too!), but I think the most interesting & unusual gigs are still to come, well I hope they are. But one of the first gigs we played was for Smokin Jo & Terry Hart. It was their first Nude party in Ibiza 2005. It was at the Bluemarlin beach club in Cala Jondal. Jo absolutely loved the Nevermind CD and asked us to come over and play a Balearic set in the afternoon. Bluemarlin is a beautiful setting, and the crowd was very much an older International crowd. The sun was beaming down and we played after Skin from Skunk Anansie. We played a really varied set, all kinds of stuff old & new, from The Gap Band & Trouble Funk, through to Adonis & The Glimmers, and it went down really well, the vibe was wicked. The crowd seemed to be really enjoying it, and our special re-edit of Human Leagues Love Action got a particularly big cheer. It sounded amazing in that beautiful setting, a really uplifting moment that we'll never forget.

4. If you could choose to play a gig anywhere in the world where would it be and why have you chosen this place?

L: I've always wanted to go play in Japan. I'm fascinated by the culture and the people, and I love technology. Stew's played in Tokyo before and reckons the nightlife is crazy, so I'd like a piece of that action. But closer to home, I think Glastonbury is in both our sights. It's the daddy of all festivals!

S: Yeah agreed, Glastonbury is a bit of an ambition, although being a London boy, Ive always fancied our own soundsytem stage at Notting Hill Carnival. I think we could have a lot of fun there. Further a field, I played for Home in Sydney during the Olympics of 2000, but I'd like to go back and tour Australia. And I like the idea of playing a big party at one of the worlds big landmarks, like the Pyriamids, the Grand Canyon, or the Great Wall of China'but I guess its just the likes of Oakey & Norman that get to do those kind of gigs'bastards. Oh and I hear that the views on Warung Beach in Brazil are rather'how can I put this politely'peachy! : )

5. When you play out, do you use the traditional decks and CDJ's or do you use a laptop or both? Also do you incorporate any additional equipment in your sets?

L: We're fully digital now. CDJs are the way forward, they're so versatile and you can do so much more. We've spent a lot of time trawling through our record collections and digging out tracks from the past that we wanna be playing. And if we can't find them on CD or MP3, then we just record it to CD from vinyl.

S: Yeah we use 3 or sometimes 4 CDJ 1000s. I read an interview with James Zabiela a while back, where he said that the CDJ 1000 had completely revolutionized the way he DJs, and to be honest, I can't think of a better way to put it. They really are an incredible piece of kit. We also use the Pioneer EFX 1000. And we're about to introduce Ableton into our sets too. However, the plan is to use this for extra FX, accapellas, additional sounds & loops, to save running those through a CDJ. I don't think that we would ever go 100% Ableton, because I think it would take something away from what we do live. Also, Louis showed me a demo of the live drums you can programme with Ableton using the M-Audio Trigger Finger controller. I play a bit of drums'badly! (I'm a frustrated Keith Moon wannabe), so this could be the answer I've been looking for.

6. You edit and remix a lot of your tracks and put your own personal touches to them. This reflects in your sets and makes them sound unique, but how much importance do you think this has from a DJ's point of view when you're playing out and about?

L: It's incredibly important to go that extra yard these days. It's no longer about mixing one record after the other, you have to be doing more than that. You have to be sounding different to the next boy or girl if you wanna be noticed. We re-edit everything we play to suit our style. We like to have a quick-fire effect to our sets, we don't like records going on for anything over 6 minutes, so everything is edited down to 4-5 minutes. And because we were both brought up on the Sasha/Digweed art of mixing, ie: tight beat matching, layering sounds and seguing chords & melodies together perfectly, we're not drop-it-in-merchants, despite the fact that we mix up all different kinds of music. We still want our sets to be smooth and sound the best they possibly can, so the upshot of that is, preparation & programming'it's the key.

S: Yeah I totally agree. And also just a few years back, a large part of being a cutting edge DJ was about getting the latest records before everyone else. Getting the latest tunes cut to dub plate and dropping them first. That's not so important anymore, with the huge effect the internet has had, getting the latest music isn't so difficult now, for anyone. So its about what you do with it and how you present it in your sets. We do loads of special little re-edits & remixes, especially with old records or forgotten gems, even obscure stuff. We might take a Led Zepplin guitar sample, or a Jay Z vocal, put them together, add some drums, loop some additional sounds & fx (like a 303 or synth riff or whatever), and make a little track out of it, that no-one else has. We do that a lot so it makes us sound different. We get asked what this or that is all the time'but we're not telling you'it's a secret!

7. 'Queen Machine' has gathered support from DJ's since it's been around; including a lot of support from Paul Oakenfold and also airplay on Pete Tong's show on Radio One. What expectations did you have, if any, when you finished the track?

L: Queen Machine, that record just won't go away! People either love it or hate it. It came together in less than a day, and we knew we'd come up with something quite special when we had finished it. That record has done us a lot of good, but as artists, I don't think you should ever expect anything of your work when you do something. You'd just be building yourself up to get shot down again. It's a hard enough industry as it is. Its just a case of whatever happens will happen.

S: Sasha was actually the first DJ to pick up on Queen Machine, and I think that record definitely played a large part in him taking note of what Streetlife DJs were doing, and ultimately him signing us to the Excession Agency. We're good mates with Dave Gardner (Sasha'a Ableton engineer) and when he told me that Sasha had been dropping the record at every gig, and it was going off big time, I have to admit it was a bit of a shock, a nice one though.

8. Can you tell us of any new tracks and releases in the pipeline that we should be hearing of in the near future?

L: Yeah, there's quite a lot going on over the next couple of months. We've got 2 tracks coming out on Paul Jacksons label (Dozer Records), called Bodywork and Yo! Jay. We've just finished our summer banger called Don't Bring Me Down, and yes it samples the old ELO record. That should be around on limited promo soon. As for Queen Machine, I don't think we've heard the last of that one yet. We've recently finished some remixes that will be coming out on Kinky Vinyl (Eames ' Glamm) and the soon to be reformed Hooj (Leama & Moor ' Distance Between Us). We're doing a compilation for Seamless Recordings called Streetlife Uploaded which will encompass the sound of a typical Streetlife club set.

S: We've also started a new mix series called Streetlife DJs Hot Mix 100 which is available as a podcasts via iTunes. It's basically us being as eclectic as we want, really pushing the boundaries of what we play, and in what order we play them. We do a new mix each month, and the response has been unbelievable. We've had over 100 thousand downloads in under 2 months, and iTunes have featured us on their recommended podcasts page. They're great for your ipods or in the car, just good music put together well.

You can subscribe at: www.streetlifedjs.net/podcast Check it out!

9. You've got two residencies to look forward to this year; one at the Ministry of Sound and also for Together @ Turmills. Can you tell us a bit more about them and what you have in store over the coming months?

S: We've already told you about the first gig in Ibiza for Nude (Smokin Jo), well we played NYE for them down at Ministry of Sound. It went really well, so much so that MoS have asked us back this year to play the main bar on a regular basis. The first of which is Saturday 10th March, again for Nude. And on a similar note, we played at Together at Turnmills back in November, with John Kennedy in the XFM room, and again it went really well so Turnmills have asked us back to play on a regular basis this year.

L: We've also got dates coming up at Fabric (London), Tribal Sessions @ Sankeys (Manchester), Lovebox @ The End (London), Nu Wave @ The Empire (Middlesborough), Renaissance @ The Cross (London), aswell as trips to Dubai & Bahrain, Russia & Poland, and a tour of South East Asia. We hope to get over to Ibiza and the US at some point this year too.

10. You are also going to be playing at some of the festivals in the UK this year; can you elaborate on this and let us know some of the details?

S: Yeah, as a result of the Together @ Turnmills residency, they've asked us to play at the Get Loaded festivals in London & Cardiff, and there's a chance of playing the Lovebox festival in London too. And there's a possible residency in the pipeline for a big drinks brand who have a big presence at most of the UK festivals throughout summer'I'm not saying anymore than that, but no prizes for guessing who it is. So maybe we will get to Glastonbury after all'.

Thanks for your time.

Stu Bradley