Introducing...Audiojack

Making their debut appearance in our Farringdon home this week Audiojack are the pairing of Leeds producers James Rial and Richard Burkinshaw. They’ve been part of the 2020 clan for as long as they’ve been going and they released their debut LP ‘Radio’ on the label in 2009, solidifying their rep for laying down deep four four grooves with a good helping of funk. So we didn’t waste any time in speaking to the duo ahead of this special event, discussing the heights of their remix achievements and the direction of their own house imprint Gruuv. Hey guys, how are you settling into the New Year, are you joining in on the January detox or is it full speed ahead? You know what we’ve never been so excited about a year to come! We’ve taken the first few weeks off to completely focus on a new EP for 20:20 Vision, one for another label and a few remixes. We’re both actually detoxing this month, although from different things and we’re trying to trim down a bit too, get rid of the Xmas weight! OK, I tell a lie, we were plumped up anyway, so we’re trying to sort that out as sadly no matter how fat you are airplane seats are the same size. You’re most recent release, ‘Get Serious’ EP on 2020 has been a huge success. Tell us about the selection of tracks on it and your decision to cover the all time classic by The Backroom –‘Definition of a Track.’? The Definition of a track remake was really down to Burnski, he posted this video up on Twitter of “The New Dance Show” in America back from the 90’s; The first track on there was Definition. Everyone was really getting down to it and we thought it would actually fit in with the stuff we’re playing now. We tried to get hold of a copy but the quality was poor and not good enough to play out so we decided to remake it ourselves, without any kind of release intentions. We’ve done this with quite a few old classics recently such as Jaydee’s ‘Plastic Dreams’, De’Lacy’s ‘Hideaway’ and Last Rhythm’s ‘Last Rhythm’, with the idea of just having more unique music to make our DJ sets more exclusive and fun. As far as the overall selection goes, that was really down to Ralph (Lawson), we just make whatever music we’re feeling at the time and send it over to him. He then selects the tracks he wants for the EP. We’ve been working gradually towards this deeper sound throughout 2011, and an instant switch might have put people off, but this is the sound we both grew up with and feels like a very comfortable place production wise. This is why we’re so excited about the year ahead as it’s the happiest we’ve been with the music we’re making and playing. How serious are you then? Describe your character for those that don’t know what you guys are about? We’re not that serious as people really, we’re always joking about and making fun of each other which is possibly a little immature at our age but it keeps life fun and smiles on our faces! As for music we’re very serious because it’s our lifelong passion and now our career so we need to run a tight ship. As individuals we have different traits and temperaments; Jamie’s easy going and relaxed about everything which means he doesn’t get stressed but as a result, for example if he’s gigging solo he’s turned up to the airport on the wrong day, things like that. It also means he has a lot of patience and can pay attention to detail, sitting for hours tweaking small elements of tracks until they’re right. Rich is a little more hyperactive, bigger picture rather than detail, always racing around with lots of ideas from one minute to the next whether that be for a bass line, an idea for a remix or a vocal collaboration, whatever. Whilst being a little more highly strung can lead to him getting unnecessarily wound up when flights are cancelled or promoters turn up really late for airport drop offs it also means no stone is left unturned and as a result we haven’t missed a flight or had to sleep in a double bed together after a gig (yet)… How has your dynamic between you both changed since you first started producing and playing out together? Break it down as to who does what exactly? First and foremost, before music, we were good friends and that’s still the case today. We’ve always been of the opinion that partnerships work best if both people give all they’ve got, and we’re lucky that we’re both really hard working and can honestly say we’ve never had a single disagreement about one of us not pulling our weight. We split everything 50/50 financially regardless of whether one of us does a couple of gigs alone or goes on holiday for a couple of weeks etc, which keeps things simple. We’re also lucky that we’re both good at different stuff, but when you put it all together it works a lot better than either one of us on our own. As many people will know there’s a lot more to making music, running a label and touring than just those elements suggest but between us we’ve got most bases covered. Who are some of your favourite duos in the music world? Who do you look to for inspiration? The first one who springs to mind is the Chemical Brothers. Groove Armada too, we love the way these guys can make popular electronic music without needing to resort to the awful cheesy crap that some feel the need to do, not mentioning any French names. Inspiration for us doesn’t come so much from other producers or DJs though, more from the things that go on around us, just living life, seeing our friends, touring and soaking up the seasons. What would you say have been the career- defining moments for you so far? Our first release Robot was where it all started for us, and watching Luciano drop it twice in a row on the DC10 terrace 6 years ago felt like something special was about to happen. Our debut at Basics in Leeds was monumental, as we’d been clubbers through those doors many times and grown up with Basics as an institution. Similarly with playing the Space terrace in Ibiza. We’ve topped Beatport’s charts a few times and it’s always nice to know people like your music. Get Serious is an important track as it’s turned quite a few heads and helped show people our deeper direction. Of course debuting at fabric is a pretty big deal too, and we can’t think of a better one to start 2012 with! How does it work remixing artist from Underworld to Bryan Ferry and 2020 Soundsystem? What do you enjoy most about getting to remix alternative genres and getting to be truly eclectic? Let’s go through each one individually. With Underworld, both of us have been massive fans since Trainspotting so we approached them and said we’d do a remix on spec (which means no commitment from them) and if they liked it they could use it. To our delight they agreed and sent us the parts to Holding the Moth. The main thing we wanted to use were Karl Hyde’s vocals so we could make a stripped back techno track with the vocals as the focal point. The feeling of having Karl Hyde’s vocals on our computer, in our bedroom studio was overwhelming, goose bumps throughout. The Bryan Ferry remix came about because we were playing at T-Bar in Shoreditch and a young lad came up and introduced himself as Isaac saying he had been following our music from the off. It turned out to be Bryan Ferry’s son and when the time came for Bryan’s material to be remixed by dance music artists, Isaac was handling things and asked us to get involved. Bryan Ferry is a legend whatever music you’re into so it was a no brainer; again we focused on the vocals. With the 2020 Soundsystem one, as we’re 20:20 artists, Ralph went “in house” for the remixes on Psycho, asking us and Burnski. We picked the standout sounds we knew we could work with. It works like this on all remixes really, you select the sounds that jump out at you and work them into your own sound and structure, sometimes you have lots of elements of the original and sometimes it’s barely recognizable as a remix but as long as we, the original artist and the label are happy the other factors are not that important. What’s new coming up on your label, Gruuv that we should know about? We’ve got our biggest release to date coming at the end of January which has two of our Audiojack originals, one with vocals from Kevin Knapp, and features remixes from FCL, Gorge and Waifs & Strays. The feedback on promo has been another level, lots of swearing, exclamation marks and nice words! We’re really excited about this release, but it’s important not to get too carried away with the promo feedback as DJ reactions on promo rarely correlate to what happens with a record in the real world. We’ve got some big release plans for later in the year; including an EP by a talented young Russian called S.K.A.M. who you should keep an eye out for. His EP will be out in April with remixes from us and Homework. We usually aim for one release per month, we find this is a nice volume to maintain quality control and allows us to give enough care and attention to promo’ing and managing the whole release process properly. Although we might have to up this a little, as we’ve got so much great new demo material it would be a shame not to help push forward. Your debut album Radio was released on 2020 Vision in 2009 - any plans for a new album that we can look forward too? Not at the moment. We can’t helping asking ourselves are albums even that relevant any more? Especially for people like us who predominantly make club music which is mostly bought by other DJs to play in their own sets? Obviously you’ll say yes, you’re fabric, with a hugely successful compilation series! But to play devils advocate for a moment, our album ‘Radio’ was made to be listened to as one long piece of music. In reality people didn’t consume it as such. It was broken down, chopped up into sections and sold off as individual tracks on digital download sites as people just handpicked the bits they thought were most relevant to their own DJ sets and discarded the rest. With so much new music coming out people don’t have time to digest everything that’s thrown at them, certainly not 12 tracks by the same artist on the same day. Then there’s the year it took us to make the album during which time our production output was practically zero because we were so busy stockpiling music. Don’t get us wrong, for some artists albums are absolutely relevant. If we decide to take a different direction in future we’d never rule it out, but as we currently stand, which is two guys who mostly make music for people to dance to in clubs, albums are just not for us. What can we expect from the 2020 Vision takeover next Saturday? With Ralph Lawson, Simon Baker and Julien Chaptal all at the helm- what’s each artist going to bring to the floor and of course, we want to know about yourselves… We’ll have to wait and see! We’ve got some really cool new deep stuff that we can’t wait to road test. In fact as we’ve taken January off its not unrealistic to think we might debut as many as 6 or 7 of our new productions, including some of the tracks from our next 2020 EP. It will be a great time to do it with Ralph and the crew all in tow. We’ve had solid promos this month from some of our favourite artists such as Eats Everything, Huxley, Jamie Jones, Fur Coat, Jay Shepheard and more, so people should expect an upfront set of deep yet energetic beats, intended to make them dance rather than nod their heads, most of which they won’t have heard before unless they’ve hacked our hard drive. What are you looking forward to most about this year, both in your personal lives and on the underground music world? Musically we’re super excited by our new deeper sound (yes we know we keep banging on about it!), we’re brimming with ideas and there really aren’t enough hours in the day to get them all down. We’re looking forward to a greatly improved output on 20:20 Vision and Gruuv along with a couple of other labels and we’re excited to get back on the road touring again after a nice little break. We’re also preparing to take the label to new heights with a firm focus on presenting each recording artist in the best way possible. We’ll be giving more attention to the release artwork now we have physical Gruuv vinyl releases too. What exciting new projects do you have in the pipeline for 2012? We’ve got a couple of exciting vocal collaborations in the pipeline, the first of which with Stee Downes (who collaborated with Lovebirds on their track Want You in My Soul) we’re working on right now. We’ll be doing remixes for Gorge and Homework and a potential collaboration with Noir and Ruede Hagelstein over the spring. We’re also working on new original material all the time. We’ll definitely be doing more vocal collaborations with our good friend Kevin Knapp as we always get the best out of each other. He’s also one of the nicest most genuine guys you could meet and working with people who inspire you is what life’s about really isn’t it! Finally, what are three things you just can’t live without? Food, water and air. Everything else can be replaced, substituted, taught etc. We spent the first 4 years producing on equipment that cost under £500, a process which required a lot of making do. Once you come out at the other side of that you realize that really no material item is essential.