THE GUESTLIST NETWORK | MAY 2011
HOUSE//ELECTRO//TECHNO 31
LEE FOSS JOELEGROOVE
US West Coast talent Lee Foss is one half of Hot Natured with Jamie Jones. Split between different countries, he is definitely a man on the move and is keeping himself busy with DJing and producing. With a ton of new releases, 2011 is set to be a big year for this House/ Tech DJ.
Yo this is Joe Le Groove, I’m with the infamous Lee Foss. What’s happening homes? All good thanks. Apologise if I cough during the interview, comes with the lifestyle! But yeah all good just working on the Hot Natured album and touring and being busy. Busy as a bee!
Cool so whens the Hot Na- tured album gonna drop? Right now it’s looking like late summer, early fall. We’ve done a bunch more vocal tracks. We’ve got most of the album finished already. I think we’re going to do it probably as a double album with the stuff we completed last year into lyric driven vocal tracks. But we’ve done a lot more with Ali Love, some good stuff with Kenny Glasgow. We’ve got some other vocalists coming in. We’re really excited about the song writing process and a story. We’ve got an interesting concept to the whole album, and a back story for us as artists. We’re working on it full time. I’m doing four/five gig week- ends and then coming back and spending literally sixteen/ twenty hour days in the studio. I go back to LA for four weeks on Thursday.
So you come back every month to work on the album with Jamie? Nah I live here. I live both places. I just tour. I do some touring here and I do some touring there. I’ve done a lot there primarily because I have some visa issues in Europe. Main land Europe is a bit of a problem until that sorts itself out. I’ve kinda got to split time to do all the other ones, Romania, Russia, South Africa, South America, North America, Japan, Australia, stuff like that.
What kind of music did you listen to growing up? I listened to whatever my parents listened too as a kid. They were into white sixties music Jim Croce and The Beatles, The Carpenters, The Mamas and The Papas. You start to get your identity in your preteens and I started noticing Hip Hop and R&B in 1991/1992. 1993 is when it really kicked for me because I remember having tapes when I was younger and starting to buy some Hip Hop. Me and my brother bought a boombox. I bought things like Boyz II Men, Illmatic, SWV and Notorious BIG. When I did get my own room I was able to get all
these radio station because it was on the second floor and I could get the Chicago Hip Hop and R&B stations and it completely changed my life. I went through a few phases where I would listen to bands briefly like Weezer, Bush but for the most part until I was 16/17 all I noticed was Hip Hop and R&B. I’m just really lucky that was a golden age for music. It was a specific time. That was my thing and it’s paid off down the line because with a lot of my friends and a lot of European pro- ducers, as sounds are changed, I’ got the leg-up because I know what’s corny and what isn’t. I’ve played Hip Hop. There’s a dif- ference between really knowing what was corny and played all the time and what was a hit, knowing what was special and knowing why you can lace a vocal that’s got meaning and is familiar but people don’t know why they know it. It makes it more special if you lived it.
So how did you first meet Jamie Jones, because you guys are now doing an album together. Jamie’s been one of my best friends for ten years. We met in
Ibiza in 2001. The situation with us is, I had to be back in America for a while. At the time he started making music. I saw his success from afar- I would bring him to DJ in America. It definitely opened my eyes, it definitely embedded in me that I would need to work on my DJing. He started making music and was really good, it imprinted on me even more. He’s not coming with anymore of a musical background than me. If he’s one of your best mates you should be trying to do this too because this is what you’re pas- sionate about and this is what you want to do with your life. It wasn’t until 2008 that we started making music together. There was an idea for doing a label. The plan was for us to work towards some music for this label. We clicked really well so we just decided to keep doing it. Jamie’s had a few collaborations but I think because I had something to bring to the table, it was more interesting for him. There were things like my knowledge about Hip Hop and R&B and movie samples and my knowledge about eighties Funk and Disco. There was a few of my edits were a couple of his favou- rite songs that perked his interest
enough to be into it. Even in the early ones when I couldn’t really provide much help with physically playing notes or anything, I had a lot of good ideas. I think in music good ideas are more important than anything. There are people who are fundamentally sound in production, who know how to make well produced music that sounds polished, but if you don’t have any ideas behind it, you can’t play the notes... At the end of the day people want to hear some- thing that’s clever and smart, that has meaning, that’s cool and that makes them dance! So you can get away with not being the most polished if you have good ideas and you’ve got an ear.
So what have you got planned for this year man? I mean I’m so busy it’s ridiculous! I’ve had a lot of releases already this year. My next Hot Creations EP comes out on May 23rd in a couple of weeks. I’ve got a DJ T remix coming out soon and a mix of Lee Briggs. I’m working on my own album for the end of this year. We’ve got the Hot Natured album! I’m working on another project with Kenny Glasgow called Undercovers. It’s just a
really busy period for me. I’m in work mode... a lot of travel and a lot of gigs.
If you were stranded on a desert island and you had to take three famous people dead or alive, who would they be and why?
Is there a way to play music on this island or are we just talking to each other? I’m gonna take Notorious BIG and I’m going to take Eva Mendes and Adriana Lima. And I’ll leave the reasons to your imagination. But Biggy and I could a chat and start our own little rap group. I’ll try beat box for him! I might share the women with him, I might not!
Haha. So whens your next EP out? Well Full Motions just came out a couple of weeks ago and Hot Creations on vinyl and digital just came out yesterday. My EP Lee Foss Starfruit EP comes out May 23rd on vinyl and Beat Poet comes out two weeks after that. Look for the albums in late sum- mer/ early fall!
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