Issue 31 / September 2011 EXCLUSIVEINTERVIEW
HOUSE / ELECTRO / TECHNO
www.guestlist.net
31
TODD TERRY
Joe le Groove
joe@guestlist.net
How’s it going? I’m good, I’m good.
Todd, I just wanna get back to you growing up; what were your musical influences? I kind of got into the whole music thing really fast, because my sis- ter used to play a lot of music and I used to go in there and bug out. I also had an uncle that I used to hang out with; he played a lot of jazz and stuff like that. One of my friends who I started hanging out with was DJing and MCing when I was a little bit older, so we starting getting into James Brown, a lot of funk, a lot of rap, breakbeat stuff... That’s how I kind of really started getting into the music thing.
Okay, and what was the tran- sition from hearing all these cool beats to you wanting to actually make music? What
With a new album on the horizon, we spoke with the Grammy Award nominated DJ and producer who has been at the forefront of New York’s early house sound patterns and arrangements.
was the turning point? I think it was just us going out to clubs, like having fake ID at the time. We were going to clubs and checking out things and that really turned the whole thing into the real DJ aspect. At 16 I was sneaking into clubs, just hanging out and seeing what’s going on. I DJ’d and said, “Okay, I gotta make sounds like this for myself”.
How long after that did you ac- tually start making music? I think I started making music when I was 18. That was really the time when I started started. I was lucky enough to have a track out by, like, 19... I really just studied and kept going with it. I kind of mimicked records. I would find a record and I would kinda write down every sound the record had on it and when it would come in, I would kind of make a chart and I would do the same thing for my track or my record. I got into the studio every now and then but I was trying to re- ally study at home. I kind of studied
You’ve remixed the likes of The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson... The list is endless. What are your highlights from producing music? I think I’ve got a lot of notoriety from the remix game but I believe in the productions more. A remix is a real fast thing; I did it in two days and didn’t
really concentrate. I mean,
remix-wise, I really like ‘A Day In The Life’ by Black Riot. I thought that it was a really interesting re- cord; you really couldn’t tell what was going on with it. I kind of just did it. It was strange but I just went with it because it didn’t sound like anything else in the world. It was very interesting, along with ‘Every- thing But The Girl’...
You had that feeling when you were actually in the studio, making it? Yeah. I said this was it, this is good, this is what is needed for now. I felt it with ‘Everything But The Girl’.
I knew it was good to have a re- ally nice song over a harder beat; I thought of that as a concept.
You’re playing at Proud2 soon; how would you look at the dif- ferences between playing in Europe and in the States? The States is quite down, you know? The pressure is just differ- ent here. We’ve had all the greatest DJs in the States. The promoters, they’re never really good to us over here. In the rest of the world we’re worshipped; it just kind of worked out like that.
Why do you think that is? I don’t know. I think a lot of cats out there have jealousy about them as well, so they don’t back you up.
Right. They don’t want you to represent. It’s a rat race. It’s just like that in business and everything in New York; that’s why we have major problems here. New York, you know, you play here but it’s a dif-
ferent thing... It’s just finding the crowd in New York. Overseas the crowd is there, they really appreci- ate it and it really makes sense.
Just talking about giving
things back to the community, have you got any current proj- ects? Nah. I have done stuff where there have been disasters. The biggest charity I have ever done was in Central New York back in 2000 or something. It was a fireman’s ball when the 2001 thing happened over here with the twin towers.
What have you got going on in the future? I’m doing a lot of collaborations with different artists here and there. I’m working with Kenny again... I’ve gone into collab-mode, you know? David Morales and everybody, ev- eryone’s like, “Let’s do a track, let’s do a track.” I’m just kind of keeping that vibe going...
Have you got any plans for a
forthcoming album? Yeah, I’m doing an album called Todd Terry Versus Hip Hop and just taking some hip-hop stuff and making it into house, making it into Latin freestyle... Just doing what I want to do.
Cool. When’s that going to drop? I’m trying to set it up for mid-Oc- tober. I’m just finishing it up in the next two weeks or so.
If you were banished to a des- ert island and you had to take three famous people with you, who would they be? I would definitely say James Brown. I would say Quincy Jones, and I would probably take... Vegas, so we could joke around [laughs].
You can see Todd play at Proud2 on 10th September along with special guests. For more information go to
www.proud2.com
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