Issue 31 / September 2011 JOE LE GROOVE INTERVIEWS
SPENCER PARkER
Being a key player in the house and techno scene, the British DJ is now a resident in Berlin and is in high demand all over the world. With a new debut album out, expect to be hearing a lot more from this guy.
HOUSE / ELECTRO / TECHNO
www.guestlist.net
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Your performances are quite diverse, I remember that stand- ing out when we first met 5 years ago when we both played at 333 in Shoreditch. What were your influences growing up? The first music I got into really was hip- hop to be honest, that was the first kind of stuff I was listening to, with artists such as Public Enemy, Ganstarr, Organised Confusion and A Tribe Called Quest. As I started going out more and more when I was sixteen/seventeen and I used to go out clubs, I was listening to a little bit of jungle, a little bit of house music and things like that. I started buying records to remind me of the nights I was going out to. I make myself sound old..lol. Before Youtube and digital downloads were about, if you heard a record you would have to go out and buy it if you really wanted it. After a while I had quite a few records and I thought maybe there was some way I could try to DJ. I borrowed my friends turntables and got a gig doing one of my friends 18th birthday party. It was a bit of a baptism of fire, I didn’t really know what I was doing but thankfully I had some good
records!
Its been two years since you you moved to Berlin? Yeah, or maybe its three I think, time flies!
What made you want to move to Berlin? I was going through some stuff in my personal life at the time and I kinda had a enough of London. I was thinking about moving to Amsterdam, Barcelona or maybe Paris but I had a friend that lived here in Berlin who had moved here previously and was also in the music business had told me so many great things about it. I played here 10 years ago a couple of times before it became a cool and trendy hot spot that it is now. I always enjoyed it as a city, but it was the simple fact that I had a friend here who loved it and he was like you can stay with me until you get yourself settled. Luckily I made the right choice, its a pretty good place to live.
Why do you name all your re- mixes and your fourth coming debut album “A Gun For Hire”?
Its from a Helmut Newton book, the fashion photographer, a son of Berlin himself. I was reading his autobiography and he was talking about fleeing from the Nazis and then fleeing to Singapore and enlisting into the Australian army, he pretty much had a crazy life. At one point he talks about the whole pretentiousness and craziness of the fashion world when working with French or Italian Vogue, he was saying as much as he takes his work seriously and he strives for the best result wanting to give it everything he is just “A Gun For Hire”. He is hired by a magazine to get on a plane and go somewhere take some photographs and come back. He states that he is not an artist and hes not a phenomenal human being, he’s just “A Gun For Hire”. Hes hired to to do a job, he goes there and does it and comes home, sometimes it can be pretty cool and can be glamorous and sometimes its not. That just got me thinking that its similar to the whole DJ/Producer lifestyle, everyone thinks it’s amazing and sometimes it is amazing but you’re not the second coming of Christ. We are just doing our job,
you’re “a gun for hire”. It just really resonated with with me and got me thinking that it was very similar to the DJ world.
You have had a string of hits from original productions and remixes over the last 6 years. How long did it take you to put the album together? I work pretty fast luckily from my A&R background. I kinda get stuff done, I don’t over think things, I don’t have twenty unfinished tracks on my computer. I get in and get it done, I did about fourteen tracks in the end and there are about eleven on the album. It took over the space of about a year and a half to two years, I didn’t really pressure myself. I was making the tracks as I went along, I have been playing the tracks of the last two to three years. I have been testing them out and tweaking them as I DJ.
You know what music is like, the more you listen to it the more you understand. I like the way that you compiled your album, it works well, especially
when you finished with the track that you did with Dan Beaumont. That was kind of my aim with the album. I wanted to structure it a little like a DJ set, it begins like a warm up weired little record, it goes into a bit of of deep house, then a little more energetic things, then some techno-esque records and then the one... the one that you mentioned that I did with Dan Beaumont, the end of the night record. The one more tune. That’s kind of how I structured it, you could listen to it home and DJs can also cherry pick the tracks that they like to play out, that they could quite easily find tracks for all times of the night.
I presume you will be travelling back to Womb in Tokyo? I normally play there about once a year which I’m really happy about, its one of my favourite places to play. I have just done a record for a Japanese label called Apt. International so hopefully I will be back there, I love it. Towards the end of the year I think I’m playing at Panorama Bar for Rekids. Rex in Paris is one of my favourite
spots, I’m also playing this Friday at Micron in Manchester. I’ve heard its a really good party, also Bar- racc in Valencia so hopefully I will be back there. I’m looking forward to doing lots of DJing to promote the album and travelling.
If you were banished to a deserted island and had to take three famous people dead or alive who would they be and why? Haha, that’s a good one, I would take Bill Hicks to make me laugh, I would also take Heston Blumen- thal to do the cooking and finally I would take the Spanish actress Paz Vega, but I’m not going to say why I would take her (laughs). So one to talk to (laughs)
Spencer’s album ‘A Gun For Hire’ is out now. For more info go to
www.flavors.me/spencerparker
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