words: MICK WILSON pics: STEVE STILLS TECH In The Studio With DJ Harvey
SOUND ADVICE
DJ Harvey played his first UK gigs in more than 10 years towards the end of 2012. DJ Mag snagged him to talk about his love of great soundsystems — and what really makes a good party...
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J Harvey is one of the UK originators of the dance music scene. From his beginnings in Cambridge punk band Ersatz, he discovered hip-hop and DJing
on a fateful trip to New York City, and later alighted upon an eclectic mishmash DJ style inspired by the B-Boy everything-in-the-pot approach of the NYC scene’s first DJs.
Later becoming a leading light for house music in the UK, his night Moist at London’s Gardening Club cemented his reputation as a true original, where his mammoth sets became the stuff of legend, and where he also invited the legendary likes of Larry Levan as guests. Becoming a Ministry Of Sound resident in the club’s early days, he later went on to cut remixes and original productions for hip labels like Junior Boys Own, Mo’ Wax and his own Black Cock imprint, while he’s recently been spotted putting out cool Balearic cuts with his Map Of Africa and Locussolus projects.
Currently based in LA, he has been DJing the circuit around the States on a regular basis. New York, Miami, San Francisco and Hawaii are his usual stop-offs, as well as some choice locations worldwide. But for his recent RBMA London and Warehouse Project gigs, Harvey wanted to go the extra mile and provide a soundsystem that would compliment his brand of dance music excellence and really give the partygoer a truly memorable sonic experience...
What was the purpose of fitting your own soundsystem at your recent UK gigs? “The basic idea was to try and get as good a soundsystem as possible. My mate Mick Boyle installed the soundsystem — it was a B&W rig, we just wanted to get the sound as good as possible.
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“All the components that went into it were good components. We used an Alpha Recordings pre- amp, which people know as a DJ mixer, customized Technics 1210 turntables with Rega arms, Shure audiophile styli, plus a value stage to get a smoother sound out of it. It was basically a really fantastic bit of kit; however, on the night we suffered a little on the technical side of things. We had some pretty nasty acoustic issues, the shape and size of the room led to some nasty reflections which affected the sound, plus we had the local tenant association complaining at the volume of the system, so we had to reduce the bass levels and retune the system on-the-fly. From a punter’s point of view, they probably wouldn’t have noticed, but to be honest I think our concept was a little too high.
“We had a five-way, five-stack system. I think if you had probably been sitting in your living room in the sweet spot, you would have been crying about how beautiful it was, but when it came to going into battle as they say, there were a few shortcomings. We have learnt our lessons and next time when we come to do something like this, we will look into a little more acoustic treatments to the venue, stuff like that.”
Do you think these issues affected the (London club) Oval Space party? “I mean, taking an overview of the party and what went down it was actually a fantastic event. A thousand-plus really cool people came out and had a really lovely time, so a rule of thumb is that a party will overrule all hi-fi. The people who are into the greatest hi fidelity are into engineering, they are not even into the music, they feed off the finer details of the sound. They can get pretty weird — anal about the whole thing, there were
definitely a few moaners out there in internet land who have forgotten how to party, that’s for sure — but the vibe of the event was amazing, and to be honest the sound wasn’t bad, it was actually really good. Everyone was having a good time, there was like 500–600 close friends at the event. I haven’t seen a turn-out like that in years, the “silverbacks of acid house” were at that party, the guys who started it all from over 25 years of dance music culture in Western Europe were there. Those people don’t come out in their masses these days, so to see them out was great, smiling, dancing and enjoying the music. It was an honour to play the event and my first time back in London for 10 years!”
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