now, that is. Back with his first release on Ovum in four years, the fabulously entitled ‘Balls EP’ is, as we speak, being hammered by the A-list — from Laurent Garnier, Sven Väth, Tiga, Digweed and Hawtin, through to Joris Voorn and Nic Fanciulli, who was last year given permission to rework Wink’s ‘Don’t Laugh’, not something Wink relinquishes lightly.
‘Balls’ has, well, balls. Two, at least, and possibly a few more. Think a face-melting breakdown on a par with the benchmark of all breakdowns, his own ‘Higher State of Consciousness’, and you’re approaching the gravity of it. It’s a 10-minute techno opus, abrasive, mildly terrifying, but with enough incessant funk to get away with it.
It shows Wink on some pretty stunning form, and makes you wonder how he was away for so long. Whatever, it’s good to have him back...
You’ve been in the business nearly 25 years now, so what’s changed for you over that time? “I miss the record store culture. I miss having a think-tank of like-minded people who want to hear different types of electronic music and go into a record shop to buy it. You know, knowing people behind the counter, people who would pick you out records, and play tracks over the soundsystem, and everybody would want one. There’s kind of a cool feeling that’s gone.”
Technology has been the root of that, something that you’ve always been at the cutting-edge of... “Yeah, I’m old and good friends with Richie Hawtin and John Acquaviva, and these guys were involved in the first platform for playing digital music, called Final Scratch. I was lucky to be one of those using it as a beta system. I got into using it from the get-go. I really liked it, then kind of stopped liking it, went back to vinyl, then CDs and vinyl, and now I’m using Traktor. The reason I’m saying this is that I was playing in Italy, and the DJ before me was playing vinyl. I was in the crowd and this kid next to me asked, ‘Why is the DJ turning his back to the crowd?’ and I said, ‘His record box is back there, and he’s choosing his next record’. I realized that he’d never seen that before! From that moment, I realized things had really changed, and this was a generation coming through who had not seen a DJ without a computer. The reason I stopped using a computer back then was that I didn’t want to feel lost inside it and disconnect with the crowd. A lot of people look like they could be surfing the internet. But there’s lots of people who use it really well. Everybody uses a tool differently.”
T
hings have changed for Josh Wink. 18 months ago the 40-year-old producer became a dad for the first time, and as you might imagine, being a new dad doesn’t always tally with clocking up
air-miles. But thanks to the prolific output of his label Ovum, which — astonishingly — celebrates its 20th anniversary next year, he may have disguised his absence from the studio in a rather cunning fashion.
From a rash of sterling production work stretching from the early ‘90s through to the mid-2000s, on labels like R&S, M_nus, Nervous and Poker Flat, Wink has been commanding dancefloors, to a lesser or greater extent, from the bewilderingly slight age of 13, when he became an eager apprentice to a local radio DJ in his native Philadelphia. But with commitments to his label and worldwide DJing in order to keep funds ploughing back into his business, his production work has taken a back seat in recent years. Until
It’s hard not to sound a bit like an old curmudgeon sometimes, when discussing how things have changed... “Right! I try not to be the old guy who’s saying ‘Oh, well things have changed’. Because things are always changing. Everything has changed, but I look at it differently now. I like to own technology and not let it own me. This way I can control things. So I look at what I can control, rather than whatever I can bitch and moan about.”
Do you feel a part of the EDM explosion in the US? Or removed from it? “I’m told that I’m a part of it, but kind of think I’m just thought of as who I am. I was in Vegas last week, and I realized that some DJs are getting $20,000 to play one night, or getting $20 million for a two-year contract. That’s like Celine Dion style! I have a unique view on it. I have a radio
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