T W
e meet Trevor Jackson at the Clove Club, an achingly hip restaurant in Shoreditch Town Hall in east London
— just behind the DJ Mag offices — where, before he arrives, we while away the time by pondering exactly why the prune ice cream on their menu doesn’t come with a whole walnut cake, but just the crumbs. The meeting place was his call — he shot down our admittedly grotty local — and as he strolls in he’s greeted with the kind of affection normally reserved for mafia dons. This is clearly a regular hangout. Trevor doesn’t look much like the sunglasses- sporting, Giorgio Moroder-channelling disco dude from the covers of his Playgroup records. The halo of curly hair’s there, but this bearded guy in a button- down shirt and chinos, sipping his sparkling water and picking at a plate of borlotti paste with truffle and flatbreads, is hard to align with the radical record sleeve designer turned hip-hop producer who helped launch the careers of Four Tet and LCD Soundsystem. Who shut down his second record label after ten years and 100 releases because it was getting too successful. He looks more like the trendy boss of a graphic design firm, someone who spends his days synergising outside the box while listening to Morcheeba.
It’s an impression that’s at least partly true. He is, of course, the boss of his own graphic design firm, albeit one that consists solely of Trevor Jackson. And he does use the word “synergy”, once, during our conversation, although he’s talking about a transcendent moment as a child, watching Fantasia, when he realised just how powerful the right music could be when put with the right images. So we let it
he idea of a footwork concept album might seem at odds with the stuttering functionality of its Chicago roots, but then Machinedrum, aka US-born Travis Stewart, has always used its 170bpm tempo as a template for more otherworldly experiments. Though often working in dreamy
textures, his second album, ‘Vapor City’, released by Ninja Tune on 23rd
September, was inspired by an actual recurring
dream and resonates with this hazy aesthetic. In turns beautiful and dark, and often both, it draws themes from his musical make-up and combines them into new forms that defy easy exposition. Hardcore stabs sit alongside laidback hip-hop breaks, slow-burning electronica underneath restless jungle snares, creating a parallel universe where the concept of fast or slow is smudged and indistinct. Previously living in New York, where he was part of the Percussion Lab collective and resident at seminal club Cassette NYC (alongside Praveen, aka Braille, who he records with as Sepalcure, and Jimmy Edgar, the other half of his most recent project, JETS), Travis now resides in Berlin. We delved deeper into the mind that laid the blueprint for ‘Vapor City’...
particularly big place for it. How did you first get exposed to electronic music and fall in love with it?
Of all your monikers and different collaborations, one thing that seems to tie them together is a love for UK breakbeat culture: hardcore, jungle, two-step garage. What made you gravitate towards that? “That’s kind of close, but I think what I’ve always strived for was finding some middle ground between electronic music and hip-hop. When I started Machinedrum back in high school, I was really into the idea of trying to combine the rhythms of jungle with the boom bap hip-hop sound of underground hip-hop.”
Powell, all pretty unlikely choices to soundtrack a dinner party. As we learn, you don’t make assumptions about Trevor Jackson.
You’re from Eden in North Carolina. There’s more electronic to figure out exactly which glass of red he generously
“I was born in Eden but only lived there for a year or two. I spent most of my life in Hickory, NC [North Carolina]. My first just four black strokes.
It turns out that he’s the man behind the Clove Club’s branding. Which is why, when we flip the menu over, the monochrome, geometric designs bear echoes of the sleeve art on Soulwax’s 'Any Minute Now', the 'what’s that?' optical illusion that won Jackson a cluster of design industry awards. And when we visit the Clove Club’s website after our interview, trying
Dance music’s grown darker recently, driven by acts like Raime and oOoOO into all that’s gloopy and industrial. But on the eve of the release of his latest 'Metal Dance' compilation, Trevor Jackson explains that these sounds are nothing new... Words: TOM BANHAM
music coming from there now but it’s still not seen as a put on his tab (and where we can get more), the minimalist triangles that greet us have clearly sprung from the same pen as the logo for his now defunct label Output, which traced the socket of a TR-808 in
experience was probably MTV. I saw the video for Ministry ‘N.W.O.’ and instantly fell in love. I started watching MTV Amp, which also tu ned me on to tons of new electronic music in the ‘90s. Other than that there were certain channels on IRC that I found out about loads of new music from. There was a small record shop in my hometown Hickory called Selector Records that, every now and then, had some cool stuff in the used section. Ot to his pioneering hip-hop as Underdog in the early Nineties; to the glittering electro he made as Playgroup a decade later; to the austere collections of industrial and body music he’s curated for a pair of 'Metal Dance' compilations, as a tribute to groups like Cabaret Voltaire and Visage. It’s love. Everything Trevor Jackson does, he does because he loves it. Not for money, not because he thought
grew up with that really knew much about electronic music outside of Nine Inch Nails and Daft Punk.”
Did you feel like an outsider in terms of your musical taste?
with — software, samples, sessions etc.”
Jackson clearly loves this place. Around the stories of records and parties, of being exposed to electro, industrial and hip-hop as a 14-year-old in Camden’s clubs, he waxes effusively about the food, the restaurant’s spare layout, the drinks. And that’s what links this place, however distant it may seem, herwise I didn’t really know anyone that I
Were you worried about being perceived as a dilettante within those styles, being geographically separate from them? Or does the internet eliminate those concerns in the way it connects people remotely? “Being from North Carolina, especially during a time of almost complete absence of any electronic scene, or even hip- hop for that matter, I grew up getting used to pulling in my influences from around the world, via the internet and people I met through traveling. I feel like geographic location isn’t as important as it used to be in regards to influence, though it definitely does play a role if you live in a place that has a rich history in certain styles of music.”
Your take is completely different to anything conventionally within those genres, though. Did you find it necessary to combine those jungle breaks with other sound sources to create something authentically you? “I never planned anything, really. It was all natural. If a song started one way and ended another, that’s just how it was meant to be. I love a lot of music and it tends to all come together in my songs. Sometimes one genre outshines the others, but I guess it just depends where my head’s at when I get in the studio.”
Did juke and footwork, with its similar tempo, offer a new way of working? The hybrid you created between them seems to very much minted by you. “Yeah, it seemed obvious to me since the tempos and feel were so similar, and the usage of 808s for basslines really tied it all in together for me. I was just excited to have a reason to make jungle again, since I hadn’t really since the ‘90s or early 2000s.”
“Definitely. That’s what led to me spending hours online becoming friends with people all over the world, and not only it would advance his career, but because it s emed liked an important thing to do. “I’ve never wanted to
learning about new music but also how to make it. There were huge communities of electronic music producers I traded files conform to anything,” he says. “When I left college, I was an arrogant little fucker. If someone had said, ‘Do you want to do a project for Nike,’ I’d say, ‘Nah, I hate big brands’. I’m independent. I had a whole independent, DIY spirit. I’ve never wanted to be part of the machine.”
When did you start making electronic stuff? “Depends on your definition. I was tinkering around with Casios, FX pedals and tape machines as early as ten years old. I started making music on the computer around thirteen.”
slide. But when we quiz him on what’s oni his stereo, Florida. I always had my eyes set on New York City he rattles off the names of Vakula, DJ Sotsofett and
ince the first time I forced my family to visit it when I was 15 or so. When I actually ended up moving, I met a lot of artists that lived there and wanted to pursue working with them. I wanted to start making my own version of pop music, and NYC seemed the best place for it at the time.”
You moved to New York later. What necessitated the move? Did you want to be closer to like-minded musicians? “Ha, that’s skipping way ahead after I started making electron music, but OK. I moved to NYC after I finished getting my Associates of Science degree at Full Sail University n Orland
LCD Jackson’s music career flows in ten-year arcs,
What role did the Percussion Lab crew and Cassette NYC have to play in you finding your own sound and getting your music out there? “The underground and illegal party scene in NYC was a big reason I wanted to move there. It was really my first experience in DJing consistently in a place where I could experiment and kind of find my place in that world. Before then, I just considered myself more of a live performer and less of a DJ. Cassette NYC and Percussion Lab allowed me to blossom as a DJ and learn how to work a crowd in a club.”
from inspiration, through sublime execution, to frustration. Then he’ll disappear for a bit, before catching the bug and launching some new project. For Jackson, less a goal than a reason to stop; he says that he simply shuts things down as soon as they stop
being fun. For Bite It!, the hip-hop label he launched off the back of his work as Underdog, that point came after 12 releases, when one of his artists punched a hole in the wall of his studio. Output lasted longer — the label-summing compilation that made up its final release carried the catalogue number OPR100 — although its title, 'I Hate Music', gives some idea of why the imprint came to an end. “It wound him up after things got bigger,” explains James Murphy, the DFA label boss and erstwhile LCD Soundsystem frontman, “but without Trevor, and without Output, it’s a very different story for LCD Soundsystem, and it’s a very different story for me.” It was Jackson who encouraged Murphy to release his music in the UK, who distributed DFA’s records, and who made sure that a small dance punk label who’d only been handing out white labels in New York were suddenly getting noticed by journalists and DJs. “That’s all down to being on Output,” Murphy says. “I don’t know if LCD Soundsystem would have had anywhere near the success without him. We didn’t know how to navigate that, and it’s all down to his curatorial acumen.”
Sepalcure is arguably the first project that really put you in the spotlight. What is it you like about working with Praveen? How does it differ from Machinedrum? “Yes, it could be argued it more-so put me in the spotlight in the UK, really. But either way, it was exciting to get recognition for something that was really just a fun project for me and Praveen. We never intended it to go anywhere, so the very quick hype we gained from ‘Love Pressure’ was definitely exciting for both of us. Working with Praveen was different from Machinedrum simply in that it was a collaboration. Two heads instead of one tends to lead in different directions and decisions than you would make on your own.”
Just a glance at the names that had their earliest releases on Output — Luke Abbott, Black Strobe, Lopazz — gives a sense of Jackson’s ear for talent. He was attracted to artists other people wouldn’t touch, who were making weird noises that weren’t welcome elsewhere but whose creative freedom Jackson felt an affinity for. Among them was a young Kieran Hebden, who had his earliest releases on Output first as part of the band Fridge, and then as Four Tet. “The music and ideas and art Trevor introduced me to were probably even more important to my future than his releasing of my music,” Hebden recalls. “It was an amazing creative and exciting time for us. He gave us the creative and artistic freedom to experiment with our music, and then we handed it over to him and he was able to see through his release and design ideas. He was even the first person to take me to a club and to get me to DJ, and he's the most influential DJ to me for my DJing style. I learnt loads from him, and still think about his take on things to this day. If I make a new track and Trevor tells me it's good, then that still counts for a lot.”
"What I’ve always strived for was finding some middle ground between electronic music and hip-hop. When I started Machinedrum back in high school, I was really into the idea of trying to combine the rhythms of jungle
with the boom bap hip-hop sound of underground hip-hop." MACHINEDRUM
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