“The sync button is just linear, there’s no ups and downs. I come from the era of listening to Sasha, to Bukem, and you’d be taken on a journey of highs and lows and that’s what I want to do, bang it out then take it back down, then bang it out again.”
Vimeo-ready video, a decent marketing budget, and a whole lot of mainstream radio play. Thing is, Westbeech has been around for a while now, putting out tracks under his own name and the Breach alias. His fans are serious music heads. They aren’t the kind of people to tolerate Olly Murs collabos or awkward appearances on The One Show sofa, so what happens next? How can he win over a new demographic, keep the label happy, and avoid the inevitable cries of ‘sell out’? “Well, we’ve got a follow-up single for Atlantic, called 'Everything You Never Had', featuring Andreya Triana,” he considers. “But, to be honest, I’d already made that tune before 'Jack' got signed. Annie Mac’s played it on Radio 1 once, and that’s it, they signed it. I haven’t felt any pressure, I’ve been doing this for 10 years and the music comes pretty easily, I just love it so much! I’m not about to sign a massive deal for an album or anything, I’m just taking it as it comes, making underground music and doing my thing and that’s what I’ll keep on doing. I’m not looking to go majorly commercial, as I said this has come completely out of the blue for me, so my mindset isn’t like: ‘Right, let's go and make loads of really commercial records’, I’m just making records for the dancefloor. That’s what I’ve always been about and that’s what 'Jack' was about. It wasn’t ever meant to be commercial — you just get lucky
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with tracks sometimes. I mean, promotion-wise, Atlantic have come up with some great ideas, and I haven’t had to be too involved. I absolutely did not want to be in the video, and I’m not. Luckily they haven’t had me putting on a bear suit and running around shouting 'Jack' for 10 minutes.”
All this seems completely reasonable, but the perception he’s ‘turning commercial’ bothers Westbeech, and though he professes not to care what anyone thinks, he’s clearly wary about losing credibility as a serious, deep producer. “You get these people that don’t like it if something gets more commercial, ‘cos now everybody’s hearing their little scene. It’s a bit of a funny view to have, because with 'Jack' the reason it crossed over was that everyone on the underground was playing the crap out of it. Now it’s gone mainstream and you get people being like, ‘Oh, it’s gone too commercial…’ Well that’s what happens if a record gets popular! And then people don’t like it, and they say it’s bad for the scene, and you think, well, y’know house has been around for, God, like 25 years now. What’s good and bad for the scene..!? Disclosure have had a lot of commercial success and that hasn’t done it any harm! “I’ve seen it with jungle and dubstep,” he continues. “When stuff gets commercial, the scene breaks down because everyone is trying to
make the record that’s broken through. And that’s what kills the scene — it’s not the people who’ve made the record that’s broken, it’s that everyone else tries to make the same tune. It could very well happen to this style of house music. It probably will. “I mean look at dubstep, after a few years of constantly moving on, it got stuck in that really harsh wobbly stuff. Then every pop artist was getting a dubstep producer in to make that sound on their record because that’s what was selling. And then it’s just like WHACK! The scene’s gone, everyone’s moved out of it. Major labels try and push their artists who aren’t doing so well onto a scene, and you end up producing for Cheryl Cole, or, y’know, being asked to make a house record that ‘sounds a bit Disclosure-y ’ and Cheryl’s on it all of a sudden. So, I’ve been asked to do big pop records, but I haven’t done any that aren’t right. I think you have to make a conscious decision to just say no, to be like, I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing that, ‘cos no amount of money is going to get me making a record I don’t want to make. I’ve always made records that I like making, so I’m not going to go down that route.”
DJ MENTALITY True to his word, Westbeech has turned down
a number of projects, and not just from the vapid end of the music spectrum. Remixes for AlunaGeorge, Disclosure and Rudimental have all been politely declined, if only because he’s just too busy. His punishing touring schedule — currently three or four international dates a week — was one of the reasons behind his relocation to Amsterdam, a city with an international airport
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