that’s not a heinous slog away. On top of all the gigging, he’s just finished a Radio 1 Essential Mix (which broadcast to great acclaim the night of our interview), he’s got a clutch of projects underway at the Dutch branch of Red Bull Studios, including a tasty-looking team-up with rising deep house don Full Crate, and, in a couple of weeks' time he’s been asked to deliver the next installment in the seminal 'DJ Kicks' series. It’s this compilation that has got him most excited. Before anything, Westbeech is a DJ. Starting on the Technics as a precocious 12-year-old, Ben grew up surrounded by the hardcore and drum & bass legends his Dad happened to be mates with. He tells me of hanging out with breakbeat pioneers 2 Bad Mice, and, as a teenage raver, buying all- time jungle classic 'Renegade Snares' direct off Rob ‘Omni Trio’ Haigh. These formative years have stuck with him, and he’s understandably dismissive of the current vogue for booking producers to DJ, regardless of whether they can rock a crowd. “You need a big enough tune to get any gigs,” he states, flatly. “I’ve been DJing since I was 12, and I love it, and I’ve never lost that love for it. But in this climate you’ve got producers who make a tune in Logic or Cubase, but they can’t DJ for shit. They’ve got absolutely no idea how to work a crowd, how to read a crowd, and you can see they don’t have the love for it. I guess you could say that the arrival of the Sync feature in Traktor has taken away that skill you need to become a DJ. I like hearing someone who just goes up there and mixes, and even if there’s a slight fuck-up, I like hearing that. It’s like a hip-hop mentality, it’s that rawness, that energy. 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.” With producers who can work the floor an increasing rarity, it’s little surprise that DJ Kicks
approached Westbeech for a Breach mix, and he’s eager to showcase the extent of his crate-digging skills. “It’s come at the perfect time,” he enthuses, “because, whilst I didn’t make 'Jack' to do what it has done, the fact that it’s gone commercial means it’s really important that I show I’ve got a deeper knowledge of music. I’ve had such a short deadline to put the DJ Kicks together, so I spent all of last week just buying up shit loads of old records and finding these total gems. My friend has a warehouse out here where it's two euros a record — he goes and buys up collections from old DJs that have given up, or old producers who’ve sold their collection, and I bought 50 records for, like 100 euros. This was all untouched stuff you’re not gonna find anywhere else, all older house and techno. From my perspective it was bringing music for a compilation that people have not necessarily heard before, and that I haven’t heard before. Everyone knows the big labels that you can pick up and dip into, but when you're there just sifting through old records... I mean half the stuff I haven’t got a fucking clue what it is! That’s what inspires me, going and finding tunes you’ve never heard about.”
PRESSURE At this point manager James leans in to point
out that the DJ Kicks mix will also include an exclusive Breach track, although it transpires, to Westbeech’s laughter, that he hasn’t as yet written a note of it. “It’s gotta be in in two weeks,” he cackles, “so Christ-knows what that’ll be. But I’m going into the Red Bull Studios once a week and they’ve got a load of kit that I haven’t. I’m going for something deeper, like synth-y and chord-y I guess.” A lot of producers would probably be a bit nervy about the impending deadline, but Westbeech is used to working quick and sharp — he seems to thrive on the pressure, delighting in telling us
the story of some recent remix work. “I played on Wednesday at the Zoo Project in Ibiza,” he starts. “James, my manager, was like, ‘Don’t go out, you’ve got to finish these two remixes, they’ve got to be in tomorrow,’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m not going out’. Then come eight in the morning I was still raving in DC-10 with Jamie Jones! I had to come back with no sleep and do these fucking remixes! But you know, if you’re gonna go in like that, you’ve got to just keep on doing the work. If you go down that route of getting fucked every night, it’s cool — if you can handle it and you can still make the music. But if it starts affecting your ability to come up with the goods then you’ve got to stop it.”
Obviously for Westbeech the alternative — of not writing music — is no option. The success (and attendant cash) he’s getting is an unexpected bonus, a way, he tells us, to buy his Dad a house. Outside of that all he wants to do is write and play, then write some more. Some blog troll’s notion of ‘selling out’ is meaningless; how could he sell the wicked itch that sings melodies through his dreams? Westbeech knows he’s got no choice but to be creating for a long time yet. “Music’s on my mind all the time,” he confesses. “I wake up thinking about music… It kinda fucks you a little bit and doesn’t let you have any time off. You hear music everywhere you go. You never get any rest from it, ‘cos it’s in your head. But I love it, it’s what keeps me going.”
• Breach is part of Holy Ship 2014 which takes place Thursday January 09 - Sunday January 12 2014
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