Онлайн-интервью Джэймса для журнала RWD Magazine в 2010 г.
Nardene Scott caught up with Britain’s favourite indie-electro outfit Hadouken! just before they jetted off to Japan to chat about the new album, working with Dutch producers Noisia, remixing the Sugababes and the annoying task of trying to get samples cleared.
How are you doing James? I know you guys are currently touring pretty much across the world, how has the tour been going so far?
Good, we’ve been touring around the UK for the past four weeks and also been over to Germany and Holland, we are off to Japan as well because we have quite a big following out there so we go and play there every now and again. We don’t really get to see a lot of the cities but it’s still worth going and just being in a different city every day.
We know that you used to be a producer on True Tiger Recordings under the name Dr Venom, is that your first love and do you ever see yourself going back into that scene?
I liked the scene back in the day when it wasn’t fashionable, I was more into garage that’s where my roots were which sort of grew into grime which is how the music with the band sounds the way it does – I think it’s heavily influenced by D&B as well, I don’t know what the reason is for people just focusing on grime or garage sounds. I was really into dubstep as well back then and still believe that dubstep producers here in the UK have the best production right now but the scene itself I don’t like with all the drugs that seem to be tainting the scene now.
Fair enough let’s talk about your new music, You’ve worked with Noisia on the new album For The Masses what was that like and how did it come about?
I’m a big fan of what they do and we asked them to do a remix of one of our tracks and it just sounded so good so we asked them if they wanted to do the whole album. We went over to Holland to record the whole thing and they’ve added a lot more weight and bass to our music, For The Masses definitely has a much bigger sound.
What can we expect from the upcoming album lyric-wise and how do you feel about the reaction to the current single Mic Check which uses the Ripgroove sample?
Lyrically, I think the first album was more of a social observation using satire and comedy and stuff, so that’s kind of been done now so that’s gone out of the window; now it’s about more ambiguous lyrics where you can just take from it what you want. In regards to Mic Check I was a big garage fan and I was playing around with the sample and we had good feedback when people heard it so we went ahead with it as the single. We had a lot of trouble clearing the Ripgroove sample, she was like my music is sacred to me and I don’t let anyone sample it, which was pretty ironic considering Ripgroove is ripped itself, that’s like calling the kettle black. We managed to get the sample from Tina Moore in the end so that’s all good, I suppose.
For The Masses is being released under your own label Surface Noise Recordings, what made you start your own label and how important do you think it is nowadays?
We were fortunate because we managed to do a great deal with EMI to have the freedom to do what we do with full support from the label so we had the best of both worlds…Like we make all the decisions and they release it nationwide. If you have a good deal then it’s great for artists but you have to be pretty lucky to get a decent deal.
There have been a few comments on the Mic Check video posted on YouTube questioning why there’s a band set up when the song is so electronic, what was the idea behind the video?
Obviously because of the sample the track is more dance based but when we play it fully live we trigger all the samples using the keyboard and also playing the guitars over it, so the video was basically a combination of what we do live and of course also for visual effect.
You’ve remixed tracks by Bloc Party and other acts how does that come about, do they come to you and are there any remixes coming up you can tell us about?
We are approached by the acts usually and their labels you know if we like the song then we just work with it. We’ve got a pretty cool remix coming up of the Sugababes’ Get Sexy track which we have taken well dark. We have taken a pop record and added as much bass and made it as heavy as possible.
Seems like you’ve got quite a lot going on with tours, videos, remixes – what do you do to unwind?
Getting down the pub and doing a lot of drinking! We all go out a lot too you’ll probably see at least one of us any day of the week if you go out in London.
Lastly, we’re doing a Best of British issue who do you feel are Britain’s finest?
The Prodigy and Leftfield who came out with the whole dance vibe in the early 90’s are all people that we really respect and look up to.
Источник: http://www.rwdmag.com/2010/04/online-interview-hadouken/