After a series of false starts in other bands, the members of Manchester’s The Whip finally realize their dance-rock dreams.

Since The Whip formed three years ago in Manchester, England, they’ve been on a nonstop touring schedule, bringing their dirty, sexy, sweaty, and infectious dance-rock to all corners of the world. While they’ve rocked clubs and festivals from Tokyo to Austin, two boiling hot outdoor gigs last summer stand out for them. The first is opening for The Breeders at McCarren Park Pool in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “I still can’t believe how enormous the pool was. I kept trying to imagine how it would look filled with water and people,” remembers drummer Lil Fee, sitting with her bandmates backstage before a gig at New York’s The Fillmore at Irving Plaza. The other gig was in September at Norman “Fatboy Slim” Cook’s yearly Big Beach Boutique held annually at Cook’s native Brighton, England. (The band is signed to Cook’s Southern Friend imprint in the UK.)

“That was the loudest gig ever! The [power of the] PA’s they even surprised our tech, and she always turns everything way up to 11,” gushes Fee. “[Norman Cook] must’ve given the local council thousands ‘cause it was so loud you could hear it in neighboring towns. By the end of the night, when Fatboy Slim went on, the Salvation Army were going around giving out earplugs!”

Keyboardist Danny Saville and bassist Nathan Sudders crack up. Meanwhile, singer/guitarist Bruce Carter, who is suffering from a nasty pre-show case of laryngitis (he later sung his heart out anyway), heads outside to find a remedy to his temporary ailment. The rest of the band—all veteran players who’ve known each other for ten years from around the Manchester scene—don’t seem worried.

Sudders goes back to the beginning and relates the band’s history. “Me, Danny and Bruce ended up working in an instrument shop. They were writing stuff, and they played me songs that sounded interesting. So they asked if I wanted to join this band they were doing, and they were looking for a drummer, so I suggested Fee, because I knew it was perfect for what they were writing. She was into Daft Punk at the time, and it was a perfect match.”

While Sudders was going back and forth between The Whip and another band who had a record deal, the relationship was cemented after the band rehearsed in Fee’s bedroom and started to gig. Before long, promoters from all over the UK started booking The Whip, and they quickly gained a following beyond their core group of friends. Says Sudders,

“Playing dance music with real bass, guitars and drums has been very interesting to us for years, youknowwhatimean? We’ve all played this type of music in other bands, so the style wasn’t new to us.”

During this early period, Saville was working a day job selling insurance over the phone and Fee was doing office work. The band would undertake a four-hour drive to play a late-night show, then drive back and Saville would go straight into the office with a half-hour of sleep. They roar as they recall the old days. “If I was in the office on my own,” admits Fee, “I mastered the art of hand-on-my-mouse-in-the-hand while facing away from people so I could sleep at my desk. I’d even sleep on the toilet for five minutes.”

Perhaps it’s having similar music interests from Daft Punk to Fleetwood Mac is what keeps the creativity flowing. Maybe it’s playing five nights a week for nearly three years hasn’t hurt either. Whatever the case, their debut, X Marks Destination, came after a brief association with Parisian label Kitsuné. Produced by Jim Abisss (Arctic Monkeys, Adele, The Editors) during a six-week period where they continually gigged, the album spawned deliciously nasty anthems like “Trash,” while mega-hit “Sister Siam” conjures up a heady stew of acid lines and electro handclaps. Though their debut album is first-rate, their live shows are equally captivating.

“This is a true statistic: this band has been going for three years, and I think we’ve had only five rehearsals,” says Sudders. “ We learn the songs on our own because we’re all busy and just do it.”

Fee: “Five rehearsals? It’s more than that.”

Sudders: “Okay, it’s no more than ten. I think it’s more like five or six.”

Saville: “The bottom line is that you can over-rehearse songs to a point. You play them so many times that a fog comes over you.”

Fee: “I used to be a band, and we’d rehearse all the time. Then an important gig would come along and by the time it came to the gig, it wasn’t fresh.”

Saville: “We’ve never had agendas when it’s come down to writing songs. We just wrote music to dance to and the sort of songs we’d like to hear in a nightclub. It was a natural thing for us to do.”

With X Marks Destination finally getting a US release in early 2009, the band is elated with their success and don’t plan on getting off the road anytime soon. They’re happy to be touring in a larger van and seem to take the knocks of life on the road in stride.

“Doing this now is the best job in the world,” says Fee. “Before we had a shit job for a living and fun. Now we’re just having fun for a living. We still got drunk and stayed up late, even when we had day jobs.”

Sudders: “The story of this band is nonstop. The album wasn’t a relaxed process. It was late nights while doing gigs. In the past two years, the longest we’ve had time off is when Bruce got married in August. Then there’s Christmas, but that’s it.”

Fee: “Having time off was strange. I’d ring these guys up and say, ‘What are you doing?’”

The Whip say they generally get along like brothers and sisters. The love is usually there, even when it’s occasionally delivered in a four-letter word. “We’ve earned where we are right now,” concludes Fee. “If it was given to us on a plate, we wouldn’t appreciate it.”

Words: Darren Ressler
Image: Craig Cowling

Satoshi Tomiie is among a growing legion of globetrotting DJs who are blurring the lines between dance floor genres.

Revered DJ/producer Satoshi Tomiie hails from Japan and calls New York City home. However, he hasn’t spent much time in either place during the past year. “My summer tour kicked off in May, and I was on the road nonstop until September,” explains Tomiie, talking from a hotel room in Buenos Aires. “I didn’t go back to New York at all. After the tour was over, I left two weeks later for another couple of months. I don’t spend time in one particular place; I keep moving. It’s difficult for me to stay in one place because I love what I’m doing.”

Since making a name for himself in 1989 by co-creating Frankie Knuckles’ epic house anthem, “Tears,” Tomiie has steadily worked himself up the house music ladder. Where he was once the low man on the totem Def Mix pole (the management company helmed by Knuckles and David Morales), he’s now top dog and has earned a legion of new young fans. Tomiie’s popularity due to his technical prowess on the decks and rich, buoyant production style, which as of late has blurred the lines between house and techno. Constantly exposed to music from his world travels, he’s excited by the convergence between the two styles he’s been straddling for over a decade.

“House and techno are getting a lot closer,” he observes, “and that’s making for some interesting music.“

Tomiie says his years of experience—and the advent of mixing software which allows him to spin without having to lug boxes of vinyl around the world—has allowed him to lead the type of virtual life many only read about in Wired magazine.  “I used to get sick a lot when I first started to travel,” he recalls, “but now I’m way more mentally and physically prepared for traveling and touring, even when I do back-to-back festival dates. Having friends in other cities really helps, and my focus allows me to bring something special to every gig.”

In addition to DJing, Tomiie co-helms Saw Recordings, the imprint which has released tunes from a host of artists and much of his recent body of work. Since he’s rarely at home, he produces music on the road. Often working at friends’ studios, Tomiie says he hasn’t had a proper studio in New York in three years. At the core of his mobile setup is his trusted MacBook Pro with a 17-inch screen. He recently purchased the laptop before the new model was released because he likes to be “a half step behind technology. I don’t want to be anyone’s beta tester.”

“I work on Ableton Live and bounce all of the tracks to Pro Tools to do mixing because I’m used to all of the plug-ins,” he continues. “Pro Tools is a great mixing tool, but it’s so much easier to be creative on Ableton Live. I use Sennheiser headphones for mixing since I can’t travel with speakers.“

In November, Tomiie mixed a sprawling two-disc mix compilation for England’s Renaissance. His third effort for the label continues his genre-hopping, and includes everything from his blissfully deep “Letting You Down” by Shur-i-kan to “Madrugada,” recorded under his new Mes alias. But what if people don’t make the connection between him and his newly-adopted moniker, which he plans to use on upcoming 2009 releases on Saw? “That’s the whole point, actually,” he laughs.

As he whisks around the world and multitasks by rocking dance floors and festivals at night and sculpting muscular club tracks wherever he can power up his laptop (he also pens a column for Japan’s Loud magazine), Tomiie continues to experiment and try new tracks out on his unsuspecting global following. “I just know when a track is done,” he asserts. “There’s a point where there’s nowhere else to fix it. I play it for my partner, and I see how people react. Two brains are always better than one.”

Though he’s scored major success with crossover anthems like “Love In Traffic,” Tomiie isn’t interested in revisiting the past. In fact, he says he almost never plays old tunes, even ones he’s produced or remixed. “I can’t play all of the new music I like in a three-hour set,” he moans. “I’m not interested in yesterday’s music. Today is what inspires me.”

Words: Darren Ressler

Anders Ilar is one of the most underrated producers working in electronic music today. His sound blurs the lines between techno, IDM and ambient, creating a style all his own. 2008 was a big year for him, where’s he headed now?

What drew you to electronic music? Who would you count among your formative influences?

Anders Ilar: My love for electronic music started quite early in my childhood, and I strongly suspect R2-D2 had a lot to do with it. The sounds of laserguns and lightsabers, flying saucers and robots is probably what opened me to be totally blown away by the music of Jean Michel Jarre at the age of seven or eight. Since then the favorites has been so many (in somewhat chronological order): Depeche Mode, Howard Jones, Alphaville, Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Front 242, Skinny Puppy, The Klinik, Severed Heads, Frontline Assembly, Neon Judgement, Sisters of Mercy, Die Form, Poesie Noire, Legendary Pink Dots, Dead Can Dance, SPK, The Cure, Lush, Cocteau Twins, Lassigue Bendthaus, The Shamen, Curve, Portishead, FSOL, Aphex Twin, Autechre, Air Liquide, Khan, Mike Ink, Woody McBride, Plaid, Boards of Canada, Rechenzentrum, Twerk, Maurizio, Apparat, Telefon Tel Aviv, Ulrich Schnauss, Murcof, Bola, Closer Musik, Dettinger, Ezekiel Honig, Alva Noto, Deru, Lawrence, Jonas Bering, Shadow Huntaz… to mention just 50… And I’m sure I forgot a few worth mentioning.

Hardware or software? What’s your studio looking like these days?

My studio these days is a laptop PC. Everything I have released on vinyl and CD has been produced with software, tho I’ve used alot of sampled hardware like Korg Mono/Poly, Roland TB-303, TR-808, TR-909. The usual suspects.

“I just go with the flow. I make the music I want to listen to at the moment. I’ve been fortunate to gain an audience to my music over the years and it’s great, but somehow I don’t expect it to last forever. I’m proud of my contributions to the electronic music scene as a whole.”

As an artist who straddles the middle ground between ambient, IDM and techno, do you ever find yourself feeling like something of a man without a country? How do you see yourself fitting into the overall electronic music scene?

I just go with the flow. I make the music I want to listen to at the moment. I’ve been fortunate to gain an audience to my music over the years and it’s great, but somehow I don’t expect it to last forever. I’m proud of my contributions to the electronic music scene as a whole. If I’m able to keep making music I like myself, I will try to keep sharing it with the world.

Where do you see yourself headed as an artist? Toward a more dance floor-oriented sound? Or perhaps towards the softer elements of your sound?

Well, lately I’ve been getting more deeply into the more esoteric perspectives of reality and music. Understood as a sound/vibration/complex much like any language, music is a very great force to say the least, and it does even appear to have the power to change our physical reality in a much more positive direction than politics and endless discussions ever could. So in vague remebrance of actions in past lives and waking up to my higher self it’s slowly becoming clear to me why I’m here now and what I’m supposed to do.

Words: Carl Ritger

An interview with Anders Ilar also appears in Issue 26.

Norway’s best export (sorry, A-ha) returns from their sophomore slump with a posse of popular lady friends and a pleasing set of atmospheric dance-pop.

Röyksopp’s best quality—their buoyant happiness—is also what threatened to capsize their last disc, 2005’s The Understanding, which was too radio-friendly for many fans of their sublime debut. One gets the sense, looking at Junior’s guest list, that Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge felt like they needed to prove their relevance after four years away: Lykki Li, Robyn, and The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson are all on board. Robyn’s “The Girl and the Robot” is a drama class and dance floor gold rolled into one. “God, I’m at the bottom,” she sings over a pulsing bass line, her voice reaching up to a falsetto. “Call me, I’m so alone.” Andersson owns the disc’s climax with “Tricky Tricky,” a six-minute hyper electro romp that builds into a spacey crescendo. Neither of these actually sounds like Röyksopp. Three collaborations with their pal Anneli Drecker fill that gap, and bubbly lead single “Happy Up Here” more than makes up for the two throwaway instrumentals.

Christian W. Smith
File under: Annie, Moby, Groove Armada

The 11th volume of the DJ Hell-run imprint once again captures the label’s eclectic style that ranges from dirty electro to gorgeous techno and sinister acid.

Once again the only thing binding this whole non-linear collection together is Hell’s refined musical taste—a cornerstone of the International Deejay Gigolo label mission statement. The first disc mainly focuses on very minimal and physical electro vibe with the old veterans holding things down as DJ Pierre, Richard Bartz, Peter Kruder, and Hell himself provide a dizzying unrelated whirl of fresh new sounds and directions in the seemingly played out world of electro. The second disc is the far better of the two as the label delves deep into the seedy world of underground, late night German techno. A seemingly endless supply of bottom-dwelling deep cuts from Abe Duque, Marascia, and Snuff Crew, among others, holds things down for the 4am crowd.

Sean Michael-Yoder
File under: Fischerspooner, Larry Heard, Sven Väth

Rennie Pilgrem’s TCR label pioneered the genre known as new school breaks while serving as a vehicle for productions by Pilgrem, B.L.I.M., Arthur Baker and Koma & Bones. As the label turns 15, Pilgrem recalls what it was like running an indie label in the previous century.

The sampler was king: It made home recording possible and introduced the manipulation of sound as an accepted form of music. Mine (an EMU) cost $5,000 in 1997. I sold it six months ago for $20.

The cult of the cutter: Still sought-after today, the cutting engineer mastered your track onto vinyl. Whoever got the loudest cuts with the fattest sound was most in-demand. A “cut” cost approximately $350. Now, digital mastering is around $80.

Sending promos around the world: We used to send out about 300 white labels to DJs/press/radio stations around the world to get a buzz going before doing finished copies.

Manufacturing vinyl. To get your music out there, you had to have it on 12” vinyl. It took about three weeks to produce and cost about $1 each. Plus, you needed a sleeve and a label, which, if you were clever, invoked a “house style” to give your label some brand uniformity and cut costs.

Distribution: Then, like today, distributors had much power. They got paid to get your records to the shops and got to keep their commission (25%) even if the records came back unsold.

Specialist shops: The meeting place for DJs and producers. They had very knowledgeable staff who knew which tracks would be your thing. The clerks were often poached by the big stores (see next entry), who then undercut the small shops and forced them to close.

The dreaded chain stores: So you decide to put out an artist album. You manufacture a couple of thousand CDs and then you join the real music industry. Try hearing this: “We want a big discount, we want every third copy free, we don’t pay unless we sell them. To rack the albums where the public can see them will cost you $2 per copy, upfront and non-returnable.” True! If you wonder why it’s no longer worth releasing albums on CD, that’s why. Greed and too much buying power.

21st century: You can now send your music around the world for free in seconds. You only pay for distribution on sales, you don’t have to pay huge manufacturing costs. But is it better? Piracy is easy (unlike vinyl), many bedroom producers are uploading sub-standard music, not professionally mastered which puts-off potential buyers. Also, last century you had to convince the owner of a label that your track was worth the money/time spent to release it. At the time of writing, it was more rewarding financially and creatively to run a more physical operation. But who knows what is lurking around the corner?

A one-hour DJ mix by Rennie Pilgrem, TCR Part One (The Early Years), is available for free download here.

as featured in Issue 25

With releases such as “Burning Up” and “Summer Dream” being hammered by the likes of Paul van Dyk, Armin van Buuren, Tiesto and Judge Jules, expectations for Kuffdam’s debut artist album are bound to be high. Fortunately, the Scottish DJ and producer doesn’t disappoint. Like any good trance artist, Network shows off a range of his skills, seamlessly offsetting uplifting, euphoric tracks like “The Ones We Loved” and “No Way Out” against more dark and moody sounds as in “Network Jam.” Highlights include: Judge Jules’ Radio 1 Tried and Tested record of the week, “Summer Dream,” and “The Last Time” featuring vocals from Lo-Fi Sugar, whose voice you may recognize from Paul van Dyk’s “Castaway.” Atmospheric and driving with catchy melodies and chilled Ibizan vibes, apart from one possible oversight in a track name (”Shagadelic” implies some kind of Austin Powers sound bite), the entire album is almost faultless.
Ellie Hanagan
File under: Paul van Dyk, Giuseppe Ottaviani, Super8 & Tab

The long awaited follow-up to the Montreal duo’s 2006 debut literally delivers until it hurts. That’s more good than bad, and guests like Ghostface Killah, John Legend and E-40 contribute significant weirdness to one of the most riff-intensive discs of the decade.

On first listen, the new MSTRKRFT sounds similar to their debut, The Looks, but playing the two back-to-back reveals striking differences. The Looks feels like Midnight Star updated for the Paris set, and any riff explosions culminate from a slow buildup. Fist is crazed, all explosions all the time, even when John Legend and Little Moe are trying to sing about heartbreak overtop. (Moe kills it, by the way. Legend, not so much.) Fist’s quick, continuously sequenced bangers bleed into each other so seamlessly that you’ll mistake a new song for a chord change multiple times. (It doesn’t help that these cuts mostly consist of the same two noises: a spastic drum kit and the trademark MSTRKRFT hybrid bass-guitar-synth that even casual fans associate with them.) That said, Fist of God is 95-percent savage, as evidenced by Ghostface Killah’s rap on “Word Up”: “It’s all in your fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking, fucking / Do it hard.” Apparently God’s fist isn’t the only thing giving a pounding.

Christian W. Smith
File under: Mr. Oizo, L.A. Riots, Justice

Sasu Ripatti is normally a reliable producer, a rock-solid talent who can always deliver the goods even when he’s dividing his attentions between three or four different projects. Unfortunately, he seems to be slipping a bit here lately.

His last album as Luomo, Convivial, was a lackluster effort that found him steering the project into some seriously schmaltzy waters, while Symptoms, the product of his latest sessions with AGF—who co-produced Ellen Allien’s Sool album and is an accomplished sound-artist in her own right—is adrift in the same tepid territory. Operating in a strange middle ground between hip-hop, techno and ghostly ambient, Symptoms plays like an album searching for its own voice, with the singular visions of Ripatti and AGF failing to ever coalesce into a coherent whole. It’s a strange outcome, especially considering that the two are one of electronic music’s few power couples. Shelve this and hold out for them both to release new solo albums.

Carl Ritger
File under: Ellen Allien, Vladlislav Delay/Luomo/Uusitalo, AGF

The solo project from The Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson feels like the wilderness at night: a little bit terrifying, emboldened by its darkness, sensual, and brimming with unusual noises. Largely written while she was pregnant and unable to sleep, every track retains a dreamlike quality.

I didn’t connect to The Knife much. One of my coworkers described “Silent Shout” as planetarium music (ouch), but my major obstacle was that I found Andersson’s voice too grating. How exciting then, that her debut is wholly immersive. Equal parts Björk, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel and Depeche Mode, Fever Ray fills these ten songs with mysterious imagery of childhood, depression, longing and boredom. The intensity lies in Andersson’s delivery, not to mention her willingness to transmogrify her vocals to sound like a spirit hovering in a landscape where tribal ritual meets witchcraft at a bog somewhere inside a computer. This one’s well worth your time.

Christian W. Smith
File under: Björk, The Knife, post-partum depression