Let’s start with my introduction—albeit, late introduction—to your work and your fantastic song, Estelle. What a beautiful track! I love the rolling rhythms that feel like they’re washing over me every time that I listen to those grooves. The pointed bass and jazzy woodwind swirls add so much direction and character to the mix. And don’t get me started on the strings hanging in the background: they add such a fine touch to the rhythmic backbone that defines this song. There’s such a natural mixing of African rhymes and jazz that it’s hard to imagine this performance was sequenced by a remixer behind the desk. I can’t get enough!
How did you get the opportunity to make Estelle, and what’s the story behind its production?
We wrote and produced Estelle for the original Jose Padilla Cafe Del Mar compilation back in 1993! We wrote the track around a jam session with a good friend of ours, flautist and jazz musician Eddie Parker. He’s incredibly musical and after a day together we had some wonderful melodies, polyrhythms and flute riffs to play with. Then Steve and I spent many months working on the song in the studio. The lyrics I wrote seemed to strike a chord with listeners and we’re grateful the track has endured all these years. We issued a Special Edition of all the mixes and remixes we had of Estelle plus an edit of an unreleased version we found on an old DAT tape (the Censer Remix). I am a singer/ lyricist/ DJ and Steve is a multi-instrumentalists as well as our roles as producers.
Reading about your backstory in various online sources, I hear the term “Balearic” often. My first experience with Balearic music was from the Down To The Sea & Back compilations from Balearic Mike and Kelvin Andrews, which are also excellent compilations that I highly recommend anyone check out. I find Balearic music often has a tropical, laid-back vibe that combines well with house or house-adjacent grooves, which makes sense as it’s music made by hammock dwellers (I made that up) sipping drinks and relaxing to the sounds of ocean waves off the coast of the beautiful island of Ibiza, but that feels like an oversimplification to me. We’re in a winter storm right now, so forgive me if that last statement was a bit warm-weather indulgent.
How well did I capture the spirit of what makes Balearic music?
You did well Evan, up to a point! The term ‘Balearic’ as a musical description is notoriously hard to pin down and many commentators have tried. Ibiza has a deep history as a destination for free thinkers and radicals, somewhere to express oneself freely. From Beatniks in the 50s and 60s to hippies in the 70s, people have journeyed there from all over the world and brought their music and open-minded sensibilities with them. By the 80s the Superclubs and beach bars were in operation and the cultural influence of that International melting pot was gaining popularity beyond the island. Acid house and a British invasion in the 90s saw the island and its musical freedoms blow-up in the public consciousness as an important cultural phenomena – and the musical term ‘Balearic’, that people find so hard to pin down was coined. It’s a complex mix of what you describe. Beautiful beaches, incredible venues, pristine wilderness and natural beauty coupled with a broad musical eclecticism that takes in everything – Italo disco, German avant-garde, intelligent pop, contemporary classical, world beats, ambience, jazz, so so many influences, nothing is off the table. But I’d say it’s music that’s aim is true, emotional music with powerful energy, and thankfully I think that’s where we’ve fitted in. We first went to Ibiza in 1990 – the phrase ‘Down to the Sea and Back’ is cribbed from our song Barefoot In the Head which took us there as performers. Like everyone who was lucky enough to go back then we were hugely inspired by sets like José Padilla’s at Cafe Del Mar and the stunning sound, lights and mixed crowds in the clubs. That eclecticism I mentioned simply wasn’t a thing anywhere else and to hear it while watching a glorious mediterranean sunset, sipping rum and chocolate milk, or on a fabulous sound system in a church-like venue dedicated to dancing was quite mind blowing for kids from the UK with its a grimy inner cities and Thatcherite politics.
I love re-edits: recontextualized tracks that highlight a completely new way(s) to listen to tunes that have the same sonic elements, but a completely new portrayal of those elements—arranged differently, laden with effects, familiar and unfamiliar. That said, I struggle to understand the difference between a re-edit, dub, and re-rub. Specifically, I’ve only seen the term “re-rub” used in the context of Balearic compilations and songs. Perhaps my favorite tag that I’ve seen was a remixed version of Bonobo’s song, Prelude, which was labelled “Lapalalux’s Finger on the Tape Remix,” which felt a bit on the nose. A favorite of mine from your catalog is a coin toss between your long version of Easter Song – Original Café del Mar Version, or the leftover that you released titled Steady (The Cornish Demo). The chirping flutes and meditative rhythms on Easter bring me back to a time that I’d long forgotten—when I was playing in the woods and scared to watch Jurassic Park—while Steady reminds me of a shantier version of a tune possibly recorded by Fleetwood Mac. The raw, clattering toms, though, really give the latter work a rootsy, in-your-face, in-the-moment feel that I find fun.
For anyone who’s interested in doing their own remixes, can you give me a quick lowdown on what these different tags mean? Also, what are some of your edits, dubs, or re-rubs that you’re most proud of?
Ah, I’m glad you liked the Cornish demo of Steady. We sometimes put things out from the vaults that we thing someone might find interesting. The main version we released first appeared on a compilation we compiled inspired by another beachy destination, Punte del Este in Uruguay. The earlier ‘demo’ was recorded while we were living and working in Cornwall – one of the UKs most stunning coastal counties. Historically, Cornwall has all shipwrecks and sea shanties there so that’s what you can hear. Fleetwood Mac are a big love of ours so that’s also spot on. Maybe the evolution of that track through its various iterations is a good case study for your question about remixes, re-rubs, dubs and versions. Sometimes we’ve recorded something that has cool elements and some emotional pull that wasn’t quite realised in the first version, or even it if it was – like Easter Song – we might feel there are still places to go with it. Alt versions that open up some other emotional landscape or dancefloor. We often bounce a lot of live mixes, where we’re manipulating the fx and dubbing a track out, almost like film rushes. This gives us material to deconstruct the rushes into new versions. Versions with more air and light in them, or bottom end (dubs) or versions that serve different purposes (remixes) or arrangements (rerubs). Like clay or paint we love to work with the materials we’ve created, sometimes we overwork them and abandon them altogether but it’s all part of our process.
I notice that you’re active in art spaces outside of the DJ booth, namely a recent collaboration with the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in their Remember Nature project. I appreciated the video on YouTube where you sampled audio from the conservatory and made music to show appreciation for our intimate connection to our environments and the species that also live there.
Can you break down how nature has shaped your creative process in (and outside) the studio? What are your favorite places to go to feel inspired to create?
I grew up by the sea and have a deep connection to it but we both love nature (who doesn’t) and love to be immersed in it. We’re on a journey into fine art practice – one that draws on all we’ve done and who we are, but we’ve registered that nature, wildlife and conservation are recurring themes in that work. We’ve always rented spaces and set up studios in beautiful places, where nature is the boss, and you can switch off the world of people and human-centered preoccupations. We draw on that to inspire our music – the stillness and deep time of the landscape, the otherness of non-human species. We had our studio for 10 years in Cornwall which was basically in a National Park, and more recently we went to The Lake District to gaze at mountains and lakes for inspiration. We like to feel awe in the face of nature and it reminds us how precious our co-existence with non-human species is. We were honoured to be part of the Remember Nature project but like everything with us, it feels like the start of something.
Your catalog is vast—remixes that are placed in many prominent compilations, as well as your own releases that include some amazing dance tunes and moments. I’m also struck by your collaborations with various educational institutions. I look forward to spending my time digging into your deeper catalog—I’d love to get a hold of any soundtracks or art establishment pieces that you’ve done—and I’m curious if any of it has been released.
Regardless, what is it about the experience of making music that motivates you to come back to the drawing board to continue to create such beautiful sounds for so many contexts?
Thanks for digging into it all! I think Steve and I are just like that. It’s not that we get bored with things, it’s just that we don’t want to keep doing the same thing over and over. Which is often what a successful music career involves. We like to learn, we always want to try new things and to push ourselves in new directions. Collaboration is a great way to do that and we love to work with people who are up for the road less travelled. Bringing sound into gallery spaces, creating installation, performance and visual art are the avenues we’re exploring. Teaching is something that feels right after our long career. It’s OK to do what you want to do, we always have, but it’s important to share your experiences sometimes, if it’ll help someone else on their own journey.