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When I first started D.J.-ing, it was like...
The D.J. was there, and there was people who knew the D.J. was there.
But they were just partying. You know, now...
It's like everybody focuses on the D.J.
The D.J.... This is nice, huh?
It is good, but you know...
It has changed... A lot!
Wow... The set is ready so...
Great set! That's a very good set, man!
Oh my God... Are you O.K.?
Hi, guys, we're here with Copyright.
We'll start with the serious questions, and then...
We'll get to the naughty ones.
The first serious question:
How did you two meet and...
how did you decide to work together?
Ummm... I know it was a long time ago.
It was a long time ago.
I'm just racking... racking back my brain, no...
We've been asked this question before and...
And he's trying to think of an interesting story.
Yeah, yeah... To make it more...
We met through a mutual friend.
I was a D.J.,
Err... I was from the North of England in Manchester,
and I moved to London,
and was looking for someone to work in the studio with.
And I've been working with various people and spending lots of money and...
You know, not really getting the result I wanted, and...
A friend of mine...
said I should contact Gavin, I contacted Gavin,
and... yeah...
I used to rent out my studio to different people.
And Sam came to rent the studio,
and by the end of the day, we two like... had such a good day of work,
I said...
"Why don't you just not pay me for the studio and let's just work together."
And... it's carried on from there.
I wish I would have just charged him now.
Yeah, you should have just charged me. Would have been a lot better.
Is one of you more of a D.J. and one more of a producer,
or do you think you have
mostly the same skills?
We both come from a background of D.J.-ing originally.
Sam's from... like the Manchester scene
from up North, in England,
I'm from London,
both been D.J.-ing a lot of years.
And in the studio,
I'm more of and engineer type
but Sam's a very good producer and very focused, so...
We both bring something different in the studio.
But when we D.J. together,
we D.J. like two people, but like... almost like
one person together, because we've been working together for so long.
Yeah, yeah, see... it's easy, it's also, err...
We just know...
when we get in a certain zone of our set, what we're doing.
It's like... becomes like instinct.
It's hard to find the word for it, but... In those classic nights.
It's almost like a communication between us,
when we don't even have to say anything.
Yeah... Sometimes I...
Just Sam hasn't been there, I've D.J.-ed witht someone else,
It's like they're in my way, and...
And you don't realize. Yeah, for anyone watching, it takes about...
Maybe about 650 flights, and...
4,000 gigs, you know what I mean? To get to a level it's...
it's... it takes a long... You know, it's always evolving.
Our tour manager said we're like a married couple.
Yeah.
And after 10 years it is like that.
How does your wife feel about that?
She's... She's very understanding!
That's funny!
Does the name "Copyright" have any specific meaning?
No. We could try and create some sort of amazing stories to why we came up with it.
We just liked the name.
And back in the days, there was originally three of us working together as Copyright.
There's actually one of my friends, Scotty, now works in a...
Works for Diesel.
He... he came up with the name.
So it's... you know...
But we killed him off because he used to get all the girls.
Yeah... He was better looking,
much more tallented, so we had to cut him.
You pay him royalties now for the new name?
No, no, no, it's all good. He's a good friend of ours.
He gives us free jeans, so, you know, it's all cool.
You've been in the music business such a long time.
What did change, from a D.J.'s point of view,
in all that time?
I think technologically it changed a lot,
in terms of the actual physical act of D.J.-ing,
there's so many options now,
whether you use a laptop,
whether you use C.D.s
whether you use just direct U.S.B. drive to the C.D.
Your D.J. setup is now?...
We play... we use the CDJ 2000's when we D.J. with U.S.B.,
using the rekordbox. And... that's...
That's... that's like a massive development.
It changes the amount of music you can bring to a gig, you know?...
Which has its positives and its negatives, you know?...
These days... it used to be about
really pulling together the hundred records
that would... really could cover yourself. The best ones.
The best ones and...
but also, you know, not everything an anthem, you know, deeper stuff tracks,
to cover the...
the range of a set. Now, it's...
It's really wide, so it's all about organization.
You know, and labeling, and you know, all those sorts of things.
So... that's been a big change.
The sound system?
It got better or not?
That depends. Yeah.
I mean...
I personally like the sound of records
when I listen to music at home.
Actually we did a party before Christmas and it was like...
playing a "sandwich D.J.", I was just in the crowd.
But it was like a revival party, so he brought vinyl.
And he was going between vinyl and C.D.
and I could hear the difference, when the vinyl...
Maybe because I'm too much of a trainspotter or whatever...
I really thought about that myself a lot
and I really think that the audience now,
if they don't know the difference, the feel it.
I mean, they feel better if... the sound is analog.
I think also, though... I mean...
Some music does lend itself to the digital sound.
Like that the more electronic sort of... That clean... yeah...
clean, techno sound.
Sounds amazing on digital.
And it really... really punches, but...
If it's like the more organic sound, it sounds good coming from the vinyl.
Do you ever get tired? What...
keeps you going on and on in touring and producing music?
Um...
There's no better feeling than D.J.-ing
and getting a response from the crowd.
playing music that you love,
and also making records.
You know, it doesn't get tiring for us, getting reactions from people,
responses to records.
You always wanna make a better record, or you always wanna...
We always wanted to make a classic record,
a record that maybe people still gonna listen to
in 23 years time, so...
You always wanna do something better,
and you're never satisfied.
And you know, we make a track,
we might think it's good,
but then we hear somebody else's track and think...
"Well, that's amazing, I wanna do something like that."
And... it might not even be a house record, it might be
an indie record or an old jazz record, you know...
just the inspirations come from everywhere.
So...
You don't get tired, you're always striving to...
to make something even better.
I think the way we play,
There's lots of different styles of music,
it's very... you know, it has become fashionable to...
put names on the different types of music.
Sometimes I'm purposely looking through my things,
like the music I've got on my computer, or at home and studio,
looking for things that's gonna surprise people
if we play them. Yeah. Sound different.
I mean, we have our sort of general sound which is house music,
and it covers a really broad spectrum.
Yeah, but sometimes we just
try and look for something that we can play, it might be an old Disco record, or...
a Latin record,
or something, you know?... Yeah. Mix it up.
We don't think about how well this track's gonna do,
all we think about is... Do we wanna play this on the weekend?
Do we like it? Do we like it?
Will we play it in the weekend? If we like it, then we'll play it,
and then sometimes you can make a track, and...
we say... you know, we're not playing it.
And then we know we have to change it.
To make it into... something that we play.
That's the starting point for us.
But you know, sometimes you... It's not as...
The people sort of see in the... You know...
Who talk about these... The big act,
you know, some of the acts that are commercially successful,
they make it sound like... "Oh, yeah..."
"I just wanna make a track that's a massive global hit" because, you know...
It's not that easy.
Those guys are tallented. Do you know what I mean?
It shouldn't be underestimated. It's kind of a...
It's a skill.
Do you see any negative aspects of...
the D.J.-ing? Of D.J.-ing, of D.J.s?
It's a pretty anti-social job.
Why? In terms of...
Well, you travel every... you know, most weekends,
ocasionally we have a weekend off,
but we are on,
when everybody else is off.
So all of... You know why... Why I'm asking why...
Because everyone thinks that it's the most social job ever.
Yeah, in terms of... Yeah.
If you wanna spend every Saturday... Friday, Saturday...
When you're 18 - 20 years old.
When you've got a wife and child... Yeah.
It's different. You wanna have weekends at home,
see your family, maybe see some of your friends...
But the life... That is just a down side...
It's a slight down side,
but I would... I'd take this over any other job.
You know what I mean? It just runs out of the question.
We're really... We're really lucky to do this job.
So, it's just a small negative. You know?...
And that's why - you get to an age our age, you know...
when we could invite all of our friends to the club
and everyone was like: "Woooh, we're coming!"
Now, we're like... "Ring ring..."
"Ring ring..."
You know... you know what I mean?
Well, I know
that you're married,
and you are engaged,
according to your facebook status. Yeah. That is correct!
Thank you, facebook!
Well...
Let me ask you this:
I promise you're talking
just to me now.
Is it true that the D.J.s
take all the girls?
I don't think that is true... I think that's a bit of a myth.
Depends on the D.J., you know,
different types of D.J.s...
There's D.J.s who are there because they love the lime light,
they love the women and...
There's other D.J.s who are there just because they love music, and...
they're there because they wanna play music to people.
Yeah... And...
We fall in the second category.
Honest, darling! Yeah.
Good answer, Gav... That was good, yeah?
Your wife will be proud!
Where from do you get the inspiration for your tracks?
Aw, all the music that we're... that we're playing,
that we're currently... you know... feeling,
Old... old records, you know,
we're constantly going back listening to old house records,
stuff from maybe... It's crazy, but... Digging!
Yeah, 15 - 20 years ago, suddenly, like now,
a certain sound from the '90s
just sounds... The sound... again.
And you sample them? Or you try to...
No, we just listen! We just listen!
We have listening to music days.
Yeah, we don't... We go in the studio and think...
"Let's just listen to music" and pulling out records,
maybe go on the Internet, maybe even YouTube.
Find a lot of music we've never even heard before.
Yeah, I know. And very good music. Yeah.
Yeah, and I've just into like recently, the last year, like...
Like SoundCloud. I really love it. You know, I just have a stream on my phone,
I have my sound dock at home,
I'm just listening to mixes, or...
You know, searching for tracks, and...
it's quite a good way of listening to music. It's...
with our job, because...
the way we produce, and it's quite an intense... you know...
We produce 3 days out of the working week,
so Tuesday, Wedensday, Thursday... Yeah...
Sometimes more... When you're producing at that level,
it is very hard to then just listen to
other types... other House music in your down time.
So maybe you listen to some old Soul, or Jazz...
Do you know what I mean, it's... Yeah, I mean...
There's only so much music you can listen to in a week...
You don't take the inspiration
only from Dance records,
but also other styles.
All over, yeah!
Do you ever take breaks? I don't mean breaks like half an hour, like...
Two weeks we don't produce anything.
We just did that. Yeah, yeah, we just did that.
It was really good to do. Yeah.
Yeah, over Christmas, we...
We didn't rush back after Christmas,
kind of like 12th of January... we said... "Let's have a proper bit of time off..."
Yeah, because we also have a label,
we relaunched our label, "Copyright Recordings",
And... so now we have our own productions,
and then we have maybe 5 - 6 other producers,
who are all making records and sending them towards,
to get our feedback, to maybe...
To put them on label, and we're working alongside Simon Dunmore,
from Defected on that. And it's...
Yeah, that's just another dimension, so...
This Christmas - we had a really busy year, last year
and it was nice just to...
switch everything off and...
Yesterday actually we just gave the studio like a...
real overhaul.
Cleaned,
put some new furniture in,
created a good vibe, we bought an espresso machine...
Like, we've got it... Some really important studio equipment!
Basically, as a producer,
you do all the things that you start doing
to not even start making any music, just to create a vibe.
'Cause that's what it's all about, you wanna go in there and work, so...
Yeah, that's where we're at the moment.
You have your own label, "Copyright Recordings" since 2005?
Yeah. How did that help with your career?
Um... it... It's a good question, though, but the thing is...
It's quite important for us to... We're running the label now to essentially
put out our music
and a core band of other producers' music.
And it's quite... It's a lot of work. And...
It's important that we are an artist in our own right, signed to Defected.
And we wanna make records for Defected.
And sometimes we make records for Copyright Recordings,
and you know, so we have to balance our time...
It's easy to just become focused on Copyright as a label, and...
But we've got a bigger picture, so...
It's just part of... the many things we do.
You know, we do a few other projects outside of Dance music,
which also fit into the whole...
sort of... you know, mixing things
that allows us to do this job.
Do you think that an artist
could make a living, nowadays,
just by producing music?
Not also... not D.J.-ing also?
And vice-versa.
Only D.J.-ing, but not producing?
Only D.J.-ing and not... Pfff... Aw...
Take one... Tough questions, huh?
No, no, that's a good question!
One feeds the other, and...
You can probably think of maybe
one or two examples of producers who don't go in D.J.-ing.
Yeah... Yeah.
But I think you can think of a lot more, who do produce records and go and D.J.
Yeah. You have to... If you're gonna be a D.J. that doesn't produce,
you have to have a niche.
You have to have something about you that's different.
Whatever that is, that you create, but if... you know...
With production, it's all about keeping your profile.
There's so many records coming out each week now.
And it's... and so, it'd be hard...
I think it's hard for just... These days for a D.J.
just to break through.
Without an element of production helping them.
Don't you feel that
some of the new producers
are not as good D.J.s as they should be,
but they get gigs because of their productions?
What about that?
Well that's... That's always been the case.
You know, someone can make a big record and then it's like right time to tour,
we need to tour.
I know D.J.s, well known D.J.s,
that now are some of the biggest D.J.s in the world,
they've been D.J.-ing for 7 years. 6 - 7 years, maybe.
You know?... You know,
I don't think it matters, I think... you know? Good luck to them!
They've got their opportunity and they take it.
I've got my personal favourite D.J.s, like... You know?...
I... I'd still love go and check out Kenny Dope for example,
or Louie Vega. That's just... You know?...
That's just my taste, I think they're great D.J.s,
in the old school... you know,
style of D.J. Take away all the technology and everything.
That's someone I'd go and see, but the new generation's slightly different.
They wanna hear that anthem that the producer just made.
With him at the decks. Yeah, yeah.
So it's... it's different.
And a lot of the acts... it's...
You know, they've got a set pre-done on Traktor, on their laptop,
and, you know what I mean? It's a different... It's a different beast.
It's quite hard to think of a big successful D.J.
who doesn't produce, or... a producer who doesn't D.J.,
the two just seem to always go together.
Do you have plans for a live appearence?
We... Well, we've always had a live element to... to what we do.
So, we'd like to see as a performer, there's Imaani,
where in Japan... we toured with Imaani...
We've made a lot of tracks with Shovell. Yeah, Shovell...
He appears with us quite regularly.
With percussion. And...
Yeah, I mean... We think of taking, this year, some of the
studio elements out with us.
So bringing out some keyboards,
some sequencers,
and doing a little bit more of a live show.
Bringing some of our studio...
skills to the D.J. set. Because we feel like now, you know,
you need the other dimension.
You know, it's easy just to turn up with a...
with the U.S.B. key,
and play.
And I think we wanna try and do a little bit more.
The quickness of the...
of the new technology,
just to throw a synth on and catch a vibe, great!
But then I think, for us,
to get the sound that we... that we achieve,
it helps to have some analog and...
You know, sometimes when some kids come in our room, and they're like:
"Awww, daaamn!", you know, "Wooow!", you know?
"Wassup? I've got that, I've got that, I've got that!"
And they're all... they're all plug-ins. It's good to mix the two flavours together.
Like mixing the old school equipment with the new stuff, as well.
Yeah, we... We've always done that, like...
MPC, Akai MPC drums
You know, recently we've done more drums in the computer,
but then we just saw this...
The clip for the new Akai MPC Fly,
which is using the iPad and a little controller.
And we were like "Wow..."
You can see the two worlds starting to...
merge. To blend, yes.
Do you have any piece of gear that you couldn't live without?
The Moog...
It's always gonna give us a great bass sound.
I can go through presets on the computer,
and not find the right thing.
Turn on the Moog and it's there! And I've just got a beautiful sub sound.
And I just turn a couple of knobs and I've got what I need.
You don't need 200 presets to get a good sound.
No, there's a few synths in the studio
that are like that. I couldn't bear to part with them...
Yeah, and you do hear tracks now, like you hear the track when it comes out,
and it's basically the preset.
You know, that's the nature of the world, now.
Yeah. You know?
Do you ever use loops in your productions,
made by other artists?
Pfff, no! Not for a while...
We have done in the past. Yeah, but...
What we do is maybe sample some old drums...
Yeah, yeah. We take a loop and make it...
We filter all the bottom-end out of it, gate here,
and put something on it. Use it your own way.
And by the time we finish it... Yeah.
The person who made it wouldn't even know it was there.
How long does it take to finish a track?
Pfff... Every track is like... so different. Is different.
It could be like...
We had a beat
that we did last year,
we tried writing a song on it.
the song wasn't quite working...
Two days ago in the studio I said to Gavin:
"Oh, why don't we try Cevin Fisher from New York on this?"
24 hours later, he's recorded the vocals, sent it to Gavin, on his laptop,
Gavin was working on the fly here.
You know what I mean? Sometimes it can take months, days...
Sometimes...
two hours. Yeah.
The best tracks... Sometimes the best projects
are the ones that come together easily.
But that's not always the case, sometimes...
If you work and work and work...
You can...
Do you have any advice for the...
young D.J.s, for the aspiring D.J.s?
Yeah, make the music from your heart! You know?...
Make it with some soul. Yeah...
Don't try and make the music for the money, like we said before.
Just make music that you feel.
Yeah, my best tip is: Go to the 2 or 3 biggest download sites,
completely ignore the top 100,
and go... everywhere else.
'Cause there's so much music out there,
and if everybody keeps playing the top 100 of sites,
the scene's dying. You know?...
It's all about trying that little bit harder.
Sometimes you don't find the best tracks in the top 100.
Yeah, listen, there'll be good ones in the top 100,
Yeah, of course.
But I'm just saying, you know...
It just becomes a little bit, um...
You know, people need to dig and that, as a young, aspiring D.J.,
that's what will give you the edge over everybody else,
'cause you'll sound different.
Get out, yeah, listen to other D.J.s. I mean, it's nothing for me more inspiring,
than going and hearing D.J.s, and...
see what they're playing.
Yeah, that's one of the only negatives of our job.
It's we don't get to listen to D.J.s as much as when...
we used... You can take breaks, right?
Yeah, yeah, you know... Or your manager doesn't allow it?...
No, but you know...
You can take breaks, but when you do take a break,
your not gonna think: "Aw, I'm on my night off."
"I'm gonna go back to a night club" It's like?!...
What are you working on, right now?
Another release with Nuwella Love. Yeah. Coming on Defected.
We did a track called "I'm All Yours", last year, and...
This one's like a... kind of a cover for an old '60s record.
But we've given it a twist of our own. Yeah.
We've done... remixes of "Wizeman" for this year.
We've done a remix with The Layabouts, some soulful house guys, done a remix.
We got a new record with a guy called Andre Espeut, called "Yali Yo Kweli",
African, kind of deep style.
He's singing in Swahili. Yeah.
So we don't really even know what the song's about.
But it's got a cool vibe. But we like the vibe.
And... Ann Saunderson, she's...
Ann Saunderson from Inner City, we're writing with her next week.
Cevin Fisher, from New York,
Yeah... lots and lots of things happening.
You're the first time in Romania now?
Yeah!
Well, I have... I hope you'll have a great night
and thank you very much!
Aw, thank you! Good to meet you!
Where's the naughty questions? Yeah!
I was waiting for them...
I was just kidding you...
No, no... That was brilliant! You were brilliant, Gav,
when you asked the questions about the girls.
That's genius! That's brilliant!