Attractive Potbelleez
Author: Aaron Roach
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
Dublin is a magical city but it's also a small one. Everyone knows everyone and it's a tight knit industry where nobody wants to feel challenged. That was the problem, and I felt entrapped. It got to a point where I felt I had achieved all I could in Ireland at the time and the only way to progress was to move forward. So I upped and left for beautiful Oz.
Dave, you've moved to Australia on the notion that Pete Tong proclaimed the Oz dance scene was 'going off'. Do you think the Australian scene has lived up to that expectation-
Yes I think so, you just have to look at the amount of dance festivals on every year in Oz, I don't think there is another country in the world that has this amount of sold out festivals, to me it means there is huge support for the dance scene.
Do the diverse musical influences ever clash when you're writing records-
Dave: No not really, we both know where each other is coming from, so things like that don't get in the way, we usually see differences as a positive thing rather than a negative thing.
Jonny: Absolutely that's the beautiful thing. You say it as a negative, but when you blend and battle two styles both in the studio and on the decks, another sound is born, ie Junkyard House - that's us. We are each other's muse in our work and always use our musical differences as a positive blend of our styles.
Dave, DJ Slipmatt is a name synonymous with the hardcore scene. How did you make the transition from listening to records at a gazillion BPM to the much-subtler 120-130 range-
When I was living in England the whole rave scene got very dark and the atmosphere was really bad, going to a rave could get quite scary if you walked into the wrong corner. So when I was exposed to house and house clubs, the atmosphere was much better and people smiled when they danced, generally it was a lot of fun and not such a boys club.
When did you have the realisation that you were going to work greatly as a duo-
I think it really hit us when we did our first gig on 4 dex and saw the reaction the punters were giving us, we had both been DJing on our own, so seeing the reaction when we were together spoke for itself really.
Having said that, it's never easy to walk into the DJ scene in Australia. How did you manage to work your way up the ranks without much fuss- Did running your own boat/beach parties have an influence-
Promoting successful events definitely helped us, as it meant we didn't need the clubs to play at, we had our crowd already. That helped us because it showed clubs we had a bit of weight behind us to begin with.
You hosted the Groove Armada launch party. Does it get any bigger than that-
Maybe if it was us being the main attraction…
You sold an abundance of tickets in such a short space of time. In that light, do you feel more comfortable in the intimate confines of a small club, or do you prefer to relish in the thousands of punters that attend the major events-
They both have their benefits, small clubs are great for that intimate feeling and you can really create a vibe, and then the big events are wicked coz you are playing to such a large crowd… we love playing both.
What was it like heading back to Europe to spin tunes- More importantly, what was it like heading back home to show people what you had been up to-
Europe is amazing to play in, the crowds dig new music, it's kind of 'if we know the tunes we will walk off' rather than, 'if we don't know the music we will walk off' attitude that can be found around Australia. Yes it does mean a lot to us to go back to Ireland and show people what we are up to, and the reception has been really warm, our peers are proud of us.
The records are coming thick and fast now, and the EP is due for a release quite soon. What is it like havin Tags