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Seb Fontaine On Fame 'You Open Yourself Up to a Lot Of Crap'

Author: Skruff
Sunday, May 13, 2001
Britain's newest genuine superstar DJ is Seb Fontaine, his status sealed when he recently joined Radio 1's charmed circle of premier league presenters, 10 years after starting his career playing hip hop at the London Wag Club. These days more known for trance and progressive house, the ex Cream resident rocked Mezz's May Day Ball last weekend and also recently mixed his 4th compilation CD for Global Underground. Mezz caught up with him last week to chat about the mix CD, which is receiving a simultaneous release in Australia and the UK.

Mezz: Prototype is being released in Australia and the UK at the same time, has that affected your approach-
Seb Fontaine: "No, not at all, Global Underground more than any other CD series are world wide albums, I certainly didn't make this album directly for the UK audience, I made it for everybody. There's no difference anymore between countries anyway, and it's a partly because of albums like this. I don't mean my album specifically, I mean the series, such as Anthony Pappa's recent mix CD. Global Underground have crossed a lot of boundaries and I think they've shown a lot of people what a good mix album should be like."

Mezz: You must be receiving literally hundreds of new records a week, are you still going through them all yourself-
Seb Fontaine: "I get so many, and I am still listening to them all myself. I've heard before about other DJs using others to go through them and at the time I wasn't sure if I agreed with that practise but I must say, I'm pretty close to looking for help now. It takes me over a day just to listen to them all. I'm being sent everything, sometimes two or three times and also stuff like hard house, which I definitely don't play. The problem is; if you listen to new records for 6 hours at a time, you're going to miss something, because you're skating (flicking) through records. If you have somebody to chop out half the crap ones then you'd be hearing the better half more intensely."

Mezz: Going into your background, a club where you started DJing, London's Wag Club , shut down recently..
Seb Fontaine: "The Wag closed!!- No way! Christ! I used to play a couple of nights down there, and would play all the reggae and hip hop upstairs. I saw the Jungle Brothers live there once and remember standing two feet in front of them. I loved the Wag but I haven't been there for years, and maybe that's why it's closed down. Everyone reminisced about it but didn't go often enough. That's really sad."

Mezz: I remember reading about you being involved in a fatal fire in which your best friend died, what happened-
Seb Fontaine: "Yeah, that was a really heavy time of my life, though it helped me move on. There was a fire in my house and I lost everything, including my best friend. It happened around 1988, and it probably spurred me on to doing some work."

Mezz: How big a role has luck or chance played in your career-
Seb Fontaine: "I firmly believe in paths of destiny and things being meant to happen or not. The fire was a skin-of-the-teeth (near miss) situation. I woke up to have a pee (piss) when normally you don't wake up in fires, you stay asleep.Anyway, I woke up to have a pee because I was so drunk and discovered the fire. I had to sit there waiting to be rescued and they had to drag me out of a fifth floor window on a big long ladder. The whole place was filled with smoke and I nearly passed out, it was a pretty heavy thing."

Mezz: Your biog, unusually for a DJ, mentions you being a father and husband, why did you bring that up-
Seb Fontaine: "I'm a big-time Dad. Not only do I have season tickets to Chelsea (football club) I've also got them for London Zoo. That's no joke. London Zoo's a great place and I take my little boy there all the time. I actually conducted a whole deal yesterday while pushing my little boy on a swing in the park. He was sitting there saying, 'Daddy, push higher, higher' as I
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