Godskitchen interview with John OO Fleming - Part Two

Retaining the American theme, JooF's next single is a collaboration with Christopher Lawrence, Attention, a dark , driving trancer.

"Remixes are done, it's all ready to go. So it's gonna come out, should be out on promo by the end of this month. Yeah it's great, I get on really well with Chris. I know Chris has got a huge fanbase in Melbourne. We've been speaking about it for ages and eventually Chris came to the UK and I grabbed him when he was here and said "Right Chris, you're staying at my house for a week and we're gonna make a track!" and we did and we're both really happy with it!" There's another jointly-written track also scheduled for an imminent release, Dame Blanche, this time with Belgian producer-extraordinaire, MIKE.

"Yes there is...eventually, it's a year in the making! It's just along story but eventually we got there! That'll be out shortly after the one with me and Christopher Lawrence." There's also a compilation on the horizon. "Yeah, not until February. There was a press release a while back telling people it would be out in October but to give us more time to promote it and market it we decided to go for February. Tell everyone February 'cause I know the words got around Europe and the States, and a couple of interviews earlier they were all thinking October so yeah put the word around that it's gonna be February."

So how is Fleming's own record label finding the current climate-

"Very, very, very well! I'm a gadget man, forward thinking, futuristic person and I've always been a supporter of downloads, as in legal downloads. Too many people are trying to fight it, and I just went with it and that is the future. I believe downloads are the way forwards, like I said we've been selling them for the past two years, and we're selling bucket-loads of them, we're doing really, really well. So yeah we're surviving but I think that people that are scared of technology get left behind, whereas I'm a fan of it and I'm surviving! From my website you go to the jOOf recordings site and you see all the options.

"Whether you want to buy a tune, you can buy vinyl, you can buy CD and you can buy digital. We sell all formats and yes it's really working. For you guys down there, when we release a track you can 'ave it straight away! You'll be able to buy that track as opposed to waiting two-three months to get down there on a piece of vinyl so it just makes sense, you can be bang up to date!"

And at a fraction of the cost of imported vinyl...

"Exactly...yes! True to pay for an import it must cost you a fortune, by the time it gets down there everybody has to get paid, for it to make its way down there, and it becomes quite an expensive piece of plastic whereas it's gonna cost you 99 pence...which is about $400!!! (Laughs) Just joking!!"

As a veteran of the scene, Fleming's better placed than most to comment on today's Trance. "I think trance will always be popular, will never die. Its just media mentality when something's doing well they try and put it down, and trance will always be there. I think it has gone very commercial." However, he's now leaning more towards the darker, more underground energy of Psy. "The psy-trance scene, to keep their scene "under the radar" as they call it, it will never become a massive commercial commodity because they have a clever way as soon as it starts to get popular, boof their scene will suddenly go really dark and hard and twisted to scare people away and it works!" In fact he's been playing some special JooF psy sets which have gone down a treat. "Yeah I've done a few, they've been going down really well. I played just recently, it was a bank holiday in the UK, I played with Dave Pearce, and me and Dave musically we're so much differently, he plays the music for the masses, so generally it was his crowd there, and there I was playing a full-on psy-trance set, and the place was turning upside down, they were going mad, it was brilliant!"

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• john oo fleming
• godskitchen