Paul Jackson & Dirty Vegas Nudge The Push

UK house producer/ DJ Paul Jackson chatted to Skrufff this week about his recent collaboration with Steve Smith, which involved the Dirty Vegas singer adding vocals to Paul's massive club hit from 2003, The Push.

The broodingly heavy instrumental crossed techno, house and trance boundaries last year, prompting numerous commentators to suggest adding a vocal could make it a crossover commercial hit.

"I've been having to defend myself to all journalists but it really wasn't a cynical exercise," Paul told Skrufff.

"I was really dubious about putting a vocal on it, to be honest, all the way through the process I knew that I had everything to lose. I knew it was a special record, one I knew I wasn't going to make every year because it just seemed to click with so many different types of people across the board. I felt I had it all to ruin."

The resulting collaboration is out this week on Darren Emerson's Underwater Records, though the instrumental remains popular, as Paul was happy to admit.

"There are so many people who still play the original and that's fine by me, Sven Vath played it all last summer at his Cocoon parties in Ibiza, literally every week and also he put it on his latest mix album which was fantastic," he said.

"I played at the Underwater Christmas party in December and I also played the instrumental, to be honest. I'm torn, I don't generally think in vocals, I'm not a song-writer, I make instrumental music and that's what I like doing and that's what I feel I'm good at. I've toyed with song-writing and it all comes across as a bit amateurish, a bit sixth form. I tend to write really over-sincere lyrics."

Paul Jackson And Steve Smith- The Push (Far From Here) is out now on Underwater Records.
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