[Circus Company]

“Minimal” — in its kinda-organic, vaguely tropical, hinting-at-house iteration — doesn’t get much coverage around these parts anymore. There was a brief moment a few years back, though, when it was on the tip of everyone’s tongues — when each Oslo release was awaited with baited breath, when “Mumbling Yeah” was “Hyph Mngo,” when it was only a matter of time before a new Villalobos stepped in from the wings (that person probably being Romanian, or at least sporting an Onur Özer haircut). And then — blame Berghain, blame 130 being the new 140, blame Luciano (via Carl Craig’s ultimate shame-face) — it was wiped from our nerdspeak, and it’s never really returned.

Sometimes I wonder if we critics messed up, like we tossed this stuff to the side before it had really had a chance to be more than lightweight Villalobos or the soundtrack to a fantastically angular and age-inappropriate haircut. Guillaume Coutu Dumont seems like a good place to start. This Canadian’s tracks (for labels-of-that-moment like Musique Risquée, Hartchef Discos, and, yes, Oslo) didn’t seem like the work of a bandwagoneer so much as a skilled sound designer who happened to find a voice in the form of the moment. Yet so many of those mid-decade clichés never really fit this guy: he looked east, not south, with a sultriness emanating not from a beach bar but through the door of a tobacco-choked jazz club. And his two albums, Face À L’Est and Breaking The Fourth Wall, displayed artistic depth beyond a desire to crank out 13-minute, Ricardo-baiting tools. Why exactly are we content — thrilled, even — to talk about Roland-driven tracks that could have been made in 1986 instead of turning our full attention to someone who’s really making a go at creating his own sounds? Did we fall prey to toxic associations?

I’m not sure “Ubiquitous Gaze,” Coutu Dumont’s latest for Circus Company, will be the release that brings him or any of these guys back to frontrunner status, because trends or no trends, these tracks just don’t sound all that fresh. Opening with a vocal sample that asserts “this music thing” is “the only thing for me,” Coutu Dumont spends nearly nine and a half minutes riding slamming disco drums, twinkling piano licks, and warm, gritty strings. Though pretty, it’s mostly just pleasant — Moodymann-lite, maybe — and there’s not much here to justify its considerable length. A “Stringapella” version basically tweaks the original into a hefty intro, which depending on your DJ style could be a good thing. “You’re The One,” a more claustrophobic take on Coutu Dumont’s sound design (and an infinitely less obnoxious use of 20th Century Steel Band’s “Heaven And Hell Is On Earth” than that Dances With White Girls song), has real promise. But compositionally, he’s treading water here, neither building nor switching up the flow enough to support the extended runtime. Trends and affiliations are meaningless if the tunes are compelling enough to reach the sorts of DJs who could give a shit about petty music journo banter. These are probably not those tunes.

[Circus Company]

Born in Ibiza, the world’s tropical dance music oasis, Willie Graff has always held the kick drum close to his heart. Securing his first DJing residency at age 14, Graff went on to become Pacha’s youngest resident before moving to New York and taking the reins at Cielo. With techno and house running through his veins, Graff’s 2005 transition into producing proved remarkably smooth, enlisting a constant stream of collaborators (including Jerome Sydenham, DJ Pippi and Tuccillo) as he refined a jacking style of tech-house. With each new 12″ for liebe*detail, Wave Music, Drumpoet Community and Freerange, Graff and Tuccillo (his most frequent partner) have opted for slower, more house-oriented sounds. The “Atracktion EP,” their new release for Circus Company, finds the duo at their most methodical and mellow.

Buttressed by rolling toms and swinging hi-hat backbeats, moist opener “Do It” alternates between mushy chords and softly intoned calls to “do it” and “move it,” with just enough kinetic energy to have early arrivals swaying. Yet its subdued nature leaves the track feeling predictable, almost like a placeholder between more vibrant tunes. “Rucula” nudges the tempo and intensity a notch higher, rewarding careful observers with minute details like gentle strumming sounds and shifting hi-hat timbres. At its core, “Rucula” only builds on the “Do It” template of understated synth tones and vocal samples, adding a resonating piano chord and party-friendly sample drops as distinguishing features. Graff and Tuccilo take the most risks with “Snerata,” loosening snare hits from the grid, letting a wandering synth progression stepping up and down the scale. Sharpened vocal syllables chase dancers towards a glowing beatless section recalling an orchestra warming up before a performance. Serving as an inviting transition point for DJs, listeners can hear the attention paid to the sound design. Distilling Graff and Tucillo’s recent aesthetic to its most functional, formulaic state, the “Atracktion EP”‘s unwavering focus serves up enjoyment and disappointment in equal measures.

In part two of our interview with Dave Aju, we discuss the balance between fun and function, the reception to his music, and his plans for the coming year.

With your mission statement in mind, do you think there’s a point when things get too weird?

Definitely. It’s like anything else, the balance is crucial. Again, [the mission statement] is a George Clinton motif. To me, I would always love the way he would be so out there but it was still very functional. And some people have said, ‘Well your stuff’s not functional.’ I’ve had people say to me, ‘Dude, I can’t play your records,’ and I say, ‘That’s real interesting, because every record that I’ve made you can start it on the one and it will follow through.’ Every now and then there will be a little intro thing that might throw you off, but very much so it matches my DJ style fine. I drop the needle in the middle, get the speed of it and bring it back. So it’s all playable, it’s just not like the other records you bought that week.

That’s interesting, I wanted to ask you about functionality. A track like “Be Like the Sun,” it definitely has a consistent groove but it seems like it doesn’t operate like a lot of dance music. How do you keep functionality in mind when you’re making your tracks?

I got into this, again, as a dancer first. And that’s the thing too, in a sense the dogmatic approach to dance music, in that it has to have a kick right here and a two and four snare strictly, and a hi-hat has to be– and that will instruct people to dance. I can dance to anything. Latin music, there’s all sorts of shit that doesn’t have that kick drum and is just as dance floor intense. So when I’m making a track, as long as I can sit back, close my eyes and feel myself kind of rocking out to it a little bit, that’s the test — as long as it passes that I’ll put it out.

Is it ever difficult to fit concepts into listenable music? So much concept music sounds like a concept, you know what I’m saying?

Yeah, novelty sometimes.

Is it difficult to fit that into straight up listening music?

I think in general it’s really easy to get caught up in something like that, maybe almost pretentiously — ‘this is my concept; it’s a concept work, that is the piece.’ I think especially with the album and maybe with “Love Always” because I had such inspiration through personal means, I decided I’ll probably always work in concepts at some level. I’ve always loved layered meaning and reading into things, but how the record will make someone respond is number one, always. For example, with the album, other people who have heard it have already said they didn’t even know it was made with my mouth, and that’s the best thing I can think of. But then people who would be into that can read into it. I like the idea that music can be appreciated on so many levels. Somebody can dance to it and be like, ‘Whoa that was a cool track,’ done; some DJ can be like, ‘I’d play that’ or ‘I wouldn’t play that,’ done. Then the more studious gear types can be like, ‘Oh, I see, he put an LFO on it…’ The more interpretations the better.

“The Tables Turn,” “Crazy Place” and Open Wide are all freed by their artistic constraints. Are artist constraints or concepts you had to adhere to — are they freeing to you?

I got into– I studied a little bit of stuff when I was in college about Steve Reich and the classical composers — minimalism in that sense, and I was really into this whole idea that the concept could become the content. Concept itself is the form, and that becomes the content and it takes on a new life. And it becomes not a restraint but it sort of opens up a bit. And yeah, I like the idea of employing that, and I also like the idea of music that becomes sort of like the design work: the art is the piece and the piece has a purpose. Each record I put out– the one I did for Context was conceptual as well. I bought three records off the street that were just gnarly, and I bought them because they were so beat up and just used those for samples, just used all the dirt to make the tracks. “The Tables Turn” was an ode to the turntable. They’re all very personal, heartfelt issues almost that I want to employ and turn into tracks.

Are there other concepts rolling around your head that you would like to work on?

Yeah, Open Wide was all made with the mouth so I’m still working out a couple things to go with the live set for that and a couple cover versions. But yeah, there are a couple ideas I have. I want to do an instrumental thing where– I have a different friends that play instruments, and what we’re going to do is (and this is tentative right now) work on something where the entire song is constructed just from that instrument being played, but not necessarily in a traditional solo sense.

A lot of your work is sample-based. Are you adding much in the way of other instruments, or how much are you working with other musicians to bring things together?

So far, other than the occasional samples, I haven’t really collaborated with musicians yet, which is why I’m looking forward to this project I just mentioned. I basically create each instrument for each track. So it all starts with samples, whether it’s a microphone recorded found sound or sometimes its vinyl samples, but I haven’t done that for a while. But each sound turns into an instrument. Interesting sounds are the whole point of this shit to me.

Why did you decide to use your mouth as the source for the entirety of an album?

Well I was thinking about the ideas– debut album, I’ve always wanted to do an album, I’ve been doing these 12 inches. I knew that I would have a little more freedom, but I also knew that it would require me, at least within myself if not within industry expectations, to be more personal. And I just thought that was the most personal thing I could do — it’s 100% me, there’s not one additional sound, environmental or recorded otherwise, from the synth to the hi-hat. And I always liked the mouth — it’s a human thing, it gives the music a human quality but it can also be playful and soulful, which I again think is key. My favorite music is equally playful and experimental in a sense, but also really rooted, soulful and kind of emotional, it has a personal resonance to it.

How much processing did you have to put into the mouth samples to turn them into a song like “Crazy Place”? Because even after reading that it was made entirely with the mouth, I still swore I was hearing a synthesizer.

I processed the vocals/voice samples– the synth sound is basically me singing the chord, quadrupled up, the same way you would do a synth so there’s an LFO, so it ends up sounding like a synth but it’s still my voice. Depending on what each track needed I would do a lot or a little processing. Some of the tracks– actually, the track “Crazy Place,” for example, I think, is literally just me going [makes mouth noises]. It gives it that kind of puffy, it actually sounds like a trap drum, ’cause I wanted that track to be more disco sounding in a sense, so the hi-hat were just [makes a mouth imitation of a hi-hat], mic’d and turned up. So I think that track is processed less than any other on the album, and the synths were definitely heavily processed. And each track on the album is approaching a different sub-genre of dance music basically. So “Crazy Place” has the disco thing, and “Open Wide” the title track has a broken beat, almost like a reggaeton kind of thing going on. “Roundabout” is the shuffle-y, Chicago-styled house thing which I’ve always loved. It closes with a straight up, vocodered R&B track. It covers the spread for sure.

Were you surprised how people received your Dave Aju stuff?

At what period are we talking about? More recently?

More recently, I suppose. It seems like from the “Love Always EP” on, and some of the stuff before it too, but it seems more people got plugged in around that release.

And I think it makes sense, because I think with that EP, which was at a very emotional time for me, that was kind of a purging that I had to do. I had just lost a good friend in a car accident, my father wasn’t feeling well, there was a lot of hectic shit going on at that time for me. I wanted to do an EP that still traveled in what I considered uncharted waters to a degree, but was a little more accessible so the message could get across better. With “The Tables Turn” and especially the Context EP, because Sutekh is a like-minded iconoclast, who would say ‘Dude, if they can’t play them, fuck them. They should be able to. Get it gnarly, keep ‘em guessing,’ Ya know? But with that one I wanted to go as far as I could with the message, but was also a kind of reaching out from me to the people, and I think you can sense that. I wanted to make sure you could dance to it, so I wanted to make sure the DJ could play it. Not in the sense that, ‘Oh, it’s my time to blow up’ or bullshit like that; I wanted to make sure the message could get across. I remember when I was working on it, and at points I thought, ‘That’s not quite going to work,’ and I definitely chipped a little away at that one, probably more than any of my other stuff — even the newer stuff — just because of the head space I was in at the time.

So when it got the reception that it did, were you expecting that at all?

Not necessarily, but I knew that because of the emotion that was put into it, I knew that it would be received on some level. I didn’t know that people would be as vocal about it because, to be honest with you, when I first gave it to the guys at Circus, I was a little hesitant because it was significantly more emotional than stuff I’d done in the past. It has that kind of charge to it. But even though it was a little more accessible rhythmically, a little more direct in that sense, I felt it was a little more introspective at the same time except for the breakdown vocal thing. I added that later, actually. ["Be Like the Sun"] was done without that and I thought, ‘It needs a moment,” It didn’t have one at that point. I was telling friends, ‘Dude, why don’t kick drums drop out more? When they drop out you can still move, you can still feel without the kick drum, I swear!’ I wanted to do something like that.

I knew people would like it, but I thought people would be more like [off to the side, almost whispering] ‘Hey man, I really like that record,’ but it was more celebrated which was really cool, because it was inspired by and dedicated to specific people. Alice Coltrane had just passed and James Brown had [too], so in the liner notes I gave props to them too; because they were monumental in music to me. Seeing the tracks get celebrated was like seeing the people get celebrated, which to me was the best payoff that I could possible imagine. I was thinking about the album too; to me, it can only come back down from that because it was such a really cool emotional junction.

I can imagine the album will do well based on the reaction to “Crazy Place.”

The reaction’s been really interesting just from the single. A lot of people who haven’t felt what I’ve done prior to, or not as much, are really getting into it. Especially… there’s a certain contingent of people who got into the “Unorthadoctor EP” I did. I had a few people who contacted me directly from that period when that style of music was allowed to be way more choppy, and they’re probably like, ‘Whoa….’

It’s a little smoother.

It’s cool, though, I have records like that. For the Open Wide, the other thing besides using my mouth, is to open back up, as a DJ, as a music lover, particularly the dance floor. Whether it’s disco or it’s house or it’s breaks… I kind of miss when DJs had a personal aesthetic and would play– again, like my brother, who was very much into that variety style, and when I DJ I play like that as well. “Crazy Place” to me was just my take on so many records I always– I love all the Metro Area stuff, even the rock crossover DFA stuff, new school Gang of Four dance rock kind of shit. I was always a fan of ESG, Liquid Liquid, I always used to play those records. So it was my take on all those records without being too far removed from what I normally do.

What’s next from Dave Aju?

Well, I’ve got the album coming out. And then actually, one of the more exciting things is, one of my inspirations coming up, Matthew Herbert, he’s just commissioned me to put out an EP on his label. So on Accidental, I have a 12″ coming out probably shortly after the album. Based on the first one I gave him they asked me to do a second one. So, with fingers crossed and high hopes, it looks like Accidental will be a new outlet for me. That’s the next step after the album is that one. Stuff with a concept too, of course. It’s made with Native America instruments, hand made ones, but avoiding the world music cliche you think that would sound like. The world music inclusion thing started coming up, a lot of bongos all of a sudden. So I said, I’m going to use just hand made, indigenous people instruments and it’s not going to sound like world music at all. It’s the same sort of reverse spin on what everyone was doing.

Is there stuff you’ve been working on more recently that hasn’t gone out to labels yet?

Well the stuff for Accidental I just tied up. I’m actually doing a lot of remixes at the moment.

Which you’ve actually only done one of so far.

Yeah, there’s only been one pressed so far. There are a couple that are coming out on a digital labels, and actually I’ve got a coupel other ones that I’ve been working that are from, what I would consider, more high profile artists, which is kind of exciting.

Any you can tell us about?

I just finished one for Tiny Sticks, Dflex, Diesel from X-Press 2, his new project. It’s a really cool record that they’re putting out a remix 12″ of, and I did one of the remixes which I’m pretty happy with. I did one for Musique Risquee for Pigeon Funk, which is Sutekh and Kit Clayton’s oddball boyband project, kind of. So I just did a remix for them, which is a pretty interesting one. I’m doing one for Matthew Herbert’s Big Band on Accidental that will tie in with my release for them.

When you’re doing a remix, how do you approach it? Is it important to keep part of the song? Is it not important? Are you trying to give you own new version?

This is a good question; I’ve had discussions with a lot of other producers about this. I ask some people, ‘Do you add your own stuff?’ And I won’t name names, but some would say, ‘Aw fuck yeah,’ and ‘It’s 90 percent my stuff because I didn’t like one sound they used there.’ For me, I don’t add any other sounds other than if I think it needs a vocal embellishment or something, literally my addition to it. So far all the stuff I’ve been given is good enough; and what I usually try to do is maintain the vibe, the feeling of the original, but give it a slightly different pathway to get there. For example, the “Utopia” one, the guy Max [Brannslokker], the original artist, put some amazing sounds on there. There’s a lot of counterpoint and this really a lot going on, and it’s also very mid-range in a sense that the synths are key. Basically I said, I’m not going to try and one-up or maintain this crazy thing he’s got going on. So I just added bass and vocals and stripped it down a bit; but I think in a sense it still gets to the same height but just through different means using exactly the same sounds. That’s what I’ve been trying to do with all the remixes.

Do you have any advice for up-and-coming producers on the bubble of whether or not to take it seriously?

Yeah, I’d say first and foremost, if you feel like you have a voice, even the smallest inkling of just ‘hey, I like things this way,’ pursue that. Try not to curb that based on what you see and hear a lot of. And if you’re like, ‘Oh, my stuff never sounds like…” that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just follow that and stick with it. Try not to get too caught up in the technical. I know a lot of people, even I had my periods when I was just starting, you have to have that software, that drum machine, that mic. Some of the best stuff ever was created with… a harmonica. I’d say just go for it. Don’t be afraid to take a risk. Believe in yourself and eventually people will believe in you; it’s one of those basic tenets of creation. (interview by Steve Mizek)

Marc Barrite, better known as the producer/DJ Dave Aju, once quoted George Clinton when describing his musical mission, aspiring to “rescue dance music from the blahs.” But a more popular Clinton quote tidily sums up the San Franciscan’s approach to making music: “Free your mind and your ass will follow.” While many producers focus on making simple DJ tools, Baritte traffics in concepts which inspire both introspective chin-scratching and extroverted booty-shaking, sometimes all at once. His debut album for Circus Company, Open Wide, takes this approach to the extreme, unifying disparate styles of dance music with a single sample source — his mouth. Barrite was kind enough to trot that tool out for a lengthy interview conducted before a warehouse party on the South Side of Chicago. In part one, we discuss the emergence of Dave Aju as an artistic personality, the free jazz that inspired him, and the genesis of Baritte’s partnership with Circus Company. (interview by Steve Mizek)

You have roots in jazz and hip-hop. How did you get into dance music?

Dave Aju: One of my older brothers — I’m the youngest of five kids — was a DJ. My dad was a jazz musician, my mom was into pop,  whatever was going on at the time; my sister was into whatever disco and funk stuff was happening in the late 70′s; another brother was into metal and hard rock; and my other brother was a DJ. He was the closest one in age to me, and once the family split up and moved around I lived with him for seven or eight years. I’d see him go to his gigs. They would be in halls so there wasn’t age restrictions. It was like Beatstreet style where I was the young kid that worked at his DJ gigs, I was in the breaking crew. They’d play everything. That was where I first heard… I didn’t even know it was called house at the time. They would call everything electro, High NRG, and hip-hop. They would mix stuff like Dougie Fresh with what was I guess was Chicago house, Trax Records, early Detroit stuff like 69, those Carl Craig, breakbeat-y, early…. And the fusion of it all was always cool. I’d always take his tapes to school and my friends would say, ‘What the fuck is that?’ That was definitely where it came from.

You’ve been DJing since ’94 and you’ve been producing since ’97, is that correct?

Yeah, that’s about right. I started out in ’94-95 playing a wide variety of stuff and went to a community college. I didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school, I was just wandering aimlessly, and I saw they were offering an electronic music course. I thought, ‘Oh, that’d be kind of cool,’ and casually took the course and I just fell in love with it. My brother had samplers and drum machines every now and then, and they’d play with them but they never really wanted to make music artist-wise, it was always just for the party. They’d show up, play a drum pattern, scratch a record over it. When I took this course I noticed how people actually get into it, people would be in front of the computer for several hours the way I’d seen people do graphic design — my dad was a graphic designer. I was like, ‘Shit, you can basically design it the way people design visually, aurally, kind of solo artist style.’ That really did it for me.

What was the first record you put out?

The first one that was released on vinyl was a compilation on a San Jose label called Resource Records which was started by a guy named Chris Jackson who was a really cool techno crusader at the time when not a lot of people were. He was really hip to promoting local artists, and I had met him, gave him a few tracks I’d made with a buddy I’d took the electronic music course with. We were like, ‘You like techno? No one else likes this shit! Let’s work on something together.’ Except at the time I was moving back to hip-hop and he was moving back towards rock and drum n’ bass.

Is this Shawn [Hatfield, aka Twerk]?

No, this would be this kid named Mickey who I still play records with in town. Shawn was also on Resource, that’s where we first met. Some of his first material was released on the same label. It was pretty exciting times.

I tried to track to track down your music outside of Dave Aju and couldn’t find much.

That was actually produced under the moniker of Vehicle. I did that and then a couple different things that only came out on CD comps, that was the only thing that was pressed on vinyl, Vehicle. The first Dave Aju stuff was out on Circus Company.

When you were making stuff as Vehicle, did you have the same sort of mindset where you were trying to make stranger sounding stuff or was it more… mainstream?

I think I’ve always been attracted to doing something a little bit different, a little bit weirder. I grew up with my dad playing these crazy fusion records and late spiritual jazz stuff that even other jazz people wouldn’t– his friends would be like, ‘Dude, what the fuck is this? This isn’t jazz. These aren’t standards.’ I would hear stuff on the radio and I’d think, ‘That’s cool, I can sing along to that,’ but when I heard that stuff I was like, this is alien shit, this is coming from a totally different planet.

Stuff like Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, free jazz stuff?

Yeah, even stuff that was commercially successful stuff like Miles Davis’ later records like In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew, which actually sold units but is still weird as hell. I always thought it was awesome; it totally takes you to a different place, as cliche as that is, it’s true. When I was doing the Vehicle stuff, my buddy, he had grown up more punk, he was a punk drummer, I grew up more hip-hop, so it was always sample based. So when we came together and did techno it was weird, off-beat and totally sample-based and we would just twist them into… it was really bizarre shit and it was really fast and hard because it was all velocity-based. Which is one of the things with Dave Aju, I wanted to take it back to my pace, where I’m coming from.

Some of your tracks, especially on the “Love Always EP,” have a sort of free jazz sensibility about them. How did you sculpt that so you figured it would work in a dance music context? Because free jazz, by its definition, is very free; dance music, but definition is very structured. What made you bring those two sounds together?

That’s a great question. Like I was saying before, I got into doing this music philosophically from the same things I absorbed from free jazz, in that it’s very deep and it’s very personal, and it’s spiritual. That gives [free jazz artists] the confidence to go out — by being so real, by being so deep and down to earth and honest with themselves. This is the kind of music that makes me want to be this real pure person, but not in the sense of being quiet and hiding in the corner, pure in the sense that I’ll give it my all — I will work on that track for as long as it takes. So in that sense it’s– it kind of gives off a religious tone — the idea of being that deep into what you’re doing where you’re not afraid of how people are going to respond to it and react to it. I think that’s it. ‘You’re going to have a trumpet blast right there?’ Yeah, man. I think people will respond to it. And again, maybe subconsciously, but sometimes that’s the best response.

I was listening to your track “Rubber Oatmeal” before I came over here and I was just like, ‘This is a weird song!’

[Laughs]

It is, it just has a sort of free jazz mindset to it. There’s only a couple other people who have merged those two sounds and I think you’ve done a pretty good job of it.

That track, too, is a funny one; it’s called that because I was listening to some Art Ensemble of Chicago stuff, and I was eating a bowl of oatmeal that had been sitting for a while and there was a rubber band sitting next to it. So all the sounds outside of the horn are the oatmeal I was eating that morning and the rubber band sitting next to it.

That’s very interesting. I wouldn’t have gathered that just from listening to it or the title. I guess I should pay a bit more attention to your titles.

The titles are usually pretty charged, they have a little something to them.

So who is Dave Aju?

[laughs] Yeah, sometimes I wonder that myself, who is that guy? I think Dave Aju is kind of fictional character in a Mark Twain/Samuel Clemens sense… Marc Barrite/Dave Aju, deja vu…

There you go!

It’s from an old Arson song, this Brooklyn hip-hop crew. One of the raps they do, he repeats a line twice and this guy goes, “That’s dave aju!” And another corrects him and says, “Nah, it’s deja vu.” And I thought, that would be a dude’s name, I just loved it. Vehicle had kinda split and stopped working together, so I just replaced it and became that guy. Started small and started DJing as that, started from scratch, started all over again. New tools, new approach.

Do you have a day job in addition to being Dave Aju?

Not any more. Dave Aju has become a full time thing. I play gigs around town to help make rent. I’d say 75 to 80 percent of them are not electronic gigs at all. I play a lot of soul gigs, some hip-hop stuff, more listening gigs, some sushi bar-style gigs. I’ll do some odd jobs, some graphic design, some fliers.

I’ve been discussing with friends and some readers on LWE that in America, making records and DJing for a living doesn’t really work, which is quite different from how it is in Europe.

Yeah, I’ve noticed it there too. You can get by doing it there because… and this was my first revelation when I went over there the first time: The DJ, the producer, is just like the dentist, the lawyer, the mechanic. In society it’s not seen as… here in the States it’s like, ‘This dude’s so lazy, he’s mad at his parents, he doesn’t want to work.’ The artist is the slacker. Whereas over there the artist is just as valuable. I think that helps a lot. I’m not going to say I’m living flush — it’s bare minimum. And to be honest with you, they say behind every man is a good woman, and I have a girl that believes in me and supports me and we’ve made it work out, living together while I do the music in the corner of the bedroom.

I was curious how you got hooked up with Circus Company.

It’s actually a really cool story. At the time I was doing a really small and poorly attended night with a friend, DJ Ron in San Francisco; and this was at a time when the whole minimal thing was non-existent — nobody knew what it was. We got really into this slower, drier sound: early Perlon releases, some of Herbert’s stuff, and some stuff Ark was doing — he was a big influence at that point. We were doing this style and Circus Company was coming up and we saw that Ark was on the first two, three releases or compilations — we just loved the label. There was a period where they didn’t put anything out for a year and a half. So I was just like, ‘Huh, I hope they didn’t….’ So I sent them an email and said, ‘Dude, I love your label. Where’s the next release? We’re starving out here.’ And at the bottom I wrote, ‘Respect from San Francisco, Marc.’ And the guy goes, ‘Hey, thanks for the love. Actually, one of our guys is in San Francisco right now, here’s his email.’

So I sent him an email and it turns out it’s Mathias [Duchemin] Sety, who’s pretty much the sole runner of the label. He said, ‘I’m going to this show tonight,’ and a friend of mine was playing, so I went and we met and it was fast friendship. We hit it off that night, hung out, bought each other drinks; and the next day he came over to my flat and had his record bag with him. He went through his bag and started pulling out all these releases that I had, too. We were like, ‘Dude, this is kind of weird.’ And I didn’t have any international connections at this point, my family rarely traveled, I grew up very blue collar. He said, ‘Do you make tracks?’ And I said ‘Yeah, I do,’ and I showed him the Vehicle stuff and thought it was crazy shit. So I said I was doing this new thing, this is my new name and here are my tracks. It was like the choppier, more abstract shit, and he heard it and said, ‘We’re putting it out, that’s it.” At the time I’d always given music to Seth, Sutekh from Context, and he’d been pretty keen on putting some stuff out so it was in that vein. That’s actually why Mathias was in San Francisco, he loved that stuff too. It was a meeting of minds, destiny kind of thing.

I read a quote from you where you said you were going to “rescue dance music from the blahs.” I’m interested to know some of your main gripes with the way thing are.

It’s like anything else — stagnation, people getting too conservative. I think for me, I moved into doing this particular strain of music because I thought it had a lot of opportunities to be more creative, to go off-beat and still be celebrated, more so than other forms. I used to produce hip-hop for years, and there was a point when there was some underground, backpacker stuff where you could get a little weird and people were supportive. And that kind of died out and it got very conservative again. I think that’s my biggest gripe. And it happens in every type of music; you could probably talk to an indie rock kid and he’d say the same thing. The whole individuality of it is key. Sometimes people get more cautious and fearful, scared to do their own thing. ‘Oh, the snare should sound like this.’ Whereas I’m like, ‘Dude, roll the fucking hi-hats off that snare and see what happens. Pitch that down. Try it.’ Subconsciously when people hear these things that they wouldn’t quite identify with, even on the dance floor and they’re just out to party, it’s going to affect them, even on a subconscious level. My biggest gripe would be that I don’t see people taking those risks as much.

Gigging as much as you do I imagine you go clubbing somewhat regularly. Do you keep up with the new records as they’re coming out?

I’d say I listen to about… 80 percent of what’s coming out at any time. I think making sure you know what’s coming out and research is kind of key, at least for me the way I approach dance music. And people say to me, ‘No way, you’ve only bought one record in the last whatever.’ I’m just a real picky guy about it. It’s not that I think stuff is bad, because a lot of great records have come out; but I could name a lot of good DJs that I personally know that are going to play those, probably in a better context than I would even. I usually just buy the stuff that really reaches out to me, but I listen to everything pretty much. I spend hours making sure I know what’s going on and I can see the trends happening. Actually it’s a big inspiration for me, it’s like negative reinforcement. Listen to 20 or 30 clips of records that just came out and they all sound like they could be off one album by one artist, and I’ll say, ‘Oh, they’re all doing that? I’ll make sure not to do that.’

Who are some of your contemporaries who you don’t think are blah?

People like Pepe Bradock, absolutely, the Noze guys, the dOP guys. DJ Koze I think is amazing. Some of the guys in London, obviously Matthew Herbert. The Hand On the Plow guys I think are really cool.

I’ve not heard of them.

Beckett & Taylor, they’ve done an EP for Herbert and they’ve also got the Hand On the Plow label. Really fun, inventive stuff, but you can also tell they’ve done their homework as well, which I think is key. There’s also the Firecracker guys who I think are from Manchester or Scotland [Edinburgh -nb], some of their stuff is real fun, like these little ten inches they put out. It’s rootsy, it’s technically kind of deep-house of the Detroit school, but it’s also very creative. Also guys like Omar-S, I like how strict and focused he is; he’s not afraid to be like, ‘Watch how loud this snare is going to be’ or ‘Watch how quiet this kick drum is going to be.’ [Marc would later add the Krause Duo to the list while we were driving around Chicago.]

Check out part two of LWE’s Dave Aju interview here.

[Circus Company]

San Francisco sound merchant Dave Aju has had the world waiting for Open Wide since his summertime smash “Crazy Place” was issued as a taster a few months back. Aju has always blended his house/techno with a smattering of outside influences, from funk to jazz and all points in between, and those styles are all on display here. Oh, and in case you hadn’t already heard, the one and only sound source used for the LP is Aju’s mouth. The mouth gimmick added some otherworldly sounds and timbres to “Crazy Place,” helping to make it the huge hit it became, but does it hold up for an entire album? Well, yes and no.

“Crazy Place” and its stunning Luciano remix are both included on the CD version of the album (vinyl buyers only get the original version), and a handful of other cuts here work the same infectious late-night vibe. “Anyway” pops and jacks like vintage Chicago house, complete with party-minded lyrics and saliva-soaked “organ” stabs, while “First Love” finds Aju ruminating about his favorite music with a clever reference-laden lyrics over a deep and soulful groove. The title track stops and starts with a broken Latin rhythm and clippity-clop percussion (presumably teeth). Each cut works a slick groove into new territory thanks to the utterly unique sounds at play here, and throughout the album, those sounds are the star, elevating the material beyond the run of the mill.

But there are a fair number of head scratchers here, too. Opener “Roundabout” is catchy as hell, but it sounds a bit too obvious, almost like a remixed Bobby McFerrin cut. “Bump” is a bouncing booty ode that can’t overcome its cheesy lyrics, and “Tapatio” has a sick bass attack peppered with bleeps that make for some credible electro-funk. Unfortunately, it’s hard to maintain momentum when you’re skipping genres from track to track. Nothing outright fails (although “Bump” comes damn close), but you have to wonder it Aju didn’t perhaps bite off more than he could chew in an effort to try out his voice on every style he could think of a tune and sound template for, without regard for how well it fit together in the big picture.

Regardless, Aju has crafted a classic single and a solid party album that literally sounds like nothing else you’ll hear this year. With judicious use of the skip button, Open Wide will have you grinning from ear to ear and wondering exactly what part of Aju’s piehole with which he made some of this.

[Circus Company]

Step number three of Dave Aju’s recent manifesto for dance music is to “personalize all sounds… whenever possible.” With his upcoming album and lead-off single, “Crazy Place,” he’s taken that maxim at its most literal -– making music entirely from sounds made by his mouth. Like his former San Francisco neighbors, Matmos, Aju doesn’t seem remotely worried about creating a novelty record. Unlike Matmos, Aju doesn’t appear interested in all the cerebral implications of turning novelty into an art. Aju keeps his fixations strictly aural. Thankfully. In all practical senses, “Crazy Place” is already an LWE-recommended track, found on a majority of our writer’s “best of 2008 (the first half)” lists. And as much as we don’t want to give in, “Crazy Place” still asks for a victory lap.

Set a couple notches below the standard 128-bpm, “Crazy Place” is built around a kick and snare that sound, for lack of better word, uncanny. They snap right, but the splash is definitely not just reverb. Dirty connotations aside, the drums sound unnaturally moist. Set against a rubbery melody, “Crazy Place” almost sounds like a long-lost track from Mouse on Mars -– playful, nimble and more than a little demented. The beat-boxed woodblocks and slow-mo air-sirens only seal the deal. Aju takes a step past his last single, “Love Always,” by taking his mantras and interlocking them throughout. It sums up to a pretty clear-eyed logic, but “Crazy Place” is built for accumulative effect. Even though each sound is finely manicured, the hardest part to ignore is how calmly “Crazy Place” coalesces. Luciano’s remix of “Crazy Place” only reinforces that fact. Sounding like a Tasmanian Devil rework, Luciano spins no small vortex of percussive effects. Equal parts dizzying and overwhelming, Luciano slowly plunges into the heart of his own tornado and remakes “Crazy Place” as his own.