Andy Caldwell Interview

DHN - You began playing trumpet and piano as a child - to what degree do u think this improved you re ability as a producer today?

Andy Caldwell - I think it defiantly did help. Being exposed to and learning how to read music, playing music, learning composition, recital, the whole performance of music, all of that, whether I m consciously aware that it helped me or not, I\ m positive it did. I see other people who didn t have that access to it when they were young and it s like anything else - the younger you start the better chance u have of being proficient later on.

DHN - Of course, your real education in dance music came in the form of underground parties. With dance music s march towards the mainstream in recent years, do you feel that there are more or less parties of this kind around these days, and what effect is this having on potential future Andy Caldwell s?

AC - I think primarily right now, I ve defiantly seen a slowdown first of all in the whole scene and also the music industry in general. I haven t really played a rave or festival type thing in a while, I primarily do club nights. Club nights have been fairly consistent, although they ve seemed to drop off a bit, but I think this is more to do with the economic downturn that s going on at the moment. I m having to travel further and further for gigs, like getting on a plane for 11 hours, as there just aren t as many gigs in the US because of the economy. Record sales are also down and that s affecting the industry as a whole.

DHN - What was your early DJing career like? Were you happy just being a DJ at the time, or did you always have one eye on becoming a producer at a later stage?

AC - I pretty much started DJing and producing around same time. There was a time when I was just DJing around ten years ago and then I began producing shortly after that. I was at school and we had an electronic music studio and I started taking music and recording classes, so I got in there pretty quickly, pretty much when I began DJing. But there was a time when I pretty much gave up DJing to concentrate on my producing. Since then, in the last few years, finally, I think I ve come to fruition as a DJ. I ve always found DJing interesting, but it hasn t been until the last few years that I ve been able to come back and play parties and travel around.

DHN - In deep house in particular, it is becoming increasingly difficult for DJs to get gigs unless they are also well-known producers. Would you agree with this statement, and if so, do you think that is generally a good situation to have?

AC - I think that if the producer is a good DJ, then yeah, that s great, but there s a ton of DJ s out there who are well known for their production and can t really DJ very well. So it s kind of a shame because there are so many good DJs that don t get the opportunity because nobody knows who they are! I think it s much easier today to start by producing records. Like I said, I ve been DJing for about 10 years and it wasn t until I started releasing singles under my own name that I started getting gigs. I think it is hurting the scene in a sense but it s also fostering a different creativity like, "Well, if I want my DJ career to take off I gotta go learn how to make music". It s creating kind of a cottage industry in dance music.

DHN - What can people expect when they go see an Andy Caldwell DJ gig? Does the music resemble your material, or do you like to try different things?

AC - Well, when I play out, I play a pretty eclectic blend of dance music. Sometimes I don t want to just play deep house at a certain tempo and a certain vibe. I have a lot of those records, I play those records but I think the artist thing is such that I m able to rock the crowd, so you should always come prepared even if you re gonna play Michael Jackson or Brittney Spears or something. A good DJ can play to any crowd, that s my motto and that s what I try to do. I m not out there to prove myself as a DJ or artist; I m just trying to make sure every one has a good time!

DHN - Joe Claussell recently commented on Japan as a place with a real prention-free area of celebration for house music. Does the growth of cynicism in contemporary western audiences frustrate you, and what areas do you see as the most responsive to your music?

AC - So far I think, parts of the US like Atlanta and Austin (Texas), Seattle, San Fran, I ve had the best experiences, oh, and St. Louis as well, are where the crowds have been the most responsive. Overseas, the southern parts of Spain have been really responsive. I just played at a festival a few weeks ago on the Naked Music tour and we had about 10,000 people in our tent and it was jam-packed until 8 in the morning!

DHN - 10,000 people - wow!

AC - Yeah, and we were just playing deep house and rocking it. I was surprised because Spain is known for the harder sound.

DHN - The whole European thing can be very trance-orientated.

AC - Yeah. I also played Barcelona a few times this summer and it s been great to play deep house there. I think they ve been building that there over the last few years though. I ve yet to play Ireland, but I ve heard it good there!

DHN - Your first release in 1994 was a breakbeat track ("Superfunkidiculous"). You went to the early dance parties, and you ve produced some drum n bass tracks, so you ve certainly done the rounds of electronic music. What is your opinion of the current state of dance music as whole, and where do you see the areas of both artistic growth and decline, musically?

AC - I see a continuation of cross genres, where you have bits of house music turning up in pop production and bits of hip-hop turning up in house and it s all just feeding itself. For dance music as a whole, its roots are in electronic and disco so you re always going to have that element of experimentation. I think the further we push those boundaries and try to mash all those sounds together, the better off the music will be as a whole because we re going to break open some new styles. And so these new genres just emerge and they re really cool, though I ve yet to see any of them stand the test of time and build like house and techno have. But they re all good!

DHN - When I was researching an interview with DJ Deep, I discovered there was another DJ Deep out there- and now it turns out there s another group with the name Solstice. Were you aware of them?

AC - There s another group called Solstice! Really? Where are they? I know there are some rock groups out there, but I haven t heard of any electronic groups out there! But we trademarked the name, so.

DHN - Aside from your solo stuff, you re also the keyboard player and lyricist for Solstice, one of the outstanding deep house acts of recent times. Tell me more about Soulstice s beginnings at your freestyle sessions - what exactly went on, and how did they contribute to the sound and direction of Solstice?

AC - Well, having the group has taught us a lot- how to work with vocalists, write songs, work with other musicians, and how to arrange. It s been a big learning experience and I don t know how I would have learnt all of those things without the group!

DHN - You said that "The song is king, it s all about the lyrics". Do you prefer the lyrical creative process to the musical side, and how do you feel deep house measures up to other styles, lyrically?

AC - I think it s making progress. I don t really think most house music has good lyrics, but some people try and sometimes they come up with some good stuff. Song writing is something that takes years and years of practice and hard work. There are people that spend their lives just writing songs. I think the more you practice with anything the better you re going to become. So if you have all these people trying to write house tracks, eventually they re going to try incorporating song structure and song writing into their music and it s only going to get better over time.

DHN - What prompted you to move into deep house? Although you continue to produce other styles (e.g. drum n bass), do you primarily see yourself as a deep house producer?

AC - I ve really got three projects on at the moment. I got the deep house, Andy Caldwell stuff. Then I have my Solstice project, that s a place where I can experiment with other styles and sounds and then I have another project where I m actually doing progressive house. I love deep house and I love the vibe because it s, for me anyway, one of the only genres that you can actually put song writing in with dance music and create something where you have a song but also dance track. And that s one of the things that compels me to continue.

DHN - Yeah, it was defiantly one of the things that turned me on to deep house in the first place, the fact that it the closest form of dance music that there is to "real" music. That people actually spend time writing these tunes and worrying about chord structure and such.

AC - Exactly, chord structure is very important and the melody, the subtle things that make up a song.

DHN - Well, the move certainly seemed to work for you, with respected labels like Om and Inspirit Music now regularly releasing your material. How do you feel these labels have contributed to your success?

AC - Well it s funny because I ve done three releases on Om records and one on Naked Music and it wasn t until I did the track on Naked that anyone knew who I was. I think that s sad because there s so much music that gets released all the time but it s not on Naked Music and you get the whole "well, it s cool but it s not on this label" so the projects I ve done outside of Naked Music have been great. I think the work that I m proudest of was "I Can t Wait" with was out on OM Records and sold in the neighbourhood of 3000 copies but then it got licensed on a few mixes and that s where it really started to spread its wings, where you had people hearing it and going "Oh, I like that song", but had it not been for those licences far fewer people would have got to hear it.

DHN - You also said that you admired the group s "ability to be so honest about the struggle of growing into adulthood". How did your long association with music help you in your struggle?

AC - I think maturing musically is about opening up to styles from all over the world, and accepting different kinds of music. There was a time when all I did was listen to house. I wouldn t listen to anything else; I d get in the car and stick on a house tape. So I ve had my love affair with house music. But I think to really grow as an artist you have to really appreciate all music, innovation and artistic expression; I think that s when you start to mature, as an artist. You can really dig into some other styles, for example I m really into Salsa and Meranga from the Caribbean, I listen to some rock, I listen to jazz and I m actually taking jazz piano at the moment. So it s just about getting the tentacles in there and checking out some other stuff

DHN - Were you pleased with the end result of your debut album "Illusion"? How has the critical and commercial response been like? How much do they matter much to you?

AC - I was excited it came out, but I m not really pleased with the sales and profile that it got. I go to these countries to DJ and they know who I am, but half of them haven t heard of Solstice and that throws me back a bit. Here s a project I ve poured years and years into with three other of my closest friends and I can put out a few tracks on Naked Music or whatever and they ll be "Oh, I know who you are, but I don t know who Solstice are"! So I think had the album been promoted better and had it had a chance to really take off, I would have felt better about it!

DHN - But do you find that s the case with the music scene as a whole, that unless people want people to hear about you that you re kind of left by the wayside?

AC - Yeah, defiantly. I mean, it really just takes the right person spinning something that you re doing and promoting it. That s the way Naked Music really took off, you had these promoters from certain little pockets in Europe and the US and all over the world who took an interest and started doing parties and bringing Miguel out to play and stuff and it really took off with hardly any effort from the label. You have other labels like OM who put out tons of advertising and did all this promotion and it fell flat because it didn t reach the right person!

DHN - So it s more about getting to the right person than the music, which is a real shame!

AC - Right!

DHN - You re a busy guy in the studio - what are you currently working on, and with who?

AC - Yeah, I m releasing a remix for Inspirit at the moment. I m also doing a track with J Jay at Moulton studios, I m actually heading over there now! Also I m doing some work with J Boogie from OM.

DHN - What equipment do you generally use when producing, and have you any tips for budding music makers?

AC - There are different levels of producing. I got into it through all this antiquated equipment, and I had like a really limited sampler and drum machine. It all fitted together in this hodgepodge of cables and stuff but now it s gotten to the point where you can do pretty much everything on a laptop. Software-wise though, get a copy of Reason, a good laptop and learn all the basics of music production. It goes up from there in levels of complexity, you can get a copy of ProTools PDM running Logic or protocols that are native to the software and samplers and all these really cool sound modules and things and they re all just native software plug-ins. These days I would recommend putting all you re money into software because that s where all the innovations are coming from.

DHN - Do you prefer the club or studio environment, and why?

AC - I defiantly prefer the studio environment. I only like to go to clubs when I m playing! I don t really like to go there to just hang out! I ve been doing it for years and I m bored with it! The studio s the place where I can be creative and productive.

By Ken Rooney & Brendan Greene