Dave Clake

365 Magazine, Holland

Dave Clarke hardly needs any introduction. He spins at all of the major stages around the world and has also been performing live since last year. On his latest DVD/CD release, 'Dave Clarke Live', you can enjoy two such sets. In the following interview Dave told 365MAG about his background and his work in a classical recordshop. He explains all of the ins and outs about his live performance and the way he works and re-works his music. Dave also declares that a laptop is for writing e-mails only...

Of course, we asked one of the biggest techno DJ's about his views on the electro scene and how he uses electro in his sets. Being one of the few DJ's that can afford to take flying lessons, Dave also talked us through how that particular project unravelled since we last spoke to him. Last, but not least, Dave gives readers some advice about signing record deals and how to deal with music in the future.

Read all about one of the most interesting characters in today's international music scene!

How did you get into in DJ'ing?
From a very young age, like the age of eight, I was playing around with records and doing mix tapes with the pause button on a cassette recorder. My mum used to collect all the disco records and my dad used to have all the hi-fi. My dad had disco lights and so I take everything and just used it. There was no pitch on the decks of course; there was only a speaker on the record player. I used to have a microphone on my cassette deck that I was given and I broke a toy train that had a green light at the end, I put the green light through the keyhole of my bedroom and run the wires on the other side and when that light, that I put on with a battery, was lit then there was to knock because the microphone was live. That was when I was about 8 or 9. Later I started to DJ at roller discos and that sort of things and did some Hip Hop and Soul club work in the middle to late eighties and then from then on obviously stayed with it.

You are playing two kind of styles: Techno and Electro, is that correct?
Yes, to me it's sort of different BPM's, different structure of where the beats are but they are integral to me because I've been following Electro and Techno for equally as long. I tend to listen to music just as music and if it's good, it's good and if it's not, it's not. If I can play it out, I'll play it out!

You worked in a classical record shop a long time ago. Why?
It was not because I was interested in classical music; it was the only job that I could get at that time. Working in a classical music shop was kind of an eye-opener because in a way I do have a bit of a laugh about the snobbishness of certain people in the electronic genre. And then I think about the people that are in the classical genre and they are even snobbier. Very narrow-minded. If it's not on Deutsche Gramophone they are not interested. But working there was not bad, I learned a little bit more about classical music.

The two live sets on your DVD are quite different. Is this intentional?
I only realized that at the very end. That every set I was playing, playing the same music, the same tracks, was different. And it kind of blew me away in a way because it is kind of what I wanted to achieve. That spontaneity and live element to it and I actually got that without realizing it.

Does it depend on where you play?
No, it's just depends on how I feel, where I'm taking the music, how I'm doing it. I'm really quite proud of the fact it's different all the time. I mean when I played at Dance Valley it one of my favorite performances in the fact that I was much relaxed. It was totally different then say a year ago. Then I needed to concentrate more. I recently switched over from vinyl to CD and for the first two months I was concentrating so much on it, because is such a different thing. Now I cannot concentrate so much on the technique. And I do different things with it now, like look at the crowd more because I'm not staring at the CD's.

In the interview on your DVD you say about 80% of the set is fixed?
The rest is how I put it together, that makes the difference. I use two samplers, three keyboards, four guitar pedals and the effects on the Pioneer (DJM600) mixer itself. On the keyboard keys there is text label telling me what the sample are. Because I have hundreds and hundreds of samples and I need to know where every single sample is so I can then look at it, use it and can go into a different direction if I want to go into a different direction.

You are not using a drum computer on stage?
No, its just samples. No sequencer. I use sustain pedals to hold a sample, I got like three sustain pedals. It's kind of an act of faith. You put your foot on it and you hope, dear God, that when you take your finger of it still going to play. But you don't know until it does so you maybe have an effect on it, just in case you need, so you can put a delay on that. Say I've got three sustain pedals, it makes the difference because it frees my hands sometimes to do things. The basic groove comes from the sustained samples.

To what extent do you break down your tracks for a live set?
Sometimes I break it down to the basic loops, sometimes not. You can do so many things with frequencies nowadays, that you can actually take away the hi-hat without changing the rest.

Did you also use the samples from the Red releases?
I use the records itself; I don't have the original files anymore, so I sampled the records. I actually did the original stuff on Ensoniq and when Emu took over Ensoniq and newer sampler software was released that could not read my disks. So I was really gutted, it really pissed me off. When you had disks in the old days each one was like 1.4 MBytes. And I had hundreds of the fucking things. I thought I might never use these again. And then two months later Emu brought out a new operating system which could read my old disks. But that's the way it goes......

So you use the three keyboards to trigger your samplers. Did you ever considered using a laptop with, for example, Ableton for that?
No. I found the interface very childish. I found the sound not very good. And also I found the whole idea of using a laptop on stage about as exciting as having missionary position sex for the 500th time in a row. It does not present anything to look at. I kind of like to have the whole fortification of like 50 kilogram flightcases filled up with equipment with lights flashing. I like that. It's nice. And when there is a problem with one I can go to the other. Luckily this hasn't happened yet. I use a power stabilizer and a UPS, so if the power should go down I have 15 minutes of power on the stage.

I wanted something good to look at and I love touchy feeling. My studio is all hardware. I have a sequencer, but I don't use the audio on the sequencer at all. I have Cubase and Logic but don't use the audio on these. The only time I use the audio in the sequencer is for vocals, but nothing else. I have the Waves plugins, but it sounds nowhere near as good as the real thing. When you've got FocusRite Blue compressors and you got SSL compressor, and then Waves is the best that you can get for software but when you compare it to the real thing...! Even the cables to the real thing make a difference.

I'm not actually a synthesizer guy anyway. I'm not really that mad on synthesizers. I love samplers, I love what you can do inside the synthesis of the sampler. The thing that I like about the sampler is once you've learned how all the envelopes work, and everything within that particular sampler; it doesn't matter where the sound comes from. I've got like Andromeda Alessis, Waldorf Q and that sort of stuff but I still sample my keyboards and use all the synthesis inside the sampler. I don't have to learn the synthesis on the keyboard; I use the synthesis in the sampler.

Do you feel the same energy in a live set as in a DJ set?
No, it's totally different because in DJ set you don't know where you are going at all, until you are doing it. With a live set everyone is there to listen to your music, and your music only. When you are DJing I feel very awkward playing my music, I don't feel comfortable doing that. One or two tracks are OK but some DJ's just play their own music. I couldn't do that; I couldn't live with myself for that because it's too much self-promotion. It is self-promotion to a shameless degree. That is wrong. You are there to support the scene; you're not there just to support your own records. It's kind of arrogant if you're there playing 80% of your own records to me that is supreme arrogance. You deny that something else is good also. Like "I'm this island of creativity, nothing else matters". That's just arrogant. For me I get a really big thrill out of playing music from someone I don't know personally their track and it is exploding on the dance floor and I think: Yeah, this is good.

You changed playing from vinyl to CD's lately? What is the advantage of the CD player?
I can carry much more music with me. I don't like the computer alternatives there are now, they are shit! It sounds terrible and the converters are shit and again you are DJing with a computer. And it looks shit, you are always looking at the screen and I don't look at my records like that.

But with CD player you have to wait till the disc comes out, wait for the disc to load and press wind/rewind buttons and wait for it to cue?
That's true, but the needle doesn't jump. And you can have shitloads of bass. You can't have shitloads of bass with the current computer DJ systems because it still will go through the turntable and make the needle jump. The vibrations will make the needle jump. With a CD you can actually play full bass. And I love full bass, it's incredible! When my girlfriend is throwing up next to me I'm happy. Because then I know I have got the right frequencies. Even if she's not happy, I'm happy.

There are different advantages. I'm not saying it's the best. I put one or two tracks on a CD, not like a load of tracks on one CD and leave it in the player. You've got lots more flexibility. The sound quality generally is better for a club system, not necessarily for an audiophile system at home but for a club system, it's perfect. It doesn't jump. Of course a CD will skip eventually but then you through it away and burn another one. The sound quality is really clean and it comes from vinyl anyway, because it's recorded from vinyl most of the time. So you get both sounds: the vinyl sound with the CD quality and bass.

Don't you miss the directness and feeling of the turntables?
This just reminds me of classical music shops with the whole snobbishness. How can you not play vinyl, it's unbelievable; the sound quality is shit. But the majority of people that actually make records actually cut it onto a CD and then master it on 44.1 anyway. With vinyl each time you play a record you will lose a bit sound quality because of the friction, and it will jump, and you get bass feedback. You can't have anything below 33 Hertz without jumps, with a CD I can go down to 5 Hz if I want! With a CD you can go backwards really easy without out putting the cartridge upside down. You can loop in there so you don't have to rely on the mixer looping. And you've got different cue points which is really good fun because you play different mixes from between things and remix live.

The CD players are not perfect, but also vinyl is not perfect either. How many times have I gone to a club setup where the tracking was not setup properly so the fucking thing was skipping like a bastard. The problem with a CD is that it takes six seconds to load the bloody thing up. But when you are loading up you can look through all the CD's and then workout what you are playing next. You just change the order that you work. Next generations will be quicker. The first Technics that came out weren't perfect either. It will take while for it to come out.

If you could get like the Technics CD player with like a 5000 gigabyte hard drive on board and still have the same control: that would be good. But then you will have to have a better control system with a touch screen.

But that's almost the same as a laptop?
But it's a hardware solution. A laptop is built to do your accountancy, do your gardening, to go on the Internet. To write letters to your tax people saying: 'why you are charging me so much, this is not fair I want some money back!' It's there for everything. A CD player is there for playing CD's. This is the point. It's about hardware versus something that does everything and nothing. I want something that does everything well. That's why I use a hardware sampler, it does what it does.

I use hardware compressors because they do what they do. I don't have to worry about it. If it's not working it's because the fuse is blown or the power supply unit is gone inside it. I don't have to think: how much DSP am I using with this. It's great for people just starting up, When I started up with Red 1 and Red 2, I was using a EPS sampler with half a megabyte space on it and to boost up to one megabyte of space cost 600 fucking pounds, and I couldn't really afford that. So it's good for the flexibility of the upcoming new producers that you can do so much, that's amazing. But for me it's not entirely professional.

Are you influenced by Punk music and would you agree Techno is the new Punk
Punk is for me like a really big, valid movement. For me it is totally valid just because the people couldn't play there instruments didn't necessarily matter. But Techno is too cozy and middle class to be Punk in some ways. Like 'O my God, have you heard, he is using a different base drum'. You wouldn't get that in Punk. Techno doesn't have the anarchy; I miss the anarchy, the 'fuck the establishment' kind of vibe. I hate establishment, I'm very bad with establishment. I'm very bad with authority.

No matter how well meaning it is, I don't trust it and I never will trust it. People seem to be ok with that, with identity cards and stuff like that. In England people go 'O yeah well, I've got nothing to hide, I'll have an identity card, it's not a problem'. I mean, fuck that. They knew who every single fucking terrorist that flew into the WTC were, they knew who they where. So getting your ass scanned before getting into America isn't going to change that.

There was quite a while between the Red series and The Devils Advocate. Why?
I was fighting big nasty multinational corporations. It's all gone to bed, I can have a laugh about it now but you can see how many peoples career goes down the toilet. In the same way that George Michael once said 'I'd like to be able to resign'. Most people can't resign from a recording contract, which is bad. I wouldn't say it's like slavery because we do get good money but if it doesn't go well and there is artistic difference and you've signed a bad contract because it is the beginning of your career then it can seem very unfair and unjust.

I wouldn't go as far as say slavery because we are not being whipped and we are not in sugar plantations. But it is very unjust and it can hold you back and you just have to fight it and hopefully you get through. In an ideal world you would have democratization of the whole music industry and it would be a lot fairer. Its just banks with bad exchange rates. I had a DJ career as well so I was very very lucky. Just without that I would have thought, fuck it, I've lost.

I've heard you also plan to start a band and will it have a live drummer?
Yeah, I'd like to start a band next year. I'll talk about it when it comes out. For me, a drummer is not precise enough. And they are always moody and they don't tell good jokes, drummers. I don't know many funny drummers in my life. Bass guitarists have always got a good sense of humor. But a drummer, I don't know. I think it's the Ringo Star kind of 'we're a bit shit really'. So no drummer.

How do you see record labels develop with the Internet?
Well, I find it funny because the record labels future is like 'O we have such a hard time, we gonna need to merge'. Sony with BMG, and all of sudden when they got apart the EU monopolies commission because they are pleading complete poverty it's like 'O shit, we have turned a fucking good profit'. What a surprise.

Record companies will be fine for a long time to come. And as much as I don't like certain record companies I'm not gonna slack them off for being not necessary because the thing that people forget about a record company is, is that they are very good at promotion, they very good at presentation, whether they are good at doing the right people, promoting the right people is another matter. But they are very important, I don't think that the average person in the street has enough time to go on the Internet and search for music that he likes. It is difficult enough to look on the Internet and to look up a European power plug and be presented with 550 different alternatives. The function of a record company is to filter.

You think vinyl will go?
I really don't give a fuck about vinyl anymore. I'm actually saying that to annoy people that annoy me by having a kind of vibe where they stick there head in the sand and hoping that everything nasty will go away. Vinyl has been great. One thing that we should celebrate vinyl for is being standard. And that's important because if we are go into computer DJing there won't be a standard and it will be very very difficult to then make into a scene. That one of the reasons why I choose CD, because it is a standard and you can still continue a scene, you can still get the record companies that can still sell CD's that people can still buy.

CD's can be copied easily.
You also can copy vinyl... Just record it on CD. You can copy anything if you want. But I still buy everything that I want to. But it has to have a scene and with mp3 I don't believe there will be a scene.

Do you find traveling conflicting with music making?
Yeah, I'm just used to it now I think. My girlfriend thinks I live like a hardcore life but I don't see it as hardcore. I just take it as the way it is. But traveling is without doubt a great time waster. In a couple of days time it will take me nine hours to get to Japan. And there is no way I gonna take a laptop and make a record because it is the wrong environment.

You also are taking flight lessons?
I did but I have stopped. I don't have enough time. And what I did was also because I'm lucky enough to be flown around in private planes. Just in case the pilot dies whilst flying I can do enough so I can land the plane. So I'm not totally helpless: what do I do here, what's this button for....

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