We’re back with one hell of a shakedown this May 26th!
Interview Crew and Substance are bringing it way back to the glory days where we all came together in beautiful dance music madness and mayhem. Ready the babysitter you old farts.
It all began in December 2005, at a wonderful city bar called Tilt Bar. Appropriately named due to the overwhelming amount of action this wonderful venue dished up. A couple of Technics 1200’s and a bunch of kids got together with thier mates and told Melbourne exactly what was going to go down. TUNES.
For many years after its inception, Interview grew and grew and became a place of worship for progressive and trance heads Australia wide. We all loved everything that was being created in this intimate and house party style event and loved to catch up with each other each month.
Leading on from the Interview crew, we had the incredible pleasure of seeing the Substance crew blast out onto the circuit and reap havoc in thier own brilliant way accross the scene. We are proud to incorporate Substance into the proceedings this year and bring the vibe in tighter and wilder than ever.
After such a long wait, Its now time to catch up with ‘our chosen family, maaan’ and laugh at how old we’ve all become. Leave responsibility at the door whilst the following caretakers show you how to misbehave again.
INTERVIEW (Downstairs)
Blinky (100% LIVE)
Ben Evans
Jules Plees
Mojo
Scott Bateman
Steve May
Mike Nichol
SUBSTANCE (Upstairs)
Dave Juric
Miza
J-Slyde
Simon Murphy
DJ Taran M
Alex David
It’s fair to say you’ve heard the name. In fact you’ve more than likely heard the music. Whether it be propped in front of the spectacular visuals at loop bar, the dingy surrounds of Brown Alley, or the hip vibe of OneSixOne. Roughly five years ago a man started DJing that would, with a little help from his friends, rebuild a stagnant progressive scene. In fact with the Darkbeat and Substance crew, Dave Juric has risen among the swill to become one of the biggest local names in the Melbourne EDM. I haven’t really known much of Dave until mid last year, the first time hearing him I was suitably impressed. Yet another man who looks further into DJing than putting together tunes, staying true to a genre or suffocating himself in the hype or bullshit. I only do articles on characters I know follow their curricular activities or vocations with love, I love writing and would never waste my words on people that didn’t deserve them. Dave is another soul whose passion, no matter how quietly displayed, is always ever-present in his audio extractions. So from borrowing his brothers decks whilst in Europe to playing at Summadayze 2012, I celebrate Dave’s career with cake… or so be it a cake in interview form, a celebration of the life and times of one Dave Juric. So sitting down with him amongst the cafe’s of the inner east I manage to elude his barriers and extract all the dirt on being Dave Juric!
So Dave, it’s all coming to an end soon honestly from one DJ who is in the process of hanging it up, to one that has John Farnhamed twice. Where is your head at right now in terms of life and music?
To be honest it’s a really strange feeling. It was a decision made probably 6 months ago that when my girlfriend and I moved to London that I was going to stop playing. It just felt like the right time. So for a while I’ve tried to enjoy each gig as much as possible. I’m sad, but at the same time pretty excited to be moving to a new city and finish DJing on a bit of a high. When I started it was always going to be a hobby, and I’ve achieved more than I ever thought I would, so I’m content.
You’re moving to basically where most of the genre’s you play began their lives. The Hacienda in Manchester will be just up the road, Ministry of sound, Liverpool’s cream. No interest in setting up shop overseas?
No. Not at the moment at least. I’m quite happy to give it a bit of a rest for a while and pursue other interests. I’ve been playing or out clubbing every other weekend for about 8 years solid. I’m looking forward to leading a bit more of a ‘quiet life’. And checking out more Hip Hop shows in London!
How did it come to be that you started DJing and more so what events shaped your sound?
My brother Jimmy got me into it initially. He spent the money, got the turntables and a mixer and a CDJ100. I was really lucky because he went to Europe for a while and I was able to use his equipment and records and sort of teach myself how to play. I was also studying at Swinburne Uni in Hawthorn so would go to Alley Tunes every week and just pick random records that I liked. I learnt how to mix by playing progressive breaks into Chicago house into German minimal, which really made me focus on beat-matching and not really tying myself to one sound. The first big parties that I went to were James Zabiela & Infusion at Room in ’04 and the MOS Breaks tour at Metro with Kid Kenobi. From there, it was all about Sunny and later Darkbeat.
I know most DJ’s nowadays have a wide range of genres, but in terms of your progressive and house stuff, what influences formed the basis of your sound?
‘Progressive house’ was dead by the time I came of age and breaks was in full swing. So progressive for me was always a way that you played rather than a sound per se. Phil K, Nubreed and Infusion were the 3 acts/dj’s that I followed religiously around Melbourne early on. Watching Phil move from breaks to minimal and everything in between showed me that you really could do whatever you liked and I always wanted to have that flexibility as a DJ. But most of all he was dynamic. He made you want to go see him; it’s what always inspired me. And the other side of things was that I got into buying house records in a big way. Dimitri from Paris, Masters At Work, Derrick Carter and pretty much anything on Drop. It was never something I heard out, but was something I really liked listening to. It was also around ’05 that I met Rollin Connection and they had recently moved away from playing breaks to that sort of dark minimal tech sound that they championed for a few years. I was really into that sound when I first started playing in clubs. They were both a massive influence on me, not only on my sound, but also on DJing and ‘the scene’.
You’ve played some pretty crucial sets with supporting some major DJ’s, how did you feel when all this was going on? The change from regular Melbourne DJ to Melbourne support DJ in particular?
I always was really excitable (I still am in many ways). I got a massive kick out of supporting artists that I loved. I tried to meet and become friends with as many people in the scene as possible and I’ve always cherished any opportunity to play any role in a night. Be it closing a side room or opening the main room or whatever. Each DJ has a purpose and I was always happy to do my part, whatever that may be.
Musical heroes, give us two electronic DJ’s/ artists and two non electronic?
Geez that’s tough, as there’s been so many. Phil K and James Zabiela. They had the most influence on me as a DJ because of their determination not to be pigeonholed and how much they both respect the art of DJing. Jimi Hendrix and Dom Kennedy. Hendrix was the first artist I ever obsessed over and Dom Kennedy is a new one. He reignited my love of hip hop about 18 months ago. (Special mention to The Prodigy, Daft Punk and Led Zeppelin).
Between you and Simon Murphy, I have to admit to knowing two of the most technically gifted beat mixers the planet has seen. What would you recommend to up and coming DJ’s in terms of exercise routines. We know that before you take to the decks you usually do at least 500 sit ups. What other tips would you have for people to break out of the bedroom?
Wow, thanks! Definitely agree on Simon though. It’s all about the sit ups! Haha! Honestly, my advice would be to try and be the best mixer you can when you’re first starting out. Learn how to mix! Take the time to learn the basics. Learn how to phrase tracks. Do it by ear, not by software or key charts. They have their place, but I feel that a lot of the ‘love’ (for the lack of a better word), has left DJing. It’s about throwing 2 tracks together that you feel will work together rather than what a program is telling you will work together. It’s something that you need to focus on and constantly try to be the best you can be when you play. My favourite gigs are the ones where I walk away and feel like I mixed well.
If you’re hanging up the headphones, are you hanging up the scarves and knitwear as well?
Blasphemy!
Worst gig experience ever Vs. Best gig experience?
The worst experiences are the ones where you wait till 5am and then get told that the club is closing. It’s the nature of the beast, and it does happen. It’s not the clubs fault, it’s not the promoters fault, it just happens. But it’s the worst, because all I ever wanted to do was play tunes.
Best experience?
I’m going to give top 3 most fun sets in no particular order.
Freestylers Boat Party w/ J-Slyde (2012)
Summadayze w/ Rollin Connection (2012)
Trust Us NYE on the rooftop at Brown Alley w/ Alam after Nick Curly (2010)
Top 10 tunes for the smashings?
Luke Chable – Tokyo (Nubreed Remix)
Stetsasonic – All That Jazz (Dimitri From Paris Remix)
Royksopp – What Else Is There (Trentemoller Remix)
Infusion – Love & Imitation
PQM – Babe, I’m Going To Leave You (Phil K vs Nubreed Remix)
River Ocean ft India – Love & Happiness (Michael Cleis Remix)
James Holden – A Break In The Clouds
Leftfield – Africa Shox
What has been your favourite venue for DJing?
Brown Alley was home for me for so many years, and I knew the people there really well. The promoters, the door girls, the staff, the owner, they were all really good to me. It still feels like home when I go in there. Loop & 161 I love because of the intimacy, seeing people rave right in front of you, you get that rush that sometimes you don’t get in a big dark club.
Do you have any closing gig’s coming up?
This Sunday at New Guernica will be the ‘biggest’ gig to date and will hopefully sit in that top 3 above. Me and a very good friend of mine will be warming up for Guy J. A few months ago I sat down with Dan Banko and we tried to figure out a gig that I could warm up an international for. Guy J is the perfect artist, and I’m VERY excited. Also having the opportunity to play alongside Andrew Wowk from Sydney will be great fun. I consider him to be my Sydney counterpart. Someone who has that real passion for DJing and has an even bigger range than me. He plays everything! We’ve supported each other and traded tracks since the very start of our DJ careers. I’m really happy for how well he’s doing up there.
My final gig will be at 161 with Fluidlife with one of my favourite producers, Tom Middleton and Haciena’s very own Graeme Park. I’ll be playing a bit of a ‘classics’ set. An opportunity for me to play all the tracks I’ve loved over the years. Really looking forward to that as well. The last few parties I’ve played there have been incredibly fun.
What are your views on MASH, Dubstep and Shappelle Corby? five words please, not in sentence form…
MASH – Vintage TV; Alan Alda’s rad. Dubstep – Like everything, CAN be GOOD. Shappelle Corby – Not my favourite Chappelle show.
Have you got anything to say to the pundits and fans of yours before your last set?
For the love of god, dance. That’s all DJ’s want, for you to dance and enjoy yourself!
Thank people in this space:
I’ve been really appreciative for a lot of people in Melbourne for giving me chances to play and supporting me. I started to write a list of all the DJ’s, promoters and friends who have helped me over the years and it was getting ridiculous. So there’s a few I really want to thank and I’ll give a big generic thank you to everyone else haha.
Dan Banko and Darius Bassiray have been the biggest support for me over the last 5 years or so. They gave me an opportunity initially, and then kept giving me opportunities. More than that they offered advice and for the lack of a better word ‘mentored’ me during the early days.
The Clarity crew: Mark Stewart, Phil Moore, John Morcom & Ryan Quinsee. It really started here. These guys gave me the confidence that I could actually play. Some of my fondest memories of playing are from these parties.
Symphonic Tonic and Dynamic: Alex Boffa, Alam, Nat Lipton and Dave @ Room. I loved the 3 years I had running parties for up and coming DJ’s. So many fun/loose nights were had there.
Substance Crew: Simon Murphy & J-Slyde in particular. Mad love. Best new crew in Melbourne, hands down. These 2 are in my opinion the future Phil K’s and Gav Keitel’s of this town.
Finally to all the DJ’s, promoters, club owners and music fans I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and working with over the last 8 year, massive thanks! Keep on raving!
Last but not least my girlfriend Jess who has been incredibly supportive and patient.
So there we have it. As it is, is ever as it was. As one door closes for someone they casually open another. I’m sure that as that door closes there will be Dj’s lining up to open the door. But none of them will carry themselves with the dignity and respect earnt by Dave. I’d personally like to thank Dave for giving me the scoop on this and especially for giving me his humbed thoughts and opinions. Us here at Substance HQ wish him well in his future endeavours and hope he enjoys the transition from the decks, to the couch in the same manner he approaches everything he does…Like a Boss.
If you have ever been in my car, my house or even just seen inside my record bag, there is one thing that is blaringly obvious….. I have a small obsession with music. Well actually, who am I kidding really? I have a full blown, OCD laden, verging on unhealthy, obsession with music and have done so for as long as I can remember. I have hundreds of records, CDs, tapes, DVDs and videos plus hard drives FULL to the brim with every conceivable genre of electronic music from the last 15+ years of collecting. The collection fills any spare bit of shelf, cupboard, car or floor space that I have and then some. Am I concerned? Not at all…. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
So what does this have to do with anything? Well, when you have as much music as I do and somebody asks you to come up with 5 albums that have influenced you the most as a DJ it does tend to open up a Pandora’s box. It was my equivalent of someone asking a parent which is their favourite child in that even though deep down I had favourites, I felt bad for the others. It was no mean feat to come up with this list as I could have easily made it 20 or 50 influential albums but through a lot of thought I have managed to narrow it down to my top five.
This list is by no means a definitive list of the best or most defining releases across the whole scene. These are not necessarily the most highly praised releases across the genres that they cover or are they even necessarily the most highly regarded releases by the artists included. This is simply a list that captures where my headspace was musically at different times, where I have drawn inspiration from, and most of all, what has shaped my outlook on music and the tunes that I play. It was hard to prepare this list without sounding conceited or self righteous as I had to try to justify what were extremely tough decisions. Passion can easily be mistaken for arrogant self indulgence so I hope that this comes across as the former as this was my intention. The list naturally formed in chronological order as it follows what I was listening to at different times, a few explanations of the scene at the time (sorry if some were long-winded), my changing tastes in music and how I went from being a music-obsessed party-animal promo-whore to a…. well…. to a music-obsessed party-animal who feels lucky to have the opportunity to spin the tunes I love (when people let me).
So enough of my rambling (or the start of a whole lot more rambling?) here are my choices……
1. The Prodigy – Music for the jilted generation (1994)
As a teenager in the mid to late 90’s I was, like everyone else, riding the grunge and punk waves. I liked music with a lot of energy but never really liked the more classic ‘rock’ sound per se. I got into dance music when I was pretty young and I’m not going to lie; a lot of the stuff I listened to was horrible stuff. Whilst bouncing around between these almost polar opposites, I found myself unknowingly searching for something that would grab me and shake things up. Enter stage right…. The Prodigy.
The Prodigy turned any preconception that I had of music on its head by merging the ideals of punk with the structures and sounds of electronic music. I blasted this through my walkman like there was no tomorrow. They were the gateway act that got me hooked on the good stuff and made me thirsty for more. With the little money I had from my part time job at KFC I would hit up Dixon’s and buy anything and everything from the ‘dance music’ section. Buying second hand CDs from Dixon’s, armed with minimal knowledge of what I should be looking for, meant my collection included everything from Detroit House to Rotterdam Hardcore, from trance to jungle, from commercial cheese to experimental Goa. Again, a lot of it was horrible, but it opened up my eyes to a whole new world of music that I fully immersed myself in. This exposure to such a wide array of sounds meant that I always kept an open mind about music and this is an ideal I still try to remain true to.
By 1999 I had a bit more knowledge of the electronic music that was out there and had started to go to club nights and events around Melbourne. My weekend diet consisted of a whole lot of trance and a whole lot of techno. Like most kiddies I liked my music banging so there was a fair bit of hard house and other UK sounds in there too. I was still listening to anything and everything that I could afford and as I slowly got more involved in the scene I read about or got told about more and more acts that I should check out.
As is still true to this day, there aren’t many bigger names than Sasha and John Digweed so it was no surprise that I came across this compilation on my travels (I think I may have actually lashed out and bought this at Sanity Dance Arena). I’m not going to lie, at first listen I really wasn’t that impressed, it sounded like a chill CD and I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. After subsequent listens though, it all started to make sense. This double CD taught me that music didn’t have to be banging to be awesome. The music had so many layers, so many different sounds and the mixes were so long that you almost couldn’t tell where one track stopped and the next track started. Every time I listened I heard something different that I hadn’t noticed before and I loved it. This album is still one of the reasons that I still look for music with lots of layers and textures that can be played around with and used to make long mixes.
By the time I heard this album I was well and truly hooked on the Melbourne scene. Whilst I was at uni I was promoting around Melbourne so that I could go to all the events that I wouldn’t have been able to afford to attend otherwise. After listening to enough trance, hard house and hardcore to turn anyone sterile I began my techno honeymoon with this double CD being one of the key catalysts. I am pretty sure it must have been in the @mosphere DJ’s contracts to have a copy of this on vinyl as the tunes on here received a fair caning and formed part of the soundtrack to that period of time. As a promoter for @mosphere I met a bunch of the techno faithful and didn’t look back. I was promoting for crews like Hardware, Wetmusik, Melbourne Techno Massive etc and my brain was well and truly rewired to run on techno time. Even though I cross between genres a bit now, techno still forms the basis of the majority of what I play and Dave Clarke still reigns as one of my favourite DJs (Ben Sims still takes the cake as the best DJ I’ve ever seen though – sorry Dave).
It’s blatantly obvious to anyone who has been around more than a couple of years that after years of techno domination, electro hit the Melbourne scene in a BIG way and before it became a taboo word due to commercial oversaturation, there was a thriving scene with some exceptional music. By this stage I’d been heavily involved in promoting, running events, writing reviews & other press, event photography etc and I had always been quite content to let others do the DJing. This was probably due to minimal funds whilst studying full time and working casual jobs but also because I never really felt the need. Heaps of my mates were DJs and I’d go to so many events I could always hear the tunes I wanted to hear. I was happy with this arrangement.
When I finally jumped behind the decks I did much the same as when I started buying CDs, I bought records (a lot which were second hand) that crossed a number of genres. From early on I got hooked on the heavier electro sounds of artists like Anthony Rother, The Hacker, Fischerspooner, Black Strobe and of course Vitalic. Seeing Vitalic smash out his set at Two Tribes in ’04 was a set that resonated in my mind when I was first buying records and when this album came out it was definitely a major influence in the sound I was aiming for. The Melbourne scene had some great electro gigs and DJs which definitely contributed to the sound I was playing. Sometime around this point I went from being a bedroom banger with absolutely no desire to play in public at all, to getting a couple of random gigs around the traps and then BANG…. my vinyl addiction morphed into a burning desire to play gigs.
After electro got destroyed by hideous electro house I was looking for something new (note: before anyone jumps up and down there definitely was/is some very good electro house around, it just got totally paled in comparison to the amount of absolute trash around). I moved back to my techno roots but in a new form; minimal. Much like when electro hit the scene in a big way, minimal threw a net over the scene and I got hooked (again, there was some terrible minimal but there was also some amazing music around at this time). Trentemoller’s music acted as a catalyst for me as his music bridged the gap between my taste for electro/early electro house and minimal.
One of my very early records was a white label of Trentemoller’s Beta Boy. After falling in love with the track, I went on a search to find anything and everything that Trentemoller had anything to do with. His EP’s on Poker Flat plus a long list of remixes were staples in my sets and they never left my record bag. This album was released about a year after I had first gotten into his music. I had loved his previous work but this album definitely struck a chord much in the same way that Northern Exposure: Expeditions had done all those years earlier. This album is a beautiful piece of amazingly structured melancholy techno. It re-taught me the value of quality production, texture and layers in music. This album made me really listen to the music I was playing and is probably partly responsible for the OCD I have now about finding the right tunes for the right set. Since this album I have immersed myself in a lot of down tempo, melodic and often melancholy music that really did changed the way I played my sets.
So there you have it. There were numerous other releases that I would have loved to include from acts like Daft Punk, Laurent Garnier, Sasha, Gui Boratto, Lamb, Joris Voorn, Shpongle, Booka Shade, Riccardo Villalobos, Protoculture, James Zabiela, Phonique, Trifonic, Lusine and well, the list goes on. Overall, I think that the five releases above are a good cross section to illustrate how I managed to get to the point I am at now. Hearing my sets, after looking at this list, you will hopefully be able to hear and understand where I draw a lot of my inspiration. The elements presented in these releases have all contributed to the ideals that I seek in music. I attempt, with varying degrees of success, to translate these core elements into my mixes and my sets. Add to this the huge amounts of quality local and international DJs I’ve been spoilt enough to catch playing around Melbourne over the last decade and you should also be able to see why I am still addicted to the music after all this time and why I can’t see that changing any time soon.
