It's been a busy time for UK DJ Graeme Sinden. The man helms an influential weekly radio show on Kiss 100 in the UK, plays every week at the uber-hip Fabric night and has recently teamed up with friend Joshua "Hervé" Harvey aka The Count, to churn out dancefloor staples 'Beeper' and more recently 'Mega'. The fidget house aficionado is also returning to Australia this summer for Summadayze and Harbourlife spots.
We caught up with Sinden to chat about his recent collab success with The Count, trying to stay on top of the latest tunes and his imminent trip to the Australian summer festival circuit.
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What's happening in the life of Graeme Sinden right now?
A lot. It's been a pretty action packed day actually. I got up early and started doing DJ mixes, I've been doing boring admin stuff and I've been hitting the studio with The Count. We've been working on a new banger. Which is a kind've retarded, dance track...don't know how I feel about it yet. I'll probably have to go in there tomorrow and listen to it again. It's all good.
Do you get a kick out of listening to your own stuff?
Um, I do when it's the finished product. It's that bit in the middle which is a bit frustrating cause you just wanna get it done. Just have it and play it loud. But I do yeah, especially the finished releases.
When you're halfway through I guess you're trying to envision what it's going to be like dropping it in the middle of a club.
Yeah, I think you've got to have that at the fore really. Thinking about club dynamics, and yeah, how it would drop. Trying to build dynamics and elements into the tracks to try and make people go extra mad. It's hard to do when you're in a dark studio, you have to take your [mindset] out of there and put yourself in a Friday night, alcohol fueled, dance floor.
How does your relationship work with The Count? Is it the two of you in the same room or are you emailing mixes back and forth?
Mostly we do all our work in the same room. There's one mix recently where I had to pick up the parts on the Friday...the deadline was two weeks away but I had to go to Japan for 10 days, so I literally started it and then had a couple of days to put the main ideas down. Zipped up the file and sent it to him. He arranged it and put it together. And then I heard it afterwards and I was like 'Oh, cool. Good work' (laughs).
It's a good team because I basically put all the parts together - like I did the bassline and got some vocal chops and got it to him. And [then] he put it together but added a few other things as well. So it's pretty good like that.
Is that the attractive thing about working with someone else? That you have the opportunity to come up with new things that are fresh to your ears because of an outside influence.
Yeah it's the way that collabs work really, you play to each others strengths and if you're a bit stuck on something [having] someone else can re-ignite it. Like if you have an idea which is good but you don't know where to take it, he can come in and go 'Oh this is perfect for
this' and he can take it to another dimension that I would never think of. And vice versa. It's good.
How close are you to finishing the record with him do you think?
We don't really know, where just making tunes. [Seeing] where everything fits. We started thinking about it too much and now we're just really having fun with it. We're not really pressuring ourselves to rush it out. We were at the beginning. We had some record company pressures but now they're really relaxed. We're just happy putting out singles and club tunes.
It seems to be working pretty well for you.
Yeah definitely. I think it's a good model. Music's changed now. And it keeps changing and you just have to approach these things differently. Our label's put a lot of other records out but it's different for us. We're a dance act, we work differently, you can't just have two singles and then the album. We're constantly putting out dance singles and getting sort've more hype off that.
It seems more and more that bands are wondering whether they shouldn't just release singles now. That's something that the dance world has been doing for a long long time. There's not so much power with the album anymore.
I agree. And dance music albums are a big anti-climax as well. It's hard to pull them off. There's only a few classic ones, where you think 'Oh this is a great dance album I can listen to all the way through'. There are so few that I go back to. I like mix CDs, I like mix albums. But the dance album you have to approach it differently and think about longevity and the flow of how those tracks are going to work. At the moment all the tracks we've put out are singles are what people want to hear. What they want to play and listen to in a club. They sound good on the radio and that's very much where we've come from. Putting out club tracks.
Do you think then with the album you're aiming for more of a killer mix-tape? As opposed to an album that ebbs and flows? Or somewhere in the middle?
I think somewhere in the middle. You can't just bang it for sixty minutes. You know there's hip-hop tempo tracks and there's dub tracks and there's drum and bass and there's techno records and there's down-tempo things. It's eclectic really which is the way we've always been and the way that we approach music. And we don't think about [specific] filters and tempos and we're not really loyal to any one thing. We're just doing our own thing and having fun. Seeing what happens.
The Count & Sinden - 'Mega'
You were just nominated by the UK's DJ Mag for Best DJ and Best Radio Show in the UK. Is that a nice pat on the back?
It's nice yeah. It's nice to get acknowledged. Especially by a DJ magazine which I remember reading when I was growing up. And the acclaim is really cool. Whether I win or not, it's still nice to be up there.
I wondered if with doing the weekly radio show as well as doing mixes and having to listen to so much new music, do you find sometimes that it's all a bit overwhelming?
I think so yeah. I'm someone that likes to feel like I'm not missing out on something and I like to be [first] with things. So I do find myself listening to loads of music, and I'm downloading loads of yousendit links. You know, [looking for] tracks that catch your attention in the first minute, [that are] unique. And...yeah it's difficult. Sometimes your ears just get drained from listening to too much music. You don't know what's good anymore. It's like 'is this good, is this not good?' So you have do it over small periods, when you're excited about listening to music. You can't just go in there and be cynical about it. I don't want to ever be cynical about listening to music.
You're criteria for listening to music must change slightly also, to find what's immediate and current. Of course everyone has their favourite records that they've hated at first, and only after two or three years of them sticking around have they become favourites. Being a DJ that has a show every week, it must be hard to keep a link to that feeling.
It's true. There's such a massive turnover of music, I'm always keeping up to date with new things. I rarely repeat tracks that I've played - even with my DJ sets I like to play what's current. I don't like looking in the past or playing too many classics. So I guess I'm kind've [always] looking for the next thing. But it's difficult, you can skim over music.
When you're listening to something you dont' always figure out how it works in the clubs. I've seen a tune go down [well] and you ask someone what it is and they say 'Oh it's this track' and I've actually [already] got it on my hard drive (laughs). And never listened to it. Or I have listened to it once and thought 'Oh not for me'.
Is it encouraging that the marginal club sounds have become mainstream in the last couple of years? I mean you've got Dizze Rascal using Calvin Harris and Armand Van Helden doing pop collabs, it's not really marginal anymore. They're Number One tracks.
Yeah. And the UK's having a really good year - dance music in the UK has had a great year. Dance music has really come back in a big way, more than bands. Not there should be a dance music vs bands kind've thing, but it's definitely been significant. Like the big pop tunes have been dance records. The success of that stuff has been amazing, like plays on the A-list on Radio One. Which it means it's all through the day. It's really good to see and it's a really healthy thing. And it means that it opens the door for us when we're making dance music and it means [more people] will be more open to hearing it and they'll understand it.
It must also mean with your own stuff that it'll be that little harder to try stay ahead of the curve. With a lot of people getting used to these sounds.
Yea it's good though. It's a challenge isn't it? I think that whilst this stuff has become a bit more mainstream, I think there's still room for experimentation. For things that people haven't got their head round yet. It can only be good for the scene.
Fake Blood is on the lineup for your spots here on the Summadayze tour. You toured here with him earlier in the year. Was that fun?
I'm a big fan. I found him on MySpace actually and signed a track to Cheap Thrills. It's nice to see his rise - and I was actually a friend of his before that - and see him come through as Fake Blood. We had a really good time on that tour just having a laugh and playing together. So yeah, to see that he's on the lineup and to be back together should be cool.
A summer festival run in Australia must be pretty attractive in the middle of a UK winter...
Ah yes, that's the other major plus about coming over and doing the festival. We hit it at the right time. When your really hot and we're miserably cold. I think I've done well.
This week here has been nearly all 34 degrees.
Ohhhh....amazing. I can't wait man! I'm ready, I'm very ready!
Marcus
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SINDEN - AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2009/2010
30 Dec - Pyramid Rock Festival Phillip Island, VIC
31 Dec - Harbour Party@ Luna Park Sydney, NSW
1 Jan - Summadayze Melbourne, VIC
1 Jan - Field Day Sydney, NSW
3 Jan - Supreme Court Gardens Perth, WA
9 Jan - Summafielddayze Gold Coast, QLD
10 Jan - Midsummer Circus Adelaide, SA
myspace.com/graemesinden