Scuba - April 2009 English Version

CM>>>Paul the first thing I remarked when I started my research about you was the fact that you moved to Berlin. I was absolute convinced that you life in London. What was the reason for moving to Berlin?
Paul>>>It was the combination of two things really. I was bored of living in London, having been there my whole life pretty much. And Berlin seemed like a really interesting place. I’d played there a few times before I moved and I just really liked the feel of it. There’s so much going on musically and in cultural life generally, and although it’s still a big city it’s much more laid back than London.

CM>>>I think as a German I have this mist-eyed belief that living and working as a musician - especially when it comes to dub, dubstep or drum and bass - must be more inspiring in London than in Berlin…
Paul>>>Well I guess the grass is always greener but for me, Berlin has much more positivity in the scene that London. Everywhere has its politics of course, and it’s very much a house and techno city, but in my experience people in Berlin are much more open-minded. London is very much driven by what people perceive as being the cool thing at that particular moment. It reflects society more generally as well, to an extent; people in the UK seem to be driven by what they perceive to be expected of them socially much more than the rest of Europe in my experience. In terms of people making music, it’s been a long time since I viewed London as being the most significant place even when just talking about dubstep, although of course that’s not necessarily got anything to do with the place itself. I think the impact of physical surroundings on what music people make is sometimes overemphasised; most people spend far more time on their computer than outside these days anyway.

CM>>>How do get along with the German way of living? When you compare – I don’t ask you to rate – the lifestyles in each country, England and Germany, which country seems in your opinion more hectic?
Paul>>>The quality of life in Berlin is much better than in London. I can’t really speak for the whole of Germany; I’ve travelled around a bit but nowhere near enough to comment. And I gather that Berlin is a lot different to the rest of the country. But compared to London it’s another world, in terms of the way people interact with each other and the pressure of reconciling work and life. Berlin just seems to be a lot more laid back.

CM>>>But people in Great Britain have a better conduct…? I just remember when I went the first time to a rave back in the Nineties to Brixton Academy and the people stand in lines before the cloakroom.
Paul>>>People in the UK don’t treat each other well at all! Anyway, people queue up for things in Germany as well… (laughs)

CM>>>Ok, you are often mentioned as one of the founders of Dubstep. How do you feel about that?
Paul>>>Well I mean the history of the whole thing has been widely discussed, but Hotflush was one of the first proper dubstep labels, in the sense that it wasn’t originally something else. Although in reality we didn’t want it to be a dubstep label entirely, that happened more by accident really. I guess I was around at the beginning and probably what we did with the label in the early stages did quite a lot to keep the whole thing going when no-one was interested. Certainly in 2004 there were hardly any dubstep releases, when there had been quite a few in 2002 and 2003, and the whole thing looked in danger of petering out. Hotflush was pretty much the only label putting out stuff regularly in that period so I guess we can take some credit for keeping it going when it really didn’t look like it was going anywhere.

CM>>>Can you tell me something about the times when Dubstep came up – and how do you undergo those times?
Paul>>>It was quite a nice little community of people making music that no-one was really interested in. There was a monthly club that you went down to and listened to people you knew playing tunes by other people you knew, sometimes your tunes got played, you played on the radio every week and that was it really. No-one really bought the records we put out, we were breaking even but no more than that. I don’t think anyone thought it would ever go anywhere near as far as it has done, I certainly didn’t. It’s always been a very creative scene, and it still is, despite the predictable things that happened stylistically with the music after it got popular. It’s still by far the most interesting form of electronic music for me. Of course now there is so much of it you have to wade through a lot of rubbish to get to the good stuff, but when it’s good, it’s great.

CM>>>When I heard about Dubstep in 2005 for the first time it sounded to me as a mixture of drum and bass, kind of Garage and 2 Step. But mainly drum and bass in a kind of … hm… slow motion. Am I completely wrong with this personal view on this music? Can you tell me something about the roots and the people who started to experiment with that music?
Paul>>>Jungle, especially the Metalheadz sound in the mid 90s and also some of the No U-Turn stuff was very influential on everyone making it in the first few years, and obviously the music really came out of garage so that was a big part of it as well. El-B had a big influence on people, as well as Zed Bias and a few others. But there was also was electro, dub, breaks, broken beat and a lot of other stuff. And of course grime. Personally I’ve always been influenced by techno and early 90s Warp stuff more than drum and bass and garage, but that wasn’t so common with most people.

CM>>>Nowadays Dubstep merges with IDM music. People from “both sides” experiment a lot with the different sounds. How do you feel about this merging of styles?
Paul>>>I’m not too comfortable with the IDM term to be honest. At the moment there’s cross fertilisation with so many different style and genres from drum n bass to techno to house to whatever else. There’s a lot of good music being made and what is even more encouraging is that there’s quite a lot of club nights that are prepared to mix up the music policy, which can give more interesting music a platform. In terms of dubstep, there’s the mainstream stuff which has obviously become pretty standard, but there’s so much other stuff that is really carrying on the spirit of what made it a great scene in the first place so I’m quite positive about the whole thing generally.

CM>>>Are also you listening to IDM music like for example from labels like AdNoise, Ant Zen or Hymen?
Paul>>>I probably should do, to be honest the only new stuff I really follow is the dubby side of techno and a few house labels. In terms of being influenced by that kind of stuff it was listening to a few albums when I was younger, notably Amber by Autechre and a couple of others.

CM>>>Do you think that the drum and bass people missed this process to be more open and merge their music with other musical styles?
Paul>>>The problem for drum n bass is the tempo. Even if there wasn’t so much leftfield dubstep, you could still mix tunes from other a lot of other genres in the same set. DnB is pretty much restricted to breakcore and slow hip hop, which aren’t necessarily the most fertile grounds for creativity. But you could also see that as an excuse, there are a lot of very talented people who have been at the top of the DnB scene for nearly 15 years now and the music hasn’t moved very far.

CM>>>Do you think that the peak of dubstep music is overstepped or would you say there is a lot of potential in it?
Paul>>>I think there’s still some way to go. As I said before, there’s the mainstream stuff, but look beyond that and there’s a lot going on.

CM>>>But its definitely wrong to name your label Hotflush just a dubstep record label – how would you define its direction and approach? Maybe I mix the facts in this case but on your MySpace profile for Scuba I read Dub, Soul, Techno…
Paul>>>I realise it’s a massive cliché, but the only aim that the label has is to release good music. When we started that was intended to include quite a wide variety of stuff, but it got focussed on dubstep quite quickly mainly because our friends were making it and we thought it was the most interesting music out there and it just wasn’t getting released anywhere else. In the last couple of years it’s broadened out a bit more to include more genres while keeping one foot in the dubstep thing. I think pretty much everything we’ve put out has a common thread running through it though.

CM>>>When have you founded Hotflush? And what was the vision and idea behind the label when you started?
Paul>>>The central idea hasn’t changed since the start, which was in 2003. I mentioned that it wasn’t intended to be a dubstep label, but of course the vast majority of the output has fallen into that category. To a large extent the records we’ve put out have reflected what I’ve been playing in my DJ sets and back in 2003 that included a lot of breaks, some broken beat and garage as well as the early dubstep stuff. That’s changed over the years, but I guess that’s why there’s always been a similar kind of idea running through everything we’ve released, even though we’ve released stuff by loads of different producers.

CM>>>… and what means the labels name?
Paul>>>Hotflush didn’t actually start as a label, it was a club night I put on with some friends when I was studying in 1999. What we were doing 4 years later just evolved out of that slowly and the name stuck.

CM>>>I remarked that you run an own SCUBA – named after your artists and Dj name - series on Hotflush – what’s the idea behind this sub label? Having an own creative playground?
Paul>>>Originally it was because the early Scuba stuff was a bit of a departure from what we’d done on the label up to that point, so it made sense to give it a new catalogue number etc. In hindsight it would probably have been a good idea to keep the sub-label just for Scuba music, but we started putting out other stuff on it which started to get a bit confusing with what I was doing under the Scuba name and having this label putting out other stuff. That’s why we decided to kill off the sub-label after ten releases and started doing the HF2 thing instead.

CM>>>What are the next plans on Hotflush? And where are the musical borders of this label?
Paul>>>It’s an electronic label, but past that there aren’t really any borders. What we are most excited about at the moment is Mount Kimbie, their first ep came out in February and the response has been really amazing. The next one is in June and there are plans for more stuff after that. And my second album will be coming out later this year as well.

CM>>>It seems to me that you are very open minded when it comes to music – when have you started to make music? ….have you learned a classic instrument at school?
Or have you first worked as a DJ and after that you get more into producing?
Paul>>>I played loads of different instruments when I was a kid, and I studied music at school up until 18, so yeah I do have a musical background. I worked out pretty quick that I was more into writing than performing though, although there was a 3 year period when I was studying where I did nothing at all. That was when I started DJing though, so the time wasn’t completely wasted.

CM>>>And to what kind of music do you like to listen to besides Dubstep music?
Paul>>>I listen to a lot of different stuff… pop from the 80s like Tears for Fears, Fleetwood Mac etc, early 90s Warp stuff …Autechre, FUSE for example, mid 90s Jungle, mid-late 90s UK garage…

CM>>>Your artists name Scuba reminds me of deep sea diving. How did it come to that name – a special story, maybe about deep bass…?
Paul>>>There’s no special story behind it, really. I was making some new tracks on a different tip in 2004 and decided they needed a new name. It was literally a 5 minute thing, thinking up something to write on the cd before I sent it to Hatcha. To be honest if he hadn’t cut the tunes and started battering them the Scuba name probably wouldn’t have gone any further.

CM>>>In the next weeks you will tour through several cities, you will also play at the famous Berghain club… Are you looking forward to that? I mean the acoustics there is amazing.
Paul>>>I’ve been promoting the SUB:STANCE parties there since last year, along with Paul from the Surefire agency (we’re both called Paul, it can be quite confusing). It’s once every 3 months, the 4th one is on 3rd April, and they’ve been amazingly successful so far. It’s the best club I’ve ever played in: the sound is great and the atmosphere is something else entirely. It’s very different on our nights (we do Fridays) to the normal Saturday when the Berghain room is open, but it’s still got something special about it.

CM>>>Do you like touring and meeting people or do you prefer more working on new tracks?
Paul>>>I like both. Spending all week in the studio can be great or it can get frustrating, so it’s good to get out and do other things. The only part of it I could do without is the travelling but to be honest it’s just great not to have to go into an office every day so I can’t complain about anything.

CM>>>What are your next plans for 2009. New tracks or can we expect an album?
Paul>>>There’s a 12” coming out in April (Bleach / Volt on the ABUCS label), another one coming in May on Hotflush which is one side dubstep and one side techno. Then there’s a 12” on the Irish label Naked Lunch, and a remix of a Red Snapper tune that I hope is going to see the light of day at some point. Then the second album will be out in the autumn.

CM>>>In the moment the world seems to step into a darker area with economical problems. Do all this negative news affect you or do you think more positive?
Paul>>>To be honest past reading about it in the press it hasn’t really affected me. No-one I know has lost their job, and it doesn’t seem to have had a big effect on what I’m doing. It certainly hasn’t changed the way I view the world or the political or economic system.

CM>>>What do you do besides music, I mean what do you do in your spare time?
Paul>>> Football,… watching and playing. And politics, in the last year or so I’ve got really into the American stuff which never interested me before for some reason.

CM>>>What do you need for a perfect day in your life?
Paul>>>Last year I went to Spain with some friends during the Euro football tournament. We hired a villa with a big pool in the middle of nowhere, sat in the sun, cooked barbecues and watched football for a week. That was pretty much perfect. Either that or working in the studio.

http://www.myspace.com/paulhotflush
http://www.myspace.com/hotflushuk
http://www.hotflushrecordings.com/

Interview Michael Mück
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