Full Interview with Dave Paton and Jean-Paul Bondy
20. September 2012 , Interviewer: Philipp Rupp
Please, shortly introduce yourself and your connection to electro.
Dave: My name is Dave Paton and I have been releasing electro music under the name 'the wee djs' since around 1997.
Jean-Paul: I'm Jean-Paul Bondy, I've been an electro DJ since 1992, and have been producing and releasing records since 1999.
Was there a certain, initial moment or happening, which forced you to react and do something to remind people of the origin meaning of “electro”? Why and how was this project born?
Dave: We have been reacting against the misuse of the word electro for some time. Mainly
just at each other on forums and various other networks. Myself and JP were both removed
from an electro group for having a discussion which was not welcome. My reaction was to
simply set up my own electro group, mostly on a whim. Almost overnight all the producers I
know and many more had joined up along with many other electro followers.
The actual project was something that came to mind after many people had joined the group and were having good, friendly conversations on the subject of electro. I felt like we should make use of all these people in one place. The main intention being to promote the genre and bring all the small fan bases of many different artists together. Time will tell if this has had any lasting effect.
Jean-Paul: I'll side with Dave here. Electro has been an established genre for well over 20 years. In fact, some consider it the first form of underground electronic dance music. We were both sick of seeing the term being used for different styles that are clearly not electro, and decided to do something about it.
What was the reaction of the artists, when you explained your mission and the project to them? Were there some artists which didn’t accept the project and refused to take part?
Dave: Initially the takeup was a bit slow and I had second thoughts about it all very quickly. There were questions about the motives and how we could define electro. After a couple of weeks the interest was growing very quickly and the confidence grew. Gradually as we posted the list of people taking part more and more people started to get involved and contribute.
There were artists who didn't want to be involved, some for money reasons, others because they said they just didn't have any material. Others who didn't believe in the basic idea of the project. In the end I believe it has worked out very well. It seems to me that a lot of the artists felt they should really give their best for this and it shows in the music. Apart from my track obviously, which is just some guff I dragged off my hard drive.
20. September 2012 , Interviewer: Philipp Rupp
Please, shortly introduce yourself and your connection to electro.
Dave: My name is Dave Paton and I have been releasing electro music under the name 'the wee djs' since around 1997.
Jean-Paul: I'm Jean-Paul Bondy, I've been an electro DJ since 1992, and have been producing and releasing records since 1999.
Was there a certain, initial moment or happening, which forced you to react and do something to remind people of the origin meaning of “electro”? Why and how was this project born?
The actual project was something that came to mind after many people had joined the group and were having good, friendly conversations on the subject of electro. I felt like we should make use of all these people in one place. The main intention being to promote the genre and bring all the small fan bases of many different artists together. Time will tell if this has had any lasting effect.
Jean-Paul: I'll side with Dave here. Electro has been an established genre for well over 20 years. In fact, some consider it the first form of underground electronic dance music. We were both sick of seeing the term being used for different styles that are clearly not electro, and decided to do something about it.
What was the reaction of the artists, when you explained your mission and the project to them? Were there some artists which didn’t accept the project and refused to take part?
Dave: Initially the takeup was a bit slow and I had second thoughts about it all very quickly. There were questions about the motives and how we could define electro. After a couple of weeks the interest was growing very quickly and the confidence grew. Gradually as we posted the list of people taking part more and more people started to get involved and contribute.
There were artists who didn't want to be involved, some for money reasons, others because they said they just didn't have any material. Others who didn't believe in the basic idea of the project. In the end I believe it has worked out very well. It seems to me that a lot of the artists felt they should really give their best for this and it shows in the music. Apart from my track obviously, which is just some guff I dragged off my hard drive.
Jean-Paul: As Dave said, people were a bit skeptical at first. But once a few larger name
artists started submitting tracks, that opened up the floodgates, and showed other producers
that we weren't fucking around, and that this project was not only legitimate, but was going
to serve a very good purpose.
The Electro Compendium consists of 116 tracks from 116 artists. How did you manage to get in contact with all of them? And by which criteria did you do the selection?
Dave: A lot of them were people we both know personally through playing gigs, releasing
records etc. Most of the communication was done via facebook or email. The criteria was that
the track must be electro and the artist should be proud of it. I think we only rejected one or
two tracks overall and that was because they had a straight beat and may have opened the
door to the project getting closer to an electrohouse project rather than the sound of electro
that we were going for.
Jean-Paul: Almost all of the artists, either Dave or I know personally. Electro is a fairly small community, and when you've been playing as long as Dave and I have, chances are you've played with and partied with almost every artist out there. But the surprise was how many people who are either relative newcomers, or people who'd never released a record before, started popping up with really killer material. As for the selection of the songs, that part was easy. As opposed to us curating the release, and picking out which tracks we liked, we decided to remove our personal preferences from the process and developed three criteria: 1) song is electro, 2) it's unreleased, 3) you're proud of it.
As finishing a simple EP can be very hard - thinking of deadlines and reliance of the artists – how exhausting was the work on such a huge compilation?
Dave: At times it was quite frustrating. I joked a few times that it seemed strange that we had many people who could create this very technological music but weren't very good at emailing a jpg. I had to chase people constantly and keeping the files organized was quite a task.
Jean-Paul: As you can imagine, it was a daunting process of monumental proportions. But it wasn't just David and I. Jon Drukman (aka Bass Kittens) is the programmer/engineer of the iOS app that goes with this release. We built the entire app from the ground up. Something that only Ghostly International has done, that I know of. So not only did we need to put the actual release together, but then build the app, with all of everyone's bios and photos and links, without typos, and making it work, work fast, and also work with iOS 6 which was released two days after we submitted to Apple. This is something that I'd never done before when releasing music, and as far as I know of, no one else has either. It was definitely ambitious, but as I've said countless times, the quality of the music that was given us, needs just as high of a quality in the method and mediums it's released in.
The Electro Compendium consists of 116 tracks from 116 artists. How did you manage to get in contact with all of them? And by which criteria did you do the selection?
 |
| Dave Paton |
Jean-Paul: Almost all of the artists, either Dave or I know personally. Electro is a fairly small community, and when you've been playing as long as Dave and I have, chances are you've played with and partied with almost every artist out there. But the surprise was how many people who are either relative newcomers, or people who'd never released a record before, started popping up with really killer material. As for the selection of the songs, that part was easy. As opposed to us curating the release, and picking out which tracks we liked, we decided to remove our personal preferences from the process and developed three criteria: 1) song is electro, 2) it's unreleased, 3) you're proud of it.
As finishing a simple EP can be very hard - thinking of deadlines and reliance of the artists – how exhausting was the work on such a huge compilation?
Dave: At times it was quite frustrating. I joked a few times that it seemed strange that we had many people who could create this very technological music but weren't very good at emailing a jpg. I had to chase people constantly and keeping the files organized was quite a task.
Jean-Paul: As you can imagine, it was a daunting process of monumental proportions. But it wasn't just David and I. Jon Drukman (aka Bass Kittens) is the programmer/engineer of the iOS app that goes with this release. We built the entire app from the ground up. Something that only Ghostly International has done, that I know of. So not only did we need to put the actual release together, but then build the app, with all of everyone's bios and photos and links, without typos, and making it work, work fast, and also work with iOS 6 which was released two days after we submitted to Apple. This is something that I'd never done before when releasing music, and as far as I know of, no one else has either. It was definitely ambitious, but as I've said countless times, the quality of the music that was given us, needs just as high of a quality in the method and mediums it's released in.
Did the artists deliver finished, mastered tracks or did you also have to work on the sound?
Dave: I suggested to people that they should try to submit the track how they wanted it to sound as mastering was going to be too time consuming and might possibly create more problems. Having to let every artist hear and approve their master would have been a nightmare. In the end the only changes I made were removing clicks and excessive silences at the beginnings and ends. I also sorted out the overall volumes.
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| Jean-Paul Bondy |
You offer the compilation for free. Just to reach a bigger crowd or is there perhaps another statement, relating to the current problems in music business ?
Dave: I just didn't want to involve money as it tends to dilute things. I don't believe in music as a business and I've never made music to make money.
Jean-Paul: Money is the root of all evil. When money is involved, evil can happen. We both felt that delivering this monster to the world would be best served pro boon. Besides, the idea of trying to split money 116 different ways is just ridiculous. Especially for two guys who are more at home behind a sequencer than behind a calculator.
While techno and other genres of electronic music got more and more famous in the past decade, electro is still kind of a special interest. For what reason?
Dave: I really don't know. I think maybe it doesn't have the initial impact of a proper acid tune or a good techno stomper but electro on a dancefloor can rock it as much as the techno classics. Electro is dead. Long live electro!
Jean-Paul: Good question. Electro has been through ebbs and flows in the couple of decades it's been around. Once in a while a pop musician will release some big tune with a killer 808. People like Skrillex and Deadmaus have obviously been influenced by electro, as you can hear with their (ab)use of formant filters, and bass wobbles, and glitched out arcade noises, not to mention those two being the biggest offenders in co-opting and bastardizing the word Electro. The real question is: Is Kraftwerk a special interest? My answer is, not by a long shot. Bleep out.
Get the Electro Compendium here:
http://anti-social-network.bandcamp.com
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