Judge Jules 2008 Interview

[Ricco.Sepet]

    He describes himself as "just a normal bloke, lucky enough to be living the dream," but looking at the discography and legacy of Judge Jules, there is so much more. Consistently ranking in the top 25 of the DJ poll for the past 10 years, Jules' radio shows and animated DJ sets are staples of the UK/European dance scene. Producing under the guises of Angelic, Hi-Gate, and VPL, he's had several major club records. Under his own name, he's done nearly forty mixed complilations and the critically claimed artist album Proven Worldwide. In the studio working on a new artist album due for a spring release in 2008, we caught up with Jules and reflected on the happenings of the past year.

DJ Ron Slomowicz: So you're in the studio, what are you working on?
Judge Jules: I've got a new artist album which I can't give an exact date for, but it's due spring of 2008.

RS: What kind of sound are you going for?
Judge Jules: It just represents my sound really, which is sort of tech-y and trance-y, but with a slightly funky undertone.

RS: So when you're in the studio, what do you actually do? Are you working on the keyboards, are you writing, what's your role in the process?
Judge Jules: Basically, I can do everything, but I have an engineer, so it enables me to finish the tracks when I'm not here.

But I actually work on the tracks when I am here. So some of the mixdowns are done over Skype, when I'm away, but the actual making of the music is all done when I'm here.

RS: The reason why I asked is because there's a little bit of backlash lately about the big name DJs not doing their own work, and so I'm just probing on this. So you actually play keyboards, you actually do the sequencing?
Judge Jules: Yes, and program and do all the above. I mean, I play keyboards very well. I wouldn't say I'm a brilliant keyboard player, but you don't really necessarily have to be if you understand your software.

RS: Very cool. What software are you using?
Judge Jules: Logic.

RS: And do you have any vocalists on this album we should know about?
Judge Jules: There are some vocalists but as yet there's not anybody that anybody would be familiar with, I don't think. I haven't really gone for major collaborations with this album. I'm more concerned with just doing songs and tracks that I'm really pleased with.

RS: When you do tracks, do you do a track first and give it to the person to sing to, or how do you write the actual vocals?
Judge Jules: Some tracks I'll write the song and do a guide vocal myself, and other things will be a collaboration, where I do music and they write the song element of it. It kind of varies according to how well you know the person.

RS: Yes, because I remember on the last album you sang one of the songs on there. What was it like working with your own voice on a track?
Judge Jules: Scary sometimes, because it requires quite a bit of fiddling around with to make it sound good.

RS: With dance music it seems like the female vocal is preferred. Why do you think that is?
Judge Jules: I think there's more of a heritage of female vocals, but there's some really good, big male vocal tracks at the moment. You're more likely to stand out if you do go for a male vocal.

RS: Well congratulations, you made twenty-one on the DJ list and they described you as "like an evergreen, always there." Why do you think you've lasted so long in the dance world public eye?
Judge Jules: I think partly it's performing in clubs and really not being a showman. Ultimately, I'm your judge to success or failure on your music, but I'm also quite a performer. I'm not somebody who stands there looking really bored. And even quite a lot of the world's biggest DJs aren't fantastically animated or exciting in front of a crowd. I just think you can't fool the people. The passion will never fade, in my case. Or it certainly hasn't shown any signs of fading.

RS: Are you playing CDs or vinyl or laptop in your sets?
Judge Jules: CDs.

RS: Have you made the move to laptop or thinking about doing that?
Judge Jules: I would only move to laptop if they brought out a laptop that was very, very small, because I think it just doesn't look right. Though ten years ago I would have told you that I didn't think DJs playing CDs looked right. But DJs staring into their laptops doesn't look right to me, which is only because there aren't small enough laptops. If there was a very, very small, almost handheld laptop on the market, that wasn't very visible to the audience, then I wouldn't mind changing to Serato, because I can see many advantages. The biggest disadvantage of Serato to me is that the weekends I spin in the UK, I do an awful lot of Fridays and Saturdays, doing more than one gig, where I have to turn up and plug in very quickly. It would make it quite difficult in that respect.

RS: Well on the tech side, what is a pacemaker?
Judge Jules: A pacemaker is a brand new handheld hard disk, do-everything, mix-your-tracks-together-and-add-effect, all in one go.

RS: So it's more of a studio thing than a DJ thing?
Judge Jules: It's a DJ thing completely. You can mix your tracks together. It's like a handheld DJ console that incorporates both a hard disk and effects and a mixer.

RS: Very cool, very cool. So looking back on 2007, what was the big trend for you music-wise?
Judge Jules: I've always tried to do sets that oscillate between different styles – playing some sort of tech trance, playing vocal trance, playing more tech-y music and some more stuff with a housey, funky influence, even though it's still within the house context. I think it's been a really good year for trance; I think trance has come back very strong. Lots of people were talking about electro, but there's certainly a lot of people getting quite bored with electro now because there so many same-sounding records coming out. Whereas trance is a sort of evergreen that won't quite hit the ridiculous heights it did in '98, '99, and 2000, but it's grown in popularity and it's perceived as being underground again. It was perceived as being a little bit too commercial in the early part of this decade, and there was a bit of a backlash against it as a consequence.

RS: I read that you're doing stuff with sportspeople now, that you're working with a boxer. Tell us about that.
Judge Jules: Well, I've done a couple of sports themes. I did the Premiership theme for the soccer league here. It's actually watched on TV by something like four hundred million people a week, because UK soccer is so massive abroad, everywhere except for America, ironically. I've also done the ring theme for Britain's number one boxer. He's a lightweight boxer, an Olympic silver medallist, and he's pretty much a world champion in the making, called Amir Khan. He comes out to the music that we worked on together, holding his belts.

RS: Very cool. How was Ibiza this season for you?
Judge Jules: I've been having my own party there for eight years, and this was the busiest. But it's not just about physical numbers in the club, it's about crowd quality, and the crowd quality was really, really good this year. I think Ibiza has always been a very accurate barometer of the strength of the European dance scene, and it was a very good year in Ibiza, absolutely packed. In any given week you can go to Ibiza and see a gathering of the world's best DJs. It's like no festival or other location would give you the opportunity to check, in such a short period of time.

RS: Was there a track from there that stands out as your track from Ibiza?
Judge Jules: I suppose all the versions of the Red Hot Chili Peppers bootlegs were big. There were a couple of electro versions and a couple of trance versions. The Peter Gelderblom "Waiting 4" track was really big. Sander Van Doorn's "The Riff" and Marcel Wood's "Lemon Tree" would be the two biggest records in my area.

RS: How's life at Radio One?
Judge Jules: All good. They've moved all the dance shows to Friday night which was a change, because I was on Saturday nights for many years. But it was a change that's been musically beneficial for me because it's allowed me to do a radio show that's much more representative of what I do in a club, whereas in my old incarnation I was forced to be all things to all people. I've always been fifty-one percent a club DJ and forty-nine percent a radio DJ.

RS: And so since, how did the move to Friday night change that?
Judge Jules: I'm on a little bit later so I'm not at such a commercially sensitive hour.

RS: OK, now time for another aggressive techie question. When people think of Radio One, Pete Tong always comes to mind. Is there ever any competition between you and Pete?
Judge Jules: Not really, because musically we've always been quite different from one another. There's lots of others, there's five or six different dance DJs on Radio One, but Pete is the most longstanding one there. What's important is that Radio One embraces dance and new music so wholeheartedly in a way that very few other stations do, and each of us is a little piece of that jigsaw puzzle.

RS: Very cool, good answer. You've got a new Gatecrasher CD coming out. Is that already out?
Judge Jules: That's out actually, yes.

RS: What was the story behind that compilation?
Judge Jules: With the exception of Ibiza, Gatecrasher is my longest standing DJ residency, a club/party that I've been playing at for years. They've just put out a triple CD, two of which are old classics mixed by other DJs, and I did the new music element to it. It's actually sold more than a hundred thousand copies, which is very, very good obviously, for a compilation.

RS: Congratulations. How do you choose songs for a compilation like that?
Judge Jules: Again, it's not rocket science, it's just choose the stuff that you're playing at a club, hopefully the best of that stuff, not the here today / gone tomorrow stuff.

RS: Would you say Sander Van Doorn is your hot pick of the best new guy for 2007?
Judge Jules: I think it would be a bit patronizing to hear me say that because I think he's there already. I think he's well and truly established. But he's a great producer and a very good DJ.

RS: Who do you see as the next big producer coming up?
Judge Jules: Richard Durand, who's also from Holland, added a cumulous, hybrid sort of chunky house and trance to Sander Van Doorn.

RS: Why do you think there is so much great music coming from the Dutch DJs, from Fedde to Armin and Tiesto, and now Sander and Durand?
Judge Jules: It's a good question that not even they can answer when you ask them. Because the UK has a population of sixty-one million, Holland has a population of seventeen million but, you know, pro rata, there are far more successful big DJs there than there are in the UK. Nobody seems to know why. But certainly it's a legacy of music making, making dance records. It goes back well before trance, although the legacy of big household name DJs is a product of trance.

RS: You did the Amsterdam Dance Event this year. How was ADE for you?
Judge Jules: It's the first time I'd been there, and I'd been to Miami, the Winter Music Conference numerous times. I was literally only there at ADE for half a day, so I was sort of dipping my toes in the water, but I'll definitely be going back.

RS: So it was a positive, good thing?
Judge Jules: Well, it would appear that way. There's various conferences relating to dance music, or at least get-togethers that have a dance music element – there's MIDEM in Paris, Popkomm in Germany, the Winter Music Conference in Miami, and the ADE. The ADE would appear to be the only one that combines work and party in equal measures. As far as I can gather, Miami had no work and lots of partying; MIDEM and Popkomm have precious little partying and lots of work. And therefore if you want a bit of both, if you want to justify the expense but still wake up with a sore head the next morning, ADE's definitely the one to go to.

RS: Very cool, I'll send that down as a quote. What advice do you have to up-coming producers and DJs?
Judge Jules: Well, if you're a DJ and want to make records, clearly that isn't something you're going to be able to acquire and cultivate quickly. But music making and DJing absolutely tie hand in hand with one another. There's very, very few DJs who don't make records on a consistent basis. But I also think if you're a DJ, you should think about promoting your own events. It's only by cultivating your own local crowd, and trying to build that crowd outside the area you start in, that you'll build a head of steam and a bunch of people will want to come and see you.

RS: What would you like to say to all your fans out there?
Judge Jules: That I'm not somebody who thinks about people who come and see me as "fans." I'm just a normal bloke, lucky enough to be living the dream, and I'm just the same as everybody else. So I don't think really think of myself as having fans. I'm just normal and out there and enjoying music.

RS: What would you like to say to all the people who come to see you normally spinning records?
Judge Jules: I'm well aware that, particularly in Europe, actually everywhere outside the US – the US is twenty-one and over in most environments, and therefore people maybe have a little bit more money to spend – but people start going out clubbing in the UK and Europe from eighteen. The amount of money they spend to go out over the course of a Friday or a Saturday night is probably a significant proportion of their weekly disposable income. And I think we're both mixed, from my own perspective. I think every DJ should never underestimate how much of an investment people are making in you in terms of the money they can afford to spend. I'd never be complacent about that at all.

source: dancemusic.about.com