electro revisionists
| an interview with SWAYZAK

Swayzak is James Taylor and David Brown, a London based duo acclaimed for their eclectic but consistently deep, minimal and yet uplifting music. Their remixes of artists like legendary house producer Larry Heard, their experimental side-projects, compilations and collaborations have firmly established their reputation as purveyors of deep soulful beats of all persuasions. Having started to record together in 1997, their debut, Snowboarding In Argentina appeared in May 1998 on the Medicine Label in the USA and Pagan Records in the UK. A critical success, it became favoured listening for electronica followers worldwide and was awarded 1998 Album Of The Year by the US magazine, Mixer. Himawari was released on Higher Ground in August 2000. This album brought them into more accessible territory with a selection of vocal tracks, featuring contributions from Benjamin Zephaniah and Kirsty Hawkshaw. The London duo's latest full length release, Dirty Dancing, takes them into new territory once again with both a more compact, song focused approach and a sound that delves unabashedly into electro.

Speaking to me before their appearance in Montreal at this year's MEG festival, David spoke to me about Dirty Dancing, his take on the electroclash scene, and Swayzak's approach to performing and producing music.

"We're very open minded when it comes to making music. We like to experiment a little bit. We always want to do something new"

With this in mind, Swayzak fans should not be unduly shocked by the style of the latest album. The predominance of songs is a bit disconcerting at first, almost a sacrilegous move away from the lengthy, dub inspired excursions of their earlier releases. Dirty Dancing allowed the duo to work with artists like Carl Finlow and Adult, artists they have admired for a long time, and to further experiment with the songwriting process.

"The first collaboration was back on our last album. We were really happy with those collaborations, it was the first time we'd really written songs, and they worked really well. So we felt on this album we should write more songs and collaborate with more people. We feel we get the best out of people when we let them do what they want to do."

The electro sound is another surprising element this time around. Given the current commercial cachet of everything electro, long time fans might feel the duo are just jumping on the bandwagon. But as David explains, they simply took the opportunity to define their own style of electro in a scene which has exploded into the mainstream in the past year. For David, electro is not merely a fashionable gimmick, it's a style he feels "has never gone away".

"We'd started working with electro in 1998 but this last year it became all a bit fashionable. We generally make house music, deep music, music with soul, we're not trying to cash in with any electroclash thing, we've been doing it a long time. For me, electro's always been there and it'll always be there. It's a good style of dance music, much more exciting than 4/4 techno."

The recent electro revival is only part of a larger return of 80's music and fashion into the mainstream. The era is being revisited, reworked and reincorporated into the lives of music listeners everywhere. Much electro currently being released seems to wallow in nostalgia, revelling in all that was good, bad and tacky about the 80's.

"There is the nostalgia of bands like Kraftwerk and Human League - they were the innovators. You take their ideas and you add your own production style to it. They way we work is we take the idea and we add our own sound to it. We're not trying to be retro, we're not trying to copy 80's tracks, we're just trying to create our own thing."

Besides touring and producing, Swayzak keep busy with various side projects which allow them to release the work of other artists and to experiment with music that David describes as an "acquired taste". They maintain three record labels, voltmusik, 240 volts and swayzak.

"voltmusik is very much seriously underground sounding stuff. We sell maybe 500 copies of each release. It's a very acquired taste I think. 240 volts is more minimal house, some electro, and we have our own label, swayzak, which we put out our own projects on. We've met alot of people in our travels and we've released their music. There's alot of good music out there, and I think it deserves a platform."