u/BBBBBBB9122

I interviewed him this week. I hope it might be of interest: he talks about jungle versus drum & bass, the influence of Portishead, Remarc etc.

Also this:

"What one Sully track would you play to someone to show them what you do? And why?

Sully: Am I trying to win them over or wig them out? The DJ in me would try and read the room a bit but failing that I’d go with Werk or 5ives. Or if it’s more the direction I’m heading in I’d go with Model Collapse ‘cos it’s a lot more open palette wise it feels like that’s the path I’m on now."

Interview here: https://linenoise.substack.com/p/john-denvers-got-some-bangers-an

And what one Sully track would you pick to introduce someone to his work?

Are we fans of Olof Dreijer? I think the music he has been releasing under his own name has been spectacular. (More so than Oni Ayhun, for me.)

Anyway, I interviewed Olof for Line Noise - I hope it might be of interest.

https://soundcloud.com/line-noise-podcast/line-noise-260-olof-dreijer

"The wonderful Olof Dreijer visited the RPS studios to talk about his solo debut album, Loud Bloom, a record of colour, joy and bustling life. We talked about living in Barcelona, aquatic synths, the shadow of The Knife, jazz, click consonants, sci-fi and getting away from the macho forces in dance music."

The last point I thought was really interesting. What do you think?

Line Noise: You mentioned in the press release of the album that you want to get away from the macho forces in dance music. Why do you think dance music has gone that way? Because you listen to early Detroit techno or early Chicago house - melodies all over the place, songs, that kind of thing. Early Detroit techno, again, loads of really beautiful melodies. And I agree with you, I think a lot of dance music has got very macho, very hard. Why do you think this has happened?

Olof Dreijer: I don't know. I mean, there is so much to say, but I mean, I was thinking... I'm thinking now, should I give an encouraging answer or maybe a not-so-encouraging answer? But let's try to do both.

The not-so-encouraging side, I guess, is that we are in a patriarchy and we are in a regression time and things are going backwards. And it's funny to see that men who already have a lot of power want to take more power and feel the need to be more macho or whatever and this is affecting everything.

But parallel to that, if you just look at the music, the funny thing - or not-so-funny thing - is that in the past, in the 80s and 90s, the big techno producers would play much more mixed than they do today. Like, Jeff Mills would play some disco, and there would be some samba grooves. It was fast and very pushy but it was quite all over the place. And if you do that today, you're seen... I mean, on one hand, it's coming back now. You also see that people mix in a bit of everything, which is very nice. But I always mixed a lot and I always felt people say that it's very eclectic and all over the place.