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[quote="Beatport"]In our revealing interview with British DJ Steve Lawler, he reveals how he’s obsessed by new music and new technology including Serato, and how he’s fed up with people trying to pigeonhole him.
Plus he talks about the ideas behind his excellent new track ‘Courses For Horses’, and how he will soon have a house record released.
What benefits are there to running a digital-only label?
When I had my Harlem record group, which was three labels, I tried to get involved in the whole process but I was really only in charge of the A&R bit.
It was my job to find new artists, and in those days you were really at the mercy of distributors.
For instance, Harlem was a really popular label in the US, but our distributor at the time refused to send vinyl to record shops in America because they were having their own distribution problems.
So then we changed distributor, but they too had their own issues.
Also, maybe ten years ago there used to be more of a personal service with one person at the distributor who was personally in charge of your account, but nowadays it’s more like one bloke with 20 labels.
The great thing about Viva Music being a digital only label is that I now do everything myself from signing the artists, to organising the artwork, to getting it mastered and working with a promotions company.
It is more hands-on and the songs and releases we have are now getting maximum exposure and good sales.
We promote our releases to our Myspace databases and because tracks are so cheap now compared to vinyl, it’s not that difficult a decision for people to purchase.
We’ve had very positive sales.
Ultimately, the fact that you can release a track to the world instantly is very powerful.
There must be some negatives though?
Well from a personal point of view, I’ve got 25,000 pieces of vinyl and vinyl has a sentimental place in my heart.
It’s always nice to have a track on plastic.
But I’ve recently moved over to Serato and my life has improved so much from switching.
How so?
When I played CDs, because of the amount of records I get sent on promo, and all the ones I buy too, it used to take me two to three days of my entire week just to sort through the records in my studio.
That was just to organise them properly into crates.
With Serato though, I can now put all the tracks in one folder and go through them whenever I’m on an arduous trip or flight.
It’s so much easier and now I feel like I’ve got my life back.
I now have two days a week spare to do what I want.
Sometimes I’ll take a break, or sometimes I’ll use the time to go into the studio and make music.
You mentioned you file your music into ‘crates’. What crate would your new track ‘Courses For Horses’ go into?
I have four main crates for different types of sets.
There’s a crate for early-on-in-the-night sets, early to mid, late mid, and end of night sets.
And then in each of those crates I have sub folders for deep house, really deep house, minimal techno, techno and progressive house.
‘Courses For Horses’ would definitely go into the ‘end of night’ crate, it’s pretty tough.
And it’s techno really.
What was your idea behind ‘Courses For Horses?
People are always saying to me ‘bring back the drums Lawler’, so I wanted to make a record that had loads of drums.
So I used Reaktor and Sonic Charge’s µTonic [pronounced Microtonic] to make these cool drum loops, and then I dropped the track out into a simple stripped down beat underpinned by a phat Nord bassline.
It’s funny talking about Reaktor now because I haven’t actually used it for ages.
I made ‘Courses For Horses’ in January, and it’s taken that long for the track to come out.
I’ve moved on since and am now using mainly Access’ The Virus.
I love it.
It’s quite weird because your sound changes depending on what equipment you use.
My tracks still have that Steve Lawler musical direction, but the actual sound is totally different.
Like in my DJing, I’m obsessed with the ‘new’ and am always looking to buy new equipment for my studio.
What other benefits are there to switching to Serato?
What makes a good DJ is music selection and programming.
I generally play four hour sets or longer, and in the past I would have usually only carried my newest CDs with me, plus a few classics.
But now I can map out a four hour set using both new and old tracks.
I’ve got about 3000 tracks on my laptop.
Just the other day I dropped ‘Somatiki’ by Andrea Oliva which is about six months old, I’d never have re-discovered it if I was still using CDs.
It has made me a better DJ.
Sasha recently said that he sees the whole minimal movement as a bandwagon, with many DJs and producers dumping prog for minimal. What do you think?
It’s true that lots of progressive house DJs and producers have starting making minimal, but I’m surprised that Sasha said that because for the people who spend their lives making and playing music, they develop a hunger for new things.
There’s nothing wrong with changing your sound, I find inspiration in new music and it affects what I make and play.
I’ve just made this new track called ‘Femme Fatale’ which will probably surprise a lot of people because it’s basically house, with a kind of Dennis Ferrer sound to it.
People are saying minimal is the new prog, and deep house is the new minimal, but I didn’t make ‘Femme Fatale’ just because I wanted to be cool.
I just make and play what I love, and that day I wanted to make house.
Minimal is now a dirty word, and so too is electro house, which is stupid really.
The other day somebody said to me: “I can’t believe that Richie Hawtin is playing deep house.”
But I thought to myself, Hawtin has always played deep music.
Sure, when he plays at a big club he will play techno, but at smaller parties he’s always had that deep house and techno sound, albeit in a more stripped back way.
The problem is, people like to put artists and music in boxes, don’t they?
When I released my ‘Lights Out 2’ compilation people were like ‘Oh Lawler’s gone all electro house’.
I used to be pigeonholed as a tribal house DJ too.
Maybe I’m constantly paranoid of people trying to tag me, so that’s why I’m constantly on a mission to shock people.
‘Femme Fatale’ will shock people.
And I’ve been working a lot with techno.
As long as I keep moving, people will keep trying to tag me as this or that.
But in the end, it’s still me, Steve Lawler.
written by Terry Church
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