agency, and that didn't go too well. To the extent that I went to go play some gigs in Australia, and I got to my stopover in LA or something like that and had an e-mail that said, "Paul doesn't work here anymore. I'll be taking your thing." But we were mates anyways, and he started up his own thing, which is Surefire. Anyway, we were knocking around the idea of doing a sort of dubstep type of thing. Obviously, if you want to do a night in the city, the number one choice is Berghain.
Well, there was the Roots and Wire album on Wagon Repair a year and a half ago. Almost two years ago now. It's great working with the Wagon Repair guys, they're like good buddies of mine, but it also opened up this whole other world of going and playing techno clubs. Which really sorta changes your sound when you're up there. You gotta keep people dancing for an hour. You can't crawl too far into your own navel.
Absolutely.
Have you gotten more into techno things since you've been here?
But, equally, how do you get in there? Especially then. I think we were the first outside promoters to do anything there. Basically what happened was, Paul, completely by chance, met Andre, do you know him? He randomly was introduced to him, and said, "I'm thinking of doing a night. Can we set up a meeting?" We went in for this meeting, and the first thing they said to us was, "Well, do you want to do a Friday night?" So obviously conversations had been had. I knew Torsten [Pröfrock] and Pete [Kuschnereit] and all these people at Hard Wax. So I guess there must've been some kind of thing going on.
I would say so. And do you think it's partly because you've been here? Absolutely. For sure. I mean, Montreal is a wonderful city. It's nice. There's the Mutek festival every year, but at the end of the day there's no club scene. There's no strong, established club scene. You know? The beat clubs are the same 10 after-hours DJs that have been playing at the same after-hours clubs forever. I've never been to Montreal, but I have heard good things.
The seeds were planted elsewhere. Yeah, cuz we couldn't believe it. We thought maybe [we'd get] a Thursday or a Sunday or something. Yeah, cuz the first night we did was the first time the big room has ever been opened on a Friday. So it was all a bit of a stab in the dark for us, and also for them, I think. Cuz obviously it's a bit of a curve ball putting on dubstep... But they're great parties. It's amazing, really, how well they've gone. I'll never forget dancing with Sam Shackleton to Loefah playing like Congo Natty at fucking nine o'clock in the morning at Berghain. Like, "Holy shit, this is totally insane!" That must've been the last... The one-year anniversary. That was a good time. It's weird, cuz you know, like I said, it was a risk. But also like, after the first one... The first one was great, like massive queues and stuff. It was just the case of like, can this be a regular thing now? Or is it just gonna be a one-off? And the fact that it's continued to be so good, it's like, yeah—it's mad, really. I think the cool thing, too, is, with that night and with the Wax Treatment night that we were at yesterday, there's been over the last year or two, there's been so much ink wasted with people trying to map some sort of dubstep/techno crossover blah blah blah... It's just bullshit. At some point it becomes such a frustrating thing.
It's quite hard to avoid it. I totally lost touch with techno completely, cuz I was into it when I was young. When I was like 15 or 16 and first started going out to clubs, I was really into like mid-'90s UK stuff. Then I got into jungle and completely forgot about techno until like maybe three years ago—I suddenly got into it again. It was really moving here that put it back into context. In London there's clubs that play it, but, like you said, there's no scene, no bunch of guys who are making it and playing out all time. No one I could talk to, and kind of like... Engage with. There's not a community to engage with. Exactly. That was the good thing about dubstep in the early days in London. There was maybe like 20 or 30 people who all did it. But it got to the stage where, like, I've had enough of this now. I need to leave.
It's such a cliché now.
It's the same thing with like all of us Canadian techno guys, like Mat Jonson and Mike Shannon and everybody. It's cool that everybody's sort of gone on, and we're able to live from this now, and "Isn't that exciting?" but at the end of the day, it's still just a bunch of, like, beer-drinking Canadian hosers enjoying a laugh.
Yeah like whatever "flavor of the month" sub-sub-subgenre-meme whatever...
It actually reinforces it, because when you see these people you haven't seen for ages, it's like, "Oh, yeah, remember when we were all nothings?"
Totally, yeah. Well, what about you, though? What have you done primarily since you've been here?
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As I say, it's a great city, but it's not like you can be working on a track and take it down to somebody to play that night. Club owners don't give a shit about soundsystems, generally. They're money pits for people that go there and drink and do blow. So obviously, with the opportunity of so many more places to go out here, being out more and being more engaged kind of re-awakened my interest in techno.
Totally. Yeah. I mean, generally speaking—obviously there are exceptions to the rule—I find that one of the things with this city, it tends to be a pretty egoless environment. You don't get the like super-club,