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t’s not every day that a renowned record label such as Balance taps your services to immortalize a mix. That’s why, in spite of the implications of a commission like this, James accepted the job. Well-established in the scene, with a solid fanbase and a lofty reputation as one of the great mixers of our time –and an advisor to producers of hardware doing test-drives–, James took on the challenge knowing he had a lot to lose and ended up winning much more… Hello, James, how are you? “Fine. I’ve been doing interviews for hours. Honestly, it’s a day I enjoy, since I hadn’t done interviews in quite a while. In fact, I did a few but I didn’t have too many reasons to speak.” Now you have something to talk about… “That’s right. If I have something to talk about, I really enjoy it.” Where are you? “In Southampton. At home. In my living room.” Do you have your studio there? “No, I have a basement and the studio’s there. But a lot of the mixes were made in the living room… at the coffee table. Exactly where I am now. In fact, there’s a floor rug that I had to replace because I made a hole in it working on the compilation for so long. So I had to go to Ikea and get a new one.” All right, tell us… How did things start with Balance? How did you come in contact? “It was probably in late 2016. I remember I was in Montreal, on the phone with my agent, who’s been one of my best friends for years, and he had other DJs that had made comps for Balance… And he mentioned he’d had a conversation with them and they were
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interested in doing it, and asked me if I was interested. And as soon as he said that, I thought, on the one hand, I’ve got to do it but, on the other hand, I was scared because I hadn’t done a commercial mix in a long time. I immediately felt the pressure that it had to be something amazing, even before saying I would do it. And it stayed with me throughout the process. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it, but that’s how it went down for me. It all started more than a year ago. And when the job was confirmed, and we laid the dates on the table, I think it was around December 2016 or January 2017 that I started to look for music to include.” So the first step was to listen to music and see what tracks would be included. “Yes, but I wanted to do something that was a kind of challenge, something more than just a mix of twelve good mix tracks. That would’ve been fun but I’d done it before. So I had the idea of creating these moments of melodic mixes where you find tracks that have conversations with each another… When you play, you find these moments by mistake all the time – by accident. You’re playing and suddenly you realize
those two tracks work really well. So I wanted to recreate that for this CD so I set out to find those tracks. Obviously, to find those moments I had to dig deep, had to fall in love with a lot of tracks, as I was going to put my name on them and release them all together as my own mix.” Also, there are two exclusive tracks from you… “Yes, that’s right. Act 1 has ‘Vines,’ which I basically made as I was doing the mix. It’s composed of old tracks, a few song sketches I’d been doing. And to be honest, I’m only now finishing it. It didn’t exist by itself outside the mix so right before today’s interviews, I was arranging it. And the other Act has ‘X-Ray.’ This is my first true acid house track. I’d done other things before but I’d never had a Roland TB-3 to use until now. So this song is me toying with the machine.” And do you think it was important to include your own music in the compilation? Did you always think you’d do this? “No, not at all. It was in the contract. I would probably not have included anything of my own. When I started to think whether I’d do it or not, I said ‘Oh, I wish I wasn’t forced to put