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acehotel · 7 years

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INTERVIEW: Justin Strauss with Trevor Jackson

Trevor Jackson makes culture via the roads that passion takes. He has dedicated his life to what he loves — design, sound production and art. But above all, Jackson has given his life to music and the culture that not only surrounds it but is borne out of it. It is the lifeblood of the streets, the zeitgeist of eras and cities. Lifelong Ace friend and New York music producer Justin Strauss had the chance to sit down with Jackson for another Just/Talk session and delve deep into what makes up a life of cultural creation.

Justin Strauss: I first became aware of you in 1988 when I heard an Underdog remix of Money Mark’s Maybe I'm Dead. How did you get into making records and Underdog? Were you a DJ?

Trevor Jackson: That Money Mark mix was well into my remix career; I DJ’d, but I was just a local party DJ, and did a few regular club nights but very small things. I didn’t take it super seriously until the Playgroup album came out in 2001. The label wanted me to play live. I didn’t have a live show so I had to up my DJ game.

JS: As a kid, what were you listening to?

TJ: I grew up in northwest London in a place called Edgware, a predominantly Jewish suburb. Was lucky to have a mix of friends from all different backgrounds and started going out to clubs when I was 14. My older friends would drag me into some amazing clubs. I was going to New Wave clubs, very different to the kind of places my older brother and his friends were going to, they were all part of a predominantly Jewish scene at the time called the “Becks.” it was almost preppy, pre casuals. Gangs of kids would hang out at the local train station listening to Jazz Funk & Disco, driving Golf GTI’s and Convertible BMW’s wearing Kicker boots and Fiorucci jeans. It was a very British youth subculture that no one really talks about.

A group of teenagers outside the Carmelli Bagel Bakery in Golders Green in 1990. Photo by John Nathan.

JS: This is in what year?

TJ: This is the late 70s early 80s. All those kids were listening to Luther Vandross and George Benson...mainly soul, funk & disco. One half of me was listening to all this new crazy electronic pop & club music, and then the other half was listening to Earth, Wind & Fire, Level 42. Then I started working at a record shop.

JS: In Edgware?

TJ: Around the corner from where I lived, yeah. It was mainly chart music but working there we could order in any stock we wanted. When electro started to take off, that was really interesting to me because it merged the funk that I was listening to with the more electronic stuff too.

JS: What records would came into the store that really influenced you?

TJ: The UK street sounds electro compilations were very important to me and I was totally obsessed with Arthur Baker. Every single record that had Arthur’s name on it I bought religiously.

JS: You mean Planet Rock?

TJ: Planet Rock, Looking for the Perfect Beat...

JS: Breaker’s Revenge...

TJ: Everything he did. Tim Westwood was on the radio on LWR (London Weekend Radio). He played Hip Hop & Electro and I’d also listen to Colin Faver — he used to play loads of Kiss FM master mix tapes from New York as well as play at one of the first nightclubs I regularly went to, the Camden Palace. It was a super exciting time, although I didn’t have the slightest idea how to make music yet, things like the Art of Noise and Malcolm McLaren, Buffalo Gals, Run DMC and particularly that first Fats Comet with DJ Cheese record really had an impact on me because the beats were quite simple. I slowly realized I could do something like that myself with minimal equipment. I wasn’t really a musician, wasn’t interested in traditional song structures, melody and hooks, it was mainly noise that excited me. I bought this Commodore 64 sampling unit I could put on the side of my computer, it could only sample a couple of seconds but learned from that, how to do a lot with very little, and one of the first things I ever made was kind of an On-U Sound track using my computer and a four track portastudio.

JS: You just started recording?

TJ: Just started recording. Made it up as I went along. Then after a year or so bought myself a Roland W30 sampling keyboard, far more sophisticated than my computer, it could sample 12 seconds at lowest bandwidth I think, and has a built-in sequencer. Then I met this rap crew, the Brotherhood, a local rap trio. They lived locally and I started working with them. That’s how I got into production.

JS: You just learned as you went along.

TJ: Yes, no one taught me anything. I just learned listening to other people's records. I started a label called Bite It! to release the Brotherhood tracks we’d worked on. The label started to get recognized by the right people and I started to work with other UK Hip Hop artists.

The Brotherhood, circa 1996.

JS: How many releases did you do?

TJ: Ten or twelve? The artwork was really important to me. I was sampling really weird European Jazz Rock. My whole thing was never to sample anything American, no obvious tracks that everyone else used, James Brown, Zapp, Parliament Funk etc, I sampled mainly European music, sometimes Japanese, Russian, anything that no one else was using at the time, I wanted the sleeves to look nothing like other Rap records at the time which were mainly full of generic Hip Hop clichés. I was inspired by ECM and CTI record covers and developed a minimal black and white photographic identity with a great photographer friend, Donald Christie. The label began to grow and on the back of my Brotherhood productions. Richard Russell at XL Recordings (who used to work with me at the same record shop in Edgware) asked me to do a House of Pain remix.

JS: That was your first remix?

TJ: Maybe my second.

JS: For “Jump Around?”

TJ: No, “Top of the Morning to You.” After “Jump Around,” they wanted to quickly release another single, but they didn't have another track that could be a hit in the UK. I heard that track and said, "Let me do something." My remix went top ten in Europe. From that, I started getting remix offers, and that's how my music career took off.

JS: Did you go to school for art?

TJ: Yeah, music was always a hobby.

JS: So you thought art was where you were going to end up?

TJ: Design mainly, anything creative. I was hugely into comic books, desperately wanted to be a comic book artist. But when I started seeing designers like Javier Mariscal & Philippe Starck, taking playful graphic comic book aesthetics and applying them to various different areas of design — that really inspired me. I developed a way to take my underground comic book, cartoon and early video game influences into a mainstream context, mainly through record sleeve design.

JS: Was that before you started making records?

TJ: Yeah, I kept those things quite separate at the time. I left college when I was 18 and started working for a small design firm creating film posters. I took on my own freelance projects and then I started working by myself. I had a design studio in Clerkenwell not far from here in the late 80s. I’ve always worked in East London since the late 80s.

JS: How did you get approached to do those record covers?

TJ: I was in my teens around that time. Acid House was just breaking out. I was full of confidence at the time, young and super enthusiastic. The first record sleeve I ever did was for Mark Moore for S'Express. I used to regularly go to this club called the Wag where he was DJing. Somehow heard he had a record coming out and hassled him to see my work. You must have gone to the Wag Club back in the day?

The Wag Club in London, 1984. Photo by Derrick Rodgers

The Wag Club, 1982. Photo by Jane Goodman.

The Wag Club, 1982

JS: Once I think.

TJ: Was a great place! So I took my college portfolio to the club with me one night, showed it to Mark, he really liked what he saw and asked me to do a sleeve for his next single. That was the Theme From S'Express, which ended up being a number one record. Around the same time, so many great records were coming out, lots of people in the same scene as me, either Dj’ing or just listening and dancing — London nightlife was full of creativity. I started contacting other labels and asked to show them my work. Champion, was one of the first I went to see.

JS: They were putting out a lot of US releases.

TJ: Yeah, they were based next to a record importer and just picked up every great new US release before anyone else knew they existed. The guy who ran the label, and still does was Mel Medalia, was a real character, bit of a hustler, real old school, but he really took me under his wing. I remember going in and saying, “Look, I really love this music. The sleeves you’re doing right now are really shit. I’ll do it for free. If you like what i do, then give me some work afterwards.” I loved these records: Todd Terry, Frankie Bones, Raze, Pal Joey, I would have done them for free anyway, getting paid was a bonus.

JS: The art and music always went hand-in-hand. Basically you were doing both at the same time?

TJ: Yeah, but music was a hobby. Music was fun. I was working at the record shop on Sundays. I was still going out clubbing and buying and listening to loads of music, but my main focus and passion was in designing.

Trevor Jackson digging for gold

JS: I was buying records in New York. A lot of London people were interested in New York. I was always interested in what was going on here in London. So I’m buying in New York and getting all the New York stuff, but I’m also getting records from the UK, UK remixes of New York stuff done by you, done by CJ Mackintosh, Dave Dorrell, and listening to their take on things, which inspired me. It’s quite interesting. I know you’ve always had this fascination with the New York scene and what was happening in Hip Hop, what was happening in graffiti, what was happening in the clubs. I always felt this great connection here, when I started hearing your stuff, and I began to get familiar with Dave Dorrell and CJ. They did amazing work.

TJ: They were very important to me. Certainly an influence. I started making music some time after them... I actually designed De La Soul covers for Gee Street Records, remixed by CJ & Dave Dorrell, which started around the corner from me in Clerkenwell, ran by John Baker. I don’t know if you know John?

JS: Of course.

TJ: They became my second biggest client and I created loads of things for them and the Stereo MCs. That was really inspiring because Gee Street were local to my office and Nick and Rob from the Stereo MCs were always making music downstairs. They did lots of brilliant remixes as Ultimatum and I learned so much stuff from hanging out and watching them, learned how to make music with minimal equipment, they could do so much with just a digital delay used as an early sampler and an 808, they were fantastic DJs also. Gee Street was a creative hub, Jungle Brothers would come pass by, upstairs (Jon’s wife at the time) Ziggy Golding ran a photographic and model agency called Z, they looked after my friend Donald Christie as well as Juergen Teller when he first started, the whole music, club art and fashion crossover thing in London was so powerful at the time, very, very important.

JS: There was this thing in New York, the New Music Seminar back in the day. All the UK DJ's would come to New York. We'd get to hang out. Back then, DJ's weren't traveling, you weren't flying all over the world. It was maybe once or twice a year you'd get to meet these people.

TJ: This was before starting my Bite It! label, I didn’t want to confuse people either, now everyone does everything. Back then, being a graphic designer and a producer, music maker, DJ was pretty much unheard of. I’d still DJ infrequently, but never travel outside of London at that time. DJs had their residences, and they just played in their regular local club. That was it. They wouldn’t leave to go to another club, would they? They’d build their own audience, their own scene, their own sound.

JS: Until Mark Kamins went to Japan. He came here to the UK to play at the Hacienda a couple of times. He was one of the first, if not the first to travel.

TJ: You know, Mark's the first DJ I ever heard play in New York! It was the first time I had ever been to the city.

JS: I want to ask you about that. You're making these records, you're remixing, you're doing artwork. When did you decide that you wanted to do your own music?

TJ: I did a competition, Street Sounds. That was the same Street Sounds who made the UK electro compilations, they held a competition to make your own own Hip Hop track.

JS: You were making good money doing that at the time?

TJ: It wasn't bad. But the thing is I was lucky I could design record sleeves for nothing when I started. I was living at home with my parents. I didn't move out until I was 21.

JS: Were you designing on a computer back then?

TJ: No. I couldn’t afford a computer. When the first Apple Mac came out, it was totally unaffordable. A lot of the early sleeves I created with very basic graphics. I was really into the Sinclair Spectrum, Atrai 2600, Commodore 64 — very, very low resolution. A lot of the bigger companies bought these things called Quantel Paintboxes, which were incredibly expensive, compositing machines. I didn’t have the money, so used to do this really basic raw simple stuff totally by hand as a reaction against big design companies ran by old men with lots of money and zero imagination. I remember a few years later I did the sleeve for PM Dawns “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” single, I spent a couple of days working on a hugely expensive digital compositing machine, something I could probably do now in half an hour on Photoshop. That cost a fortune. Was so difficult to do at the time.

PM Dawn, Set Adrift on Memory Bliss

JS: Then that's all happening. You started to DJ, you're getting DJ gigs.

TJ: No, no, I didn't at all. I'm designing record covers. I've got my little label on the side; the remixing started to take off. At that time, I was taking on more design work I didn't like for the money. I think at that time I'd moved out of my parents’ place, had a mortgage, needed to pay the pills.

JS: Where, Edgware?

TJ: No, got out of there as quick as I could! I was living in Kilburn, which is half way into the West End. I needed to earn a living, so started taking on work I didn’t really enjoy. Like I said, I was working for Champion, Gee Street. I was also working for Network & Kool Kat Records in Birmingham, which were revolutionary. They were releasing early Carl Craig, Derrick May, Juan Atkins; it totally inspired a new wave of young British electronic music makers, the early Bleep sound of Warp Records. But then I started working for a company called Pulse 8, I was fairly well paid but the guys who ran the company were awful and didn’t really care about the music, it was all about the money. Mel at Champion certainly knew how to earn a good living, but he also knew a hell of a lot about music, and had a team of great staff around him; Paul Oakenfold worked there for a while, they continually released great records. I got more and more disillusioned working for Pulse 8 but luckily my music career started to pick up. Not DJing though, I wasn’t even thinking about DJing professionally whatsoever. The design work was becoming more and more of a day to day job, the music was far more enjoyable. Then I slowly started putting an end to the design work and just carried on doing the music.

JS: You didn't really start DJing until the Playgroup?

TJ: We're still mid-90s, early to mid-90s.

JS: Doing remixes?

TJ: Doing remixes, as Underdog. That starts taking off, then my manager, Marts — one of my best friends and a very important person in my life, someone who guided me through so much of the industry bullshit — suddenly died. He had a brain hemorrhage and just dropped dead one day. That stopped me from doing anything for a while. This was 94, maybe 95, I didn’t do anything for a year afterward I think. It was a very strange time. You feel totally indestructible in your early 20s. Then something like that happens, it completely changes your perspective on life, threw me completely.

JS: Mo'Wax records, did you work with them?

TJ: Yeah, Mo'Wax was early 90s. James Lavelle was working at Honest Jon’s records, he actually introduced me to my manager Marts in the shop, it was the closest record store to me when I lived in Kilburn. James used to sell me loads of great records, I had a very good relationship with him. I used to sell him my Bite It! releases which he loved. The shop had an incredible selection of used records, so much crazy shit I used to buy for just sampling. James learned a lot from there, and his Mo Wax label started via Honest Jons. We remained close friends and I did various remixes for him, for Unkle as well as DJ Krush & Money Mark.

Honest Jon’s, London.

JS: Did you do any artwork for them?

TJ: No, I didn't. It was always a musical thing.

JS: That label made stuff that just made you want to collect it. You wanted to have it — it was gorgeous.

TJ: James was the first person to really tap into that whole Japanese collector market. He was super smart.

JS: Different formats, different sizes.

TJ: The whole thing. A lot of people give James a lot of stick, but for me, regardless of his issues, I’ll never lose respect for him. What was interesting about the whole Mo Wax thing was I grew up listening to eclectic diverse forms of music. I’d go to clubs and hear Electronic Pop, Goth, Punk, Afrobeat, New Wave, Hip hop, Electro, literally everything together. But when Acid House and then Progressive House became huge, things became very generic and drug driven, I lost interest in most club music, hated it. Things became musically so narrow I thought a lot of it was the most boring music I’d ever heard.

Growing up experiencing illegal warehouse parties and unconventional underground clubs, with mixed audiences and DJ’s without boundaries, when nightlife started becoming an industry, things changed radically. There weren’t that many great clubs anymore. There were a few key ones, but things weren’t as eclectic — you’d go to a club and hear one form of music all night at a similar tempo. James with Mo Wax and the club he ran Dusted in Hoxton Square brought back dance floor diversity, and in the process it united many different scenes together. I’ll always respect him for that, so many important artists came from that scene.

JS: It was the same in New York, when I started at Mudd Club. We didn't know anything. We knew what we liked; we played what we liked. We didn't think about what genre it was. It was just all good music. In 1979, 1980, we had Hip Hop being born. We had left-field disco stuff coming out. We had punk. It was just so many great records, so much great music. We just played it. As you say, as time went on, people just got more narrow-minded.

TJ: James really broke the mold. Dusted was fantastic, I loved playing there. In my early days going to clubs, I was much younger than everyone else. I didn’t actively feel part of what was going on. I was passionate about everything, but never felt included. Then when Mo'Wax started, I felt proud to be part of something very special, music, design, fashion, art were all integrated.

JS: What about when you heard DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing? Did that have an affect on you at all?

TJ: Not really. To be honest, I was doing a very similar thing musically to Josh. We used very similar equipment, sampled similar records. To this day, I still regret spending so much time doing remixes. I was so busy working on other people’s music, I did hundreds of tracks for other people, never really focused on my own career. I was very happy being the Underdog lurking in the shadows. My idea for a long while was for no one to know who I was, I didn’t want to be recognized, was happy having little media attention, something I’d still kind of prefer. In retrospect, I shot myself in the foot because I could have spent all that time and creative energy concentrating on my own project, my own solo album project with vocalists etc. When I heard Endtroducing, I thought it was great, but didn’t hear it as being as revolutionary as so many others did, there were other Mo’Wax artists equally as innovative at the time. The only album of that period that genuinely blew me away and reinforced my regrets concentrating on remixes was Portishead's first album.

JS: How did you decide that it was time to do your own project?

TJ: That was much later. In the late 90s, I was growing bored of doing what I was doing and felt uninspired by other things I was hearing at the time, so I went back to the early records I first started sampling, Jazz Rock, New Wave, Industrial, Avant Garde electronics, underground outsider music, things I began to listen to properly not just looking for breaks. Through sampling, I discovered probably 3/4 of the music I love now.

I decided at that point that I was sick of Hip Hop as well. I loved it in the 80s through early 90s. I think around 94, 95, I started getting a bit tired of it.

JS: What was coming out then?

TJ: When did Nas’ Illmatic come out? That was probably 93, 94? That was THE album for me, still is, but shortly after West Coast Hip Hop Gangster Rap took hold of people, lyrically and morally questionable material that others seemed to love, I didn’t want to listen to it. More of the rappers I was working with were getting aggressive and violent too, the whole scene was getting nasty in many ways. London was a very weird place to make Hip Hop. It just wasn’t successful at all. Drum and Bass hadn’t blown up yet, and everybody was fighting over nothing, trying to earn a bit of money. Beef between different crews. It was stressful. I wanted out of Hip Hop. That’s why I decided to start a label, just putting out weirdo records, mad shit that no one else would potentially like, apart from me.

I wanted out of Hip Hop. That's why I decided that I want to start a label, just putting out weirdo fucking records, mad shit that no one else would like apart from me. I started the label with some outtake stuff, Underdog stuff, that basically didn't have vocals on it with things I messed around with.

JS: This is the beginning of Output?

TJ: Yeah.

JS: What was the first record that really established the label, that people were really paying attention to?

TJ: Probably a release by Kieran Hebden’s band Fridge — Anglepoised. It was a 12 inch release, they were so productive but worked at home in a tiny bedroom after school. A band with guitars, live drums and electronics. I had so much confidence in the band that I soon hired them a studio near Old Street. They spent everyday in it.

JS: You put all your own money into this?

TJ: Yeah, yeah, I got the studio, money for some bits of gear. Lent them my 808 one time and they made a truly beautiful record with it. Anglepoised, still one of my favorite Output releases. It ended up being played by a really diverse group of people, from Dj Harvey through to Gilles Peterson and John Peel. Was very satisfying.

Trevor Jackson DJing in 2013

JS: Okay. You know you're running a label. You're an A&R guy.

TJ: Yeah, kind of.

JS: You decided you want to do Playgroup, or how did that happen?

TJ: Okay, I was producing a live band called the Emperor’s New Clothes signed to Acid Jazz. A real mix of musical styles: Dub, Jazz and Post Rock. We worked for a solid year on the album, I recorded everything live then resampled every track in my mono S950 and put the tracks back together again! Insane amount of work, nearly killed me the amount of effort I put into doing it. But when it was finally all finished the label refused to pay me, I was furious so told them I’d keep the masters until I received payment. They bloody never paid me so sadly the albums still never seen the light of day! They eventually broke up and the drummer and bass player, Luke and Leo, formed a new band called Gramme. I produced them too and helped them put their initial stuff together. It was very inspired by ESG, Liquid Liquid, Public Image Ltd, music I first introduced them to when we were recording the Emperor’s New Clothes album. I ended up putting the Gramme record out on Output, got on so well with Luke, asked him to play bass on demos I was writing at the time and they eventually ended up developing into Playgroup. Underground club music at the time was either dark, complex and overly serious, or cheesy diva led piano or boring as fuck progressive driven house, very male with little sensuality or sense of fun.

JS: I was totally bored.

TJ: So was I!. I realized I wanted to make a fun sexy dance record, with strong female personalities, taking influences of the best parts of the 80s, all genres, the foundations of club music, which, at that time in the late 90s, very few people actually cared anything about. Output shared an office with Nuphonic records for a while, their strong interest in that period was — especially Arthur Russell — the Loft and Larry Levan...it certainly influenced my direction too.

JS: Which was also not very different coming from you, whose music at the time was always on the darker end of the spectrum.

TJ: Yeah, I was making dark music, and a lot of it was fucking depressing. But I’d taken it as far as I could, I needed to make some fun music. If I did an interview and mentioned Soft Cell or The Human League, people laughed at you. People had no idea. The media especially would not take any of those artists, even Human League, seriously at all.

JS: When did you first come to New York?

TJ: The year of Do the Right Thing, which was in 89 was it?

JS: Yes

TJ: The first club I ever went to in New York was Mars. I vividly remember hearing Mark Kamins playing Summer Madness by KC Flight when I walked in. Upstairs on the roof, they were hosting a De La Soul Three Feet High and Rising launch party. Was some night, magical for this young guy from London who’d dreamt of going to NYC his entire life. I vividly remember going to the Pyramid too.

JS: It's the only club that's still actually there.

TJ: Mars was three floors or something, right?

JS: It was in the Meatpacking district. Nothing was there then. Florent and that.

TJ: Florent was a great spot to hang out and eat late. At the Pyramid, I’ll never forget, a crazy naked dancer on stage or a table right next to me with a huge dick squeezing breast milk out of his tits, was an insane place!

JS: It's amazing to me that that time when there was so many clubs. Every club was packed. No promoters, no nothing. It's just an amazing time of people going out and just great music.

TJ: Yeah, so many places, I was there for a week and I think I went to MK, Nell’s, Mars, Palladium. The Tunnel, many more I can’t remember.

JS: How old were you?

TJ: 21 or something.

JS: You were already involved in music.

TJ: Yeah, design wise anyway, but was connected. I remember hanging out with this guy called Boots, a friend of John Baker from Gee Street, he used to manage some bands. I remember going to a roof party he took me to and seeing the singer from Set the Tone, one of my favorite bands from the 80’s play a solo gig of some sort, it was wild.

JS: They were on Island.

TJ: They were on Island, killer band, recorded with Francois K at Compass Point. I was only in New York for a week and did so much shit. I remember going to some fucking loft art party on Broadway. Where the fuck am I? It was like being in Scorsese’s After Hours. It was like that every night.

JS: Was this the period when you were doing the Underdog stuff?

TJ: No, this was pre. This is 89. I didn’t do Underdog stuff until 91, 92. I wasn’t making music. I was just loving music. I was only designing record sleeves. Think the main reason I went to NYC was to go shopping. Records at Vinylmania, Downtown Records was it? Canal Street buying sneakers and fake Rolexes, tracksuits, goose down jackets, name belts. There's a photo of me somewhere sitting on my hotel bed with 50 pairs of new sneakers around me, I’ll have to try and find it.

JS: You just filled suitcases?

TJ: Yeah, I went to New York with an empty suitcase and brought so much shit back. I remember getting out of the taxi coming home to my parents wearing a shiny white Troop tracksuit like the one on the Stetsasonic album cover. I was mental.

JS: New York lived up to your wildest dreams pretty much?

TJ: It’s like you were saying about London. For me it was a dream come true, so much of the culture I loved was born in NYC, it was incredible. I mainly went to NYC to listen and to firsthand experience Hip Hop culture in its birthplace. But when I went to Mars, I was enlightened. Mark Kamins was playing Arabic music with Acid. It was weird to hear anyone outside of London playing Acid House, I thought it was just a London/Chicago thing.

JS: We got the Chicago Acid, then the UK really fell in love with it and brought it back to New York.

TJ: I'm trying to think what they were playing at the Pyramid.

JS: My friend Ivan Ivan would spin there. He ended up doing “Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight” and the band Book of Love. They basically came out of the Pyramid. There was so much happening. It was such a great creative time.

Did you come back often or was it a while before you came back again?

TJ: I think it was probably a while before I came back. It was expensive; I couldn't afford it.

JS: It wasn't cheap airline flights. This is pre-internet.

TJ: Yeah, pre-internet, exactly. For me, all the things I wanted: records, comic books, toys and clothes, New York was like wow. You couldn't get any of that shit in London then.

JS: Musically, we're at Playgroup. You're starting Playgroup; you're starting Output. What was the first Playgroup?

TJ: “Make It Happen.” It was very frustrating at the time because I put so much into Output and its artists, it stopped me doing my own things, I was starting to resent it.

JS: Then you started DJing then?

TJ: No, not yet, I made the Playgroup album first.

JS: I'm surprised to hear you weren't DJing until after that.

TJ: I didn’t really want it. I loved DJing for fun, but I was more into making music and doing other things. And also, DJ culture at the time (in the UK anyway), wasn’t something I wanted to be part of. It was all about the Big Beat sound and Fatboy Slim, very white and stupid. The times I did play, I’d either throw my own party locally with Output artists and other affiliated DJs or play weird post-punk and no wave records for someone else and clear the dance floor! No one really wanted to hear that stuff. No one was really interested in the records I played.

JS: When did that change?

TJ: After the Playgroup when Stephan from K7 asked me to do DJ Kicks.

JS: Wow, that was a very influential CD. It's history now to think how important those mix CDs were at that time. DJ Kicks — there were a million of them.

TJ: When they asked me to do DJ Kicks, I was so proud to do it. It was a life changing event for me, one of the best things I did for my whole career.

JS: That was amazing. I remember going into a Virgin mega store in the city and getting it. There was the vinyl. You did a cover version of “Behind the Wheel” which was one of my favorite Depeche Mode 12 inch’s that Shep Pettibone remixed.

TJ: When you listen to my selection now, it's not unusual in any way; if anything, it’s standard. But at the time, using that range of artists and tracks, trying to join the dots between the old and new, was very fresh. Truth is we actually tried to license Shep’s remix of “Behind the Wheel” for the album, but Depeche Mode or Mute wouldn’t let me use it. I was so pissed off, I was like, “fuck you. I’ll do my own version."

JS: I didn't know that.

TJ: Off the back of the Mix CD, I started getting serious DJ offers. Something I didn’t want to do initially, I would rather have been known as a producer or musician, designer, video maker, etc, than playing records.

JS: Were you asked to travel as a DJ? Come to New York, come to Europe, all over?

TJ: Yeah.

JS: A lot of people respect you as a DJ. I've been talking to people and say, "Oh, I'm going to be interviewing Trevor." Like Joe Goddard, he used to come listen to you. You inspired him. You're good at it.

TJ: That's lovely to hear. When I first started DJing, I was very happy doing it. I’d just play weird records for an hour and a half, two hours before a band, could play what I want, I felt comfortable doing that. But when I got pushed into playing clubs and making people dance, that was a very different agenda. It became easier when Output started to release more club orientated material, as I had so much great stuff on the label I could play — DK7, MU, etc. I didn’t ever want to be part of anyone else’s scene, and I was wrongly affiliated to the Electroclash movement although what I was trying to do was very different.

Independence and individuality is very important to me, I’d like to think Output had its own identity even though its releases were fairly undefinable and diverse. From the ashes of the Electroclash movement very special dance records did start to appear, and I eventually began enjoying DJing to audiences who wanted to hear more exciting left field dance music.

JS: I remember the first time I met you you were DJing at PS1 Warm Up. I wanted to meet you. I had gotten into DJ Kicks. I was like, "Hi, Trevor, I'm Justin." You're like, "I have a load of your records.” I was so happy because I was disillusioned with a lot of shit and was just starting to get re-inspired. To hear that from someone like you, who I was being inspired by, was nice. It was the beginning of something again for me.

DJ Kicks, Playgroup.

TJ: It felt like an honor to meet you, a real NYC legend! I remember that PS1 so well, what a fantastic event it was — 2003? Madlib and Peanut Butter Wolf played as well.

JS: So The Playgroup comes out; it's a big hit?

TJ: No, it's not a hit at all. It wasn't a hit.

JS: No? It's not a hit in clubs, in culture?

TJ: It worked in the areas I knew it’d work in. I knew the press would get it, because most journalists were older and would understand the references. I knew the tastemakers would get it too, other people interested in the same inspirations. But it didn’t sound like anything else at the time. That was a big problem, it was really important to me to make a record that sounded different. It was an underground record but with pop sensibilities, a party record not a club record, I think it confused people and the retro references especially put Radio One and the mainstream media off it, they thought it wasn’t relevant. The fact I didn’t want to but realistically wasn’t capable of playing it live didn’t help. It was a critical success when first released but a financial failure. The record cost a fortune, they put so much money into it, but the minute commercial radio stations rejected it, the label lost total interest. I was taken to the Mercury Music Prize awards by the head of Universal Publishers and told, when the winner was announced, “that will be you up there next year” and the second Radio One didn’t pick up on it they never spoke to me again. I learnt so much from the whole situation.

JS: Who put it out?

TJ: Source via Virgin Records, ran by a guy who originally signed AIR, I was one of the first people he signed, a trophy signing to establish the label. I knew I might never make another album again so decided to spent most the advance on working with the best people, in the best possible studios I could find, try to learn somethings along the way. I ended up working mostly at Olympic studios with Spike Stent who mixed Madonna, Massive Attack and Bjork, learned so much, it was an incredible, very expensive, once in a lifetime experience.

JS: It sounded amazing.

TJ: Thank you. For me, I was never happy with the sound, to be honest. The mastering wasn’t right. But anyway, I worked in that studio for six weeks virtually every day.

JS: Was there a live Playgroup show?

TJ: I did one show when I did an Output party showcasing LCD Soundsystem live in London. Did a live version of Make It Happen for half an hour, that was it. I did actually get a full band together to try and tour, with Edwyn Collins on guitar, Ted Milton from Blur on saxophone, Leo Taylor on drums, Lascelles from 7 Hurtz on percussion, Luke Hannam on bass. We rehearsed, it sounded great, but I found it impossible to recreate the sound of the album, something that was fundamental to me, and it wasn’t possible for the guest vocalists to perform so it never happened again.

JS: When the album came out and didn't do as well as you maybe would have liked, were you disillusioned?

TJ: I wasn’t disillusioned because whenever I do anything, I push things to an insane point of personal perfection. All that matters to me is knowing I couldn’t achieve any better. At that point anyone could say it was shit, and I really wouldn’t care, I trust my own critical judgement enough and always do things to foremost please myself never anyone else. If it’s flawless in my head, any external criticism or failure is irrelevant. I was disappointed with the record company, not myself. 80% of the failure was their fault. I made a great record they didn’t know how to sell or market it properly.

JS: You reissued it again.

TJ: Yeah, exactly, via Output a few years later when I negotiated my master rights back.

James Murphy, LCD Soundsystem.

JS: How did you meet James Murphy?

TJ: I knew Tim anyway from Mo'Wax days. Tim had moved to New York and set up DFA with James. I went to NYC to record tracks for the Playgroup album with Shinehead and Kathleen Hanna. I met us with Tim while I was over there and met James through Tim.

JS: Had they already been putting out stuff?

TJ: No, they’d put out nothing. They had this huge building and studio in Manhattan but hadn’t released anything yet. The Rapture release they weren’t entirely sure what to do with. They played some tracks to me, and it sounded exactly like the kind of thing that should be on Output. They didn’t have any experience of releasing records out and knew having someone based in London who knew all the right people internationally and could get their music out via the right sources would be a huge asset, so they asked if I could help. I thought it was an amazing record and happily agreed to promote and release worldwide, excluding the US and Japan where they already had their own connections. To be honest, initially people took notice of The Rapture in the UK because of Morgan Geist’s remix, they weren’t really interested in the original version at first, the live elements of the original put some DJs off playing it, but after a while things shifted and the track really started to blow up.

JS: Did you commission that mix?

TJn: No, no, they did that themselves. They were friends with Morgan.

JS: We're talking about “House of Jealous Lovers?”

TJ: Yeah, “House of Jealous Lovers.” I think it was the first DFA release. The Juan MacLean was next I think. “Losing My Edge” came next. “Losing My Edge” just went crazy.

JS: When you heard that for the first time, did you feel this is...

TJ: No, not at all, and I actually preferred “Beat Connection” at first. You have to remember I already had other successful artists on the label, critically and creatively, they were another of those artists to me, never THE artist. It was a great record, but I had no idea the impact it would have. LCD and The Rapture became part of the Output Family — many people thought of them as Output artists more than DFA ones.

David Cunningham and Deborah Evans-Strickland from The Flying Lizards

JS: Can you imagine that they probably, as of right now, they probably would be biggest band in America?

TJ: Never in a million years.

JS: Did you release the first albums?

TJ: Only The Rapture Echoes album on vinyl which was given to Output to release as a goodwill gesture after they signed to a major label, and that label had no independent vinyl store distribution network.

JS: Did you do contracts with your artists?

TJ: No, no contracts, wanted to try keep things mutually respectful. We rarely made money on anything. We just about broke even, ran things on a shoestring, put everything back into the label. It was just me and a label manager running things, that was it. But we always spent money on good packaging, marketing and press. The label was never set up as a proper business, I earned my income from design work, never drew a wage from the company and as long as we didn’t lose too much was happy to keep things going on a purely creative basis. I always told the bands, “I can’t promise you’re going to make any money, but I can assure you via Output you’ll get attention, that’s the best I can give you.” If this is just about money to you, please go elsewhere. Perhaps that was stupid and naive, but it made good sense to me not to give people any false expectations and promise anything we couldn’t deliver.

JS: How many 12” records would you sell of LCD or The Rapture at the time?

TJ: A few thousand maybe. I can’t remember exactly and they were exporting records from the US as well. Enough to break even.

We fell out very badly after LCD and the Rapture signed huge deals and Output got very little back. Fundamentally, I’d taken DFA and I hooked them up with every single important person I knew in the industry worldwide, DJs, promoters, festivals,lLabels, press, PR, etc. Then The Rapture signed to Mercury and LCD to EMI. I felt betrayed and was bitter to the point of printing a full page advert in Vice at the time venting my frustration at the turn of events, but over time learned to live with it. I’m well over that now, water under the bridge, learned my lesson, and consider both James and Tim friends.

JS: You were disillusioned by the whole thing?

TJ: Disillusioned totally, the label starts getting bigger and the bigger it gets, it becomes more stressful, the artists start becoming divas, the more money it costs to run things, the more money I’m losing. It just was a lose/lose situation because most of the other successful independent labels at the time weren’t genuinely independent. They were all sub-labels of a major. They usually had one big act everything else lived on, we didn’t have that. I refused, implicitly, to be part of the major label network, tried a partnership with Source for six months and it didn’t work, so I refused to be part of any bigger corporation anymore, and wanted to do it completely independently.

JS: You had offers?

TJ: Yeah, I had offers. Everybody wanted to sign Four Tet. Everybody wanted to sign The Rapture. Everybody wanted to sign my acts. Other labels I thought were my friends were turning into sharks, people were going behind my back.

JS: When Four Tet left the label, you didn't feel you were being betrayed as you did with the DFA situation?

TJ: No, the Four Tet situation was different. I’ve always been friendly with Kieran, never fallen out with him. It was a different thing. There’s always been mutual respect and I’d like to think he appreciates all I did for him in his early career. He was honest with me about his concerns, we discussed it, I was fine. I was realistic about the capabilities of the label too when he spoke to me, it would've been unfair to hold him back in any way.

JS: The label was draining you, basically.

TJ: The label was draining me, not just financially, and at this point I’m like fuck it.

JS: This is pre-digital?

TJ: Yeah. I ran the label from 96 to 2006.

JS: People are still buying records then.

TJ: YouTube didn't start until when? 2004 or something? When that stuff started growing and illegal downloads became the norm, it just became so difficult. It became harder to sell records, we started losing too much money. The most stupid thing I ever did was try and bring in a business advisor, someone who promised to turn things around, but proceeded to fuck everything up whilst being very well paid for it. I was like, “forget this.” Then PRS and MCPS started coming and biting my heels, trying to get money from me we didn’t owe them, stopped us being able to manufacture records even though that was the only way we could make any money back to pay them! I’d become an A&R man for every other label in the world there yet wasn’t getting any financial return, I was naive and made mistakes. The whole thing was a total mess, was ruining my life, so decided enough was enough.

JS: I remember when Bryan Mette and I brought you to New York to play at Club Love. I think that marked the death of the Output label?

TJ: Yeah, I put together a final compilation called I Hate Music. Managed to get out as the hundredth release and just close the label. After that, I wanted nothing to do with the music industry or community ever again. In retrospect, it was a good time to get out, the digital age was emerging, big changes were happening, it was killing independent labels.

JS: You got more back into your art?

TJ: Back into design and art projects, yes.

JS: Did you run it out of this place?

TJ: No, no, it was around the corner on Curtain Road. I’ll never forget the day the label ended, I had to tell my label manager who had worked so hard trying to pull things together we couldn’t go on anymore. The wankers at Pitchfork had just ran a story publishing a private email I’d sent to one of the artists about my personal reasons for closing the label against my will. I left the office, got home, opened the door, and found my 21 year old cat dying. It was all too much, everything became a bit of a blur after that.

JS: That was in 2004?

TJ: 2006. That was 10, 11 years ago. Then, I took time off, pulled myself together and went back to design work. I took it all very personally, the failure of the label was a hard thing to deal with, I’d let a lot of people down that relied on me, was an awful time.

JS: Would you DJ occasionally?

TJ: Not so much, I really couldn’t bear the thought of any contact with anyone music related, I felt so bitter about it all as well as embarrassed I’d fucked it all up. I turned down all gigs, remixes, everything, ended up hating everything related to the label for years — it’s literally only been the past few years I felt proud about anything I did during that period. I mainly concentrated on getting back into design work and, after some time, took on a few DJ gigs.

But then, a few years later just when I’d started getting myself back on my feet, one of my best friends passed away. She’d been recently diagnosed with epilepsy; I didn’t have a permanent home at the time so I lived with her, helping to take care of her, she couldn’t be left alone at any time of the day in case she had a seizure, I had to accompany her all the time. One morning I woke up, her office called me to find out why she wasn’t at work, and I found her. I assumed she was sleeping in bed but discovered she’d passed away, it was the worst thing I’d ever experienced. Not only the shock of the event but also the guilt of supposed to being there for her, not only letting her down but also her family and friends, then being questioned by the police and being treated as a suspect as I was the only person in the house at the time. It was unbearable.

JS: Were you living with friends?

TJ: Yes, crashing with friends for a year afterwards, had no home of my own, the worst situation to be going through after what I’d been through.

JS: Brutal.

TJ: Brutal is the word. I had nothing. I went through a really cathartic process of just trying to cleanse my life and trying to work out the most important things in my life. When you go through shit like that, you just don’t want any negativity around you at all. I got rid of friends and associates that didn’t add anything positive to my life. Life is too short. I don’t put myself in situations I don’t feel comfortable with anymore. Before that I’d have much more patience. If I’m in the company of people I don’t like now, I just leave. Friends that I don’t get along with anymore, I don’t need them. I’m very lucky I’ve got enough good friends around me anyway, people I’ve known for 30 years or more that I love and respect. Also, it sounds like a cliché, but I got into healthy living, meditation and exercise were the only things that managed to pulled me out of a very dark place, it took a long time to get back into a good place.

JS: That opened a door for you to do more music.

TJ: Yeah, I found that it takes adverse situations to make me reassess things and create. I've now learned that however bad life gets, it's cyclical. When you hit rock bottom, there’s only one way to go, back up!

JS: I was DJing at the biggest clubs in New York. I had two kids, and the dance music scene was like you said – very boring. I did a publishing deal with Warner Chapel. They were trying to hook me up with pop stuff. It didn't work out. They would always end up going back to the same two producers they use for everything, whoever it was. I didn't know what I was going to do. Me and my wife split up. I was totally depressed. I wanted to kill myself, but I had two kids. I did what I had to do. Then this all started coming back, like I said, being re-inspired again and meeting people who said, "Oh, you did all this. Why aren't you doing stuff?" I was like, “You're right. What the fuck am I doing? I'm good at this.” Made me want to get back into it, and really, it's all I can do.

TJ: It's easy to forget your worth when you’re in the wrong place, when you get to that point, that low, you either end it all, right? Which is an option when you’re that bad, or pull yourself out of it.

JB: When you have two kids, you don't think about ending it all. I guess there are people that do.

TJ: Sadly, there are people that are so low that they can't get out of it.

JS: Yeah, thankfully, you got out of it.

TJ: We both did. I got out of it. The first project I did after that was an art show called Nowhere at a small gallery in Hoxton Square. I showed a series of abstract photographic works, abstract images of sunset skies, juxtaposed with personal images and manipulated images of the cosmos, some video work too. It was a cathartic experience and really helped to cleanse my past in a way, moving into a new creative arena. I also did a show at the Red Bull 12 Mail Gallery in Paris, large scale microscopic images of record vinyl grooves titled “Yesterday,” “Today,” “Tomorrow,” “Forever,” along with an accompanying limited edition vinyl release made up of samples from the images I was showing. This show cautiously renewed my interest in getting back into music again and I came up with the idea of the Metal Dance compilations. Felt like the right way to make people aware of me again, I’d worked with K7 many times before, trusted them and Strut was part of their network.

JS: A compilation of?

TJ: Late 70s, early 80s experimental electronic dance music. Which were mostly chosen for an old mix tape I found at my parents house one day in the attic.

JS: That got you back in?

TJ: Press-wise, media-wise and public-wise, they were like, “Trevor Jackson is still here!.” And it introduced me to a whole new audience too. I’ve mentioned it before, but I felt hesitant to put some tracks on Metal Dance that might be too obvious. But kids would come up to me, like 17 or 18, and talk about those specific tracks I was concerned about and go, “Fuck, I’ve never heard that before.” It’s great to feel that. A new generation of people making music inspired by stuff that inspired me.

JS: You were getting a lot of attention.

TJ: Enough, was great to feel proud of something again. Did a second volume of Metal Dance and then I started to think I should really start releasing some of my own music, something I hadn’t done since the Playgroup album and that 12 Mail Gallery release. That’s how Format came together. I started going through my archive, listening to tracks I’d never released, mainly demos and unfinished recordings. I’d never stopped making music since the Playgroup release, making music helped me get through the very worst of times, but I’d given up thinking of releasing any of it, overly cautious of putting myself back out into an industry I’d grown to despise and had also changed so dramatically. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 4–5 years, sorting that archive out, 100s of tracks that sounded rubbish to me at the time, things I’d overworked for so long, that now with time and objectivity have learnt to love again. It’s part of this huge cleansing process I’m going through, trying to move on to a new phase in life. It’s insane to think but I’ve now actually finished all of it, feels great.

Format, Trevor Jackson

JS: Wow! You released Format with The Vinyl Factory?

TJ: Yes. I did it with them because I knew that I wanted to try and release the project in a unique way — something that as a label they’re very interested in doing. I needed to satisfy my creative urges and in the process get the music — and most importantly my ideas — noticed, which in today's current climate is very difficult. Tragically, so many great things get ignored now regardless of its value or quality, things exist for such a short period of time, you need to do something special to be noticed.

JS: The idea was to release it as...

TJ: As 12 different physical formats.

JS: And not to release digital?

TJ: There was a USB stick, but initially no download or streaming. I wanted it all to be very democratic. Usually the press hears a release months before an album is released and with this, anyone could hear it at the same time but only by visiting the a/v show I’d created. There were no promos sent out at all, people had to make the effort to come and experience it. The album was presented on 12 huge screens. Each screen showed the process of playing each track via its own designated format on its own unique playback machine. The ritual of playing physical recorded mediums. So much of the magic is lost when all you need to do is simply press play on a screen to listen to something, right? I wanted to highlight not only the aesthetics, the intricate physical details of these machines, but also the tactile beauty of the actual process.

JS: It was a real coming together of the two things you love — your music and your art.

TJ: Exactly. I also did an amazing project a few years earlier at the London BFI IMAX titled RGBPM. Performed four pieces of music on a custom built video synth, one of the highlights of my career to date. The music was actually released this month as a vinyl only EP along with a series of signed prints on a small label called UTTER.

JS: So you had a whole exhibition for Format.

TJ: It was a large project. The only way you could come and hear the album initially was to come to the exhibition, and you could buy the separate formats at the exhibition and also online. Most of them sold out straight away. They were limited to various edition numbers: 500 12 inches, 400 10 inches, 300 7 inches, 200 cassettes etc. Also had a series of 10 box sets with an additional reel to reel tape format that was only available in that set.

JS: What was the most obscure format?

TJ: 8-track probably. They were a total pain in the arse to manufacture and find parts for, most of it was a logistical nightmare to manufacture. Format was the first large scale project I’d done for a long time, took well over six months to put together, was a hell of a lot of work, but definitely worth it. The main objective was to highlight the importance of physical music, something that had become far less important since I’d released my last album back in 2000. But also making it as inconvenient as possible to people, so it wasn’t easy to obtain or experience. I wanted people to make an effort, the more problematic something is to obtain, the more important it eventually becomes and the longer it will resonate with you.

JS: The music was recorded from what years?

TJ: Between the years 1999 to 2006, 20077. I was really hesitant and quite scared about letting this music out. So I tried to highlight the concept more, the music became secondary. A bit of a mistake in hindsight when I listen to it now, I realize the music was really good. I’m very proud of it... I’d lost a lot of confidence in what I was doing. Had total confidence in the concept, but wasn’t sure about my music-making ability anymore, it had been so long since I’d released anything and, after listening to the tracks so many times, had lost all perspective.

JS: Over the years, people would say when are we getting another Playgroup album? Now, here it is. Everyone was asking “What's Trevor Jackson got to say?”

TJ: Yeah, and that was a lot of pressure after all that time. But I'm really happy. It worked really, really well.

JS: It was beautifully designed, and there are some great tracks.

TJ: Thank you. The thing is, there's more of it.

JS: You also did that Adrian Sherwood compilation.

TJ: Yeah, that was a real labour of love, On-U sound was my favorite label of all time. I would never of dreamt of doing that as teenager, dream come true.

JS: It's come full circle.

TJ: Full circle. I’m still such a fan.

JS: Did you work with him on it?

TJ: I did. I’m still in awe of the guy. It was really embarrassing. I couldn’t sit here and have a proper conversation with him like I am with you. Hold him in far too high esteem.

JS: Had you ever met him?

TJ: Yeah, I met him before, but I’m like a gibbering wreck when I meet him. He’s not intimidating; he’s a lovely guy. I had interviewed him before. Before I did an NTS show, I did this radio show called “Strongroom Alive.” I’d also interviewed Arthur Baker and Jah Wobble, then I did Adrian.

JS: When was the Trevor Horn interview?

TJ: That was recent. That was with NTS when I interviewed Adrian. What was interesting was that all the tracks I picked up, he didn’t like most of them, he was quite dismissive about them. Don’t think he realized how important they were. They were crazy throw-away experiments to him and, in his heart, he’s a pure reggae head. I think the records that were the most important to him at that time were the Roots/Reggae, more traditional things.

JS: Science Fiction Dance Hall Classics

TJ: Those crazier left field tracks have resonated with a younger generation, also with people that either didn’t realize the label released things like that, or totally forgot about them. The compilation was really well received.

JS: That's your role in all of this — you've always just done what you loved and exposed people to a lot of music that they might not have heard otherwise.

TJ: I strongly and somewhat arrogantly feel that if things are important to me, they should be important to other people. It’s passion more than anything, nothing to do with ego, I want as many other people to share that excitement with me, try to experience the way I feel about things. I can only work successfully on things I’m passionate about, I’m not driven by money or success, integrity is hugely important thing to me. Look at Richard Russell, who we spoke about earlier. Look at him now. Look at James Murphy, these people. They’ve gone on to have huge success. They're both highly ambitious people, whether they’re entirely happy with what they’re doing, I don’t know. You make sacrifices when you get to that level, things I probably wouldn’t be prepared to do. I’m happy in the shadows to a certain extent, I’ve been in the game actively for more than 30 years, still relevant in someway, hopefully, that's an achievement I’m very proud of.

JS: The pressure of James Murphy stopping LCD Soundsystem when they were very popular, going away for five years, saying that he’ll never do this again — many times he said it, and then came back.

TJ: I don’t know his reasons behind it, but sure he’s done it for the right reasons.

JS: They are such a great band. I don’t see any reason to stop it or not go back to it. People change their minds. I don’t fault him for that at all. They’re an amazing band.

TJ: As long as they're as good or better than they were before, that's all that matters.

JS: I mean, I'd seen them before they'd done any new music, when they just came back and just started playing.

TJ: Live, they're fucking unbelievable. Live, they're incredible.

JS: They're the best band out there; the best band I've seen live recently.

TJ: Live, they’re outstanding. It’s really odd when you see someone you know at that level of success onstage, this guy who’s just one of us, that level of adoration, something I’d never feel comfortable with, it’s just fucking weird because it’s still James, you know. It’s still the guy I know from 15, however long years, however long that was…

JS: You do a radio show on NTS every other two weeks? That’s been inspiring you these days?

TJ: Yeah, it’s like having a record label without any of the bullshit. The main reason I did the record label was just to get new music i was passionate about into the world. Now I can do the same thing without having to deal with any artists or managers, do exactly what I want. And apart from the cost of the records, it doesn’t cost me a penny, there are no risks or stresses, it’s an absolute pleasure.

JS: Now, you released a whole slew of 12 inches as Playgroup after the Format thing. You had this idea to do one release every couple of weeks?

TJ: After Format, I said to myself, “okay, I’ve got the rest of this music here and I desperately want to make brand new music. I’m doing this NTS show, all the new music out there is inspired, innovative. I need to be making forward thinking brand new music, but I’m having a real problem doing that until I finish all the old music out of my life.” It may have been stupid, but I set myself that task, to finish off that music, and now I’ve finally done it and need to release it all in an exciting way too. Last years Playgroup releases were the first part of that. Was difficult, I had 30 tracks and they’re all club tracks. They’ve got to be on vinyl but I couldn’t do a nine album box set, so came up with the crazy idea of releasing an EP a week for nine weeks. Everyone said to me, “You’re mad. Forget it.” But it worked really really well. Each sleeve fitted together to make a large image which added a physical collectability to the whole project.

JS: And you used the Bill Bernstein photos as cutups in the sleeves, which is genius.

Previously Unreleased, by Playgroup

TJ: Yeah love his work, was a big fan of his Night Dancing book. I wanted to tease people, no one knew what the large image was until you put all the sleeves together...an element of surprise.

JS: Have you ever thought of teaching?

TJ: Yeah, I'd love to teach.

JS: I think you'd be amazing at it.

TJ: Thank you. that’s one thing I would really, really love to do. I don’t have any kids. I’d like to try and contribute something positive to society.

JS: Has that opportunity ever come about?

TJ: No, I haven't been asked, but it's something I would want to do.

JS: Now, what's next for Trevor Jackson?

TJ: Now? I've got five albums worth of material.

JS: New material?

TJ: No, more unreleased stuff that on one’s heard.

JS: The Playgroup stuff? What’s this coming out as?

TJ: I don't know. I've literally just finished it. I'm just sitting there with 85 tracks wondering how on earth to get it out. I'm trying to think of an interesting way to do it. I can't release five albums at the same time. Maybe I can — I don't know. I haven't got an idea how to do it. I'm sitting here thinking. That's where I'm at now.

There’ll definitely be a Playgroup Previously Unreleased volume II and possibly I’ll use some of the other aliases I’ve used over the years for the other ones.

JS: I have confidence you will.

TJ: Glad you do! I want to get it all out this year.

JS: Then you will start the next phase.

TJ: Hopefully, I’m getting rid of all the excess weight in my life. This unreleased music is part of that. I want to start afresh. Been trying to do this since my friend passed away, six, seven years ago. I want to be able to sit in my studio and make music in a completely new way. At the moment, what’s really fantastic is people making music out there without any boundaries anymore, without any expectations or preconceptions. They can just do what the hell they want. I haven’t been able to do that for a while.

JS: Do you want to collaborate or you want to do it all yourself?

TJ: I don’t know. I want to get all this music out, take a bit of time off, wipe the slate clean and reassess things. Part of me never wants to make a record with a 4/4 in it ever again. Another part of me wants to make the most tear-jerkingly beautiful gentle album. I’d like to attempt to make something sonically as good as one of my favorite Trevor Horn productions.

JS: Which is? What would be one?

TJ: Oh, Slave to the Rhythm, Moments in Love or something so beautiful it makes you want to cry.

JS: Those are the best records.

TJ: At the same time I love listening to Death Grips. At this point in my life, I really want to try to do something new, so much of what I’ve been doing over the past decade or so has been somewhat related to the past. That's holding me back.

JS: You think that's still possible? For you, it's brand new, but...

TJ: I think that's fairly impossible now. But I’ll give it a go!

JS: It is. It drives me nuts sometimes. It's like you think you have something and then it's out there. Fiorucci decides to relaunch this year, and all that stuff is like —

TJ: You know what? I was supposed to work on it.

JS: You should have.

TJ: A year and a half ago, they asked me to be involved. Do the design and everything for them. Didn't happen.

JS: You didn't want to?

TJ: I wanted to; it would have been a dream job.

JS: Just never happened?

TJ: Just never happened.

JS: Their archives are insane.

TJ: One of the later meetings I had with them, they got some stuff, just bits and bobs of things from the archive. They had this pair of jeans. I was like, “What the fuck?” They said “What?” I said, "You know what those jeans are?” They’re like, “No.” I said, “That’s Keith Haring.” Hand drawn jeans with him and —

Keith Haring on a skateboard

JS: L.A. II?

TJ: L.A. II!

Keith Haring and L.A. II (Angel Ortiz) on the show card for their opening at the Tony Shafrazi gallery, 1982

TJ: Yeah. They didn't even know about it. I'm like, these should not be in a box. These need to be in a fucking museum. They had no idea who L.A. II was. When Fiorucci opened a store in Milan and Keith Haring and L.A. II went along...what an amazing time.

JS: Painted up the whole store, had videos, insane.

TJ: To paint the store.

JS: There's a video.

TJ: It is what it is. I would have liked to do something — it would have been interesting to do something in fashion. What I love about Fiorucci, and I think what’s missing now is I like to see women happy, smiling. Smiles are sexy and sadly they’re not so cool anymore. A generation of woman thinking it's far better to frown and look unhappy, what the fuck is that all about? No one does fun sex like Fiorucci.

JS: It was an amazing time.

TJ: That must have been crazy. There used to be a store in London on the Kings Road.

JS: Yeah, I went. I got some of the bags. I was mental into Fiorucci and collected everything.

TJ: Have you got the fanzines, the comic book?

JS: I didn't get those; I don't know why. I didn't know about them at the time. I had good friends that worked there and stuff. They would just give me all this stuff.

TJ: Fiorucci jeans, Dinky belts and Kicker shoes were big in the 70s & 80s with the Edgware Becks. Did you have Kickers in New York?

JS: I loved Kickers. I actually have the poster, all the different Kickers.

TJ: Collecting Kicker tags was massive for us as teenagers in the UK, in as many different colors as possible, and wear them all on your shoes.

JS: They still make them, right?

TJ: Do they?

JS: I think so.

TJ: They got picked up again in the late 90s, I think.

JS: I know there was a relaunch or something. I would love to get a pair. I saw someone wearing a pair recently.

TJ: Same here, a good pair of Kickers would be great!

JS: Yeah.

TJ: Wow.

JS: There you go.Thank you for this, Trevor!

TJ: There you go; that's my life. Thanks for listening.

#yes #interview #justtalk #justin strauss #trevor jackson #dj #music #just/talk

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desireesroadtrip · 6 years

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Episode III: Return of the Jetta

It is now July 2018. I have gone on two major road trips in my life thus far. I am about to embark on the third. But before I tell you about that, let’s reflect on those first two I’ve taken…

Hello, all.

My name is Desiree Echevarria and I have wanderlust.

I’m 27 years old and have lived in Southern California my whole life. I’d like to get out immediately please, if only for a little while. And here’s why.

Every day, I go to a job that, admittedly, I like a whole lot. I have family and friends that I like a whole lot. I have a life that I sure do like a whole lot.

And yet…

I gotta get the fuck out of here.

At the end of every day, in order to get home, I drive east on one the many freeways in Southern California that are in a perpetual state of apocalyptic clusterfuckery. I sit in traffic. I dodge assholes who are seemingly using their BMWs to try to commit vehicular manslaughter on everyone else on the freeway. Sometimes, I’ll admit it, I’ll add to my own anxiety by being the asshole who’s trying get ahead in traffic using my clearly superior weaving skills. OUT OF THE WAY, JERKS, I HAVE TO GET TO MY HOUSE BEFORE YOU GET TO YOURS. I NEED THAT EXTRA 2 MINUTES TO SIT AROUND AND BE TOO LAZY TO SHOWER.

I look out the car window and see the same scenery every day. If it’s not the crumbling concrete of the rough, grey L.A. freeways, it’s the boring, well-manicured, strategically landscaped, but grotesquely artificial, ambiance of Orange County. And every day, while sitting there in traffic, I think to myself: “What if I just kept driving? What if I didn’t stop at my exit and I just kept going east? Who would stop me? No one, that’s who.”

That’s what I wrote five years ago in my mission statement (you can re-visit that lengthy manifesto here) prior to embarking on a three-week road trip across the country and back. It was a trip that, when I returned, a friend of mine referred to as a “walkabout.” I liked that. So that’s what I call it now.

I drove my Volkswagen GTI (R.I.P.) from Los Angeles through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.

Pictured: Black Magic the GTI, the most beloved of all my Volkswagens.

I didn’t have any deadlines or any real destinations. I went just to see what I could see. I stopped and pulled off the road to take photos whenever I felt like it. I talked to strangers. I blogged a lot. And it was fucking awesome.

(I won’t rehash the happenings of that first trip because literally every post on this Tumblr prior to this one chronicles them in detail. I created this Tumblr specifically for that trip and am reviving it for this next one. Scroll back to read about my exploits if you’d like.)

That first trip was a major turning point in my life. It got me out of my lifelong comfort zone and made me a little more fearless in general – and that alone has had far-reaching effects. That trip shook all my shit up, in a good way.

Today, I’m 32 years old and a lot has changed since then.

For starters, I don’t like the word “wanderlust" anymore. Makes me cringe. Please forget I ever used it.

But also, I don’t live in Southern California anymore. I live in Austin, Texas – a place I encountered on that very first megatrip.

This might seem surprising because in my post-roadtrip recap back in 2013, you may recall I returned from that trip with grand plans to “kick down Hollywood’s door and take the motherfucker over.”

Narrator voice: She did not take the motherfucker over.

So how did I end up in Austin? (I get this question a lot. So, finally, here’s your answer. *Clears throat.*)

Throughout my twenties, I worked in Hollywood. When you work in Hollywood, your friends and family love to hear stories about the most glamorous parts of your job. Everyone loves hearing a story with a famous person in it, even if the story is simply, “I got an email from Jennifer Lawrence today. She seems nice.” See, there’s a famous person in that riveting story about a work email. That makes it a good story. It’s very cool to come home from work and tell people that you spent the day with Clint Eastwood or that Jay Leno showed you around his fancy car garage or that Bradley Cooper asked you for a bottle of water and you handed it to him and you will both cherish that moment forever.

It’s very cool to tell people those parts of your job. But those aren’t even the everyday moments. Those are the sometimes moments. They’re awfully cool, but what happens when the day-to-day of your job is in no way fulfilling and, in fact, sucks so much ass? That’s much less cool.

It’s a tough trade-off. Because you like being able to tell your family and friends your Hollywood anecdotes. It makes you seem interesting. You like being able to watch a movie and see your name in the credits. It makes you feel important.

And it’s a hell of a thing to have to admit to yourself that it’s not actually what you want at all.

But that’s exactly what I did at the end of 2015.

Hi, I’m Desiree Echevarria. I’m sure you remember me from The Hunger Games. I played Katniss.

Here’s where I was: American Sniper was finally finished. I worked through TWO releases of those DVDs, one per year. So I had SOMEHOW been working on American Sniper for a damn year and a half (looooong after the film had left the theaters and lost all the Oscars). So I was bored and ready for something new.

My boss came to work one day and very excitedly told me that the next movie we would be working on was Clint Eastwood’s new film, Sully, starring Tom Hanks. It was our job to produce the bonus features for it, as per usual. The film would likely be a hit, like anything else Clint Eastwood or Tom Hanks does.

And yet I felt nothing. I did not feel excited. I did not feel awe. I did not feel that Hollywood magic that I know I felt at some point in my life before.

A Clint Eastwood/Tom Hanks joint walks through the door and I feel nothing.

I was burnt. out.

Sorry, Clint.

It was time for a change, and not just on a three-week walkabout to recharge my mental batteries this time. For one thing, I was broke af (because the thing everyone loves to downplay about working in Hollywood is that the pay is shit and if you don’t like it well, fuck you, there’s a line of about a thousand suckers right behind you just BEGGING for a shot at your gig). But also, I didn’t want to have to come back to this place — not just this production company, but this Hollywood. It was time for a REAL-ASS CHANGE.

Austin, Texas was about as much of a 180-degree shift from my status quo as was possible. So that’s where I set my sights.

I moved out of my expensive-but-still-somehow-in-a-bad-part-of-town Los Angeles apartment and into my parents’ house 50 miles away in Orange County for a few months to save what little money I could (and braving the 4-hour round trip commuting to the production office in Glendale daily as a trade-off).

I remember the day I put in my two weeks’ notice at that production company. My boss, a producer who had done pretty well for himself, had gone on vacation (he went to his vacation house at least once a month, otherwise he would “go stir crazy!” he often said). I remember I was alone at the office on a Friday. And I mean ALONE alone. I had no co-workers. It was just me and my boss. Though, most days it was just me. All alone. In a small room. My boss liked to work from home mostly, and he had the freedom to do so.

On this particular Friday, I asked if I could work from home. Doing so would save me four painful hours of driving in L.A. traffic. We weren’t a busy office. People didn’t stop by. People didn’t call. We seldom got packages and if they were important (a delivery of assets from a studio or something) I sure as shit knew if they were coming. But my only project on that day was writing research reports for Sully. So, yes, I could have done my job from home. My boss could have done me a HUGE solid by just saying yes to my simple request.

Still, my boss said no. He didn’t feel “comfortable” with me working from home even though it was 2016 and the internet had been invented decades earlier. Besides, what if an office emergency came up?!

Narrator voice: An office emergency had never come up.

I said, “Okay.” And I spent that day in the office. By myself. Pouting. Lamenting my lack of freedom and control over my own life. All while my boss was sitting in a hammock, strumming one of his many vintage guitars at his vacation cabin in the mountains. This seems like a relevant time to add that this job did not come with health insurance.

I put in my two weeks’ notice that day.

I was 30 years old. And this shit was no longer worth it.

Two weeks later, I packed up my Volkswagen Rabbit (R.I.P.) with everything I owned. I didn’t own much. A friend would later call the fact that I was able to fit my entire life into a car “romantic.” I call it “poor.” I then embarked on the second major road trip of my life: the move from my home in California to my fresh start in Austin, Texas.

I didn’t know what the fuck was going to happen, but at least I was free.

Pictured: Tibor the Volkswagen Rabbit, named after the German man who sold him to me (and who replaced the Rabbit decal with a Golf decal for some reason).

Road Trip 2: The Great Escape

I drove from California to Texas in two days in a car that I wasn’t sure would even survive the trip.

The trip HAD to be two days because I didn’t want to blow what little money I had staying in hotels over the course of several nights. I didn’t have a job waiting for me in Austin – in fact, all that was waiting for me there was just one friend from California and a cheap two-month sublet to share with a stranger from Craigslist.

On Day One, I drove from Orange County, CA to Flagstaff, AZ because my friend Camille lived in Flagstaff and I stayed at her house. However, Flagstaff was nowhere CLOSE to being the halfway point between California and Austin. So my first day’s drive was just 7 hours. Meaning my second day… well, my second day was 15 hours and 1,026 miles of pure hell.

For one thing, the aux input in my car was broken and the only CDs I had with me were five Taylor Swift CDs. I know on the surface, that doesn’t seem THAT bad (after all, it’s better than silence, right?), but I listened to those five Taylor Swift CDs over and over and over again throughout the course of 22 driving hours, pushing myself to the brink of madness and back again several times over.

I tried listening to the radio, but when you’re driving through endless zero-population towns in West Texas, you can’t put a lot of faith in radio stations that play music even EXISTING. (Though, there are plenty of radio stations with loud preachers yelling about how most things are The Devil™.) So even though I was on a tight schedule, I made the time to pull over at a Wal-Mart and buy a CD – ANY CD – that wasn’t Taylor Swift. I purchased a Luke Bryan CD.

By the end of this ordeal, I would come to hate Luke Bryan as well.

(Note: I have since forgiven both Taylor Swift and Luke Bryan for what they did to me that day.)

But deeper than that, my Road Trip 2 lacked all of what made that first road trip great. I didn’t enjoy it the way I had before. This time, I didn’t take the trip slow and stop along the way to smell the roses and take pictures of interesting rocks I saw. This time, the trip wasn’t a walkabout. It was a mission, and a scary one at that.

What if I failed? What if I got to Texas and hated it, or couldn’t find a job, or ran out of money, or became a Republican? There was a lot for me to worry about on that drive.

After 15 hours, I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I thought the drive would never end – especially in the late hours driving down endless empty two-lane roads in the pitch-black darkness of West Texas, with what I still maintain to this day were UFOs in the distance. I showed up at my Craigslist sublet at midnight, immediately rolled my sleeping bag out on the floor, cried for the 90 seconds I remained awake, and then passed out.

Pictured: my first Austin apartment. I slept on a mattress on the floor for longer than I care to admit.

The first thing that made me feel better after that sad-ass moving night was waking up the next day and being able to see some familiar faces. My friend Krista, who had moved to Austin not long before I did, swung by my empty apartment, picked me up and gave me a tour of the city. That helped make the transition remarkably easier.

Pictured: my first meal on my first day in Austin at the now-defunct restaurant Bacon (R.I.P.) courtesy of tour guide, @kristadoyle.

Also, as luck would have it, my friends from back home, Kyle and Iris, happened to be on vacation in Austin during that very weekend and we were able to meet up and do some touristy shit together. And again, that familiarity in a strange new place calmed my nerves immensely. I value my friendships above pretty much everything in the entire world and things like this are why. I like to think I’m pretty resilient on my own, but I’m far more resilient with help from my pals. I highly recommend friendship A+++ 11/10, 4 stars.

Pictured: Kyle, me, and Iris during my first weekend in Austin in the quintessential tourist destination -- Dirty 6th.

But once that introductory weekend was over, I had a lot of hustling to do. I didn’t have a job AND I only had enough saved to live comfortably for two months — which meant I had two months to make it work in Austin or I would have to crawl back to my parents’ house in California with my tail between my legs. The clock was ticking.

That Monday was the first day of SXSW, Austin’s major annual music, film, and tech festival. I had decided to move to Austin in time for SXSW because people on Reddit told me that if I wanted to network in Austin and find a job, I needed to be at SXSW. But badges to get into SXSW run upwards of thousands of dollars (which I did NOT have). So I got in the only way I could – by working for free. I volunteered for a week at SXSW and got a badge in return.

And for once, Reddit was right. I got two job offers that first week.

I knew then that everything was gonna be okay.

Still, the offers I was able to get weren’t ideal. I took a job doing customer support at a website in Austin while patiently biding my time for the job I REALLY wanted to open up: a content writer position at the startup where my friend Krista worked (also as a writer). She raved about how awesome it was and how, someday soon, they would probably hire more writers. So I waited all spring and summer for that probably. For six months, I looked something like this:

Then, finally, a writer position opened up and I pounced on it. I got the job and can honestly say, it’s one of the best things to ever happen to me.

This sounds pretty anticlimactic, I’m sure. There was this thing I wanted and I was patient and then I got it. But to me, it’s been pretty life-changing.

Working as a writer at a great company (Aceable – we’re hiring) is what I wanted all those years in Hollywood. And I just never quite found it. Sometimes I worked on projects that didn’t inspire me, sometimes I was doing work I was capable of, but not passionate about (hello, post-production), and more often than not, I worked for companies that didn’t challenge me or offer an actual career path. It wasn’t their fault necessarily, but a symptom of the small-production-company-grind that plagues much of Hollywood.

But by sticking around that kind of environment, I would always be doomed to this cycle of burning out and getting out, burning out and getting out, repeat times infinity. I’d always be looking for a temporary escape and it would never be enough – because I would never truly feel like I have control over my life.

Getting my job at Aceable was the validation I needed to finally stop feeling as though I was moving backwards rather than forwards.

I never would have imagined as a kid who was OBSESSED with making a name for herself in Hollywood that I would find everything I was looking for in a career in the middle of Texas.

Oh yeah, and now I get to work from home WHENEVER I WANT.

There’s a saying that goes: Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

I won’t say that my time in Hollywood was a “mistake” because, in reality, I HAD to do it – all of it. If I hadn’t, I never would have learned that it wasn’t what I wanted. Some alternate universe Desiree is out there, writing a blog where she laments never having taken the chance to pursue her film and TV dreams and then leaves behind her job as an astronaut to make it happen (what an idiot).

Besides, I had my fun. I did work on cool stuff. Working on the first film I co-produced, The Hopeful, gave me some of my all-time favorite memories and left me with some awesome friends that I still have today. I got the chance to work on my favorite show of all time, The Simpsons, and for that I’ll always be grateful. But all those pursuits had significant drawbacks and, ultimately, weren’t sustainable, like a lot of film/TV career paths (but that’s a whole OTHER conversation for another day). It turns out my heart just wasn’t in it.

I also want to say, as I’ve said many times before (and y’all are probably sick of it but this is my blog, get your own) Austin is a really fucking great place. I like it here. I feel a sense of community and pride in my city for the first time in my life. My list of restaurants to try in Austin is NEVER-ENDING. It’s gotten to the point where I feel guilty going to the same restaurant twice now because I’m always thinking, “Shit, I could be trying a new place instead.” Put simply: it rules.

So I’m in a uncharted territory going into the third major road trip of my life…

Road Trip 3: The Everything’s Actually Pretty Okay

For the first time, I’m not using a road trip as a motif for some kind of escape. Progress!

I’m packing up my Volkswagen Jetta for a trip across the southwest that will be part walkabout, but also part of it will include some much needed quality time meeting up with some good friends from California. It’s a regular, good ol’ fashioned vacation. And I’m super pumped.

As always, I’ll take the time to be alone with my thoughts because while I’m at a place in my life where I feel pretty settled in a lot of ways, let’s never lose sight of the fact that I am an always-buzzing ball of anxiety and need these little jaunts as a way to reset my brain. It’s for this same reason that I like to go camping a lot (though camping in Texas seems abysmal DON’T @ ME.)

I’ve always appreciated road trips for the head-clearing they allow me to do.

I’ll take little weekend trips here and there for a breather.

There was the time when, on a whim, I drove from L.A. to the Grand Canyon because I had spent months pouring my blood, sweat, and tears into writing an awards show that turned out ABSOLUTELY AWFUL (read aaaallllllll about it here).

There was the time I drove from Austin to Scott, Louisiana (the boudin capital of the world!) to clear my head after a summer on the dating apps broke my brain – damn you, Bumble!

And then there was the time I spent an entire day driving aimlessly through the rural areas outside of Austin the weekend after the 2016 election (ugh) to calm my nerves with the sight of pastoral landscapes and the taste of out-of-town BBQ before the impending unraveling of American democracy began.

Road trips clear your head, man. They’re underrated. Whenever I tell people I’m going on a road trip, they tend to say things like “Oh no, all that driving! Hope you have plenty of audiobooks all lined up!”

And I’m like… no.

I don’t want to distract myself. The whole point is the solitude. I like the solitude.

I like that there is NOTHING to see sometimes.

I LIKE THE NOTHING.

I really believe that being in new places forces you to think differently than you normally do, and from those departures away from your normal thought patterns come your best ideas and your inspirations for growth.

My life is definitely FAR from perfect and I still have about a MILLION flaws that I have to constantly work on, but with freedom comes the time, energy, and ability to do just that.

So I guess that’s what makes Road Trip 3 different – I’ve got some freedom in my life and with it, I just want to see some cool shit and spend time with people I love, relax out on the open road, take some pictures of some interesting rocks I see, and know that when I get back to Austin, I’ll be happy to be back in Austin.

I can’t say that things will always be like this (who can?), but this is how things are right now.

Also I wish to purchase one (1) marijuana when I arrive in Colorado. IT’S LEGAL, MOM.

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