It’s god-knows past way-too-late and we’ve retired from a mammoth session of clubs and after-parties. Curled up on the floor of our new friend’s flat, the tiles glow from the underfloor heating with the same warmth as our Romanian hosts have given us all night. But there’s a plane to be caught sometime soon, if only we knew where the hotel was or – even better – where we are. Requests for taxis are met with more encouragement to stay the whole weekend. They might be relatively new to this clubbing lark, but Romania certainly knows how to party.
There’s no wonder that James Lavelle chose Bucharest as the inspiration for his new Global Underground mix CD. The crowd at his gig at Studio Martin last year was the best of the last 12 months and he was eager to revisit. And from the warm reception from the friends that return tonight to welcome him back, the response is mutual.
“I just think there’s a magic here, a spark,” he explains, “and I thought it would be a really good place to do a Global record. With Global they’ve done so many of the known places on the map, it was good to do something a little bit different. I didn’t know what to expect when I first came here, but I fell in love with the place right away.”
Studio Martin is exactly the sort of place you’d hope to find in Eastern Europe, and just the sort of place a real clubber would fall in love with. Like a mini Fabric set in a cinema – minus the seats and any strange animation, of course – it’s dark and dingy, full of wild enthusiasm and the obligatory fine-boned women. But has it really influenced the compilation?
“It’s really hard, cos I play what I play,” James admits. “To be really honest, I think that you don’t really adapt to the country that you’re in. You may adapt to the environment of a club slightly. I play the way I play whether I’m in Romania or I’m in Fabric, or Tokyo.”
But the whole experience is all tied together. James says that knowing he’s going to go to a club that’s exciting, that’s going to be surrounded by an amazing environment, with a crowd is going to be great – that tends to make him feel more comfortable and into making a great mix.
“That’s why I chose where I’m going to play for the series,” he explains. “It’s going to be, Where’s the best gig that I know?”
Ultimately for James the CD is a document of his DJing since the last compilation – the records and sounds that he’s been into and been playing. And with loads of Meat Katie, plenty of Unkle, and a new Photek record that sounds like an old Daft Punk tech house track, it sums up the last 18 months of gigs perfectly.
But the experience hasn’t been all plain sailing. Waiting for James to turn up in the less than glamorous Bucharest airport earlier in the day, he’s easy to spot, decked head to foot in Bathing Ape clothing and Futura scribbles. He’s also weighted down with a brace of the coolest record bags available. He smiles his way through a Fabric-fueled hangover, but it isn’t long before the lack of sleep helps shift his mood. There’s been a mix up, and Lavelle isn’t in the least bit happy. His favourite mixer isn’t at the club as planned, and instead he’ll have to make do with his most hated bit of equipment. For someone who claims to be ‘not much of a DJ, no Sasha’ it seems a bit much as angry phone calls are made.
Somewhere around the UNKLE album Lavelle started to get a regular kicking from the press. His ‘overblown’ longplayer ‘Psyence Fiction’ – featuring mates like Massive Attack’s 3D, Badly Drawn Boy and Thom Yorke – dared to go beyond the underground hip hop clubs where he was worshiped. The media had spent the last few years asking Lavelle what they should tell their readers was cool (“Star Wars figures? Great. Futura graffiti? OK!”), but now they’d changed their minds. The Mo Wax boss was getting too big for his boots, they said, he was arrogant and needed taking down a peg or two.
Wherever this is true or not (and it would certainly be understandable from his achievements and the attention he got so young) is better commented on by the people who knew him at that time, but there’s not a hint of that in him today. As it turns out DJing is not something to keep him occupied while he works out what to do with Mo Wax, he fucking means it. For him this is the most important set of the year, not just because we’re here, or Global Underground are here, but because Bucharest is becoming like a spiritual home and he really cares about putting on the best show for a crowd he loves. No wonder he’s upset.
Not that he has anything to worry about as it comes to, the hip crowd go at with abandon, even though the mix of dirty breakbeat and ruff house is hardly mainstream, even in the UK. For some reason it seems a little shocking to hear Lavelle play so eclectic – most of his peer DJs keep very ‘pure’. But James is braver in his selection, and the tech house breaks are joined by a heavy rock grind and some truly off the wall selections. Can you imagine Lee Burridge or the Plump DJs throwing in Lennon’s ‘Merry Xmas (War Is Over)’ in the middle – yes, middle – of a set? Or kicking off with Metallica?
“Those tech house and breaks records can sound really great in a club like DC10,” he explains, “but you’ve got to take people away and bring them back and mess with them, ‘cos it’s fun. It’s not everybody’s bag, but it’s what I do. I’m not pretending to be Sasha. I don’t do ten minute mixing. It’s not seemless, it’s broken.”
It all comes from a varied DJing history that started off at the legendary That’s How It Is with Giles Peterson. Mixing up Portishead, DJ Shadow and Roni Size with old funk and jazz records, Lavelle played dark to Peterson’s lighter side.
“It was a real yin/yang thing,” James recalls “It was good but I never felt like I had my own space, where as with Dusted at the Blue Note things were more rooted in contemporary music.”
The Blue Note was a huge influence on the music policy of Friday nights at Fabric and James was offered a residency, which has given him the chance to grow as a DJ.
“I feel like I’ve found my own sound,” he says. “I don’t feel like I’m on the heels of anyone. At Bar Rumba I was surrounded by the people who were my influences, now I feel like I can do my own thing.”
And as he shoes the bouncers off the stage at Studio Martin so that the crowd can dance up there with him, James Lavelle has certainly found his own space – one he’s willing to share.
Originally published in DJmag, 2004
