Fresh from his Interference EP, released earlier in the month on Tresor Records, and ahead of his return to the club in March as support act for Jeff Mills, we sat down with the zealous Glaswegian Vince Watson to discuss his fierce musicality, affinities with Tresor and diverse array of forthcoming projects—but whatever you do, DON’T MENTION DETROIT.   Catch Vince on March 23, as Tresor carries over its 21-year anniversary with the legendary Jeff Mills and host of other club and label stalwarts—including Blake Baxter and Patrice Scott.   DOWNLOAD TRESOR.CAST 003 via iTUNES | via DIRECT DOWNLOAD   Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

VINCE WATSON | ENTERTAINER, EDUCATOR, MUSICIAN
 
 
In an interview with Fabric you mentioned how a laptop DJ isn’t very entertaining to watch—in reference to your hardware show. Is this something you are doing more of now—playing live shows over DJ sets?
 
It’s kind of ironic, but since I decided to use my hardware to play live I’ve started to get a lot of DJ gigs. For me, playing live should be with keyboards and stuff instead of laptops—you couldn’t really call that live I don’t think. I use a laptop on stage, but I use it only for sequencing and putting in certain effects. I play my keyboards and drum machines very live. None of the tracks I play—when I play live—sound exactly the same as they would in the public domain on vinyl or digital because I don’t see the point in it.
 
And when I DJ I pretty much dance when I am behind the turntables, so I am quite energetic. I think that is what it is all about, you’ve got to try and entertain. It’s an entertainment business and if you’re standing on stage and you are not entertaining people, what they’re listening to becomes a bit monotonous.
 
Do you try and “entertain” as you say musically, on your records, as well as through your performances?
 
I put my heart on my sleeve when I make my music. I’m not the kind of person who will sit there and make the same kind of music all the time. I quite like to change every now and again, just to freshen things up and express myself as an artist. The fun that I have making music in the studio is expressed in my music as well.
 
Could you tell us about some of influences and how they might have changed over the years?
 
I was a Hip-Hop freak when I was quite young. I had always been interested in electronic music, like Electric Light Orchestra and John Nichel Jarre. I’m jealous of people like that because they were so musical. I think that was the main thing that really attracted me to them. There were a lot of bands out there making “freaky” music. Kraftwork were making electronic music that I wasn’t really that interested in because it was too simplistic for me. I was looking for something a bit more musical and complex. It took me a long time to actually appreciate what Kraftwork were doing.
 
I think the next obvious step was Chicago and Detroit. When Chicago House was out it was getting really musical and funky and I was really into that kind of groove, whilst Detroit was kind of the softer, more emotional side to Chicago. When Detroit really kicked off, what was coming out of there was unbelievable. Unfortunately it is not the same anymore. I think that time is a bygone era. I actually hate the name Detroit now. I feel like it always attaches you to a relic from the past, and I am always being labelled with this Detroit music tag and it really pisses me off.
 
I was aware, and planned to avoid the issue entirely, but somehow you’ve led yourself onto the subject.
 
I think it is important to make people aware of the fact that I have never been to Detroit and I don’t make Detroit music, I just make music. People will tag it however way they want but as far as I’m concerned you either make good music, or bad music, and you can pick whatever one you like to listen to. If you like something, fine. If you don’t, you don’t. It doesn’t have to be any particular thing. Especially the music I am making at the moment, I’ve got so many different projects on the go that I can’t possibly tag it to anything.
 
Could you tell us about some of the different things you are working on right now?
 
Between Tresor and my own label Bio, that is only the really sort of club material I am putting out at the moment. The rest of it I have been making is something a little bit different. I’ve got an album coming out called Every Soul Needs A Guide on my sub-label Everysoul. The album basically has broken beat in there, jazz, ambient, classical. It is a really artistic album, probably the most artistic I have attempted to do, and I am really happy with it.
 
I also have an ambient album coming out. It’s basically like a movie soundtrack, without any movies attached to it yet.
 
Do you think you will continue using them as your “club” platform?
 
I see no reason why not. It will be difficult for them to shed the moniker of being a hard techno label because of the profile it has had in the past. These things take a long time, so I think just to do two singles with them isn’t really going to work. You’re going to have to do these things more long-term if you want to make a success of it. Tresor is such a massive name, and still is such a massive name, but it is a massive name for one particular type of music, so trying to turn that round over night is going to be impossible.
 
I think it goes back to what you were saying about Detroit being a relic of the past, in a way so is the “Tresor hard techno” sound. So what is happening to house / techno now, and where do you think they’re heading?
 
Music is a cyclical event. Every 25 to 30 years, music comes round in a circle and I think it has been like that for generations. Fashion comes round in a circle; music comes round in a circle. It’s almost like there is a finite amount of ideas that last 25 years, and every 25 years that comes back round. But the new generation doesn’t realise that it is an old thing coming back. There has been so much proliferation of all the different genres that at some point it has got to come back together again. I think it can’t continue to spread out in miniscule formats—that is impossible to keep up. At some point most of them are going to fall by the wayside, and it is all going to come back to being just house music, techno music.
 
Can you tell us about your “Radio Drama” residency at Tresor?
 
We [Vince and Matt—Future Beat Alliance] started last September and have done it for just over a year now. When we first started we were in the basement, which was difficult because the crowd in the basement just want you to play 140bpm hard techno from 12, and if you don’t do that it can be quite a difficult night.
 
Me and Matt alternate between the warm up set and the end set, so if I am warming up I start with ambient music and I play a bit of broken beat, something a little bit deeper. Sometimes I play a bit of classical music in the middle of my set—try and make it as musical as possible, because people want to hear music and when you go to a club. Most clubs these days you’re just hearing bleeps and blobs and effects. To me that’s not music, that’s computer-generated effects. It’s cool, but not for eight hours.
 
You’ve spoken of musicality a number of times. Are you “classically trained” in any instruments?
 
I went to the Royal Academy to study piano but I actually left because I wasn’t being taught anything I didn’t already know at the time, and it was too formal for me. I actually trained myself with keyboards, and I think that is a massive advantage for a long-term career—if you can actually play an instrument. A lot of current DJs who have blasted onto the scene are going to have problems when the music they’re making starts to die and they need some sort of musical skill to get them to the next stage of their career. I think it is very important if you want to be in the music business to learn an instrument because you cannot rely on computer-generated input forever.
 
I think as well if everyone is using the same piece of equipment to create music, the sound invariably becomes homogenous. Whereas if you have personalised equipment, you can put your own identity into the music you produce.
 
Exactly, if you are using the same sounds on a computer—even hardware synthesisers—if you are using the same sounds other people are using it is not lending to your creativity and eventually things will start sounding the same. You get into that rut where you don’t have any ideas, which is a horrible place to be. I’ve been there. Sitting in front of the keyboard, I can play anything I want but I’ve got total brain fart. I can’t do anything at all.
 
Is that where all your records start from, the keyboard?
 
Most of my tracks have come from just playing keyboards with nothing else on, finding something I really like and getting it into the sequencer. Very rarely do I start a track with beats because I think percussion is such an important part of the track, you’ve got to actually listen to the groove properly and then make the beat accordingly, instead of just throwing any sample beat from a CD or someone else’s down. I think you have to really listen to what you are making.
 
Where do you see yourself heading?
 
Over the next ten years I am definitely going towards TV and film. The club side of things will always be there and I will always do it, but it wont be the most important thing in my music career. I don’t want to waste any musical talent I’ve got on a scene that isn’t interested enough in the music. The club scene is very small in terms of stature and progress on a musical world stage—if compared to, say, the jazz and classical music. Film scores are my ultimate aim.
 
Catch Vince on March 23, as Tresor carries over its 21-year anniversary with the legendary Jeff Mills and host of other club and label stalwarts—including Blake Baxter and Patrice Scott.