Ben Watt has just released Buzzin Fly Volume III, as his label celebrates it’s 3rd birthday. We find out just how this man has maintained such a successful career and get his thoughts on the development of the scene and what the future holds.
With a career that spans more than the entire duration of my life it’s hard to know where to start, but I might go back to the first days when you started to get into music. What was it that triggered the realisation that music was your destiny?
[Laughing] well I grew up in a very musical family, my father was a jazz musician and a big band arranger for a British big band in the 50s and 60s so I always had music in my house. I was the youngest of five kids and all my brothers and sisters played music. I think the thing that was the inspiration in the end was probably the post-punk scene of the late 70s and early 80s. That really gave everybody a belief that whatever your talent you could get a deal and a gig and that was the real start of it.
Missing was obviously the biggest hit for Everything But The Girl and probably the track that put you on the mainstream map, not only for EBTG but as a producer in your own right. How does you current position differ from that which you envisaged it would be in the early days with EBTG?
Well I think you just accept that your life is just one of peaks and troughs, it’s very easy to believe when you’re young that it’s just going to be one straight ride to success and it’s always upwards. That’s just not true and I think you have to accept there’ll be points in your career where you’re successful and points when you make rubbish records that nobody wants. I think once you accept that as a state of mind you can almost deal with anything. These days I’ve quite willfully moved away from the mainstream, I think I’d really had enough of it by the end of the 90s. I’d been making music on major labels for 20 years by then, while for the last 5 or 6 years I’ve just really, really enjoyed having less pressure and working back on independent labels again, making music I really want to make, signing people I really respect and just operating in an area of music that has a real depth and a different set of rules and different parameters I guess.
The Lazy Dog CDs were partly responsible for converting me from a trance into house, they are widely regarded as two of the finest collections of house of all time by many people, house heads and non. What happened with the Lazy Dog brand?
I think a few things really. Jay and I had been DJing together very intensely for about 5 years and before that we didn’t really know each other, we just met by chance in a London record shop. I think there were other pressures surrounding our relationship, quite a bit of claustrophobia. We went from DJing on a Sunday afternoon in London to travelling the world, doing long haul flights together and staying in hotels, and I think in the end we just looked at each other and It was just too intense really. I think Jay wanted to spread his wings a bit on his own, I never expected it to be as big as it was. I think we both agreed it was probably best to leave it at the top and move onto something else before we bit chunks out of each other. I’m just proud that we left a mini-mountain in London clubbing history.
Buzzin’ Fly represents a very wide ranging label in that it’s a very unique sound in its diversity, what do you look for when selecting a release on the label?
Well somebody pointed out in a review in DJ Mag only last week of “Lephtee” on the label and they were saying how Buzzin Fly seems to be mostly about my taste more than anything else, and I guess there is some truth in that. I am very interested in keeping the label fresh and to keep signing music that I think is relevant to contemporary dance floors and what DJs are looking to play, but I guess it’s also shot through with my own taste and my own sensibility, things that I’ve always believed should be in music like depth and pathos and swing and the ability to uplift the dancefloor in a kind of deep and meaningful way I guess. That’s really what the ethos of the label is about.
As is the case with many labels, Buzzin Fly held back with a lot of its releases on digital format for various periods of time, what was the reasoning behind doing this?
I think what we did at the beginning was because we were uncertain about the appeal we’d have in a digital format so we held back for a few months and then we tried a couple of releases on a limited digital release to see how popular they’d be and we sold enough numbers to make it financially worthwhile doing it as a long term project. Som from January this year, the entire record collection is released simultaneously and the entire back catalog is available on a range of portals now.
Apart from yourself what other DJs do it for you and why?
If I’m honest with you I haven’t been out and about as much as I used to, partly from pressures of work and partly from pressures of family, so I haven’t actually been out in clubs for the past year. Charles Webster’s DJing I still really like, Dixon from Berlin I think is a real talent. I still like listening to Jerome Syndenham from New York, I think he puts and amazing mixture of house and techno together in his sets that I really respect. Young DJs, I think Justin Martin, although he’s on the label, he’s a real talent, very exciting behind the decks, great fun to watch, a lot of energy in his style. I’m off to Berlin next week to play with Phonique at the weekend club in Berlin which I’m very much looking forward to. It’s certainly going to be an eye opener for me and should be fun playing in that environment, I really rate his productions and he’s a great DJ too.
There was a time when it was said that a good producer didn’t make good DJ and vice versa, but it seems to be the case now that the two skills go hand in hand. Why do you think this change has come about?
I think it’s a pressure of the scene unfortunately. I think I lot of promoters will only book you if you have records out, and respected records at that. The days of just being a great underground DJ have gone now. I think you have to be both a producer and DJ at the same time. Alan Braxe just came over to London for the first time ever to DJ after years of classics and underground French records and I think that’s a sign of the times, that he was forced out of his studio and behind the decks.
Various sounds have come and gone throughout the duration of your career, what ones have offended you most and are there any that are currently around that you find offensive?
Well, I just keep away from stuff I don’t like. I don’t bother to listen to much hard house and trance and all that kind of very popular side of the scene. I just don’t even go near it; it’s very hard to be offended by it when you don’t even bother to listen to it! It’s just a personal taste thing, I don’t really get anything from it but I’ve got nothing against people who are into it. There are only so many hours in the day to even listen to the music you like let alone the stuff you don’t like. I just don’t choose to listen to it!
Many DJs change their chosen styles for various reason; disillusionment, boredom, or frustration at a lack of original material for starts. You are one of the longest standing DJs and players in the world and you’ve remained true to deep house as long as I’ve been aware of you, what is it about this genre that you love so much?
Well I have the belief that pathos is an element on the dancefloor, that is really often overlooked by DJs as a powerful weapon to move people. I think if you can apply pathos to a great beat and a great bassline it’s an amazingly powerful emotion in the communal environment, which is what a dancefloor is. I still maintain that even in this era of electro and minimalism and the German sound, and all these kind of things. I’m always looking for something that has that connection with me in that way. For example, I think it’s really interesting how much Ame have caught people’s imagination in the last few months. I think they’re taking music in a new direction; they’re bringing a new kind of deep techno sound into house which people from all walks of life on the DJ scene are getting into. But it is a really deep emotional sound and I think they’re one of the first people to really bring that into the sort of really minimal techno sound last year. That “Rej” track was really interesting for it’s musicality above anything else, it had the edginess but it also had a kind of depth and musicality to it which I think really flicked switches for people.
The scene in the UK seems to be at saturation point while in other parts of the world it is still pretty much a sub-culture, what are the pros and cons of each scenario for you?
I think the advantages of the English scene is you have to be good, there is so much competition out there, there’s so many club nights, so many records coming out every week, you’ve got to be on your toes, you’ve got to know your shit when you DJ. You’ve got to play the right records, because there’s someone breathing down your neck [ready] to take your job, so that is one of the reasons I like it. Although it’s kind of a pressure, I do like it cos it keeps you motivated. Having said that it’s just as rewarding to go to cities who are currently experiencing the whole kind of house and almost rave scene for the first time that you go out and DJ in places like Bulgaria or Latvia and you’re meeting young crowds who are really having their first experience of long 4, 5 or 6 hours sets of house music and that’s really exciting just because of it’s freshness. So I think you take your audiences as you find them and you should just respond to whatever you see in them really…
It has been said that the whole scene is coming out of it’s honeymoon period with drugs (a move from E to coke is cited as reason for this perception), are you seeing more evidence of that in clubs and how is it affecting the scene?
I think drugs and alcohol and cigarettes are just all part of underground culture and always has been. People will always seek out different drugs to take with their music. I think some of the much heavier dopier trippier drugs like ketamine have had a big influence on the minimal and electro scenes – that real after-hours scene, the 6am to 10am scene. I have really seen that have a big influence the last couple of years. But again it’s different clubs, different music and different drugs. You can find clean clubs, where people just want to smoke some weed, clubs where people take a lot of coke, it’s where you choose to look I think…
What does the future hold for you? What would you like to achieve in the next 10 years that you haven’t yet done?
Having survived a major life-threatening illness 12 or 13 years ago from which I nearly died a few times I don’t ever really try to predict the future anymore. I just sort of take what comes and I’m still of the belief that the future will be laid by people we least expect or come from the direction we least expect and I think if you maintain that as your philosophy you’ll never be disappointed!
Buzzin Fly Vol III, mixed by Ben Watt, is out June 5 through Buzzin Fly/Stomp.
