Chicago’s Gene Farris is a man of subtle contradictions.

On the decks the American mixes up tough and taut disco grooves and jackin’ tech-house yet, away from the club environment, the man himself is genial and laid-back with an instantaneous sense of humour. There was virtually no press for Gene’s first two Australian tours, but this time he could hardly contain his enthusiasm when it came to conducting press interviews. “For a while I just didn’t really have much to talk about,” Gene laughs as he chills outside his house, spliff in hand, “but now that I got my own company and I have a few more releases coming out and, hopefully, I’ll have a tour next year and I’m coming down there, I guess there’s a few things I can possibly have to say that may be interesting to people Down Under.”

While the recent US terrorists attacks have rocked even the hedonistic world of dance music – with DJs like Frankie Knuckles and David Morales apparently vowing not to fly – Farris is again more philosophical. “Well, I haven’t even really spoken to anybody about it so much, other than my girlfriend and a few of my close friends, but it was a tragedy, you know, and I really feel bad for the people out there and their families and everything – I pray for them all and I wish them the best. It’s just a global tragedy… But we’re Americans, we’ll move on, we’ll be fine, we’ll be fine. We’ve bounced back from other things before. This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to us, but we’ll definitely bounce back again, we’ll be fine – even though our President is a little crazy (laughs), we’ve all gotta stand by under him right now and just be a country unit.”

From Chicago’s rough and tumble Southside, Farris has been DJing since 12 when he acquired his first pair of turntables – the kid was still compelled to improvise since he had no mixer. Gene would spin funk, soul, disco and the occasional New Wave classic. Eventually Gene started hustling his mixtapes to Chi-town’s Gramophone record store and playing block parties and, by his late teens, was filling the support slot for Ron Hardy and Ron Carroll at the AKA Club. Farris inevitably made his first forays into production, and, encouraged by Ron Trent, shopped his early efforts to Cajmere (aka Curtis Jones), who released ‘Farris Wheel EP’ on Relief, an offshoot of Cajual, in 1994.

Gene belongs to Chicago’s Second Wave of producers – along with Boo Williams and Glenn Underground – and, as with his homeboy Derrick Carter, his music spans the spectrum of house and techno. Gene played Kevin Saunderson’s KMS afterparty in Detroit during this year’s Detroit Electronic Music Festival alongside techno icons Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson and Herdest Cummings. The Mid-Western scenes of Chicago and Detroit – the homes of house and techno, respectively – have always been relatively fluid, competing more with New York than each other. “As far as Detroit goes, we share the lake, they’re just over the other side of the lake, and we never have a rivalry with Detroit at all – they’re kinda like cousins to us, ‘cause they’re just right on the other side of the water,” says Gene. “All of the producers in Chicago and Detroit have a mutual respect for one another – maybe that’s the thing, it seems like a friendly DJ rivalry. But even back in the day when Derrick May was doing his stuff early – the early things, right when it began – he was doing parties with a lot of the Chicago legends – like Lil’ Louis and Pierre and different people like that.” In fact, Detroit house types Alton Miller and Theo Parrish hailed from the Windy City originally, with Gene and Theo attending the same grade school. “We’ve known each other since the fifth grade, so we go way, way back,” Gene reveals. “He’s like almost a brother to me – he knows my mom, I know his mom, I know his family.”

Since those early days Farris has disseminated his material through a host of international labels – among them Germany’s Force Inc, which issued his first two LPs Fruity Green and Planet House. Last year Farris delivered his most definitive album – This Is My Religion – via the Scottish label Soma, home to Slam. Gene calls Soma “family”. He had met Soma’s label manager, Richard Brown, three years before at Glasgow’s Sub Club and subsequently put out the singles ‘A Place 4 Me’ and ‘Mainline Disco’ on Soma. This Is My Religion traverses Farris’ roots in disco, hip-hop, techno and deep house.

As it happens, Gene, who as well as disco and house digs acid jazz (“Jamiroquai-type sounding things”), is in the midst of recording a new single for Soma ahead of a follow-up LP – which, he imagines, will be even more eclectic than Religion. “The next album is gonna be a little bit more live-influenced. I’m gonna have more live bass and different things involved, just bigger sounds, better production – I think that’s a better way to say it. It’s not that the [last] album was not produced properly, but I think in order to hit a wider market you have to do a little bit bigger production, and it’s fine, I have no problem doing that.”

Today Gene has his own “disco-based” label Farris Wheel Recordings through which he hopes to distribute “easy, fun music”. “It can be very serious and very well produced, but still just fun,” he points out. Gene has lined up artists such as Boo Williams, Glenn Underground and DJ Rasoul for recordings, and is developing a deep house imprint. Lately Farris has brought out a mix-CD in the Booked series with tracks by Ian Pooley, Miguel “Migs” and Derrick Carter. He will compile another on Farris Wheel in the New Year.

Gene is undertaking his third visit to these shores – he last DJed in Melbourne at Seven the night after the New Millennium Eve with Derrick Carter and newcomer DJ Dayhota from Chicago’s Superjane DJ collective. “I love Australia – I’ll just start off saying that,” he enthuses, “not only because of the beauty of the country itself and the cities and everything – Sydney is a very beautiful city, and Melbourne is as well – and the beautiful weather. I love it. I think the people are great, and being African-American is also really cool out there (laughs) because there’s not many Black people around, so people stop and look at you, like, ‘Hey, who the heck is that?... He’s gotta be from the States and be a basketball player or somethin’’ – ‘cause I’m really tall, so people have a second if they look at me, so I love that, too. Everybody always treats me really warm and really well there, I’ve never had any bad experiences in Australia ever, I only have good things to say. The parties are really good, people have good energy, they’re really up for it all the time and any fan of Derrick Carter is a fan of mine as well, ‘cause we’re all from the same tree. So anytime I went out there, even when I wasn’t DJing, I was watching Derrick play, people were going crazy.”

Gene Farris plays Seven’s Family in Melbourne this Saturday.