The success of the global downtempo or ‘chill-out’ genre has spawned many new interpretations of what has become the modern day ‘classical’ music; featuring beautiful production and sounds that are soft on the years, in recent years it’s become nearly a parody of itself because of all the imitators flooding the market. But of course, every genre has it’s masters and innovators – in the is case, we look to Steve Miller who’s been producing under the alias of Afterlife over the past decade.
Afterlife broke onto the scene by delivering an unexpected chillout set at the Glastonbury Festival in 2000. This led to him playing gigs at Kumhara, Pacha Playa and Cafe Del Mar’s 20th anniversary all in the same year. Since then he has had his music published on the infamous Café Del Mar chillout CDs and worked with artists including Jose Padilla and Chris Coco amongst others. The latest Afterlife album is called Speck of Gold, and it’s been hailed as chillout CD of the year. With the Ibiza season in full swing, ITM talks to Afterlife about the state his new album, the state of chillout music and about that famous gig in Glastonbury.
So now that the album has been out for a few months, what sort of response have you had from your audience and reviewers?
The record label reports have delivered a very positive reaction, and personally I have received many emails from fans who are very happy the album is in the shops.
What motivated you to produce this album the way you did? What were the key factors in shaping the final result? How do you feel about it now?
The title track Speck of Gold was started a week after the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers in response to my deep sadness, I sent the track to Cathy Battistessa who echoed my sentiments and surely everyone else’s. It was the first track I started for the album and the last to finish as I rewrote the music 3 times! My profile had got pretty high after I remixed Another Chance by Roger Sanchez which went to #1 in the UK charts and I started getting calls from well known artists who wanted to collaborate and the album just grew from there. I think the album reflects the period of uncertainty and hope that many artists were feeling, with a lot of strong songs and great vocal performances.
Take us back to Glastonbury Festival in 2000 – from all reports, the crowd was not expecting a chill set… yet this is regarded by many as a seminal event in your career and really the platform from which you went forward. What was it like? Do you still remember it? Was it a defining moment in your career?
We were scheduled to do a Hed Kandi ‘chill’ special in The Glade from midnight to 4am. but because of new noise restrictions we were rescheduled for midday. I played a DJ set, first gently waking up the crowd before upping the tempo with One of These Days from the Pink Floyd album Meddle – I found a joystick which controlled the main system’s surround sound panning and had great time swirling the sound around The Glade before Rachel Lloyd took to the stage. It was her first gig and she completely won them over half way through the first song. That’s what I love about Glastonbury, people are very open-minded because there is such a wide range of music available. Album sales shot up in the following 3 months so I guess it was a defining moment.
Since then you have played at some of the most highly regarded venues in the world. What are your favourite venues? Why? Where else would you still like to play?
Café del Mar, Café Mambo and The White Room at The Supperclub in Amsterdam are my favourites. My sets are very eclectic so I like to play at places where people are open minded, preferably out doors in the sun and by the sea. I’d love to play the Stella Polaris festival in Denmark where 15,000 people and there kids go to chill every year, it has a massive high quality sound system, lots of new music and lovely people running the show.
You have also collaborated with (or had your music remixed by) some of the best known artists in electronic music today. Which ones you really enjoy working with? Why?
I have enjoyed working with every single one of them equally as I only work with people I respect professionally and like as friends, I think it’s essential to have a fun time in the studio and feel totally relaxed, with no preconceived ideas as to how the track will turn out. If I have to name one person I would say Chris Coco as we share a similar sense of humour and each track we make is very individual.
The chill genre has grown exponentially over the past decade. What are your perspectives on its growth since the late 90s? Has the Ministry of Sound been that importance in driving its popularity? Where is it headed in the future? Is ‘chill’ still the right word?
Like every new genre it went through several stages. I believe Jose Padilla started it
with his Café del Mar compilations which encouraged people like me who had been writing this sort of music for years but could not find a market for it. Jose brought it to people’s attention quite naturally DJing at Café del Mar where tourists wanted to buy his mix tapes. As soon as the CDM compilations started to sell worldwide every record label jumped on the bandwagon exploiting the back catalogues with ‘lifestyle’ concepts such as ‘classical chill’, ‘lover’s chill’ etc etc. There were so many copy cat compilations and all these little studios churning out dreary new age ‘chillout by numbers’ stuff all wanting a piece of the action, that it caused a backlash in the UK and quite rightly so. People got fed up with Café Buddha Ibiza Chill soundalikes. Chill became “the C word that cannot be mentioned.” Ker-ching!
Now most of those people have gone off to try and make electro house! Hed Kandi and Ministry of Sound have kept releasing more cutting edge chill because real chillout has the same vibe as a good house track, but with a different beat or none at all, as well as being a mixing pot of musical styles worldwide. The concept of chill still works, ‘chill’ is just a word like ‘ambient’ was in the early 1900s when Debussy and Eric Satie gave concerts, they instructed the audience to talk to each other throughout the concert rather than watch the stage as they believe that good music stimulate good conversation. Classical, jazz, folk, even some Rock songs fall into the chill bracket.
It’s funny, these days as club tracks become more ‘banging’ some house tracks that would have packed a main room 10 years ago are now deemed to be chill or chill house so from that point of view the market can only expand. Recently the chill word seems to be acceptable again as well as ‘downtempo’, ‘leftfield’, ‘lounge’ and ‘ambient’, it just depends on which magazine you read although personally I think there is a difference… What is for sure is that most people hit 25 and stop clubbing, settle down with a young family but still want to hear good contemporary music whatever it’s called so the market is obviously growing for timeless music.
With your most recent album behind you, what projects are you working on at the moment?
Several. A new Afterlife album is almost there and should be ready for 2009. I have a project with ex Café Mambo resident Pete Gooding called No Logo and we have just released a single called Dark Star on Urban Torque with remixes including a killer from Francois Dubois. The original is old school breakbeat/rave which some reviewers have called ‘cocktail sunset’ while some well known DJs play it at peak time in the main room! There will also be an album.
I have a collaboration with Chris Coco under the name Infamy and we work together when he has the time off from rehearsing and gigging his amazing band City Reverb. Afterlife has a single coming out on Defected Records on 4th August called Let It Go featuring Cathy Batistessa with remixes from Groove Assassin, Charles Webster and Jovonn. I have just remixed Eric Prydz’s Pjanoo for Ministry of Sound and J Majyk & Wickaman’s Crazy World for Hed Kandi.
Composing in the studio or playing live – what do you prefer and why?
They are totally different experiences. Playing live gives you instant audience feedback which is a massive buzz and can get addictive, you get to meet lots of new interesting people and hear fresh new music which is very inspiring to a music junky like me, although air travel these days is not so much fun as it used to be and I’m not sure about jetting thousands of miles just to play records…
In the studio I have several modes – writing, engineering, production and mastering. All require different mindsets and I never stop learning new techniques in the pursuit of making better sounding records. My studio is at home these days so I don’t have to rush a track and I think that helps a lot. When I feel like a holiday I go somewhere hot where a friend with a serious home studio just happens to live and we get some work done while I’m relaxing. I moved to Cornwall 3 years ago and the same thing happens here, mates come down from London for a week, we go to the beach, go sailing and actually still seem to get more work done than if we took it more seriously.
Afterlife’s Speck of Gold is out now through One World Music, check out the ITM review.
