From his beginnings as a prolific graffiti artist, Richard Sen has moved on to establish himself as a dynamic DJ/producer over the past two decades. Under the alias ‘coma’, Richard Sen got his artistic start ‘bombing’ trains in his native suburb of Wembley, England. Inspired by a family trip to New York city during the height of its graffiti movement, he and a number of friends quickly gained notoriety in the scene. Unfortunately, other graffiti writers were not the only ones interested in his exploits. Sen was arrested twice for his illegal art.

His second arrest coincided with the explosion of acid house in the UK, which he was quickly captivated by. He’s been an avid connoisseur of the leftfield elements of house and techno since then, and in the late 90s began to produce music both as part of the Bronx Dogs and by himself. His work resulted in a slew of singles and remixes for artists as diverse as The Jungle Brothers and The Sugar Hill Gang. More recently he has been working alongside Neil Higgins of Dirty Beatniks fame, in the DC Recordings signed Padded Cell project. The duo released their debut album under the Padded Cell moniker Night Must Fall this year, and it’s a superb combination of dark, rhythmic post punk mixed with psychedelic new disco. Ahead of his Australian tour, ITM talks to Richard Sen about living life in a padded cell.

I guess you started your artistic career as a graffiti artists, when and how did you transition to electronic music?

Basically I started as a graffiti artist, but when the big explosion in dance music came in 1988 in England I stopped listening to the b-boy hip hop vibe and just totally got into house, techno, dance music and the whole European Balearic thing at the time. So I started buying and collecting electronic music in 1988. I didn’t get into the studio until 1997, so it was quite while before I decided to make music. I have been into DJing since the late 80s.

How did Padded Cell come about?

Neil, who is the other half of Padded Cell; we worked together and knew each other for over 10 years now. He had his own little studio when I used to make my music under the outfit Bronx Dogs. Neil helped engineer some of the Bronx Dogs stuff so it was just a natural progression to carry on making music. His studio is called the “Padded Cell” and we did a remix for DC for Big 200 which is Chicken Lips. From around 2003 was the first thing we did as Padded Cell and then it just went from there.

The New York ‘disco not disco’ sound really comes through in Padded Cell to me, was that intentional?

Well it’s a big influence. I collected a lot of those records. We wanted to make dance music and disco is a massive influence. We get all our inspiration from disco records, grooves and breaks but put a bit more of an attitude to it.

You have collaborated with a lot of really cool collaborations on the latest album; I was wondering in particular how you got Dennis Young from Liquid Liquid to work with you on the album?

James at DC recording had previously worked with him. Liquid Liquid was a big influence on us. Dennis was really keen to work with new artists and he liked our Padded Cell stuff because it had that post punk influenced sound. James suggested we do some kind of collaborative because he did some percussion on his projects. It just went from there we had emails, and I went to New York last summer and we met him. We just sent him stuff and he played over a few tracks and we took the stuff that we thought would work well.

So is that how a lot of your music is made sort of by correspondence?

Some of it is done just through friends in London who come in. We will have the idea of what we want, maybe we will be using samples and we want it replayed or redone. So we get friends in to play bass, guitar, keyboard or saxophone. Sometimes they will do what we want; sometimes they will jam along and do their own thing. We rearrange it and chop out the best bits that we like. But then people who are abroad like The Diaphanoids in Italy and Dennis Young and Giallos Flame, we just sent them stuff. They did whatever they felt they wanted to do. then we used what we though was right. With the The Diaphanoids they sent us a lot of vocal stuff that we didn’t like, so we didn’t use everything. We are always going back and forth to these people abroad, a right kind of mix. With Chloe the singer, I knew her and she was London based. We had an idea for a track and she just came in. She did a couple of tracks for us. She was really easy to work with and her voice was really suited to the sound.

I noticed that you collaborated with Time for Action on the Glimmers latest album, how did that collaboration come about?

I have known the Glimmers for ages and they have been a big fan of what I do. They really liked our sound and asked us to remix one of their tracks Time for Action. That was done a couple a years ago and we didn’t realise it would be part of the album. They remixed one of our singles off the album. They are like minded people.

What is the Padded Cell live set up like and is their any plans for a Padded Cell Australia tour?

Well the live isn’t very live, its just the laptop, keyboard, controller and the two of us. It’s just a difference option to play our music. It’s all our own music but kind of presented as a DJ set. 45 minutes of all our music with us controlling things with different parts going in and out. it’s too much work and commitment to get a band together to do what we do. I’m a DJ but people seem to want something to look at I don’t know why, haha. With Padded Cell they want to see people play but we aren’t musicians, we are just producers. We just get other musicians in to create the sounds we want. Regarding coming to Australia again its about logistics and money. It costs a lot to pay for a tour: costs of flights, hotels and a decent fee. That’s the reason I’m just coming out to DJ.

Your album is so far one of my favourite 2008 albums. What was the process of making a dance music album? I noticed you had to shorten a number of the tracks to make it more of an album and rather than just singles.

Yeah exactly, most of the tracks are shortened down so they are easier to listen to. Dance music is what we do, our music is for clubs. But because there’s the live element a lot of the kind of indie kids or people that aren’t into dance music seems to like it because of the post punk influence. Also we got a big influence from soundscapes and early eighties horror films. John Carpenter, Goblin people like that. It kind of fits in the whole DC (aesthetic). They are steering the sound, what they want the final product to be. DC have a big part to play in what its going to sound like. Hopefully it crosses all the boundaries of the dance people with a bit of a soundtrack thing to it so that you can listen to at home.

From listening to a number of your DJ mixes, I really enjoyed them especially the Beats in Space ones. How would you describe your DJing style to some unfamiliar with it?

I guess leftfield music that you probably have never heard before. Depends where I am playing, at a big mainstream club you are definitely going to hear house and techno but still quite deep. But if its a smaller place you can hear right across the board from funky spaced out rock, new wave, disco, new disco and old electro tracks. I don’t know; deep, dark and funky.

Padded Cell’s Night Must Fall is out now through Creative Vibes. Catch Richard Sen on tour this November…

Nov 7th – La Di Da, Melbourne
Nov 8th – Sugar, Adelaide
Nov 14th – Lick It at The Empire, Brisbane
Nov 15th – Lost Baggage at The Cross, Sydney