While James Zabiela will always be the ‘DJ’s DJ’, revered for his technical mastery in the booth, the last few years have seen the man expand his musical boundaries as well. Last month, Zabiela delivered his second volume for Renaissance: The Master Series entitled Life, traversing ambient soundscapes, glitchy electronics and his trademark melodic tech-house. Around the same time, he turned in a special set for BBC’s Essential Mix, striking a balance between the studio mastery of producers like Modeselektor and Extrawelt and his own deft touch.

Following his headlining turn at We Love Sounds and Winter Sound System last year, Zabiela returns to Australia this weekend for club shows. It’s a prospect he readily admits is more creatively exciting, and fans are sure to agree. Before the long haul down under, the certified master gets enthused with inthemix.

Let’s begin with the Essential Mix that you recorded in early April. It has been one of my favourites this year and your inclusion of Tycho tracks was amazing. Your concept for the mix was ‘life on the moon’. What did you mean by this and why did you decide on it?
Oh yeah, Tycho’s great. I dunno, I just wanted to give the mix another dimension, you know, give it a loose theme – kind of like my Renaissance mix. Obviously with the Renaissance mix, you are kind of limited by copyright. But with the Essential Mix, I was free to completely pillage and choose anything I wanted. It was not for retail or anything, just for radio. I just really love that film and I wanted to give that whole mix a sort of soundtrack vibe and the best way to do that is to put the film dialogue in the mix.

You recently released the latest Masters Series mix for Renaissance. You have described the mix as ‘an audio travelogue’. Could you tell us a little bit about the production behind the mix and how you went about collecting your field recordings?
Yeah, I had a little Microtrack II recorder which I just carried on tour with me for a little while. Most of the sounds that were recorded on the renaissance mix are from when I was on tour in South America. So there was a lot of stuff there from Peru where I happened to be for a few days, so from just walking around the city and recording things and checking out different areas of each place. Also in Buenos Aires there are some famous markets called the San Telmo markets, which were just brilliant. But, you know, there is also stuff there from South Hampton and less glamorous places.

You have to spend ages listening through loads and loads of ambient sounds, so it kind of takes a while to find the bits that are interesting. You can’t, sort of, fast forward in case you have missed a split second of what you were looking for. What’s nice about it is that I can listen back to it, having had a period of rest from it, and will be able to remember where I was when I recorded that sound. I nice to have a sort of memoir like that.

I loved that you included a Boards of Canada song in your Renaissance mix. When did you first discover them?
Oh let me think. I think I was like 19. I got into them quite late. I got into them after their Beautiful Place In The Country EP and then I went backwards and got their Music Has The Right To Children album so whenever that came out that was when I sort of discovered them. I remember I was ill one night and I had my head hanging out the window and it was raining on my face and it actually made me feel a bit better and that came on the radio. It was like four in the morning and I remember I said to myself I have to find out who it was. I’ve still got one of their tracks on 12 inch; it’s the blue vinyl copy. It’s great travel music.

You have a residency at Space in Ibiza. For those of us who have never been, can you describe the vibe and the scene, and your night in general?
Umm…it’s…well…it’s kind of like a festival, really. Every week they have such an enormous line up over such a long period of time that it feels like a mini festival and the guys who promote it, We Love started out doing Creamfields here in the UK and then they were doing Homelands. They have taken that mentality and moved into larger clubs really, with many rooms. It’s amazing to play there as a resident, and you get to try out new things and experiment. And then obviously the familiarity gives you a sense of comfort in knowing what you can get away with and what you can’t.

Last year I remember sitting on the deck of this old wretched boat pulling into one of the ports in Northern Colombia. I sat with a friend and we had one of those headphone splitters and we both enjoyed the sun and the sea and it was your music that we spun along too. How would you describe your current sound and what can we expect from the future?
I think the main thing I’ve started to do is treat studio mixes completely differently to club mixes, mainly for myself, really. I listen to so much house music, you know, whilst DJing and whilst sorting out my music for my gigs. In some ways, it’s the last thing I want to listen to when I am just at an airport travelling around. So the music I am putting together now for the commercially mixed CDs and the Essential Mixes is music that I would listen to for pleasure.

Finally, your forthcoming Australian tour has a lot of people very excited. Could you leave us with some parting clues as to what we can expect?
I have no idea, really! I’ve got a 30-hour journey to get to Perth, and a lot of music to go through before I get to Sydney. I kind of need to listen to a shed-load of stuff so I am hoping to find some cool new stuff in there. I’ll play some of the stuff from my Essential Mix and the Renaissance mix, just one or two tracks, you know? I am kind of always trying to stretch my musical legs a little bit.

If it’s a three-hour set, then you always get to go up and down a bit. I’m looking forward to it as opposed to the previous times I’ve been to Australia where they have been festival sets. With those you have thousands of people in front of you and you have to kick the doors down – get in with your biggest festival set for an hour or hour half and get out of there. It’s a totally different way of playing and creatively it’s far more enjoyable to do these longer sets in a more intimate environment, so I am very excited about it!

Renaissance: The Masters Series – James Zabiela, Life is out now. James Zabiela tour dates:

Thur May 20 – Villa, Perth
Fri May 21 – Brown Alley, Melbourne
Sat May 22 – Garden Party @ Chinese Laundry, Sydney
Sun May 23 – Lot 33, Canberra