From little things big things grow, or so the saying goes… With humble beginnings in 1988 playing to 200 punters crammed into a Glasgow nightclub, to rocking thousands at the biggest festivals around the globe (including Glastonbury, T in the Park and Dance Valley), Scottish duo Slam have developed into a highly respected force in the electronic music world. Made up of Stuart McMillan and Orde Meikle, the pair are famed for their five-hour sets across four decks in Room 2 at London’s Fabric nightclub, leading to the inevitable request that they mix an installment in the successful Fabric CD series. Luckily for Australian audiences the experience won’t be restricted only to your stereo, as the duo prepare to embark on their first tour down under since the turn of the millennium as part of the traveling circus known as Two Tribes. ITM’s i_have_ADD spoke with Stuart.
With previous mix albums selling upwards of 20,000 copies around the world, it is fair to say that Slam’s chapter in the Fabric series has been hotly anticipated. The boys agree that it is their best and most concise mix to date, “We got together and decided what we were going to put on it, which is the way we always do it – get the records together and see what fits. I think the difference between this mix and past ones we’ve done is that this is a single CD, so we’ve tried to capture what we do at Fabric in five house onto one CD! Starting a bit housier but the main focus being on techno.”
After the great success of past releases in the Fabric series I was interested to hear if Stuart felt any pressure when compiling their mix, “Obviously it’s a great honor to be involved with Fabric, it’s a great club, so the pressure was on to get the right tunes there. We’ve got a couple of exclusive tunes on there, one from Envoy (Night Moves) which is a cover of an old house record, and guys like Billy Nasty from Tortured sent us some exclusives, so it’s good to have the up front stuff.”
Having experience across various fields of interest with the music industry (as DJs, producers, promoters and label owners), Slam’s insight into the commercialism of dance music is naturally somewhat interesting. With the UK press loudly proclaiming the ‘death of dance music’, Stuart’s opinion provides a stark contrast, “From my point of view there are certain people who took it to a level where they couldn’t climb any higher, and when you get to the top of the ladder the only way to move is by coming back down. Most of the bad press has come from places like Cream closing, but places a bit different like Fabric are really striving at the moment, so we don’t see a problem!”
With their five-hour sets ordinarily covering a wide scale of music, from the deep end of house, to house and techno, I was keen to hear where Stuart saw the duo fitting in on the dance music spectrum, “We’ve always been into our house music as much as we’re into techno. I think when we talk about house it still has that techno feel to it, that electronic element. Ideally in a night we will do both, beginning deep and building up. However some nights we’ll just get straight into it, it really depends, if the club is already at 135bpm then that’s what we’ll continue at. That’s the beauty of playing at places like Fabric, we can generally manipulate the set because we start earlier and take everyone on a bit of a journey doing the five-hour thing.”
With the pair working across four decks so effectively I was also interested to hear how planned or structured their sets are, “It’s spontaneous, Orde and I are quite connected as DJs, we play really well together. We’ve been doing it for so long and I really don’t think there’s anyone else I could do it with! Normally our sets involve us on four decks and two CD decks, we burn a lot of our own material to play.”
It seems Stuart and Orde are just as excited as their local fans at the prospect of touring Australia for the first time in over three years. And with the lovable quirks of the festival time cutting the Slam experience down from its full five-hour splendor, I was keen to hear how the pair would approach the shorter set length, “Like we do at any other festival really. Shorter sets are a completely different ball game; we’d probably try and condense what we do in the last three house of a club set down, so we’ll probably go with a harder sound!”
Slam are touring with Two Tribes, dates are:
Sydney Show Grounds, March 1
Perth, The Globe, Metro City, March 2
Melbourne, Rod Laver Arena March 9
