Layo interviews Carl Craig

The techno pioneer answers questions ahead of his album launch here at The End…

If you’re reading this interview, chances are you’re fairly well versed on Carl Craig’s contribution to techno, so we’ll spare you too much hyperbole. For the uninitiated though, he was part of the second wave of Detroit techno producers, and a key component of the sound’s development. Throughout his two decade career he has been never less than innovative and an inspiration to artists across the entire spectrum of electronic music. With the launch of his latest mix album, 'Sessions' approaching, we asked Layo if he had anything to ask Carl, and he had plenty of questions...

Layo: In the past couple of years you have returned with key music aimed very much at the dancefloor. Was this a conscious choice or did you just feel reconnected with that style of production after exploring broader fields of electronic music?

Carl Craig: I’ve never gone anywhere! No, I felt reconnected, definitely – it’s always good to take a vacation from yourself, or what people might know your music as. Those explorations in jazz or classical give you ideas for the dancefloor, for a fresh new beginning. The mix that really got me feeling cool about doing it all again was ‘Angola’, the Cesaria Evora remix.

Is Detroit still home, and does the city still exert a strong influence? Or is it more of a global influence for you now?

I still live in Detroit, right in the centre of downtown, so I get a bit of normal Detroit as well as the ghetto side, and those experiences are great for me. My office is ten minutes away, and round the block is a huge old factory with the windows knocked out, it looks like its going to fall down any minute now, and those ruins of Detroit are as special to me as the ruins of Rome or Athens; The Parthenon or The Acropolis. So that is important for my vibe, and it’s good too because it’s not very expensive, I don’t have to make music to pay the rent like I would if I was living in New York, London or Paris; I just make music because I love it. Detroit has changed very slowly – it has a long way to go before it’s a totally new city. Some people come back after ten years and can see the differences, but for me, being there all my life, I just see the changes very slowly.

I remember first meeting you in 1994 at Mr C’s Watershed studio, I think you were there having been at the Plink Plonk offices. I was recording with Bushwacka! in one of my earliest sessions, and was terrified that you would hear what I had just written! If you had been in one of your early sessions, who would you have feared walking in and checking it out?

Haha! Anybody! I never really thought of that – I’m really weird about my music anyway, so I try to work in situations where it’s only going to be me or people that are very close to me around – it’s very rare that anybody’s going to walk into my office without me knowing! If there was someone that I would be worried about, it would be maybe Quincy Jones – because he’s like the top of anybody as a producer. I love Trevor Horn, and I love Timbaland, all these guys over the past, but yeah, I think Quincy Jones would be the one to freak me out; he was definitely an influence on me.

Who else do you consider to be your influences?

I’ve been influenced by tons of people. Of course Derrick May is my mentor, he’s the guy who really got me started. I’ve been influenced by Prince, George Clinton, The Beatles, Miles Davis is a huge influence for me. It’s across the board really, any good music that I’ve connected with.

Are you enjoying DJing more these days or do you feel your best artistic expression is in the music you make?

I’m very fortunate in my career because I go back and forth between making music and DJing. When DJing takes up more time I have to fight for the time to do the production, when the DJing gets less I have more time. I’m happy playing music for people and I think DJing is a great chance for me to present music that I’m working on, you know, to see how it works. With DJing, what makes it amazing for me is when I have new material, of my own, or from artists that I know, or just those records that I feel are quite amazing. I can’t necessarily say that I like production more than DJing, or DJing more than production.

Do both still drive you - do you still have the same passion for both?

Passion changes as you get older, you know. I have children, I love spending time with them and seeing what they’re going to do, so I have to share my time between my wife and kids and my mistress, which is music. The passion for my mistress is strong, but I have to find the time – those fleeting moments – getting a kiss in behind a wall while the family is in the other room – that’s how it is with me and music.

Like a forbidden fruit?

Yeah – and for some people it is – depends on who’s your wife!

You have remixed a real cross section of artists, what do you look for in a track to decide whether or not to take on the remix?

I try to find something that I’m interested in – so if it’s not the song, it’s got to be an idea in the song, or some sounds that are inspirational. Something has to really stand out at me, and say to me “I can do it” otherwise it’s going to be hell to try to finish it. The two things I have problems with are picking the songs for the remix, because I always pick songs I love, and then it raises the bar for me to make it as what I feel is as good as, if not better than, the original. And the other is when there’s nothing in the song that I feel as though I can use. I try to stay away from the money remixes.

Do you approach remixes through existing relationships that you have with people, or take the more ‘Mark Ronson approach’ of finding talented artists or undiscovered talent to work with?

Well Mark Ronson’s got a good eye for that kind of thing – my eye is more for finding things that I love and that I want to cultivate, instead of trying to find an artist to put out there. Maybe one day I’ll know how to do that, but right now I don’t.

Your new compilation for !K7 is a mix, but made up of your remixes - so a combination of your artistic expressions. Doing a tracklisting for a compilation is often tricky but this approach kind of circumvents that problem - was that your intention?

No, that wasn’t the intention – it’s still tricky because sometimes people don’t let you use the remixes! There are some remixes that I wanted to be able to use, and it wasn’t possible, one way or another. Putting compilations together is extremely tricky – the legalities of it, the creativity of it, what you like versus what people want to hear, but it wasn’t a conscious effort to try and make it an easy compilation to put together – it was a conscious effort to make it represent me.

I loved ‘The Detroit Experiment’, any chance of a Part Two?

I would love to see that happen. Partly a Part Two is the new Tribe album that I produced, which is Marcus Belgrave who was on ‘The Detroit Experiment’, plus Wendell Harrison, Doug Hammond and Phil Ranelin. That’s a nice project – it’s their own material, whereas with ‘The Detroit Experiment’, a lot of it was versions that we did of existing tracks by other writers.

I have always heard conflicting stories of your part in ‘Strings of Life’ - what is the actual truth?

Well I had absolutely zero to do with the original ‘Strings of Life’. ‘Strings of Life ‘89’ was the version that I worked on, and it was basically a version that we did at the Town and Country club when we opened for Inner City back in 1989. We took it to the studio, recorded it, and it became what it became…

They’re equally beautiful…

Yeah, I love the original more though!

We at The End are really excited about the idea of putting you together with Gilles Peterson as we feel you share a great love of similar music and have a long working history, but not so much a shared DJ one. Were we onto something?

Yeah definitely – Gilles has been really supportive of my music, and I’ve tried to be equally supportive as possible for him. I think that it’s a great team, we’re going to have a lot of fun, and the crowd is going to have a lot of fun too!

Published: 17/03/2008

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