Booka Shade Interview
An in-depth Q&A session with the remarkably talented twosome.
Booka Shade are one of the most innovative acts in electronic music right now. Whether it be with their own productions, their electrifying live show, or their hit-machine record label Get Physical co-run with M.A.N.D.Y. and DJ T, Booka Shade are constantly pushing boundaries. With their new album ‘The Sun and the Neon Light’ almost ready to drop, we caught up with one half of the group Arno, for an interview about the work that went into the new Booka Shade LP, life at Get Physical and his all time favourite drummers…
Endclub.com: Hi Arno, how are you?
Booka Shade: I’m very good thanks, the sun is shining and everything’s cool…it’s spring!
‘Movements’ was one of the most important electronic albums of the last few years, and was showered with praise from all corners. How on earth do you go about following that up with your new album ‘The Sun and the Neon Light’?
Well, when we started the production of the new album, which was 15 months ago during the ‘Movements’ tour, we knew very quickly that we didn’t want to come up with a ‘Movements 2’, because it would have been extremely boring for us. If we’d have talked to a major record company, the first thing they’d have said would be “do Movements 2, and sell even more of the same stuff.” But it’s not the right way to go for us, because artistically it wouldn’t be challenging at all. When we came up with, say, ‘Body Language’ it sounded very different to anything that was out there on the dancefloor at that time, and we were always good when we were different to anybody else. It’s always good to be unique, so we thought let’s go the harder way. We wanted to experiment with song structures and vocals because we had had very good feedback on our track ‘Numbers’, which was the single from the ‘DJ Kicks’ compilation, we heard it was played a lot on the campus radio in North America, on national radio in Australia, so we had a good feeling about the vocals. We were looking for a different sound in our production, we didn’t want to use the riff sound that we had in ‘In White Rooms’ and ‘Mandarine Girl’, we were looking for a different language in music, that’s why we had the orchestra for example on two of the songs, a lot of acoustic percussion, guitars, bass…
The album as a whole is a lot more live sounding…
Yes, a lot more live sounding, we wanted an album that presented us as a band, so that when people hear it they can say “yeah, I can imagine what this would sound like on stage when they play live”, which was also very important to us.
So does this mean an expansion of the live show, or will it remain just the two of you?
Yes, it’s still going to be the two of us, the setup will be basically the same, although a little bit bigger, including some more instruments and a bigger visual element; all the visuals that run in sync with the music are produced in a new way. We discussed for a long time whether we should bring in featured artists, but in the end we decided against it because we knew we’d be on a long tour again, and what do you do when you have these featured artists? You can’t take them with you because they’re too busy or whatever, so you have to take a session singer instead, which is obviously never as good as the original. So we decided instead to rely on our voices, it comes naturally – we don’t want to compete with any Joe Cocker soulful vocal – it is an 80s vocal, but it fits well with the overall concept of the music, and that was important for us.
You will be touring this live show all over the world this summer. Do you change the show at all to accommodate the different audiences you play to, say from Glastonbury one day to The Arches in Glasgow the next?
Well what we always try to do is never keep the same show for a year like many rock bands do – they’ll often stick to the same set list every night. We have some of the DJ culture within us, so we change the set list and the arrangements every couple of weeks – sometimes from show to show even, every time something new comes to our mind. We started the tour last week in the States; we set up the equipment during the day in the hotel room and changed the set list to have it perfected specifically for Coachella. We do this all the time, to keep it interesting for the people, but also to keep it interesting for ourselves, we get bored very easily, and we always want something new to happen. It’s really nice to sometimes go on stage and not know exactly what song you’re going to play next. As a performer you have to give people the feeling – and this is what I adore about bands like U2 who play hundreds of shows – that it’s the first time you’ve played that song, but it’s even better if it actually is the first time you’ve played the song!
Are there any rock & roll stories of bad behaviour you can share from your years of touring?
This may be quite boring to hear, but the more people you have around you – and our crew is getting bigger – the less rock & roll you become! I try to switch the rock & roll side to the week, and stay relatively sober at the weekend. I remember well when we first started out it was all about the fun, sometimes when we were with the M.A.N.D.Y. guys we were so drunk we could hardly reach out for the keyboards, but all this becomes relative when you look to the side of the stage and you see your tour manager there shaking his head, and you’ve got a bunch of people standing in the hotel lobby at 8am in the morning waiting to take you to the airport, you don’t want to have come straight from the after-party completely smashed. I think it’s also a case of we’re at an age where it’s important that we are looking after our health, but we still like a drink from time to time.
You’ve warmed up for Depeche Mode before – are there any other musical legends you’d like to perform with?
Well Depeche Mode are certainly the highlight for us, they are a band who were very influential for us. I saw my first Depeche Mode show in 1983 and I have been a big fan ever since. Opening for them, and doing remixes for them was very important for us. We had an offer once to play with Björk, but it didn’t work out for timing reasons. Björk is an artist that I very much respect, I saw her on her last tour, and once I also saw a collection of the best performances from Glastonbury 2007, and of all the bands that were there the one that stood out was her. She is amazing and somebody I would love to perform with.
In a similar way to Richie Hawtin’s Minus label, your label Get Physical always gives the impression of being a big happy family run by a bunch of mates. Is that the case?
It is a family in every sense: in the good sense and the bad sense. We have a lot of fights. But the good thing is that at the end of the day you stick together, like a real family. You have all these different opinions, you discuss things for months and months, and sometimes it’s not easy for the people around us. For the last year and a half it’s been difficult because everybody has been doing his own thing and we don’t see each other sometimes for months. At the end of the year, M.A.N.D.Y. and DJ T always go to Australia and New Zealand for a little bit of DJing and for their holidays, and that was when we were finishing the album, so at that time we didn’t have any contact. But now it’s getting better, because for Walter and myself psychologically now the album is finished, a lot of the pressure is going away, and now that the tour has started we can relax a bit. We had a lot of tension around the studio for a couple of months with the production of the album, there was a lot of pain and a lot of blood involved, but now it’s getting better and we’re having a good time with everybody else.
How do you divide the roles at the label?
It was always that we Booka Shade were responsible for a lot of the productions, but now we’re in a lucky position where we have loads of really great artists who give us their music to release. People like Elektrochemie, or Jona from Belgium, the Nôze guys from France, or Raz Ohara the German singer, we’re very happy with all the artists we have around us. DJ T and the M.A.N.D.Y. guys mainly look after the A&R, they select the 12 inches that come out, whereas with the albums we all decide together what we’re going to release.
So they keep more in touch with the underground side of things…
Yeah, because they are DJs, they know what is going on in the clubs, whereas for Walter and myself it’s difficult because we don’t listen to other people’s music that much. We listen to a lot of electronic music, slower stuff, but not a lot of club music; we don’t really listen to stuff like that at home.
So what other kinds of music do you listen to? Your DJ Kicks compilation was pretty eclectic…
Well recently I’ve been listening to a lot of reggae. I went to the Caribbean for a holiday and all of a sudden it made so much sense to listen to this music. I really love the reggae rhythms, they’re very free and very alive. As a drummer you can really work a lot with those rhythms, and I understand why Stuart Copeland (drummer with The Police) took so much inspiration from these rhythms, he is the best drummer in the world. The second best drummer in the world is Lol Tolhurst, the drummer from The Cure, he is the complete opposite of Stuart Copeland, it’s straight beats just like a drum machine.
As a drummer, how do you find playing on electronic drums in comparison to an acoustic, traditional drum kit?
I’m so used to playing with the computers that I don’t mind. Sometimes I get asked the question, “isn’t it hard to play with a computer, having to be so on the beat” but I got used to it. I’d probably now freak out if I had to play with a live band, the timings would change and it would drive me nuts! It’s not difficult for me to play with those computer beats, it’s a lot of fun to have these backing tracks and then provide the colour that brings it to life. I work a lot with delays, echoes and reverbs on the drums and this is what makes the grooves breathe. For the new tour we have special customised controllers which allow me to work even more with the sounds, and Walter has the same thing for the sequencers, so we have a lot more control. We are still in the process of exploring what we can do with all these capabilities, but that is the fun thing.
Can we ever expect a Body Language mix from you guys?
I don’t think so. We discussed this for a while and we decided that the DJ Kicks series is a perfect concept for us because it is more open to producers. The mix we did is a producers’ mix, we are not DJs and we never say we are DJs, we are producers. When we do a DJ mix it will always be something constructed in a positive sense, meaning we can take the possibilities of a studio, layer things and put together songs in different ways. The concept of Body Language is a much more up to date, club orientated mix and this is something we won’t have fun doing, because as I said before, we don’t listen to other people’s music that much. To do a Body Language mix you need to know the latest, most up to date stuff, stuff that is going to be big in three months time, and DJs can do that much better. I have a lot of respect for really good DJs and for the art of DJing, but it’s not something we are so good at. We come up with our ideas, and hopefully will always be able to recognise a hit and judge a good song, but it’s very difficult for us to listen to other people’s songs and from a DJs point of view be able to say “this is going to be working in three months time”.
What are the best and worst things about working with Walter, and what do you think he would say are the best and worst things about working with you?
The best thing about working with Walter, and it’s been twenty-four years, is his creativity, and his musicality. He strives for new things, and always challenges things to the extreme. That is also the negative side though, when I could sometimes kill him haha! But I have such great respect for his musicality; he is the best producer and songwriter I can think of. He would probably say the best thing about me is my consistency in a sense. When we try and push a concept it would normally be me that would make us stick with the concept, because I will say “we know this is right, let’s go our own way”. The way we usually work is he will start working in the studio the morning while I do label work, legal work or an interview or something, then we meet in the afternoon and my fresh perspective helps him, which in turn helps the Booka Shade thing because sometimes you can focus too much on the details but you need to have the general concept also, and I think that’s what I bring. The way that we work together seems to have worked for this many years and there’s a lot of mutual respect. That is what keeps us together.
Published: 12/05/2008
