DJ Format - Part 1

DWG: The first time I became aware of your work was from your track 'Vinyl Overdose' on the 'Return of the DJ Vol. II' compilation. There were a few good tracks on there, but yours really stood out: your use of Tony Tone's 'Flow To The Bone' ("And I love hip-hop like Madonna loves dick") and other more unusual tracks really resonated with me. What had you done before that? You were in the group First Down, right?

Format: Yeah, I was but that was a little bit later actually. First of all, I was just doing my own thing down in Southampton with my mate Ben, messing around making loops and stuff and putting acapellas from other records over the top… that sort of thing. Then I started to try and network a little bit more and I met other people like the Transcript Carriers up in Bristol, that later became Parlour Talk and then Undivided Attention, and I met Mick - Blue Eyes - who had the group Suspekt with Lenny and Woofer. Woofer decided to go his own way and they needed someone to produce and DJ, so me and my mate Ben got involved with doing the production… and I took on the role of DJ.

I joined Suspekt around 1995 and joined First Down… well, there was never a formal joining date really, but I was doing some production and cuts and DJ Hyste was getting into other stuff, so that just naturally happened. That was probably '96 or '97.

Mick - Blue Eyes - was in contact with David Paul at Bomb Hip Hop and it was around the time he was putting together the first 'Return of The DJ' compilation. And Mick said, 'Oh, my DJ does DJ tracks' to him. I was a bit late to get onto the first volume, but Dave liked the track and put it on the second one, which was obviously great for me.

DWG: Did that open many new doors for you? Those first few volumes of that series seemed to have quite a good appreciation globally.

It was a great opportunity and, like you said, it was where many people first heard of me, but things didn't really kick off for me until a few years later. I just started to think that I should do my own 12", as I was enjoying what I was doing with the others, but I wanted to concentrate a bit more on some of my instrumental b-boy stuff and DJ tracks to kinda do my own thing for a minute.

It was doing that first 12" with Bomb ('English Lesson') that was my first solo 12" release and around that time I was also doing a couple of remixes for Mo'Wax and discussing a possible album deal with them that never really materialised, maybe because of the amount of samples I was using – I think they were a little put off. And I could understand that.

DWG: That's funny, because I guess they'd have been through a similar thing with DJ Shadow at that time too?

Yeah - and maybe they'd learnt some lessons. And, to be honest with you, I don't mind admitting that I didn't really have a proper grasp on really putting an album together. I remember my idea being that I wanted to do a glorified mixtape as an album. I wanted to put accapellas from other records over beats that I had recorded to make it work – I didn't really know the rappers who I would've wanted to work over my beats that I had. I wasn't really ready to make an album. I think everything happened for the best.

DWG: You had a track on the 'Art of War' album compilation on Mo'Wax, right?

Yeah, that was the original version of 'Last Bongo In Brighton'. I remixed it for my album, as for me it was an old track by then. It's funny because, in hindsight, the original version is much better to me than the album version.

DWG: So after that period did you start to refine your ideas for your own album?

Format: I went to Canada to go digging and went to Toronto, where I met Aaron Keele from Tune Up Records. I was digging around and someone gave me his card and said 'You should give this guy a call - he's got some great records'. I went round his house, we really hit it off and towards the end of the little buying session we got talking about music - what I was doing and what he was doing - and it turned out that he had 'Return Of The DJ Vol. II' and he knew my song and liked it. And he said that he was just about to put out a record with some local guys, Abdominal and DJ Fase, and that he'd send me a copy as soon as it's ready. That was 'The Vinyl Frontier/Fly Antics' 12". So he sent me a copy of the 12" and as soon as I heard Abdominal I was like, 'Wow… This is the person I've been looking for'.

I got in contact and we hooked up, talking over the phone a lot, sending cassettes of my beats and he would write rhymes… and that's really how I started to focus more on the idea of doing an album.

I had these instrumentals and b-boy things and early versions of things like 'Here Comes The Fuzz' or instrumental versions of things that would develop further later. For example, 'We Know Something' with Chali 2na and Akil – originally, I was trying to do as a song with Ugly Duckling featured on it, but I was finding it hard to track those guys down. I didn't even have an email address at that point! It sounds laughable, but that's actually true! So that just never happened with them. I'd already become friends with Jurassic 5 from a few years before when I was driving them around on tour, so when I bumped into Chali at a music festival I was at the stage of getting stuff together for my album and I told him that I had this track that they might like… and it all happened.

DWG: So this brings up to your first album… and I guess the first single from that was 'Ill Culinary Behaviour'… The album version was different, wasn't it?

Yeah, only very slightly though. I did some extra cuts on the end and stuff… I like to do lots of intricate things with wordplay and things like that. I was never the most technically gifted scratcher: I'd get bored of listening to myself practicing. I would get more satisfaction in putting lots of little sentences together and trying to keep it funky rather than maybe getting a noise and trying to make more noises from just one sound. I felt that around that time, turntablism went one way: there were some incredible scratch DJs taking things to a completely different level but along the way it lost a little bit of the funk.

With my music, I've always tried not to worry about the latest developments too much and just do what I feel is right for me.

DWG: I like your music because, for want of a better term, you've got the more upbeat party tracks in there, but then on another level, you've got all these clever little things going on elsewhere. Like, your instrumental versions of the vocal tracks aren't just the same song minus the lyrics. It's still funky, but there's lots of clever and interesting things happening there too.

I was always inspired by cut-and-paste hip-hop in the '80s and it was something that was dying out a bit in the '90s but it was something that I've always wanted to do. I've grown to realise that it's really appreciated by some of my listeners. I get a lot of people who are into my music and are straight into hip-hop, but I also get a lot of people that aren't usually into hip-hop so much enjoying it as well.

With the new single, 'Mr. DJ', I've got the vocal version with Sureshot that is absolutely going to entertain the rap fans but even if you're not so into rap I've done the B-Boy version where it's literally a different instrumental track: lots of different cuts, lots of different sections of music. There's a difference between an instrumental piece of music and an instrumental version of a rap song. The latter isn't constructed to entertain you for the three minutes you listen to it: it is literally the backing track, minus the vocals. I try to put together instrumentals that are entertaining in their own right.

DWG: One thing I wanted to talk about was that I think you cover a pretty exclusive ground for me: on one hand, you've got these funky, catchy tracks that have a broad appeal - like you said, you don't need to be 'into hip-hop' to enjoy them. But then you've got this really informed and knowledgable side that I guess anyone who doesn't know you personally might not be aware about.

You're the most modest and unassuming guy ever, so you'd never acknowledge that yourself, but that's one of the reasons why you were our first choice to do the ‘Lungbutters’ mix for us.

Format: Haha… It just comes from being passionate about music and especially hip-hop. When I'm putting music together I'm making songs that I want to hear: I wish other people made them! It's not like I set out to tick all these different boxes – "Oh well, my songs will reach more people if I put this sample in" or "I might put people off if I put this sample in". I just do what I think is right for the song and, generally, I think it just appeals to more people because it is kinda different. Even though, to me, I'm just updating an old 'winning formula' that a lot of people did before me, I'm just continuing a tradition that is not being upheld by that many people. Just doing it my way.

DWG: You make it sound so easy!

No, it's not easy! (laughs). That's the thing...

DWG: The concept’s easy, but not the execution.

Yeah, kind of. When you're working with so many samples, it's so hard to actually make things sound like a great finished song rather than a cluttered mess of ideas that you didn't quite execute properly. I learnt that when I first went into the studio in '95 with Suspekt: that was when I did my first two DJ tracks. I learnt very quickly that what I thought would work, because I'd messed around with a few samples at home, was actually very difficult to execute. It can easily end up sounding like a mess.

DWG: So after 'Music For The Mature B-Boy' came out, what did you get up to straight after that?

Format: 2003 was a really busy year: the album came out, we toured with J5, then later that year me and Abdominal went and supported Ugly Duckling on their UK tour. That was cool because they had a similar sort of fanbase and they were great guys to learn from and hang out with. I love their music and I love the way they put on a show: they're so entertaining. They take their music seriously, but they don't take themselves too seriously. So we continued to tour with those guys, learnt from them, had a lot of fun… and Abdominal and I tried to knock about ideas while we were on the road together and later in 2003 we actually did our own series of shows on our own, where we were the headliners. That was the first step to realising 'OK – we've won over these people and we're starting to develop our own fanbase here’.

At that point we only had four songs together, so we'd make it into a half-hour show by having a section of Abdominal freestyling – and he is an exceptional freestyler – and then we'd do a couple of his songs, like 'Fly Antics'. I'd do a half-hour DJ set to keep things moving and warm the crowd up for 30 minutes – I really enjoyed doing that. Those were actually some of my favourite times. I'd just come out, play for half an hour, get people in the mood and just when people were starting to get won over, Abdominal would come out and join me, then we'd do our half-hour show: it was short and sweet, no-one had any expectations and we were hopefully able to give people a pleasant surprise.

Come 2004, I started to put together a new album and obviously Abdominal was going to be a big part of that, but then we thought we could make the live show even more energetic if we had another live MC with Abdominal to bounce off, which is why he recommended D-Sisive. I was going around, doing a lot of DJ gigs, digging all over the place, buying breaks throughout the year, which took me into 2005. I still liked a lot of the stuff of the first album, like 'Vicious Battle Raps' and 'Ill Culinery Behaviour' which were a bit light-hearted, but I felt that I wanted to get a slightly harder edge with the second album. So we did a few tracks like '3 Feet Deep' and 'Separated At Birth' which felt like a natural progression.

DWG: I'd agree with that, but one thing that I've always really liked about your music is that it's never felt 'fake' or forced. having got to know you a bit over the past few years, your music is a really good representation of what you're like as a person: same sense of humour, meticulous attention to detail and full of respect for the style of funky hip-hop that many of us (especially on DWG) still love.

Yeah, it's funny you say that because with something like 'Ugly Brothers', that was me and Abdominal very much being ourselves: silly guys with a good sense of humour. But I would totally understand anyone that said 'that's cheesy – I don't like it', I could totally respect that, but to me, that isn't cheesy. I still stand by that record, because it was fun, whereas 'The Hit Song' I think in hindsight I might like to have done that a little bit differently. For me now, I look back and think it was a little bit too cheesy.

DWG: It's funny you mention that track, because that's one I heard and I liked – but I grew to love it when I saw the video. The video is SO good. I'm not just saying this, but me and the missus will watch that video and bug out to that song every time we watch the on-demand music stuff on our TV. The video made me have a totally new appreciation for that track and it's one of my favourites still.

Was the second album as well received as the first one?

It's hard to say: it sold about half the amount of the first one, but I think that was as much a sign of the times rather than anything else. It felt like we'd built a bigger fanbase than ever. When we did our 'return' shows, we brought D-Sisive over and we did Leeds and Reading festivals, it was just amazing. I was a bit apprehensive and wondered if people would really remember us from a couple of years ago and was anyone going to care that we've come back with some new material – and the reception was amazing. We were playing in this tent that was supposed to be for up-and-coming indie bands, nobody was really in that tent at all, it was really poorly attended – and we thought we were going to be in for a really tough day. This was at Leeds, in particular. And then something like 15-20 minutes before it was our timeslot, it started getting busier.

By the time we got to play, the tent was totally full and overspilling: people had actually come to see us. There were over 2000 people spilling out of this tent at Leeds festival! It was the best feeling. And I'm not someone who enjoys being on the stage either, but that was fine because Abdominal and D-Sisive were able to be the frontmen of the show and they were really entertaining.

DWG: Have you ever been pulled up on any sample issues?

Format: Well, yes and no… Actually maybe we could talk about that.

One of the samples I used in 'We Know Something You Don't Know’ with Chali 2na and Akil, was from a Polish group called Breakout who were one of the biggest blues and rock bands in Poland – I'm a massive fan of their music. And those guys, or somebody who represented the writer of their songs, saw the video on MTV in Poland – it was a great video by Ruben Fleisher. Anyone that didn't know better probably saw that video and thought 'Wow - those guys must be massive and they're making a million dollars out of our music', whereas in reality I'm just this little artist. Sure, I sold a few copies of the record but it was nothing like what I assume they imagined. They came after me for about €300,000 and we tried to explain that the whole album was made for less than €10,000!

When the guys' lawyer initially got in contact with my manager, I held my hands up and said 'Yes, of course I admit that I sampled your song on the chorus of my song' and I offered to give them 30% of the publishing right there: 50% of the publishing is going to belong to the rappers, because they'd written new vocals. I'd only sampled these guys for the chorus, so I felt that was a fair offer. But the lawyer declined, saying that he wasn't a published artist and he wanted a cash settlement. I just didn't ever have the kind of money that they seemed to think I did.

DWG: Regarding the videos, every video of yours has been really really good.

Format: Yeah, I was just really lucky with the guys I got to do them. They were really good ones.

DWG: Have you got any more lined up for this album?

No! (laughs) Those days are gone! If someone wants to make me a video, then great, but I'm putting my own records out now and I can barely afford to do that! It's just not feasible. To be honest, I don't even crave that sort of attention. I'm just happy making music that I'm proud of – and I hope I can sell enough copies to enable me to continue to make more. I'm quite a low-maintenance guy: I've got a shit TV, a shit DVD player… in fact, most things I've got are shit! I've got a great record collection, great family and friends and I'm happy! I don't desire this ridiculous celebrity lifestyle that many others seems to want.

DWG: No, you've never struck me as very materialistic at all…

No, but it's because I'm not… but then I'll go crazy chasing after records. I love a bargain as much as the next man, but sometimes I'll pay a bit extra because I know I have to. Generally speaking, records are my only vice.

DWG: So, after the second album came out… From my perspective, you disappeared a little bit. Then I heard The Simonsound.

Format: After the second album, me, Abdominal and D-Sisive had toured a lot together and – in the nicest possible way – we'd probably had enough of each other! And I do mean that in the nicest possible way: if you spend too much time with anyone in that sort of intense environment, you're going to need to have a break from each other. We all had some different ideas on what we individually wanted to pursue too, so they went off to do their thing and I still wanted to continue my music but I carried on doing a lot of DJ gigs on my own.

The first thing I did after that time was the mix for the Fabric Live series and I've got to tell you that I had massive reservations at first because I thought that Fabric is your classic 'dance' sort of club label and I didn't know if what I do would fit in with what they wanted. I guess I felt a little bit confused as to why they were asking me… and, I have to say, that they were the most professional, passionate and brilliant group of people I've ever worked with. Honestly, they were just brilliant and so supportive. So good at clearing the songs I wanted to use and just really enthusiastic and everything just went really well from that point. Doing that Fabric CD reached so many people that it enabled me to go onto the next phase of my career where I was able to be a DJ again: until that point, I was going to gigs as a DJ and people were turning up disappointed, asking 'Where's Abdominal?'. And I could understand why people were saying that – I certainly didn't take it as an insult – but people assumed that 'DJ Format' automatically meant Abdominal was going to be there as well. And doing the Fabric CD broke that presumption and showcased me as a DJ, playing not just hip-hop but funk and soul and different kinds of music. I can't tell you how many people come up to me and say 'I bought your Fabric mix' and 'I don't normally listen to hip-hop, but I love what you did on that CD and the way you mixed in Nina Simone…' and this and that. And it was the best-selling CD that Fabric had done, at that point.

So that was in 2006. I was still making songs, but I was a bit confused as to which direction I wanted to go in. I wanted to make some rap songs still, but I didn't really want to do anything with Abdominal at that point because I felt people might think, 'Oh right – more Format and Abdominal' in a sort-of accepted but not excited way. Maybe I felt that we'd done some of our best work already and that we needed to have a bit of a break from each other.

I was listening to more '60s rock at that point and funk and jazz and I thought I wanted to make music that I'm inspired by. So I thought I should try making a bit more funk and even rock-based stuff at that point. And it took a lot of experimenting to get me back on my feet again, because a lot of it didn't work out: I made a couple of funk songs where I put together tracks with samples and got a band (Speedometer) to replay certain samples and elaborate certain things and they wrote these great vocals for the tracks. And I was really happy with these tracks and they were really quite good but just not quite as good as I feel they have to be. If I'm honest, if I heard them in a club or in a shop, would I instantly pull my money out or ask the DJ what the record was? And the answer was no. I'd enjoy it, but it was a 7 out of 10 record, not a 10 out of 10 record. And to me, that wasn't good enough. So I kind of scrapped that stuff and then I was asked to do a remix for Dave Cortez ('Happy Soul (With A Hook)') and a mix using the Fania back catalogue, which I really enjoyed and opened me up to yet another audience.

Around this time I started to do some stuff with my friend Simon, which initially was going to be for the next Format album and be a little more experimental and electronic with some Moogs and get creative like that. We quickly realised that is was just too different and that it wasn't going to work as a Format release and that it had to be its own thing, so we became The Simonsound and that was a whole different project. We did a couple of Moog cover versions – Jimmy Castor Bunch's 'It's Just Begun', we did Kraftwerk's 'Tour De France' but with our own twist and called it 'Tour De Mars' and then when we were working on the album, we did a crazy cover version of Bob James's 'Nautilus' that was a crazy space version that sounds like it predates the original somehow!

DWG: How did you meet Simon?

Simon is someone that I've worked with for years and he mixed most of the vocals on my first album. He's been a kind of behind-the-scenes guy: if you read my album credits, he's always been on there as 'Sigh'.

So, basically, we did our Simonsound album which was a great creative outlet for me. Just me and him collaborating on '50s and '60s space music and electronics and kind of library music and music for film and television. It was very much music inspired by that kind of stuff. And all the while I was still trying to get together more songs for my Format album, but I'd really fallen out of love for hip-hop at this point and couldn't think of anyone I really wanted to work with or any MCs that would suit my music perfectly…

I also did my 'Stealing James' 12" in 2007, which was my James Brown tribute, which 'borrowed' the style of the original TD Records 'Feeling James' label artwork: just a cut and paste thing, like an update of the classic cut-and-paste stuff that really inspired me originally... Double D & Steinski’s 'Lessons' and Coldcut 'The Payback Mix' and Norman Cook's 'It Began In Africa'. That was my little token of respect to that genre.

DWG: So this was around the time you did the 'Lungbutters' mix CD for DWG?

Format: Yeah, exactly. Whenever you and I were hanging out we were talking about the fact that there was all this 'random' rare rap that people were into and some of it was fantastic and some of it was a bit so-so and some of it, let's face it, was just awful! And people were trying to sell some awful records on the strength of them being 'random' or rare when in actual fact they were crap. We were saying that we should do a mix that maybe has some rare stuff on it, but maybe also has some other stuff that felt a bit overlooked and was maybe easy to get. I had all these Miami records, like Balli and the Fat Daddy and LeJuan Love and you had stuff like the J.D Ranks track…

DWG: It was fun to help compile that mix, because – and I want to give credit to Ivory for inspiring the whole 'guess the tracklisting' idea here and also a huge to nod to his 'Hear No Evil' series – there were enough overlooked tracks out there alongside the known rarities that were just as good and were a lot cheaper to buy too. But then there was a lot of stuff that was definitely going to be a lot harder to track down in there as well.

Yeah – and the whole point was that we just wanted to make sure that it was good music. Of course, we wanted some exclusives on there, but then we wanted to have our share of overlooked things like Balli or Kool Slic that were really sat out there if you looked for them. That was the idea behind 'Lungbutters': it started out as me and you talking about that, then you introduced me to Rare Dave and Jeff – Sureshot LaRock – and basically in the process of putting the actual mix together, Sureshot was the person I was probably talking to the most about little intricate details. And the more I talked to him, the more we hit it off and struck up a great friendship – and then he started to play me some of the old rap tracks he'd done. I was trying to explain to him the sorts of rap songs I wanted to do and, before you knew it, we realised that we kinda clicked and wanted to do roughly the same thing. And that's where things started to fall into place for my new album.

I needed to get back to doing what I do best: cut-and-paste hip-hop that is heavy on the breaks, has a lot of intricate samples and is funky with the scratches. I wanted to get back to that – and I was able to do that with Sureshot. Once we started working together, that just kickstarted the rest of the album. I'd found the perfect partner in Sureshot to make music with.

DWG: It's funny because I was really pleased you guys had linked up and hit it off, but I had no idea just how amazing the results would be. Sureshot was taking a little creative break from DWG at that point, which is when he started to focus on the music with you I guess. When we eventually got back up to speed, it was great that you guys had created these incredible tracks together and that 'Lungbutters' had sort of been the catalyst for that. I knew both of you as my friends, but to realise the chemistry you had when working together as artists… well, it almost brought a tear of pride to my eye!

The thing about Sureshot is that he's so open to ideas and has no ego, which is so unusual in an MC. For example, 'Mr. DJ' isn't going to go down in history as one of his most advanced lyrical tracks, because he simplifies the rhymes where he needs to in order for it to work as a song. It's a complete collaboration between a DJ and an MC. With 'Mr. DJ', he was writing a verse at a time and I was coming up with these vocal samples and giving them to him to see if he could write stuff around them – and he completely turned the song on its head. He suggested that we change the order of the verses around and a certain breakdown that we had in it. I wouldn't have thought of that because I was too close to the song: it was already laid-out in my head and he was the one who said, 'Hey - why don't we switch this bit around' and it completely changed the energy in a brilliant way. The thing with our partnership is that we're both open to whatever will get the best results.

DWG: It's the perfect partnership to me, because you're both as knowledgable and passionate as each other.

We're fucking obsessive!

DWG: So, the new 12", 'Mr. DJ/Dope Pusher', has two vocal tracks on it and two instrumental tracks?

Format: Yeah: two songs that feature Sureshot and two very different instrumental versions of those tracks. 'Dope Pusher' was actually the first song that Sureshot and I worked on. Originally, I'd done this fast rap track probably four years ago and I thought it would be fun to go back to that late '80s/early '90s time where people were using the ‘dope’ metaphor – dope rhymes, dope music, dope beats – which was maybe overused a bit back then but it's now been 20 years since then and it felt like a fun thing to revisit and somewhat update. I had the Big Daddy Kane sample in there ("Because I'm just about as dope as dope can get") and the "Here comes the dope pusher!" sample already lined up. I'd originally had Percee P in mind for it, but I don't think the concept of the song was really connecting with him. He already had some stuff written that he wanted to use but I really wanted to have the ‘dope pusher’ theme in there. I just needed to work with someone who I could have a bit more of a personal relationship with, rather than just doing this all over the phone or online.

I was able to give Sureshot the beat and he kept writing little bits and coming back to me and by the time we got right into it, it was just getting a bit too complicated to the point where it was getting a little bit lost. So we ended up using a slower beat for him to deliver the verse over and then develop the original fast version of 'Dope Pusher' into the cut-and-paste, spoken word version that became 'Here Comes The Dope Pusher'. We felt it was important to still make sure that there was still a link between the two songs.

DWG: When you hear the two versions, you do get that connection and it works – but I love the fact that you're getting two different tracks rather than just a 'vocal-less' version. So what about 'Mr. DJ'? How did that track come about?

I had a song ready with lots of interaction between me and Sureshot going back and forth – him rhyming, me scratching the punchlines – and I had so many other bits I wanted to use that there was no room! So that's why I did the 'B-Boy Version': there are a lot of people who might not necessarily like rap music, as such, but they might enjoy this version instead as it has the same kind of energy but with a bit more scratching and no rapping. On that version I was able to put in the different breakdowns at the end where I go into different genres of music – there's an easy-listening bit, a jazz bit, a rock bit, a reggae bit, a latin bit… Y'know it's just for a bit of fun at the end of the song…

DWG: That's the thing: this isn't a two-track 12" at all. It's four tracks. And even if you love the vocal versions, you're not going to want to lift the needle off at the end of Sureshot's verses.

It's funny because I wasn't even going to put the 'Dope Beats', as in bonus beats, on the vinyl. It was only when I spoke to Mr. Krum, who did the artwork, and he asked me for the tracklisting on the 12" and he said 'Aren't you going to put the instrumental on there?'. And I said, 'I wasn't going to, but if you bought the 12" would you want some bonus beats on there?'. And he said 'Yeah, I always want to mess around with the bonus beats', so I put the little bonus bits on there too.

DWG: And we need to talk about the artwork. Everyone loves it.

Me and Mr. Krum were discussing various old school labels that we could borrow and rip-off, in a fun way. And he came up with three designs: one was the Fresh Records one (which we used), another was Fever, as in III Most Wanted and then he did a Profile one as well. The Fresh one was the best one but when he did it in the yellow and black originally, we realised that it didn't look right in the white sleeve. So I thought in order for it to look authentic, we've got to strip it back to the promo version, because the promo were just the black and white label, with a plain white sleeve with a sticker on. That was a lot easier for me to do authentically and it seemed like more fun. So the yellow and black version is just for the iTunes download, the black and white promo versions for the actual vinyl 12" – technically, it will say 'promotional use only' on the label, but it's the one – and then he did an extra design just for an advert with the fake Record & Tape Exchange (editor's note: this is a UK chain of second-hand music shops) label on it. And people really responded to that, especially the people at Record & Tape Exchange!

DWG: It was really well done. Very considered and relevant to you and your style of music too, I thought. Props to Mr. Krum.

To see this kind of package being released in this day and age is really impressive. The vinyl market has dwindled so much that people are either doing high-price premium limited pressings – because often that's the only way to get the music out there – or they're thinking that the vinyl market isn't worth bothering with. Often in that case, they understandably end up cutting things back so much that IF they do a vinyl release, it's so cheaply put together that it's not even a nice physical product.

Yeah, you've got to make people want to own your product. At the end of the day, music is music and obviously that's the most important thing, but it certainly doesn't hurt to make it look like something you just have to own.

- Pick up the ‘Mr. D.J.’ 12” at a number of online spots, including: Rarekind, Fat City, Chemical, Rough Trade, Phonica, Juno, Groove Distribution in the US, HHV in Germany and HUM Records in Zurich.

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