Session Transcript:
Sinden
Red Bull Music Academy, Toronto 2007

The video stream for this lecture can be watched here.

Sinden is part of a clutch of producers redefining British dance music. It’s too new to have a proper name yet, but he won’t mind if you call it turbo ghetto dance. He tells us why he likes his music fast, hyperactive and almost neurotic and why the music is no respecter of the boundaries of taste: listen to Sinden and you’ll hear a world you thought (and maybe hoped) you’d never hear again, now remade to sound fresh and urgent. Snobbery is the enemy for Sinden – he’s happy to be known as the pied piper of dance music, sampling ABBA and making records that sound like a theme park advert. Together with his friend and partner Herve, he’s turning them out at a rate of knots. In this session, he talks about blogs, old school UK garage and his hip hop heroes, Public Enemy, why he’s enjoying working with indie bands, and how he sidestepped Pharrell by doing his track over again. Crimes against taste aside, he shows just how far he’ll got with his sound, playing his Est’elle remix that draws on the world of trance – and even threatening to reintroduce the cheesy raps of the euro dance era into rave. If you’re a ‘deep house snob’, look away. If you like your dance music to sound like the kitchen sink, this is the place for you.

RBMA: »OK, so we’ve got Sinden on the couch.«

Sinden: »Hey, what’s up.«

(applause)

RBMA: »So Sinden, Herve, Switch have all been breaking up dancefloors over the last year or so with something that sounded to me last night like a turbo ghetto dance.«

Sinden: »I like turbo. Turbo is definitely an apt term.«

RBMA: »Why is turbo a good term for what you do?«

Sinden: »Because it’s very energetic, fast-paced. It’s a fitting term, it’s hyperactive, it doesn’t sit still, it’s always moving about, that’s how we make our tracks. They don’t stay still for any long time, they’re just switching and moving it up.«

RBMA: »And the term ‘tearing up the dancefloor’ seems quite apt.«

Sinden: »Yes, it does. We were recently pictured on the front cover of a dance magazine with chainsaws tearing up the speakers.«

RBMA: »Which of your tracks has had the most chainsaw type effect at the moment?«

Sinden: »We just did this new remix for Est'elle who’s a UK rapper. I might play it later, it’s got a very trance kind of bassline.«

RBMA: »Is this something you’ve been playing out recently?«

Sinden: »Yes, we just literally finished it last week and sent it off to the label to be approved. We haven’t heard back yet, but it’s doing really well in the clubs.«

RBMA: »Estelle goes trance, we should definitely hear that one.«

Sinden: »We should do.«

RBMA: »Before we start listening to what you do, I thought it might be interesting to start with how prolific you’ve been. You’ve done an awful lot of remixes over the last 18 months.«

Sinden: »Yeah, it’s been crazy, it’s really taken off over the last couple of years, just remixing really hard. It’s a really good challenge as well, various artists have been coming: indie bands, rappers, dancehall artists, world music artists. That’s the challenge for me, reinterpreting what they do and keeping the flavour, just putting our little signature on it.«

RBMA: »There aren’t a lot of people who could do Pharoahe Monch, To My Boy and god knows what else, Lady Sovereign all in their remix CV.«

Sinden: »Yeah, it’s great and now I want to do more with bands. That’s more interesting to me at the moment. I’m from a hip hop background, so taking rap vocals is second nature, but doing something with bands is interesting. I love all the parts they give us, all the stems, all the vocals. That’s cool.«

RBMA: »Did you start doing remixes because you were asked to do them or because you wanted to create stuff for your DJ sets?«

Sinden: »A little bit of both. Obviously to get paid, remixes are the best. But we’re doing club tours as well, so we’ll make tunes for our DJ sets, just to spice them up. A lot of them don’t get released but it’s something that defines our DJ sets and makes them stand out from others.«

RBMA: »That’s something that taps into that old thing about having to go to see a DJ to hear a track.«

Sinden: »That’s true, it’s not a commodity you can go out and buy. It’s something you’d only hear if you listen to one of my DJ sets or heard a radio mix. Obviously, there’s a lot of sampling, which is why it might not always come out, not that that’s been a big issue for us, we’ve always put out sampling tracks before.«

RBMA: »It changes the relationship between DJing and people on the dancefloor if you know you’re going to be getting something there that you can’t get anywhere else. It also means that you’re putting more in because you’re having to make the effort to go to hear the stuff. Do you find that people that come and see you… hmm, that’s a bit of a cul-de-sac question isn’t it (laughs)?«

Sinden: »I don’t know, possibly. I like to think I offer something more than just playing my own tracks or tracks I’m into. Hopefully people will go back thinking, ‘Wow, I never heard anything like that before, that’s really cool’.«

RBMA: »So how prolific are you, how many remixes do you do in an average week?«

Sinden: »At the minute we’re doing one or two a week, we just need to put them away. But it’s time we started holding back on them a bit because we’ve got an album we’re working on, so maybe it’s time we stopped saturating the market and held a bit back for the album.«

RBMA: »So who’s the ‘we’ in this? «

Sinden: »That’s my production partner, Count Of Monte Cristal who also goes by the name of Herve. He’s a guy I’ve been working with for the last year, a very talented producer.«

RBMA: »I think one of the trademarks about your stuff is the really distinctive, specific noises. What’s your favourite noise at the moment?«

Sinden: »That’s difficult, I quite like the Est'elle noise. A lot of our remixes are featuring trancey sounds. I don’t know if we should be going there with trance, but someone has to twist it up. We’re not afraid, nothing’s a no-no, we don’t say that sound’s out, we’ll always go back and try something no one’s done for ten years.«

RBMA: »One of the things that’s interesting about what you’re all doing is you’re pulling stuff out of the past, but the stuff that’s cool now is stuff that was uncool first time around.«

Sinden: »Yeah, and that’s the stuff I grew up on. Now Technotronic and 2 Unlimited and Euro-rave is cool. It’s good, I can go and dig back through my old stuff. I’m not ashamed.«

RBMA: »But it’s really good because otherwise people can end up trawling one path and it gets dry. There’s stuff in these records that have been deemed untouchable for a long time that suddenly makes them sound fresh again.«

Sinden: »That’s true, music can get stagnated and a lot of people seem to be copying certain trailblazers in the scene. To come up with something new is refreshing, if you can bring something new to the scene that’s how it’s going to evolve.«

RBMA: »I think we should have a listen to one of your biggest records at the minute. Can we have a bit of Beeper, please?«

(music: The Count & Sinden – Beeper / applause)

Sinden: »That’s actually a new version with a rapper called Kid Sister, who you may know. Originally that song used a sample of Pharrell and Fam-lay, but we had legal issues with it. We approached Pharrell and his lawyers to clear it but they were going to take a whole load of our publishing, so we thought we’d get Kid Sister on it. The only thing left of the original is the hook and she put new lyrics on it, so it’s pretty much an original record now.«

RBMA: »And we’ve just had an exclusive of it. Bassline seems to come from a different place than other genres which rely on basslines. It doesn’t come so much from the reggae soundsystem school, more the booty bass, Miami side of things. Would you say that’s true?«

Sinden: »Yes, definitely. We’re very influenced by ghetto house from Chicago and Miami bass music, hip hop too. It’s funny, I was never really into house music until I met Switch and people like that; to me it didn’t really have that bassline sound. But as soon as I heard his productions I started really getting into house music. I didn’t think it was like that before.«

RBMA: »So in that ghetto area, booty bass, who are the people who really do it for you?«

Sinden: »I think the pioneers, people like DJ Funk, Godfather, people like that. A lot of dudes in Chicago. There are a lot of new kids coming through as well and it’s great now: there are kids in Europe making that music; there are kids in Switzerland making Baltimore club music; in Australia. You can’t really put a location on it any more. Chicago and those cities are the home of it.«

RBMA: »It was only a few years ago that trying to find a house DJ under 30 was almost impossible. Now it seems this style of music has rejuvenated people into wanting to DJ and play house music again.«

Sinden: »And also getting people into the studio to be creative, which is good for the scene.«

RBMA: »You talked about Detroit and some of those guys. Have you played there and is your stuff played there?«

Sinden: »No. I don’t know actually, a lot of our stuff crosses over in Baltimore. A friend of mine, Scottie B, has embraced what we do and he’s started playing Baltimore club music and house and stuff. Even though he’s a veteran of the scene he’s embraced what we do. Same with a lot of people, I’m quite surprised that people don’t really have any hang-ups about playing different styles of music, they just enjoy what they do.«

RBMA: »So you think you’re working in an almost genre-less age?«

Sinden: »Yes, I think so. People have been trying to define what we do, put a genre on it, but I think it’s quite lazy. I don’t think music should be branded and genrefied. I think the spirit of music now is taking from lots of different places and mixing it up, which is refreshing.«

RBMA: »Things aren’t really location-specific anymore, you have people in all these different cities in the world making Bailie funk or Baltimore whatever, but they’re not from that place. I guess that makes for interesting directions for the future.«

Sinden: »I think the internet has really helped with that, blogs and the way music is sent around the world. It’s less about record shops and more about finding that music online. The music is moving so fast kids on the other side of the world can be playing exactly what you’re playing that week, but they’re putting their own twist on it and making that music, too, and putting it online. So you have a good community.«

RBMA: »Which places online were particularly important for you in getting your music out there? Obviously there’s myspace, but were there any other blogs or places that were good for you?«

Sinden: »I’ll talk with people who run blogs, but usually it’s just that they’ll post tracks of mine. Sometimes the etiquette is that they will come and ask permission, but more often they just post them on site. It’s good. At first I was a bit negative about it, like people downloading your music, but now I think it’s really cool and it’s really helped, the whole blog scene.«

RBMA: »It would be good to hear more of your stuff. You talked about Switch before and you’ve worked a lot with him. Can we hear a couple of things that show the breadth of the stuff you do with him?«

Sinden: »Shall I play A Bit Patchy? I don’t know if I have it.«

RBMA: »Got To Get Up maybe?«

Sinden: »OK, I’m going to play something which is…«

RBMA: »Oh yeah, I told you I had that, didn’t I?«

Sinden: »Have you got it to hand actually?«

RBMA: »No it’s on my laptop downstairs. Whatever you’ve got there that would be nice to play. While you’re having a look can you tell us how you and Switch got together?«

Sinden: »I was working in a full time job…«

RBMA: »What was that?«

Sinden: »I was working as a merchandiser for a fashion company and one day a week I was doing PR for a label called Front Room for Jesse Rose. Switch was cutting his teeth at the time, producing some records for that label, just starting out and we got on really well. He said: “Just come into the studio one day. Even though you don’t have any studio experience, just come in and we’ll jam on some tracks. Bring some samples, bring some ideas and we’ll knock some ideas out.”«

RBMA: »So what was he doing with house music that was different to other people?«

Sinden: »He was just flouting the rules, just doing these crazy 8-bar, 16-bar things where the track would just change direction. I’d never heard that before. Before that house music to me was – I was a bit ignorant – but it was like relentless and didn’t always have my interest. It was quite druggy and didn’t really change a lot, it was repetitive. That’s a good thing, too, there are some good tracks. I’m trying to find this track.«

RBMA: »What did you like about his music?«

Sinden: »I just thought sonically it’s crazy, it was amazing. I’d never heard stuff like that before, just the way he had the kickdrum sounding, it was so fat and bassy. He had his own sound, it was cool.«

RBMA: »I think one of the things he does and you do, too, is make stuff that’s interesting sonically, but is also really populist in the best sense of the word. Would you agree?«

Sinden: »Yes, I want our stuff to cross over and be accessible. That’s why we don’t mind just using samples and being cheeky and stuff like that, referencing pop music and old dance records, those ‘guilty pleasures’ things we were talking about. While I’m looking for this track can I play something else?«

RBMA: »Yes, of course. So what is it, what’s coming out of the CD case?«

Sinden: »Shall we play this Mark Ronson remix?«

RBMA: »Go ahead.«

(music: Mark Ronson & Amy Winehouse – Valerie (Count Of Monte Cristal & Sinden remix) / applause)

RBMA: »I think we’re going to hear something on a different tempo now, aren’t we?«

Sinden: »Yeah, that was a remix for Mark Ronson - Valerie. I wanted to play this because it’s a different tempo and it’s with a British grime artist called Lethal Bizzle.«

(music: Lethal Bizzle – Police On My Back (remix) / applause)

RBMA: »It’s definitely the big, meaty, beaty approach to something.«

Sinden: »That’s a slice of the ghettotech there.«

RBMA: »How does that connect with the music you grew up liking?«

Sinden: »That’s more of a recent thing; hip hop is really what I grew up listening to, that and indie bands. Dance music came later. Hip hop was definitely the soundtrack to my growing up.«

RBMA: »Have you got the Buraka Som Sistema thing nearby?«

Sinden: »This is a remix myself and Count Of Monte Cristal did for a band called Buraka Som Sistema from Lisbon. It’s coming out on Modular.«

(music: Buraka Som Sistema – unknown (Sinden and Count Of Monte Cristal (remix) / applause)

RBMA: »Nice use of the CD stutter there.«

Sinden: »Yeah, that’s the running joke, when a CD skips in a record shop people always say: “That’s the new Switch tune, or the new Sinden tune.”.«

RBMA: »It’s like the new extended breakdown.«

Sinden: »I suppose it’s a technique we use quite a lot, the vocal breakdown. Traditionally, it’s been the fills that get quicker, but now we’re trying to find different ways to make the connection between the breakdown and the verse.«

RBMA: »So tell me about Herve, how did you start working together?«

Sinden: »Herve is someone I met through Switch in the studio one time. Him and Switch were working on an EP for Dubsided and we just got on really well, were hitting it off and cussing each other over instant messenger, being cheeky.«

RBMA: »What good cusses has Herve got?«

Sinden: »He’s really quick, he can just cut me down to the ground, he’s faster than me.«

RBMA: »So you started working together.«

Sinden: »Yes, we started working together, Beeper was the first thing we did, almost a year ago now. We did an EP in basically a week. We both work really fast when we do thing together, he can turn things out really quickly. It’s a very good partnership.«

RBMA: »So we’ve got something else to listen to from the two of you.«

Sinden: »This is the Estelle mix I was talking about, with the trancey influence. It’s a track that Will.I.Am produced and features on.«

(music: Estelle feat. Will.I.Am – Wait A Minute (Sinden and Count Of Monte Cristal remix) / applause)

»Thank you.«

RBMA: »You weren’t joking about the trance.«

Sinden: »I’m not messing about (laughs).«

RBMA: »Do you think it’s important as a producer almost to not care about what you’re supposed to do, because nothing’s sacred, is it?«

Sinden: »Yeah, definitely, I think it’s very easy to get caught up in that whole dance music snobbery thing. With house music it’s something that’s always existed; there’s a deep house brigade, or the ‘you can’t do that, you can’t sample that’ people. I remember once Switch played an ABBA track I gave him, a cut-up of Voulez Vous, and he played it at this party in London with all these deep house and disco house DJs. They were all on the forums the next day: “Switch is playing ABBA, he’s shit. What’s he doing?” Fuck it, it’s great.«

RBMA: »What makes you say that? Why don’t you care?«

Sinden: »I don’t know, I just think I’m happy to show my influences and I suppose they are a bit iffy, but that’s what we pride ourselves on, not really giving too much of a fuck, just doing what sounds right.«

RBMA: »And is ‘fun’ a big part of it?«

Sinden: »Fun is definitely the biggest part of it, it should provoke the reaction that this is fun music and not something you have to think too seriously about. It’s something that’s basically going to move your waist and make you let go. That’s what our stuff does we like to think.«

RBMA: »So it’s a pied piper rave style: you will get on the dancefloor, you will lose your mind a bit and your ass will follow.«

Sinden: »That’s it.«

RBMA: »I thought it would be interesting to listen to something else you’ve done with Herve. You’ve got Tamborzuda there.«

Sinden: »It’s funny you should say Pied Piper, actually. We have an advert in the UK for a theme park called Alton Towers and this bassline sounds a little bit like the advert for that theme park and the breakdown is 2 Unlimited-esque.«

(music: Sinden and Count Of Monte Cristal feat. MC Thiaguinho - Tamborzuda / applause)

RBMA: »So what is it about 2 Unlimited, Snap!, early Prodigy that we’ve forgotten was so good, from your point of view?«

Sinden: »I don’t know, that’s a very good question. Maybe it’s the synth sounds they use and also the simplicity. Sometimes we can get too complicated and think about things too much and make the music too complicated, when really it should be about hooks and simple drum beats and something that kind of changes very subtly.«

RBMA: »So there’s lots of stuff from that part of music you’re taking – obviously there are lots of other things, too, but are you ever going to go so far as bringing back the cheesy rap?«

Sinden: »What, Morris Minor And The Majors (laughs)?«

RBMA: »Like Rhythm Is A Dancer, you know the cheesy raps you used to get in the middle of rave records.«

Sinden: »Yeah, I could do that, me and Herve.«

RBMA: »I’m not sure it’s entirely advisable, I don’t really want to be responsible. That’s one element that’s thankfully been consigned to history.«

Sinden: »Yeah, hip house. Some of it’s good, but some of it’s a bit… yeah.«

RBMA: »Hip house isn’t the problem so much as dance music with the ‘here comes the cheesy rap bit’. One technical question: how do you and your production partners get your bass sounds so big?«

Sinden: »Basically a lot of production techniques, it’s difficult really. Herve is definitely the man with basslines, he’s more technical than me. We take it in turns to make the melodies, but he’s the wizard in the studio who gets all the compression right.«

RBMA: »So as a DJ, how important is it for DJs who maybe don’t have the most studio experience to work with partners who can get the sounds out of their heads and onto CD?«

Sinden: »That’s advisable, I started off as a DJ who then got into the studio and started making music. I still think I’m learning, I’ve only been doing it a couple of years. Switch was instrumental in bringing my ideas out and making them sound good. I think now it’s more accessible, though – music programmes are cheap and home studios are very inexpensive. What I work on is very basic: monitors, a USB keyboard and plug-in’s. It’s so much easier now.«

RBMA: »Are collaborations important?«

Sinden: »Collabs are good.«

RBMA: »Collabs are good! I feel a cheesy rap coming on.«

Sinden: »You can bounce off the other person much better and when you get stuck, the other person can come in and listen to it with fresh ears. Sometimes when you’re in the studio and you’re struggling over this remix or something, you need fresh ears and a second opinion. Herve’s really good, him and Switch both, and sometimes when I play him a bassline he’ll look at me and go: “Is that good?”, and I’ll know that’s the one. If it’s a little bit borderline, it’s good to have that second opinion.«

RBMA: »And how important is going to the pub?«

Sinden: »Going to the pub is really important, that’s where all the best ideas come from. That’s where A Bit Patchy came from with Trevor Loveys, on a drinking binge (laughs).«

RBMA: »It’s a silly question, but it’s a serious question as well. Making music isn’t always about being in the studio 24 hours a day, seven days a week and looking into the blinking red lights.«

Sinden: »Definitely. It’s not the most inspiring place, the studio, it’s often quite dark and underground. All the best ideas are hatched through going out. It’s not even contrived, we’ll just have a chat and we’ll get onto music that we’re into at the moment or what’s inspired us in the past. It’s more natural: good music made in collaboration comes out of friendship and having a good connection.«

RBMA: »So we took the boy out of Southend. Where’s the Southend in the music?«

Sinden: »I don’t know, it’s somewhere in there.«

RBMA: »Sometimes you don’t think that way about your music, but is there anything that connects it to where you grew up or what you listened to?«

Sinden: »That’s difficult. The hip hop influence is always relevant, no matter what music we make, it always goes back to hip hop. It might not be instantly recognisable, but it is in there.«

RBMA: »So where’s the hip hop in the music?«

Sinden: »The hip hop is in a lot of the drums we use and we’ll cut up the lyrics; we’ll make a house tune but we always put some hip hop in there, just to get me interested in it. What I want to do is fuse dance music and hip hop, because that’s not happening enough. When I was growing up people were into hip hop or dance and never really crossed over. That’s happening more now.«

RBMA: »So we’ve had nu rave, maybe now we’ll have nu hip house. You’ve described yourself as a big hip hop head. Who was it in hip hop who really did it for you?«

Sinden: »Public Enemy: they had the rage and the image was striking and bold with the S1Ws and the way Chuck and Flava combined together, it was great. Hip hop was really exciting for me growing up in Southend in sleepy Essex. Public Enemy came along with their angry hard hip hop and blew my mind.«

RBMA: »It’s easy to forget or not to realise quite how alien that sounded at the time. I remember the first time I heard Public Enemy thinking, ‘It’s not that I like it, that’s not really the feeling I’m getting from it, but I’d never heard anything so alien and strong and powerful and mad in my life’.«

Sinden: »Sonically it just bombards you, sounds coming out of everywhere. I heard they’d go into the studio and all play different instruments and record it, then just take one little bit of what they’ve heard. Basement Jaxx told me they do that as well, they’ll all play instruments at once and they’ll find something interesting from the session, that’ll be something they’ll run with. It’s just a cacophony of sounds.«

RBMA: »So Public Enemy were a big influence for you; who else is in your box of hip hop records?«

Sinden: »The Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Native Tongues thing. Jungle Brothers were big, BDP and KRS-One. Not so much NWA and the West Coast gangsta stuff, although I got into that later, but more the New York Gangstarr/DJ Premier stuff.«

RBMA: »Then, moving on from hip hop, was old school UK garage an influence on you?«

Sinden: »Definitely.«

RBMA: »Was it something you were actively into or something you just kind of liked?«

Sinden: »I just liked it really, the heavier stuff. Not so much the light skippy vocal stuff, more the bassline-oriented stuff.«

RBMA: »So less Sweet Like Flowers? I mean Sweet Like Chocolate.«

Sinden: »Flowers was the other tune.«

RBMA: »Brrrrp! I just mashed it up (laughs). So less of a sweet attitude, more Benny Ill.«

Sinden: »Benny Hill?«

RBMA: »Ill, Benny Ill!«

Sinden: »Oh yeah, Horsepower Productions. I thought you said Benny Hill. Yeah, I was into the early Tempa stuff, that whole South London Big Apple thing, Bingo, those kinds of records. Yeah, they were big.«

RBMA: »What did you like about them?«

Sinden: »They had a really good swing about them, they were really direct and the tempo was good as well. I always find drum ‘n’ bass quite hard to digest, but that was a tempo I could move to, the 130 tempo.«

RBMA: »I guess you don’t have anything in there to illustrate the kind of garage you’re talking about, but what would you suggest people check out?«

Sinden: »Good question.«

RBMA: »Sorry to slightly put you on the spot.«

Sinden: »Wookie actually. I’d go to Twice As Nice sometimes back when that was happening and the end of the night they’d always play three or four Wookie dubs and that was the highlight. Wookie’s great.«

RBMA: »And what was the Wookie cut for you?«

Sinden: »It’s got to be Scrappy, that was the one, blew me away, amazing.«

RBMA: »I almost asked you to do me the bassline there, but I won’t. Have you got something else you can play us that brings us up to date, something that you’re working on?«

Sinden: »This is for a project for V2. It’s an old Latin boogaloo project, like ‘60s Latin jazz, and they’re putting together a compilation and they asked me to remix Fever by La Lupe.«

RBMA: »Interesting.«

(music: La Lupe – Fever (Sinden remix) / applause)

Sinden: »That was quite interesting, I thought I’d approach it in a different way. With a project like that people will more often than not just sort of update it, like with extra drums and a synth line. But I wanted to completely deconstruct it, take the vocal and put it in a completely different arena.«

RBMA: »So artistically, is irreverence an important part of what you do?«

Sinden: »Definitely, just have fun with it. The best results are when you’re really having fun with a track. When you’re slaving over it and not having fun, that’s when it gets really dry. The decisions you make over remixes can backfire; if you’re not into the track then it’s not really advisable to remix it. If you’re having fun with it and you’re into it, that’s when you got the best results.«

RBMA: »So you have a follow-your-feet attitude to it.«

Sinden: »Yeah, follow your head and your feet and your waist and your knees.«

RBMA: »You’ve got something else to play us now, haven’t you?«

Sinden: »Yeah, this is a guy from Sheffield called Toddla T who’s making dancehall and this is the Count and Sinden remix of Inna De Dancehall.«

(music: Toddla T – Inna De Dancehall (Count And Sinden remix) / applause)

RBMA: »That sounded heavy, I like the slowing down bit.«

Sinden: »Slowing down is the new speeding up (laughter). Everybody’s going to be doing it soon, it’ll go from 130 down to 5bpm.«

RBMA: »That will fit that kind of underwater dancing thing you see people doing. (inaudible shout from participant) I wasn’t going to say that but you said it for me. Doesn’t matter, let’s talk about your DJing style. You’re CD-only, right?«

Sinden: »Yep. CDJs at the minute, I’m thinking about using Serato for CDs. I’m resisting using Ableton at the minute. I know Switch started on Ableton but now he uses CDJs. Herve and Trevor Loveys are Ableton users, which is good, you can get good results off every format you use. Vinyl is still good, Serato is good, I’ve seen people who are incredible on CDJs, it’s basically knowing your tool.«

RBMA: »So who’s brilliant on CDJs?«

Sinden: »Erol Alkan is amazing, he’s got his loop points and the way he’s playing with the wide pitch, the feature on the CDJ Mk III means you can go from 0bpm all the way up to 200. He’s really creative with loop points.«

RBMA: »So what do you think about that vinyl-is-best school of thought?«

Sinden: »I think vinyl is still valid and if you DJ with it and you’re really tight, that’s awesome. I don’t think it’s necessarily the case that computers are the way forward, it’s all about how you use them. You can have a computer and DJ off Ableton, but if you’re just mixing as I would be doing off a CDJ there’s no advantage to doing it. But if you’re doing it really creatively and bringing something new it’s good.«

RBMA: »Obviously, there’s the ease of carrying them. Are there any other reasons why you use CDs and not vinyl?«

Sinden: »Because a lot of the tracks I’m given are CDs. A lot of the promo companies are mailing out CD instead of vinyl and a lot of the tracks I make I can just burn onto CD. It’s the ease of having your laptop wherever you go, taking it onto a plane, having it ready for the club in the same evening.«

RBMA: »I like the way you spread everything out, you’ve got your own little messy table on the side of the decks.«

Sinden: »I’m really, really messy, I should be more organised.«

RBMA: »Everyone has their own style.«

Sinden: »I like feeling at home when I’m DJing, take my shoes off, have a cup of tea.«

RBMA: »Maybe you could put that in your rider: I need a sofa, a comedy pillow. I think we’re coming to the end. Start thinking about any questions you want to ask Sinden and don’t forget to use the mic. Otherwise people watching afterwards won’t have the benefit of hearing your brilliant questions. Before we do that we should talk about the label you run with Switch.«

Sinden: »The label I run with Switch is called Counterfeet. We got off to a very slow start and had, like, one release in one year.«

RBMA: »That’s very relaxed.«

Sinden: »Yeah, that’s very relaxed. Then we signed a group called Radioclit, one guy from Sweden and one from France, and we’ve put two EPs out from them, one of which is in the shops. And one Count Of Monte Cristal EP and one we did together. It started off as a bootleg label, and we were just going to do mash-ups. Then we decided that wasn’t the best way to do it and we wanted to promote music, whatever style that would be, just a platform for our productions.«

RBMA: »So have you got something you can play us from Counterfeet?«

Sinden: »This is the new track by Radioclit, Divine Gosa, and it’s actually a beat for the Bonde De Rolê’s new album and this is a remix by a kid from Paris called Brodinski.«

(music: Radioclit – Divine Gosa (Brodinski remix) / applause)

RBMA: »So one final question from me before we open it up to everyone else. You’ve mentioned a few different people you’ve liked over the years. If you could get one person to make a tune in your style, be it Aphex Twin, Bomb Squad, Wookie, who would it be?«

Sinden: »Very tough question, definitely not someone from a dance background. I don’t want to pass on that question either.«

RBMA: »Maybe you can marinate on it. So really all there is to do now is say thank you very much to Sinden.«

(applause)

Sinden: »Thank you.«

RBMA: »And now to lunch.«