Yorkshire-based techno duo Spektre have had an amazing year. In February they topped the Beatport charts with their minimal masterpiece ‘Cheyenne’, in July they were featured in dance bible MixMag as the ones to watch, and their tireless gigging has taken them everywhere from Israel to the Netherlands. Spektre (aka Paul Maddox and Filthy Rich) are currently in the early stages of building their own label, Silhouette, on which they’ll release their much anticipated debut album next year. Today I’m interviewing them from their Sheffield studio, before they fly off for a weekend set in Nuremburg.
So what’s the Spektre schedule looking like at the moment?
Rich Well last weekend we played the SW4 after party at The Coronet supporting Eric Prydz, which was a bit of an honour for us. After Germany tomorrow, we’re playing in Athens and the Ukraine; in a couple of weeks we’re touring Mexico, and then Brazil in late November/early December. And we’re squeezing in dates in the UK, Austria and Paris.
A techno crusade. Amazing. But as solo DJs you don’t come from a techno background. Where do you come from musically?
Paul Rich used to be into house, but I was more into the hard dance scene, which is even more distant from tech.
Rich I still play a lot of house with [my solo project] Filthy Rich, probably more so than I did a few years ago. I’ve been through the whole funky house then electro scene and got a name for myself doing that. Now I’ve moved on and gone back to my house roots. I still play and produce a lot of house, but I guess my production head is very much techno based and the Spektre project is going so well that that’s definitely our main focus at the moment.
Talking about electro, why do you think it has become so massively commercialized, whilst techno still retains its underground status?
Paul Actually I think techno has more mainstream appeal recently than it has done for the past few years: there are a lot more techno nights around. But I think in general, techno doesn’t really lend itself to radio play, which is always going to be a big stumbling block in it becoming commercial. Whereas you get big vocal electro tunes that translate well to radio, techno very rarely can, with the exception maybe of a few old Underworld tracks. But it’s great because it means techno can be really popular, the clubs can be absolutely rammed, without it ever getting that overexposure that more commercially successful genres do.
Do you chill out to techno?
Rich We’ve both got a very wide range of musical tastes. When we’ve had a hard day in the studio and we’ve been listening to the same sort of tracks all day, it’s always good to go away and listen to something different. I can chill out to techno though, I can quite happily listen to it in bed.
Paul I tend not to do that so much to be honest. When I’ve been working on techno all day I don’t really want to listen to the same music when I get home. I tend not to listen to electronic music at all actually, I tend to listen to bands instead, because I can enjoy the music more. If I do listen to anything that’s too similar to our own material, I tend to over analyse it and not actually enjoy it. So to chill out I need to listen to something a bit further removed from techno.
You promote your gigs as Spektre ‘Live’. How is techno played live?
Paul I suppose the whole ‘live’ thing with electronic music is a bit of a misleading term, because it’s not live in the same way as going to see a band. Rich has a pretty traditional DJ set up, and I have a laptop with all the parts of our tracks loaded on as separate entities so we can rearrange the tracks as we go along, extend bits, shorten bits, etc. The ‘live’ banner is a way of indicating that it’s something more than a DJ set really.
Rich Yeah, basically, Paul will break down all of our tracks into loops and he’ll jam the loops live over whatever I’m playing at the time, and he can effect them with the mini controller that we use. We’ve just got the new Acai Ableton controller, which is a wicked tool for jamming. We also wanted to be more visually appealing. A lot of DJs just use one laptop, which looks like they’re checking their emails.We haven’t seen too many people do it the way we do. It lets us interact better with the crowd.
So there’s a strong element of improvisation in your sets?
Paul Definitely. Like I said, some of it is premade loops, but the way I’ve set it up, I can control the sound in finer detail with subtle percussion parts and white noise effects and things like that. We just sort of go with it. It stops the sets being the same twice.
What do you think the techno scene is like in London at the moment? What are you excited about?
Rich The scene is very strong in London at the moment. It’s just so vast. We recently played at Matter... the production and the sound system there were really cool. Having done that we definitely have Fabric on our minds: we’d love to play there.
They’ve got a Funktion One sound system at Matter haven’t they? Is that the best sound system you’ve ever played on?
Rich Yes. Although at The Coronet the production was also pretty immense.
Paul I’m just gutted we never got to play at The End before that closed, because the system there was absolutely ridiculous.
Seeing Spektre at The End would indeed have been spledid. If you haven’t listened to their material then you should, it’s like a lesson in how powerful techno can be. Their tracks are both haunting and ambient, progressive and danceable: think Trentemoller on a ghost train. Oh, and listen to ‘The Voice’, it’s singularly beautiful.
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