Junkie XL
Interview by Alex Pagan

How was the Winter Music Conference?
Oh, really good.


Didja have a good time?
Yeah, absolutely...[Ultragig] was really special, and I met a lot of interesting people...I spent time remixing demos for [Digidesign] and met a lot of people and producers and it was a really good time.


Where you there for most of the conference or just for Ultra?
No, I was there for most of the conference. I actually joined two panels...I learned a lot of interesting things. Some of the panels there was not new information for me, but great information for the audience. On the other hand, there were also a couple of panels where things were discussed about music for movies and commercials and stuff like that and I heard a lot of things I had never heard before that were quite interesting.


Are you on tour right now?
On tour is a big word...I'm based in Los Angeles since November. I live here and I have 14 days coming up and during the week I fly in and out...


Now that your new album, the three a.m. and three p.m. was domestically released, how's the response been over here in America?
The response has been really good and I'm quite pleased actually with it. People really look at it with a pretty open view and the response has been really, really good and I'm really happy with it.


Great. With the 2nd edition, seven a.m. seven p.m. is that only going to be online? Are you going to release that as a CD as well?
Only online. That has to do with the view I have of the Internet in general. I think it's great to have something exclusively online and also to accomodate situations for people that don't have that much money.

In the US, CDs are priced reasonably, but in Europe or Japan you pay easily 30 or 40 bucks for a CD like I make and you can buy it here for $15 or $20. And to become a member online is $6.99 for 120 minutes of music and there's a lot of people out there that really respect that.


If you had to guess, how many downloads do you think have come off that release at this point?
A lot. The only way I know that is if I do Ultra and people know certain tracks. I play for people and I know that people know that track, there must be a reason how they know that track.


On your album, you collaborated with some really incredible artists. If you had to pick a favorite, who would you say was the most fun to work with for that last album?
Well, that is really difficult to say, because all those people are so unique and so special for their own reasons and their personalities are completely different. I can say, though, that what was a really unique experience was that it's actually the first time I really worked with one of those people that was the first of my old heroes. [It] was unique for a hero like that to step into my studio and say, 'Here I am.' I almost literally fell off my chair. It was like, 'Oh my God, it's Gary Numan.' That was an amazing experience.


How did you end up working with these guys? Did you seek them out, or were they seeking you out?
It had a lot to do with the concept of the album. I'm a big fan of conceptual albums in general: Pink Floyd, The Wall,Tommy, The Who...I wanted to do this conceptual album based on having a pirate radio station on the Internet, which I have on my website. The album should be a reflection of that radio station, with a daytime disc and a nighttime disc.

The nighttime disc was easy, because I wanted to turn it into more of a chilled out, clubby environment because people listen to particular music at three a.m. instead of three p.m. That's why I chose those names for the discs. The daytime CD, I wanted to create alternative sounding radio with short tracks with a lot of energy, good vocals...good melody but still underground and that's why I needed a lot of vocalists.

I wrote around 20 tracks with the vocalists in mind without knowing if they wanted to work with me so I took a big risk there and worked on it for a while and then just sent all those tracks out with a personal note and I was hoping one of two would come back. Eventually, they all came back, so that was really thrilling to work with all those people on those tracks.


After you did the Saturday Teenage Kick album, I didn't really hear too much from you for a while except for a couple remixes here and there. Out of all the remixes you've done and the things you've created, what would you say was the most inspiring and the most fun?
In between that album and this album there was another album, but my record company never decided to release that in the US. It did pretty well in Europe and in Australia, but for some reason it never got out to the US.

I did a lot of music for movies and commercials...every commercial or movie is different to work on. What I found is it's a really big challenge to make a remix of the Matrix theme, which I did a year and a half ago. That came out just as a promotion, but it ended up on the soundtrack. That was the real challenge, because I got movies like Reloaded and I got all the dialogue and all the classical score and I could pick whatever I wanted to pick from that and turning out a remix of that was a big, big challenge.

That song is a really big club hit too. When I play that one it just goes crazy...
It's been a DJ favorite for a while ...


Do you still have any connection with those hardcore bands like Fear Factory or Sepultura?
Yeah.. I was in a band that was hardcore industrial music, hard electronic beats. That's how I know Lee. We met in '89 and we've been friends ever since. I work with people from Front 242 and people from Ministry, Revolting Cocks, we all knew wach other. There was a league of bands starting in the late '80s: Meat Beat Manifesto, Young Gods...it was all that same alley. That's when I started experimenting with electronic music, and I've done that ever since.

I ran into the guys from Fear Factory six months ago out in LA and they're about to release a new album. It's really fantastic. I might do some remixes for them in the future as well. I really like that kind of music. Even though I make music right now being appreciated by a lot of DJs and the dance audience,I still have an eclectic view on music.


Are you planning on creating another full length album?
I think I will start thinking about thinking about making another album somewhere after the summer when I'm done touring America, Europe, Japan and Australia.


I was browsing around your website and it says you sometimes do live sets. How often do you do something like that on the website?
We recently did a live chat session, which is really nice to do because I spend two or three hours behind the computer at a certain time slot that is kind of convenient for almost every territory, which is between 8 and 11 LA time in the morning. That means you can chat with people from Australia, you can chat with people from Holland. That is a lot of fun to do and that's how we do the broadcasts as well. But once they're on, it's like music on demand and then people can go back to the previous broadcasts.


I was wondering where exactly is the computer hell cabin located?
It's located wherever I am. The computer hell cabin used to be in Amsterdam and now it's the computer hell cabin in Venice, LA.


Do you have any advice for any of the younger aspiring electronic musicians who are out there trying to make it right now?
First of all, I have to say there are a lot of really, really good young producers out there. We all talk about dance music suffering and that is true to a certain extent, on a commercial level, but there is amazing music being made. I hope a lot of young producers out there don't get discouraged by the fact that they can't get a record deal or that it's difficult to get their record out. It's very important that people who believe in their music stay out there and make good music, because that's gonna make the dance music industry alive again.

For the moment, we all can be happy that the people who came into this dance industry in the first place just to make money are leaving now because it's not worthwhile doing it anymore, and the people who stay behind or keep on doing it are the people who really want to contribute something to electronic music in general. We really just have to rely on all those young producers out there to keep on making great music.

 

more info at www.radiojxl.com