Love This City TV caught up with Justin James before he hit the decks at Aries Music Festival in London. This techno master has hit international levels after releasing some heavy tracks with Richie Hawtin’s Minus label and Dubfire’s Sci + Tec label. To our excitement, he is launching his own label ‘Refused,’ which we have already heard quite the buzz about. This man not only has some serious talent, but the passion to back to it. Check out what Justin has to say about his influences along his journey, his latest WMC experience and where we can find him next. After hearing him play a powerful set at Aries and seeing how the crowd swarmed towards his sound, we will definitely be seeing a lot more of this fellow Canadian DJ, producer and now label owner.
Q: You’re about to hit the stage at Aries Music Festival, how does it feel to be home and play for all your fans here tonight?
A: Playing in London is great. I’m about two hours from home in Windsor—it’s cool to play close to home, I have a lot of fun here. I play at a place in London called Tabu quite often and the crowd here is pretty responsive. Really heady and knowledgeable, it’s great!
Q: You just got back from WMC, playing alongside Minus label’s Richie Hawtin. Tell us about your experience in Miami this year.
A: It was pretty awesome! We played at the Red Bull Guest House. It was myself and other Minus artists. It was pretty surreal being sandwiched between Richie, Madador, myself and Gaiser, as well as the rest of the supporting cast. It was a great party! We only did 30 minute sets, so it was an interesting format, but it was super fun and super cool to play! Very intimate!
Q: You have your strong ties to Detroit, are you playing Movement this year?
A: I played Movement parties in the past, and I’m not playing Movement itself this year, which is one of my big goals! Although I am playing the Minus after party again at Movement which is going to be big!
Q: On production side of things, you’ve released music with Minus, Sci + Tec, and you’re launching “Refused”. Tell us where you are at with your labels and what “Refused” is all about.
A: The name itself is playing homage to one of Richie Hawtin’s monikers back in the day. He used to write music as F.U.S.E, which I believe stands for the Futuristic, Underground, Sonic, Experiment, and that became a big influence for me. That was something that stuck with me since way back then. I even used it as my pin number for a long time! So the label was going to be called FUSE, but there is too much “fuse” stuff going on, so I played with it and came up with Refused. It is rather ambiguous because it can be refused as in “no,” but also refused as “re-brought-together”. That’s why the idea of fuse is important:to bring people together—not only my music and bringing that to other people, but also bringing new artists and my friends together on the label. The label will be starting up in early May, starting with an EP by me and then some friends of mine from across the world!
Q: Any exciting new artists you will be working with?
A: Quite a few, and there is a good friend of mine actually, a kid who started taking Ableton classes with me a long time ago; Ante Ujevic. He’s the real deal. He’s 22, on some amazing labels already and writes some amazing music. I’m really excited.
Q: You DJ, you produce, you’re launching your own brand, how do you find your balance? Do you have a favourite aspect what you do?
A: I love it all. It’s all kind of like many hats under the umbrella that I love. Under that umbrella it’s important to showcase all of those. I love to DJ and I have friends who are solely DJs, and we get in little fights about the importance of it all the time. I think DJing is important, however it’s a dime a dozen now. Any kid can get the Beatport Top 10 and download music anywhere. It’s completely assessable to anyone. Actually, my first title track off my Refused label is called “Not the Curator” and it’s big for me because I wrote the track after a discussion about this. As a DJ you’re solely a curator, its like you’re running an art museum and you’re selecting all your pieces of art to bring into your gallery. That doesn’t necessarily make you an artist, but it makes you a person of good taste. That’s what I think a DJ is—someone of good taste who wants to share that, but not necessarily showing the art they produced. The inverse of that is the artist’s side of things. A guy like me, or my colleagues, we are more than just a curators, we are creators. Being a label owner now, I’m a curator and as a DJ I’m a curator, but more importantly I’m an artist making music. We need both in this industry, but it’s a balance between the two. There was time when you could make a living off of just being a DJ, and even today they are some amazing ones out there, but to break into it now you definitely have to be a creator before you’re a curator.
Q: When you create your music, it has such emotion and it really shows through, where do you get the inspiration behind your music and what are you are trying to give your listeners?
A: Some of my friends grew up listening to trance and progressive house music and more of a sound being Toronto-influenced sound. I, on the other hand, got into it a little later than them and learned through the Detroit side of things. Derrick May once said, “Detroit Techno is Kraftwerk locked in an elevator with Parliament Funkadelic.” So you have the cold ‘roboticness’ of Kraftwerk, and the warmth and soul of Parliament Funkadelic/George Clinton and his crew. They even had a big space theme to their music and I was certainly influenced by that. Both sides of things. For example, on the elevator of Detroit techno, is Kevin Saunderson and his biggest track was ‘Good Life’ and that is more of a house track then techno. That track was huge for me in understanding the Detroit side of things. So when someone refers to Detroit techno, it’s like a hybrid of house music and techno—the warmth, soul and organicness of house music, yet the coldness, darkness and weirdness side of things, which would be techno. Outside of the spectrum, I’m a big Prince fan. A few of my tracks sample him and one of my big tracks, “City Club”, has a Prince vocal. I’m very opened-minded like that.
Q: You have worked with some of the best in the industry, who are some of your big influences?
A: I was just telling Richie this the other night in Miami, that it’s kind of surreal for me to play around people like him because he was my idol before he was my mentor and colleague now. So he is a really big influence of mine. Another is Dubfire. When Dubfire was Deepdish, that was a big for me. So those two, in their own rights, are huge! I also had a big opportunity way back when….how I got into DJing, which is kind of ironic and funny. I met John Aquaviva at a squash tournament. He was a big influence for me after I saw his set at a Movement Festival, and it totally changed the way I saw music and made me really passionate about it. I saw his name on the tournament draw and I was like, “no way!” I introduced myself, and a few months later, I sent him an email and told him I wanted to start DJing. He told me what to get, and that was all the start of it for me.
Q: When did you have that moment when you realized that music is what you were meant to do? What inspired you along your journey?
A: Some of the big moments for me were that same evening I was at Movement. Mix Master Mike from the Beastie Boys closed the main stage and it was just party-rock and hip-hop! Then we left there and we went to Motor, which was a legendary club in Detroit, and John Aquaviva was playing. He was playing Fatboy Slim and Star 69 and it was just a party—house music and so much fun! It opened up my mind to music. It’s funny how that sticks out in your brain, that exact moment. Then we went to City Club and Richie Hawtin was playing this music that I never heard before, techno like I never heard it. Every 15 minutes he would drop this vocal track that said, “Don’t worry I wont hurt you, I just want to have some fun,” and that’s actually the first 10 seconds of a Prince track that I love. That lead to my track called City Club on Sci + Tec, which was me sampling that same piece after this experience I had with Richie 10 years earlier. I remember seeing John and Richie shaking hands in the DJ booth and knowing their history starting Plus 8 together, and it was just that moment there that I was like, “whoa!” A few months later, I met John at the squash tournament and that’s all kind of where it started to where I am today!
Quick questions, quick answers:
Favourite place to play? France, Spartacus
Favourite place to party? Ibiza, Enter
Favourite place to relax? My studio
If you could only listen to one track for the rest of your life what would it be? “Darling Nikki” by Prince
If you could go on vacation right now where would it be? Hawaii
Favourite food? Sushi
Favourite car? My Jeep!
How would you describe your music in 3 words? Robotic, Soul, Music.
www.facebook.com/justinjamesmusic
www.soundcloud.com/justin-james
By: Christina Shmidt
