Even those people that don’t consider themselves fans of house music have heard of the legend Dennis Ferrer. From the soulful How Do I Let Go to the latest club stomper Hey Hey he’s forever gaining new fans and continually switching up his style. Nardene Scott caught up with Dennis during his taxi ride across New York to see his therapist (it’s not what you think) to find out how he continues to stay so fresh and grounded, tries to steer clear of divas and is all about being up in the middle…
How are you doing? We hear you recently had to cancel some gigs over here in Europe because of a back sprain, are you okay now and can we ask what caused it?
Oh that’s where I’m going right now; I’m going to the therapist’s office. It’s from all the travelling and sitting on a whole load of aeroplanes on your ass, all those flights constantly travelling day in day out. It’s actually called Piriformis syndrome [we Googled, its real] it affects your back and thighs. It’ll put you out of commission for six weeks and that’s exactly what happened, I couldn’t even walk let alone DJ (laughs). You know the dangers of DJ-ing if someone was to tell me this I wouldn’t have believed it, it’s an occupational hazard!
Wow, let’s move on to a more pain free subject…You’re a globally renowned DJ and producer. How important do you feel it is to stay relevant and fresh and how do you manage to continually recreate your sound?
You always should be paying attention to your core audience. People tend to think they develop one style and that’s their core audience… In reality your core audience for dance music must be with regards to where in time and culture of dance music you are…Things constantly revolve you know it’s a cycle so what’s hot one day is not necessarily hot the next especially in a business as fast as the music business. I’m always saying you’re only as good as your last record, so you need to pay attention to trends you can foresee happening.
Your production really manages to crossover genre boundaries especially here in the UK. What is it that you think is so universal about your sound and is this something you’re conscious of when you’re producing?
I’ve always been conscious of that; I’ve always thought I’d rather be up in the middle than to pick sides. This is a numbers game basically, I mean how many people can you get to listen to your interpretation…it doesn’t make sense if only five people understand you. You want as many people as you can garner so my feeling is I don’t want to go too far to the left and I don’t want to go too far to the right. I just want to be up the middle so that anyone can understand the record. I’ll usually do another mix too that will catch the area that I think was lacking in the original.
You have used some amazing vocalists for your productions, how do you select them and are you interested in working with already famous vocalists?
I’ve always kinda shied away from famous vocalists, that’s just always been my thing. When we first got Shingai (lead singer of indie dance outfit The Noisettes) to do that Hey Hey record like she was pretty well known but she wasn’t like blown up like she is now. I’ve always liked to stay away from like big big big names, there’s too many egos involved. Normally I write everything for my records, I mean I’m the composer, the songwriter, the lyricist. When you see a big name vocalist they don’t tend to be producer friendly, (sometimes I don’t mean that about everyone) but bigger artists sometimes want more than they’re worth just because of who they are. For me, it’s my baby I’m not just going to give you something you don’t deserve.
Do you use social networking sites like My Space and Twitter to find new talent then?
Oh yeah we use all those sites my label manager Shauna does that too, she’ll say “Hey D check this vocalist out she’s kinda different”. It’s like everybody has an ear out for me looking for new vocalists.
Hey Hey is an absolute banger, how long did it take to build the track from start to finish and did you know it would get such a positive global reaction?
That track was an absolute nightmare! Because I’m the producer I just kept wanting to put more things into it, I kept saying damn it sounds unfinished it’s too bare, it’s too simple there’s not enough drums there’s not enough claps, there’s not enough anything in it. It’s too simple it’s too f**king simple [he says frustratingly]. I kept fighting myself but every time I added something it just would mess the record up, destroy the record and it would be so whack. So [big sigh] I finally realised one day that it wasn’t about me. This is where experience comes into play, you sit down and you finally figure it out and you say you know what I need to take a back seat here but yet still get my point across. That was the best thing I ever did let her (Shingai) do her thing …I had to be careful that I didn’t overshadow the vocal. Writing the record took me no time I knew from the get go that it was catchy but the issue was making the right bed for it, that record was about for a year before I got it right. You know in sing-a-longs nobody cares what delay you made or what reverb or what kit you used – they care about singing along. I’ll be first to tell you there’s no rocket science to the record.
What’s the plan for 2010 and beyond?
I’m not changing, I’ve done what I’ve done all these years why do I expect to change but you know it’s different because I live this. I don’t do this because I have to I do this I do this because I don’t know what else I would do, I live it, it’s like my life.
New York or New Jersey?
New York
House or Techno?
House
Single or loved up?
Loved up
Cocktail or beer?
Cocktail
Dancefloor or bar?
Dancefloor
Club or Studio?
Studio
Living it up or down to earth?
Living it up (he adds, “hey when the cats away the mice will play”).
For more check objektivity.com and MySpace.com/dennisferrer.
Tags: Dennis Ferrer, House, Interviews
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