Interview with Ben Watt
“For me, that's the essence of House music; you rock‘em, and you make ‘em cry.” –Ben Watt

For the better part of two decades, Ben Watt has been creating a name for himself in the music world, leaving his artistic mark in various genres. Most recently, he has delved deep into the world of house, picking up where he left off with Everything But the Girl's Temperamental. Along with partner Jay Hanaan, he created Lazy Dog, throwing London's undisputed essential Sunday night party.  He has produced some of the most sought after remixes for artists from Maxwell and Meshell Ndegeocello to Beth Orton and Sunshine Anderson, and his sound has become one of the most recognizable in the house scene of the new millennium.
 
 

 

 
 

The basic Lazy Dog concept and structure remains very much intact for Watt with his new Buzzin Fly venture, in that there is not a great deal of deviation from the jazzy, soulful deep house groove that Watt has found for himself. There certainly is no need for him to make any drastic changes. What Watt has done, and very successfully at that, is to unearth a layer of house which is deeper, more pensive and, at times, more brooding in comparison to the Lazy Dog era. Challenges may be posed and envelopes may be pushed with this deeper outing, but ultimately any journey that Ben Watt leads his listeners on will prove to be worthwhile. After navigating an NYC crowd through some peaks, valleys and waves, Ben Watt took the time to speak with me over coffee and tea about his latest creations and favorites tracks, his own musical journey and the creative techniques of Bill Murray.

ARM: What direction have you seen your music go in from Lazy Dog to Buzzin' Fly?


BW: “I think with last night's set I was on a bit of a high from the end of the tour. I was a little bit more up than I've been lately, a bit more peaky, more Latin– which is stuff I haven't been playing quite so much lately. I've tended to be going on a deeper route, certainly on my Sunday's in London when I'm playing to a home crowd. They're going with me a lot more and expecting new stuff. You can go on a bit of a trip. There's always a bit more pressure when you come abroad and people haven't seen you in a while. They want to hear some of the things that have been stockpiling on the label for a while. They still want to hear Sade, they still want to hear “Lone Cat”. Part of me feels a bit cheesy still dropping it (Sade's “I'll Be There”), but I do like it.” Soon after that, I like to take it down again, wash around a bit in some deeper water. It goes in waves.

ARM: It seems to me that with Buzzin Fly you've gone deeper, more soulful, almost making a more personal artistic statement as opposed to Lazy Dog.

BW: Lazy Dog really came out of a club night. It was very much about the vibe we created: it was all really an extension of the night.  When I started Buzzin' Fly, I wanted it to be more of a broader-based enterprise. I wanted to put as much effort into the artwork and the website as I was putting into the club night and the releases. I wanted to make sure that I was going to sign young artists as well, that was really fundamental.  I  just want to try and help break some new talent, some fresh talent.

ARM: What do you look for in other artists' work? What do you strive for in your own productions?

BW: I want to tread this line where it's clearly a dance floor track but there's a sense of pain, loss and death to it as well, which is I guess what I'm always looking for. It's a bit of a broad question, really....

ARM: Let's discuss Justin Martin's “The Sad Piano” as an example.

BW: Well, it's a very lean and muscular track.  It's no non-sense in it's arrangement, and it has kind of a dark “tech” sound that announces the track. That freaked a lot of people out at first. Then in the midst of all this darkness is this really beautiful piano line and that is almost an exact embodiment of what I look for. That kind of tender-tough. It's nocturnal and punchy, but also serene and melodic and touches you in some way. I think it's very easy to go out and play atmospheric moody deep house records that don't kill out on the dance floor.  But if you can murder the dance floor at the same time...


In a way it's not so different from what “Missing” was all about.  The Todd Terry mix was a track that slayed the dance floor but was an incredibly emotional piece of music.  For me, that's the essence of house music; you rock ‘em and you make ‘em cry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ON INSPIRATION

Many of us want to know what makes an artist tick, what drives him or her on the inside, and of course where they get their creative inspiration. This is kind of like asking The Pope why exactly he's a Catholic; he just is. Watt breaks it down with a bit of self-depreciation, but also adds some personal insight:

BW: Quite often, you start off as a complete magpie. You're sitting around doing nothing in particular when you hear something on someone else's record, or on the radio and you think, “That's got a vibe,” and that's your kickoff point. You don't really know what triggers that reaction in you.  I try very hard not to over analyze my instincts, because if I do it just drives me insane in the end.

I read a really interesting article about Bill Murray's role in “Lost in Translation” and how Sophia Coppola had been chasing him for months to do the movie and he wouldn't totally commit to it. He seemed to be tacitly agreeing to do the movie, saying “yes I'll be there,” but apparently even on the day of shooting there was no real conviction from anyone that he was going to show up. So he turns up, does his part and he doesn't want to talk about it too much. There was always that feeling from him like “well, I've got to be going in a minute, but let's do this shot...” and apparently that's how he was through the whole movie.

It's a process that I can totally relate to. I try not to question too much why I'm doing what I'm doing, it just seems like a good place to be and that's all I should worry about– just going on my instincts. I just think that as a concept, not quite committing, not really describing what you want or need is often a
better route sometimes.

 

FROM EDEN TO THE DANCEFLOORS

Watt and his musical and life partner, Tracey Thorn, have navigated a vast sea of musical styles during their tenure as Everything But the Girl, the most moody of which was captured on “Walking Wounded” and “Temperamental.” So how did they go from bossa-latin infused folk-rock to drum n bass breakbeats and house grooves?

BW: You're just looking for a vehicle for your feelings, I guess. You're looking for an appropriate infrastructure on which to hang everything. That period (Walking Wounded) was a weird kind of “back to the future” thing that Tracey and I were going through.  It was post-my- illness, and we didn't want to go back into the past but we did want to bring some of the best essence of ourselves from the past and put it into the future.  With the early drum n bass stuff, I always thought that it sounded like futuristic bossa nova. That was, I suppose, the way we were able to meld our past with the future; taking our Latin influences from our early albums like Eden and mixing it with this forward facing modern dance vibe. That excited me.

Like a lot of things, it was incremental. Your ear is caught by one thing and then something else and gradually you realize you're being pulled in a direction you weren't expecting. I remember being quite into the New York  garage scene in the early 90s and some of the stuff that was coming out on Republic like Turntable Orchestra “You're Gonna Miss Me.”I remember asking Tracey if there was a way could incorporate some of that stuff into our sound but it just seemed impossible at the time.  We seemed locked on a track at the time as EBTG and, in retrospect quite honestly, not all that contentedly. I could see us growing older quietly with our audience and everyone around us getting a bit more conservative in their taste; wanting to come to the shows and maybe sit down as opposed to standing up, wanting to hear more of the back catalogue in the set list. It was starting to feel quite claustrophobic.

And then out of the blue I got this life threatening illness that took me out of the game for a year and when we came back it was like we were back at year zero. We had been torn apart emotionally and I said to Tracey, “If we do begin again, let's just fuck the past. Let's do something fresh.” We felt really raw emotionally. I sometimes say, if you don't try to look too hard, things will come along. The phone rang and it was Massive Attack. We didn't go looking for it. We were in that mood and the phone rang.

ARM: So life presented you, perhaps, with an opportunity to start something new?

BW: Well, yeah. When we did “Missing” I actually wrote that track specifically to be remixed at that tempo with those kind of chord changes. But in those days, I had no weaponry to make a house track, I didn't know where to start. But I certainly knew the vibe and the tempo we needed. I just threw it at my Dance A&R guy at Atlantic records and he suggested Todd Terry for the mix. Todd threw the mix back and I don't think he thought it was all that. Of course now looking back with 20/20, everyone can say “I knew it was a hit record” and all that.  I think it was one of those things that just fell together. It was a great song, a great vocal, very involving lyrics, beautiful strings, guitar and an absolutely devastating drum and bass line track. I don't think anyone could have ever have guessed.

ARM: What kind of equipment to you use?

BW: When I play live, pretty standard. We just put the new Rane MP44 mixer into Neighborhood in London, which I think is a great sounding mixer. We also have the new Technics 1210s, the Mach 5 which are the new ones. They have this sweeping pitch change, which is very helpful. On the old fashion decks there was always a cut off point, called the “Greenlight” where you're at the record's original pitch. But there was always a little groove that it sat in, and if you're just trying to mix around the green light, the deck itself actually goes into a free spin. The turntable itself is not locked on the spindle. It's a really tricky point for a DJ to mix in. With the new Mach 5's you can sweep right through the pitch from plus 8 down to minus 8. Of course the pioneer CDJ 1000s, the current state of the art CD players are also great fun to work with.

In the studio I use a mix of the latest and the vintage. I've got the latest version of Logic Audio on my computer, but I still have old bits of equipment lying around the room: vintage fender rhodes, old synths from the 80s, my guitar collection and my amps. It's kind of like that back to the future again.

ARM: What are your hottest three tracks right now?

BW: Manoo's “6 In the Morning,” and I'm not just saying it because it's on my record label. I really do totally adore it, along with the flipside of that single which is call “A New Life.” There's a storming, peak-time track that I played towards the end of last night by Shapshifters calls “Lola's Theme” which I think is going to be a massive track, but it's also very deep and very rewarding on the dance floor.

What I really like is Jerone Sydenham and Dennis Ferrer have been putting out these really deep 10 inches on Ibadan. They did one called “Sandcastles,” that is a hot track.  It's deep shit. They also sent me the new one, “Timbuktu” which again is as deep as the Pacific

ARM: Whose work do you admire right now?

BW: Some of the French guys, the kind of post Daft-punk generation, now that's all gone by the way side. Some of the deeper guys like DJ Gregory, Martin Solveig, and this guy Manoo, on my label, who I just think is really great. He works with this keyboard player Francois Aymonier and the two of them.... Holy Shit! Manoo builds these really flat beats with really subby-dub baselines, which is the kind of nocturnal muscular thing, and Francois overlays these futuristic orchestral keyboards lines. “6 In the Morning” is the main track from them at the moment, which I'm doing as a single next month as well with a new track from them on the flipside.

I still love some of the classic deep US guys. I love Sandy Rivera's beats, John Ciafone (of Mood II Swing). They're the kind of people you often return to for inspiration when you're looking for a groove.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Words by Alex R Mayer

Photography by Richard Haughton used courtesy of Buzzin Fly Records.

Thanks to Ben watt for taking the time to speak to Alex and to Jo Webb
at Buzzin' Fly for sorting out the photographs for us.