If you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, you might be forgiven for not knowing about Defected Records and their central role in the global House scene. What is unforgivable, however, is the misconception held by many people that Defected is corporate entity strictly in the game to make a quick buck. But this is not 1979 “Disco Sucks” fever, and Defected is not of the mind to exploit a hot sound strictly for the sake of their bottom line. What Defected Records strives for is a roster of DJs and Producers that span the spectrum of House sounds (from Deep and Soulful to harder-hitting and tribal-tinged) and stay true to the spirit of the music, while also keeping it fresh and exciting by pushing the envelope and challenging the traditional genre lines (Chus & Ceballos and Havana Funk are just two examples). Simon Dunmore, Co-Founder of Defected, made the move from signing Janet Jackson and CeCe Peniston records to what he does today so that he could look himself in the mirror knowing that he was helping to sustain and bolster the music that he so loves. But being true to his musical inspirations does not mean running a financially unstable company. At what seems to be the height of a digital renaissance (or revolution, as you will) people seem to have lost sight of an idea that once rang true: while it is a crime to download or swap music illegally, artists should not be condemned for expecting to be paid for the music they make. In this in-depth conversation, Dunmore discusses Defected’s journey thus far and takes a candid look at the global House scene, what it truly means to be a participant in it and how one record about love can inspire so much hate. -- Interview and words by Alex R. Mayer
ARM: Tell me a bit about your upbringing and some of your earliest musical influences? SD: Music always interested me from quite an early age. My first recollection of music was kind of “borrowing” my uncle’s Motown collection and selling it to a second hand store without his knowledge. I kind of look back in horror at that now, but I was just being a kid and thinking I was smart. If someone did that to my 7” collection now, I’d be beside myself! My uncle was a Mod so his collection was probably a good one. Other than that it was a fascination with collecting records and making tapes for friends, getting asked to do a few parties and enjoying the experience of DJing. That was combined with working in specialty record stores that sold a lot of imports and Disco records from the States, France and Italy, which was where a lot of quality disco and house records were coming from. That led to a job with Cooltempo records, which is part of Chrysalis EMI, where I worked with artists like Adeva, Arrested Development and Ganstarr. It was a hybrid of Dance acts and Hip-Hop. I worked there for 5 years and then worked with A&M, running their dance department (AM:PM) for about 4 years. Then I decided that I had had enough of working in the majors, it didn’t sit with me musically- everything you did had to aimed at the charts and be very mainstream and commercial. So I had learned enough to start my own label, and there was Defected in 1999. Although, I found out about 18 months later that I actually hadn’t learned enough. Tell me a bit more about why you decided to start your own label. If you work for a label or are involved in music, at some point you know you’re going to come to the end of your “shelf life”, much like a professional sports player does. I felt that was going to be the case, especially at a major label. If you’re in sports, you transition to management or something that keeps you involved, even if it’s not on the frontlines. I still do A&R, signing records for Defected, but that was the reason I left. I just wanted to be in control of my own destiny. The good thing about making the transition is that you can sign records that are a little bit truer to yourself or that make sense to put out for an artist. If you have the expectation to only sell a few thousand, that’s OK. But a major wouldn’t bother putting something like that out, it wouldn’t be worth it. It meant that I could indulge myself, which is the greatest thing. However, at some point we do have to take our business obligations seriously, which is the part I enjoy the least. This is a topic that often turns into a heated debate amongst House music enthusiasts, but do you find yourself making business decisions that take the popular charts into account so that you can continue to be to be true to your creative and artistic directions? Any business has to have a balance of forward thinking and growing itself into the marketplace, and sometimes that requires making commercial decisions. We have a record in the charts right now, “Love Generation,” and it’s a love-hate record. It gets great crowd reactions and DJs that are of a more commercial mind are quite happy to play it. People who deem themselves to be more deep and more serious find it hard to deal with. Even on our own message board we’ve had a lot of criticism. I understand why people say what they and as long as their criticism is constructive, I have no problem with it. But that record is going to finance other areas of the company that are a little more creative or indulgent or specialist. Without having commercial success we wouldn’t be able to do that. A lot of independent labels are run as hobbies and are maybe a bit too indulgent and they find themselves in trouble and go out of business.
Why do you think labels like Defected and Soulfuric are lightening rods for such criticism? It’s kind of inevitable; people think we’re commercial and corporate. But all we do is get behind our artists and promote our records. If taking out ads and taking records to radio to reach a bigger audience is being corporate, there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people like to keep the scene to themselves and I think that’s very selfish. When you have success, your head is above the parapet and people will take a shot at you. It seems to me that the remixes of “Love Generation” really gave Defected the chance to fly their true House colors by taking this commercial track in a decidedly underground direction. That’s the thing about remixes, you can take something that’s underground and not so commercial, and someone can come up with something that twists it [in a commercial direction] and you have a different potential for the record. We did it the other way around, with this commercial track and its pop melodies. Ron Carroll’s mix is the ultimate remix- he added his own vocal, got a gospel choir from Chicago and used just one line from the original. He really made it his own. Kenny’s mix is way deeper, and with Kenny it’s really all about his beats and bassline. Again, it has that twist, and that’s why remixes are commissioned. There’s no point in trying to put it back into the same market. What has been your most valuable learning experience from running your own label? Without a doubt it has been to try and keep your artists happy. There are a lot of labels, especially in the UK, where you never see a follow-up from an artist; the follow-up may be on a different label or there may never even be another record. If you look at the releases that we put out, we work with people over a long period of time. We try to treat our artists properly and we try to support them. I think it’s a great reciprocal relationship—the artists undoubtedly give Defected great credibility and we give the artists enough over time for them to continue to be happy as well.
How did the Wax Wars concept come about? What connection do you have with Jamie Lewis and Brian Tappert? Our paths cross on a regular basis. Music is really serious, and some people take it a bit too far, but we just wanted to have a little fun. About 18 months ago, we did an underground club night called “DJ Death Match” where Brian and I had a competition at Medicine Bar in East London. It was just a really cool, friendly night. So that put the idea of a musical stand-off in our heads. Jamie Lewis also had the idea. We were all out in Ibiza together and Jamie said, ‘Why don’t we make an album? I’ve got all this stuff on Purple, Brian’s got Soulfuric, and we can make it a competition to see who’s got the best mix.’ We’ve also really taken a piss at ourselves with the artwork. Tell me about the characters you have each taken on. Well, we discussed this quite a lot. Brian wanted to be Digi-Man, since he has his Traxsource download site which he’s put so much time and energy into. He has a digital portal so people can download bullets and bombs to go and DJ with. I kind of wanted to take on a bit of an ogre look. I’m pretty ferocious on our message board, especially if someone is personally attacking our artists. I just try to protect the people we work with. I took on the big persona of Defector. It’s really tongue-in-cheek, it’s not meant to be scary. As for Jamie, he was apparently found frozen in the Swiss Alps, and he’s the protector of the good grooves.
It’s all stimulated a lot of interest because it is so much fun. If this does work, I think we could open it up to other people. Lots of people have great catalogues, and it doesn’t even have to be strictly House; we could have Norman Jay vs Gilles Peterson vs Kenny Dope, who knows! What is the future direction of House? Do we need to go “back to the future,” so to speak, to the days of a slower BPM that somehow let twice as much energy and emotion shine through, and could also be dark without being just plain evil? I believe that a lot of House music has lost its soul over the years. We certainly like to put out records that have a degree of emotion and musicality in them. House music got very boring with people just making beats and basslines. Those records do have their place. But I remember records 7 or 8 years ago when you’d buy a remix package and you’d have the David Morales Def mix and the Red Zone mix. Then all of sudden, all you would get is the Dub mix. It was as if they’d forgotten about doing the vocal or uplifting version, and everything went kind of dark. People moved away from the scene because of that. In the UK, there are more songs in the House scene now; it’s not all about the frantic, peak-time, big-room records. People appreciate the fact that people do want to hear familiar songs; it’s not all about being upfront and super cool. What has always struck me about your DJing style, is your ability to simultaneously occupy the deep, soulful side of House as well as the harder-hitting tribal sounds. I like my House music soulful and I like it tough as well. I can always remember going to see Tony Humphries or Louie Vega back in the day. They’d play something super soulful and then they’d play a techno record but it would be pitched down to minus 4 or 6. It sounded great but it had that edge and it would be raw. We don’t want to be pigeonholed into one style or sound. If we have something that’s really soulful, we’ll try to get someone to do a tougher mix or if we have something that’s a little tough, we’ll try to take it into a soulful area as well. When I play out I certainly like to take people on a bit of a journey. If I’m playing really tough and have people going crazy, then I’ll drop something really soulful, like the Ron Hall & the Motherfunkaz track that DJ Spen produced. And the reaction, when people aren’t expecting it, is incredible. It’s important to have moments in the night when people are surprised, as opposed to just giving them what they want. Why do you think there seems to be less “timeless” music being produced today than there was ten or fifteen years ago? Will there be as many timeless records ten years from now, as there are now from ten years ago? Ten years ago you had to be some kind of musician to make records. You had to understand chords and progressions and keys, you had to play an instrument. Now you don’t have to do that. You can just sample some records, steal some drum tracks and put the thing together quite easily. The thing is that the world is now flooded with bad and average productions. I don’t know if there are as many really good records being made today as there were ten years ago. I certainly think that there are really good productions out there, you just have to go looking for them and it’s a lot harder to find them. If you want to take it to the extreme, go listen to Loleatta Halloway’s “Hit and Run” on Salsoul, and I’m talking about the 9 ½ minute album version here. From the moment it starts to the moment it finishes, you can tell that record was scored and it was a progression, nothing was looped; they don’t make records like that anymore. The process of putting a record like that together would be astronomical. Those records stand out for me because people don’t score strings anymore, or write a horn arrangement or a live bass and guitar line. They do it all on their computer now. There’s probably just as many records around from ten years ago that can still stand up, but there’s not many records from 20 years ago that still sound good today, and I think that’s sad. With the continuing advancement of digital technology and digital media, how much do you keep your hands on wax these days? Do you think digital is going to be the death of vinyl, as so many people suggest? The thing we have to work out is how we’re going to get people to pay for the music that they play, not just in terms of downloads, but also with the CD-R swapping and exchanging that goes on. I’m hoping that something will be developed to make it almost impossible to copy stuff so that the people that make records can get paid. I think that’s only fair. As far as technology is concerned, I play almost exclusively CDs now, just as a matter of convenience. Having said that, I do still collect vinyl. If I have a record that I play on CD and I see it in a shop, I’ll buy a copy to support the label. Plus, I don’t want to see vinyl die. I treasure my record collection and I don’t want it to be in a memory bank on my computer. It always strikes me as odd that House music sees more success in places like the UK and the rest of Europe than it does in its birthplace of America. Why do you think that it? Have you noticed differences in the House scenes throughout the world? [America] just doesn’t seem to have the clubbing culture or mentality that Europe or Australia has. From when you’re 16 or 18 in the UK, you want to go to a club. We’ve always had this massive Soul culture in the UK. Since the ‘60s with the Mod Scene and Northern Soul, there’s always been a fascination with Black music. I think that’s why the soulful House scene has survived. I don’t necessarily think the scenes are huge around the world, but there is enough of a community to make it a viable scene. I find it ironic that the internet was supposed to the death of House music and dance music, it’s actually been the savior at the same time. More information is available at www.defected.com
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