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Jackson plays cut-and-paste
Debut album by an electro prodigy
Paris
21/10/2005 -
Jackson: When I was a teenager I was a drummer in this band. We played mostly rock, blues and funk. But there came a time when I found myself confronted by mates who were going off to hardcore raves. I looked down on them a bit at first, as logically a guy who's learning to play a real instrument would. I was mega-resistant to the whole rave thing! I'd say things like, 'Give me a computer and I'll knock you off a piece of electronic music in a couple of hours!' My mates got really fed up with that ... Anyway, I gradually started getting into electro after that and began going to raves. That made me start questioning everything and I ended up giving up rock and the drums for good.
What kind of stuff did you do when you first started experimenting with electro?
I'd be listening to the radio and I'd record my own cassettes, mixes by Manu le Malin, Spiral Tribes, Liza N’Elias and stuff like that. I didn't get what the music was about at all. It felt like it was coming from outer space!
When I was 15, my big sister introduced me to one of her friends who was setting up this house label called Pumpking Records with a bunch of mates. It was through them that I actually found out what work in a studio was all about and through them that I discovered the history of house and techno. When I first started out making my own stuff on my Atari and my Korg synthesiser, I'd do really hardcore stuff with really fast beats. It was pretty naive ... Then I realised that that kind of nervy, speedy sound didn't go down too well with girls ... And I ended up doing more of a funky, house sound, which was actually more in line with the stuff I used to listen to before. That was when the French electro scene was really big. I was a major fan of Trankilou at the time.
You almost ended up as a male model instead of a musician, though, didn't you?
Yeah, this guy stopped me in the street one day and asked me if I'd be interested in doing photos for a Benetton ad. I ended up making quite a bit of money out of that! It was like there I was at 18 with this idea that I was going to go off and live in London and set up my own label there. Luckily for me, I didn't actually launch my own label. I worked on a couple of remixes instead, wrote some of my own material and released an EP which I financed myself.
How did you end up signed to Warp, a label that's home to Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Autechre ?
I got this e-mail one day from a journalist working for this magazine in the UK. He knew the people from Warp and put us in touch. I ended up going off to London and taking my album, which I was just on the verge of finishing, into their offices. Anyway, they liked what they heard and my French record company, Barclay/Universal, began working with Warp who are distributing the album in the rest of the world. It's an ideal set-up – I love the idea of such a bizarre alliance!
How did you end up with such a rich mix of musical styles on the album?
Well, my approach to music is fairly intuitive. I actually ended up integrating quite a lot of influences and musical styles that I haven't entirely mastered myself. OK, so I know artists like Aphex Twin and Prefuse 73. But they're not the ones who got me into cutting stuff up. That came more from Todd Edwards, who was one of the first guys to start playing around with fragments of vocals and making musical phrases out of them. The way I worked on the album was I did everything on just the one computer and that really changed the time factor. Working that way means you can start a track and then take a break and come back to it again a couple of months later. There's not one real moment of creation and then that's that!
Did Smash involve a long and difficult labour?
Oh yes, you can definitely say that! It was a really long process, because I was actually coming up with the concept for the album and experimenting with personal stuff at the same time. That's an unbelievable luxury! There was no real method involved. It was a matter of trying everything out along the way. I never really knew where I was going. And, I have to say, a lot of tracks were only 'finished' because there was a deadline and a taxi was waiting outside ready to take the tapes off and get them mastered!
What now?
I want to make other records now. My contract with Warp is actually for another two albums after this. I'm also working on remixes for Jamie Lidell – but that's under the pseudonym Marie-Madeleine, because I want to dissociate my remix work from my own productions. Remixes aren't exactly my favourite thing! Mostly, up until the end of 2005, I'll be doing a lot of live performances. I do all this last-minute stuff for clubs, where I end up working on the plane or in my hotel room… It's totally new for me travelling and making music. It can be quite crazy at times!
Jackson and his Computer Band Smash (Warp/Barclay) 2005
Nicolas Dambre
Translation : Julie Street
27/07/2005 -
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