The Juan MacLean

Still riding the wave of his excellent The Future Will Come, The Juan MacLean was in town to grace the Heineken Expressions tour and show the masses at Tripod what disco sounded like before nu-disco. Having spent much of the year touring with his live show, and then took off across Europe on a two-week DJ tour. All of this travelling might get a little dull, but he has ways of keeping himself occupied. “That’s how I spend most of my time, reading. My favourite thing of the year is probably The Road, the Cormac McCarthy book. Right now I’m reading a book by James Ellroy. His newest book just came out, called Clothes Like Blood or something [Blood's a Rover], it’s like 1000 pages or something. It’s part of a trilogy that started with American Tabloid, it’s in the late 60s.” For the uninitiated, have a look at this clip of Ellroy on Conan O’Brien a decade ago.

Juan had just come from playing Manchester’s Warehouse Project alongside Erol Alkan, Aeroplane and more, a popular fixture on the UK clubbing calendar. “It was good. I think there was like 1800 people. It was just rammed with people, big huge space packed with people. I asked to be in the small room actually. I hate those big main rooms. It’s not as fun.” I asked him how that show compared to April’s gig in The Deaf Institute. “I thought they were pretty similar. That show at The Deaf Institute was good. Just really packed with people who seemed really into it, having a good time. I like smaller places better, but it’s hard because they want you in a bigger room a lot of the time. I think it’s so much more fun playing in smaller, like 500 capacity is nice. When you get up to big huge empty room, well, not empty, spaces that are more wide open, sometimes it doesn’t sound very good.”

The Future Will Come, as is probably clear from my many posts on the subject, is my favourite album this year, but it works just as well on club speakers as it does on headphones. Making an album and directing it towards one particular experience is obviously something that requires very careful attention. “It’s a big issue that I think a lot about. It comes down to making in album, I don’t really about dancefloor atmosphere. I’d rather make something that you could listen to at home. So on my album there’s a lot of shorter, more pop structured songs, and then I think 12″s are the best to reserve for longer, loopier, more dancefloor-friendly things. That’s always been my philosophy.” The Future Will Come works best, in my opinion, because of the balance between short and snappy songs like One Day and dark, twisted, eight-miunute burners like The Simple Life - but not everyone can get that balance right. “I think it’s always the downfall of electronic musicians - some of my favourite 12″s of all time, like those artists will go on to make albums and they just don’t work very well at all. I think 12″s and albums are two entirely different things, albums that are just collections of instrumental tracks are really hard to do. Like the first Field album [From Here We Go Sublime] I love, I think it’s great. But a lot of the time it just doesn’t work.”

One aspect of the album that is most interesting is the lyrical interplay between Juan and DFA stalwart Nancy Whang. Happiness, heartbreak and every emotion in between feature in songs that seem to catalogue the peaks and troughs that affect every relationship. “That was pretty intentional. I think in dance music when people do have lyrics they tend to be throwaway, either party lyrics that are really meaningless, or really ironic things, or just really clever things, and Nancy and I sat down and just decided that we would try to write as personal, keep it very personal and honest as we could.” As far as Juan’s lyrics are concerned, they often seem to come from the point of view of a humanoid creature, devoid of emotion. “I think that’s kind of a stereotype that has a lot of truth to it in relationships in general. The guy is the one who more robotic and reserved and it’s always the girl who wants to be more emotional or something. So that’s why I’ve always used robots as a metaphor for that.” This robotic trope is turned on its head by Human Disaster, a bleak, desolate song that bares every hidden emotion, which precedes the epic Happy House. “Originally we had a sort of narrative arc to the album that we got away from for sequencing, but it was really a progression of two people coming together and growing apart, and coming back together again. I feel like it sort of getting bookended, in terms of vinyl, side one ends with the song Tonight, which is much more upbeat, happy, optimistic, and it was definitely ending with Happy House, to leave it on a positive, upbeat note.”

Getting back to the live show, Juan recently went into great detail about his setup for Resident Advisor’s Machine Love. I asked him to break that down for a layperson. “It’s hard, how much of a layperson? I think the best way to put it, now, most people in electronic music work entirely inside a computer, using software, synthesisers, all the sounds come from inside the computer, and everything I do is outside the computer, starting with live drums, and actually big collection of synths, and live playing of the instrument, I think that’s the most identifiable quality to it.” Bands like Holy Ghost! have talked about how difficult it’ll be for them to start touring, with the extensive setup they use, but they’re not the only ones. “It’s a big issue because it’s very expensive, especially when you start flying, it’s hard to get all the gear around. We’re in the same boat. Because we actually play all these synths and instruments, there’s a lot of stuff to carry around. Basically it’s a lot more engaging, a live show, than people getting up with a laptop and turning it on.” I recounted to him an experience last year when I saw Ulrich Schnauss start a show only for his laptop to crash within seconds of starting. “That’s embarrassing too. There was a Junior Boys show in New York, in Webster Hall, really big, like 1200 capacity place, and after the first song all their stuff crashed and they had to cancel the show. That terrifies me, I don’t ever want to have that happen. But everyone on DFA, LCD Soundsystem, you know, Hercules and Love Affair, we all carry around all this gear. I think it’s a standard at DFA that’s been established, you’re going to have a proper band.”

All of his recent singles have featured what can only be termed glorious remixes - Surkin, Matthew Dear and The Emperor Machine to name but three. “I usually try to go off the beaten path a little bit. I do so many remixes myself as well, I like the idea of having different things for DJs to play basically. Which is always what I think the point of any remix is, to have something for DJs to play.” And his favourite? “God, that’s a tough one. I think surprisingly it’s the One Day remix by Mark Romboy, which was really, people think of as a weird choice, but I thought it was amazing.”

A recent interview revealed a past spent teaching teenage delinquents in detention centres. Is this something that could follow a successful music career? “I don’t know, I think about it all the time. It’s so hard to say. Some days I think I’ll do it till I’m like 60. Then other days I think I can’t do it anymore, I don’t know. I played with Alexander Robotnick the other night, he’s like 68 or something. He’s 68 and he’s jumping around and going crazy! And I thought “Wow, that’s pretty amazing”. I don’t know. It’s one of the things with electronic music, like dance music, as opposed to rock music, like when I played in an indie rock band, I was like “I definitely don’t want to be anywhere the age of 30 and doing this”, like I found it kind of embarrassing. But with dance music I think there’s a tradition of people being revered as they go on.” Why not instruct kids on how to make a break into the music industry? “I could, I’d like to, when I was teaching I set up an electronic music programme, that was really fun. In the United States it’s looked at as a luxury kind of thing, there’s never money for it.”

I guess all that can be said to that is that, well, the future will come…

The Heineken Expression tour continues at The Classic in Cork on November 13, with Shit Robot, Dancepig and more. See here for more details.

Electric Picnic 2008, a MySpace Tour - Sunday

Sunday’s line up explained, through a MySpace linkaggedon…. Let it be known that I abhor the use of labels, so this was a painful exercise.

[Previously - Friday's acts; Saturday's acts]

Sunday 31st

Absentee; James Ford-produced dark, melancholic indie-pop. Think The Magnetic Fields, only British.

Adrian Crowley; Irish singer-songwriter folk music stuff. Hot Press love him.

Black Lips; Flower punk. Or so their Myspace says. Rough around the edges, and all the better for it.

Candi Staton; She sang Young Hearts Run Free! And You Got The Love! Unmissable.

Céilí House Allstars; The name says it all really.

Chromeo; One half is A-Trak’s brother. The other dresses like Cee-Lo. They sound like Prince with a vocoder and a sense of humour. A bit Marmite, they’ll probably draw a HUGE crowd.

Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band; Basically a Bright Eyes project without producer Mike Mogis, this doesn’t deviate much from his folk-tronica template. Not a bad thing, mind.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYewptydkvE]

Cowboy X; An Irish take on indie-tronica.

CSS; Brazilian flavoured pop-rock turned generic indie whine. If you’ve seen them already (and no doubt you have, you can afford to miss them). If not, they can be good fun live.

Deadmau5; Tech-electro flavour of the month. Pronounced Dead Mouse.

Dengue Fever; Indie-rock with a Cambodian twist. Hence the name, I guess…

Dublin City Big Band; I can’t find a link for these guys, but I imagine they play Glenn Miller and Gershwin favourites. Fun for all the family then.

Dublin Gospel Choir; An Electric Picnic staple, expect these guys to rouse you out of your hangover on Sunday morning.

Emmy The Great; More folk-pop. Seems to be a lot in this vein on Sunday…

Farmer’s Market; Some noodly jazz for your inner beatnik. Don’t be fooled by Famer’s Market on the Picnic website, it’s a typo.

Faust; 70s Krautrock. Important.

Florence & the Machine; Mournful, slightly distorted indie-rock.

Foals; Their Myspace says that they are SNOTTY ART SCHOOL DROPOUTS HUNGRY FOR THE DOLLAR, so who am I to say any different?

Gemma Hayes; Husky-voiced Irish indie-pop darling.

Get Cape.Wear Cape.Fly; British acoustic guitarist. Recently covered Justice’s DANCE, with surprisingly good results.

Grinderman; Nick Cave minus The Bad Seeds plus some other guys led Bad Seeds side project. Not my thing, but I think I’m in the minority.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sshpJbeNF4U]

Hadouken!; Their album title, Music For An Accelerated Culture, says it all. Comparisons to Mike Skinner aren’t that valid; think less Streets, more Street Fighter.

Ham Sandwich; Kells-based indie-pop.

Hayseed Dixie: Bar fight music. The sort of thing you’d expect to hear in the bar where The Blue Brothers do Rawhide.

Hercules & Love Affair; DFA-based future-disco. Sexy as hell. Antony (of the Johnsons) won’t be around, but don’t let that put you off. This will be great.

Iarla O’Lionaird’s Invisible Fields; Irish music. I don’t profess to know much about this kind of thing, so I won’t say any more than that.

Ibrahim Electric; Meandering Danish jazz-funk. In a good way.

Jah Wobble’s Chinese Dub; An experimental foray charting what happens when dub collides with Chinese folk music. This could be very interesting.

Johnny Flynn; The blues and country end of the singer-songwriter spectrum.

Leila; Moulin Rouge era-sounding nightmare-pop on Warp. Looks like a definite highlight to me.

Lou Rhodes; Delicate, heart-on-the-sleeve style folk music.

Mahmoud Fadl’s United Nubians; Master Drummer from the Nile. Gives world music a good name.

Martina Topley-Bird; Super-collaborator turned solo artist. One to see if you like your intelligent female pop like that of Santogold.

Mark Geary; Token Irish-American singer-songwriter nonsense. Don’t we have enough of these guys?

Micah P Hinson; Deep-voiced country warblings.

Michael Franti & Spearhead; Revolutionary Californian reggae-soul.

My Bloody Valentine; What can one say? The reason a lot of people are going I’d wager. Your friends will probably mock you if you miss this.

Pivot; Noisy, Australian post-rock-tronica. Nothing like the other Aussie acts in town for the weekend (ie Midnight Juggernauts and Cut Copy), but a little variety never hurt anyone. Worth a look.

School Of Language; Bizarre vocal experimentalists.

Sex Pistols; Probably only worth seeing if you want to tick them off the list of acts you’ve seen. Unlike MBV, I can’t see any valid reason for them to re/perform.

Sinead O Connor; Again, not much one can say on this front. She’s a bit nuts, she courts controversy, but she also recorded this.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rO8JWbG6bVw]

Stephen Malkmus; He was in Pavement. Lots of people like him. Karl talked to him recently, so have a read to see where he’s at these days.

The Congos; More reggae, coming from some guys who worked with Lee “Scratch” Perry and Max Romeo in the 70s. Old school.

The Dodos; Slightly twee indie-pop tempered with a heavy dose of live percussion.

The Gossip; Apparently these guys have been around since the 90s, but only hit big with a certain anthem two years ago. Go for Standing In The Way of control. Then see what else is on.

The Roots; Hip-hop with real instruments and “music”. Drummer/producer ?uestlove is an arrogant nutter, but that hardly matters when he helps to put on such a show with this crew. All rappers should aspire to be like this.

The Urges; Dublin-based psychedlic garage music. Sounds like something you’d hear on a Tarantino soundtrack.

These New Puritans; An English indie/nu-rave/noise band who wrote a song about Elvis. But apparently not that one.

Turin Brakes; Yawn. This one is for the Franz Ferdinand fans out there.

Wolfgang Haffner; Funky nu-jazz. That’s not always a bad thing!

Yacht; Experimental noise from Portland, Oregon. Sounds like fun.