Jokers Of The Scene

In an industry that is overflowing with next big things, overnight sensations and latest trends it's refreshing to find producers who work on the slow burn theory. Like a real warm up DJ, the concept of a fan base growing as your sound develops could almost be a forgotten concept. As can the fact that you'd opt to push the crowd rather than just play the big tune. That they also know how to put a sound system through it's paces and have history of rocking parties, Jokers Of The Scene were an easy choice for podcast #3.

After meeting in Linus's record shop the pair went on to run the Ottawa legendary Disorganised parties (which sadly closed earlier this year), as well as releasing bombs on Fools Gold records. Nick Catchdubs initially described their sound as "Bob and Doug McKenzie trading their fishing hole for a rave cave..... They can get deep with the best of them, but they're not your stereotypical chin-stroking techno aesthetes at all. That would be boring! If that doesn't wet your appetite for their mix then nothing will. Welcoming The Jokers of the Scene.

Pulse: From what I’d heard, 2010 was planned to be a big year for you you guys. How’s that working out so far? Jokers Of The Scene: So far, it's been great. The winter months were spent primarily working on new material in the studio - our 2 new singles for the year, as well as various remixes and a couple of other projects we have on the go. As winter ended, we were again at south by southwest in Austin and the Winter Music Conference in Miami; which were also highlights for us as we were able to debut and test plenty of new material. We continued touring throughout North America in the spring and were invited to play at Coachella, which was an incredible experience and another major moment for us. May and June was spent touring the US, South America, and Europe as our new single "Revolting Joks" was released. Right now we are on a touring break for a month at home in Ottawa, which has been a particularly prolific time in the studio. Loads of new material is being churned out and prepared for various upcoming projects.

You’ve had quite a hectic touring schedule recently, what have been some of the highlights or standouts for you? Most of the touring is a highlight for us. The exploration aspects of traveling are very exciting to us, so we tend to focus on seeing and experiencing as much as we can when we are away from home. History, culture, people art, food, architecture, etc...these are the things that interest us the most, and we're lucky to have the opportunity to take advantage of being in different cities all over the world. There are definitely some specific moments and places that stand out such as our first trip to Brazil, performing for thousands at Coachella, and of course spending time in favorite cities such as Berlin, Barcelona and LA.



So apart from all the touring, what have you been working on lately? lately, we have been focusing most of our studio time on new original material and less on remixes. There are many new pieces of music that have been recorded. Some are complete and others are in pieces, and some are destined for specific projects while others have an undetermined fate.

We are also currently working on a few collaborations which we can't give too many details on yet, but one of them is heading in a darker pop-oriented direction complete with vocals and there are also a few new JOTS tracks that are either finished or works in progress that will hopefully see the light of day before long as well. One of the new tracks (called Power Slave) is to be released this fall on the upcoming Fool's Gold label compilation.

There is also a second JOTS single being released in September on Fool's Gold called "Joking Victim", which will also be part a larger art-related collaboration that we haven't announced yet. Details will be released soon.

You were saying last year that you were keen to start working with more band’s and you recently remixed O.Children. Hows this working out for you? We really enjoy working with bands and live instrumentation as we have always been interested in the textures in sound. Recordings of actual performances have a lot more life and warmth than cold, robotic computer-generated sounds. The inconsistencies and slight changes in each strum of a guitar gives the recording much more depth and colour. We also enjoy the challenge of reworking a rock or pop song into something geared more for dancing. The o. Children remix was a really fun challenge for us, as we wanted to keep the vibe of the original piece alive but bring it closer to what we do musically. It's definitely one of our favorites.
 

"I like to think our sets have something for the smartest and the dumbest kid in the room."

Linus, having owned a record store before, do you think this effects the way you consume music, do you feel more inspiration to put releases out on vinyl? I've always consumed a vast and varied amounts of music. The shop allowed me to share with others the artists and records that i enjoyed. Once it closed though I took that aspect of the biz and applied it to making and sharing music through production and djing. Having been a record collector for so long it is definietly nice to see our catalog still growing on vinyl... It definitely validates a release for us.

Do you still play vinyl? Not really, no. we still both have a lot of it...but because we travel so often we keep it at home and bring our laptops. We do still use vinyl control records while dj'ing, though. We were both vinyl dj's before everything went digital so we like to keep the feel and action of that alive and there have been the odd special events where we're still able to pull out an all vinyl set.

How have you adjusted to the lifestyle as professional DJs/Producers? I think we've adjusted alright. Touring can be very tiring and draining, but we're both pretty on top of things. Also, because we record in a studio we can't make tracks while on the road - so we are always looking forward to coming home to work on new material. We like the contrast between touring and studio time. While doing one for a while, we itch for the other.

Are there any things in particular to which you attribute your success? We've been a slow burn with our fan-base growth, and we're alright with that. We've never compromised our vision or ideas, and i think that's made us different and challenging for a lot of people out there, but the ones who get on board stick around. We seem to have a loyal cult following that respects our efforts, and that means the most to us. Our fans seem to be growing with us and if we can continue to bring new ones along for the ride then we all win!

Have you found any downsides of being in the spotlight due to your success? Sometimes you don't always get to play the set you're hoping to as the odd promoter books you based on one tiny aspect of your career and expects one thing from you all night. But i'd say we experience a rather modest size of that spotlight as opposed to other heavyweights in the dance music/dj world. Generally we don't deal with too many problems or see many downsides. Perhaps we are misunderstood or lumped in with other acts that we don't relate to from time to time.

I read that you sometimes feel like black sheep with some of the scene and Fools Gold artists. In what respect? I think we come from a pretty different background than a lot of our peers and we've never really had any expectations of things growing to the extent that they have, so we've stuck to our guns and it confuses some people. We like to try things in our work that might seem outlandish to others, but it's perfectly normal to us. We also spend a small fraction of time listening to dance music. Even though we are considered "dance artists" or "club producers", we really approach it from outside that realm. Obviously we keep it in context and our ultimate goal is to make people freak out on the dancefloor, but we usually enter to studio with a lot of non-club music ideas as our starting point. We like to reach for distant inspirations...

What’s the JOTS production process like? We work together in the studio. We generally approach it like a band, jamming on various gear or recording little pieces and focusing on the strongest ideas. We approach a JOTS remix the same way we do an original JOTS song. Starting points are always varied, depending on if we have an initial idea for a song or using a part of the source music for a remix. 

How would you chart the progression of your sound? Are there any reasons for this change? I think our tastes are just always evolving. There's no particular reason for it, we just like various songs and styles in various times and eras. We've always been into a variety of music and being that there are two of us there is room for even more of that variety to seep through. We're conscious of challenging our audience as well as each other as much as possible during our dj sets. We like to play for each other and we've always found it much more rewarding to have an audience freaking out to a song they don't know rather than playing that go-to track to make people cheer. Thats boring to us and with so much amazing and little known music out there we want our audiences to hear something new alongside their favorite JOTS tune. I like to think our sets have something for the smartest and the dumbest kid in the room.

All the JOTS imagery, is very stylised. Is there a story behind this? Our design and image aesthetic comes from a collaboration between our personal interests and the ideas of the visual artists and designers we work with. Fool's Gold creative director and artist dust la rock has been instrumental in developing our aesthetic, and we have also collaborated with a few other like-minded artists who have contributed design work for us.

The Disorganised parties are somewhat of an Ottawan folklaw. What were your feelings on putting the parties to bed?  We just became too busy on tour to have the level of involvement we wanted with disorganised. Because we were never home, we had to hire people to help run it for us, and it slowly turned into something completely different in our absence. It was an easy decision to shut it down. if we were ever to find ourselves in a situation where we were home again for an extended period of time i'm sure something else would happen again as a one off or another series of events... only time will tell.

Can you tell us a little bit about the mix you have done for our podcast? We definitely wanted to compile something that reminded us of Berlin - minimal but detailed, textured, and raw, experimental yet still recognizable. That, and we were into some dark twisted techno that day i guess!

You’re stuck in a studio for 12 hours with Lady Gaga, whats the result when we let you out? A children's album.

What’s next for JOTS? Everything!

James Huxley

Jokers Of The Scene Pulse Radio podcast