Denney - Hot Stuff

With his latest release featuring on the new Hot Creations, Paradise EP and a stream of gigs including DC10 later in the year Eddie Jux speaks to the Leeds producer about his early influences and Saturday Night Fever / Grease megamixes.

Where did your journey begin? How long have you been doing this away from the public eye? It actually began 15 years ago when I managed to persuade my Mum and Dad to buy me a pair of Soundlab belt drive turntables for my 13th birthday. They were terrible but I thought they were the nuts at the time as before that I actually put 2 old record players together and used to fade the volumes to try and mix them together. The only vinyl I could find in the house was Saturday Night Fever and the Grease soundtrack so used to try and mix and scratch those two together…I’ve never actually told anyone that before [Laughs] . After a couple of years I sold them and got a pair of Technics 1210’s and used to spend every penny of my pocket money on records.

Do you come from a musical family? Where does your musical background lie? Yeah my Dad was a professional drummer for years and has played with some legends in his time. He is a Jazz nut so I have grown up listening to the likes of Miles Davis, Marcus Miller, Herbie Hancock etc. Both my Mum and my Dad have supported me massively with the whole music thing so I owe a lot to both of them.

Who were the DJs you really remember inspiring you? Who made you say, ‘this is what I want to do’? It’s weird because I knew I wanted to be a DJ before I actually saw anyone play live. I was so heavily into the electronic side of music it was really the only option for me. I used to sit glued listening to Pete Tong and Danny Rampling on Radio 1 as wasn’t old enough to get in clubs and used to be glued to my decks every minute of the day. When I was 15 I started sneaking into clubs and I was hooked from then, the two DJs which influenced me massively after seeing them though was Roger Sanchez and Yousef. The way they used to use accapellas and double copy records (as all this was vinyl as well) was fucking mind blowing to me at the time.
 
Do you think elements of these can still be seen in what you do today? Can you give us any examples? Absolutely! I still love to play around technically and layer records and add accapellas and loops and things. The way technology is now means you can do it even better than those days with FX units and memory points etc.

 
…and where do you think the real turning point was? When did things really start to pick up? I was 17 at the time and I was going out clubbing every week without fail and hanging around with people a lot older than me. It was actually on a Tuesday night I had been with a group of people who I knew through going out and we ended going back to (unbeknown to me) a club promoters house for an afterparty. I got on the decks there and he was that impressed he started pushing me and getting me gigs around England. From those gigs I got the Mixmag Future Hero accolade they were doing at the time and then that was really the turning point where I started getting gigs in clubs I wanted to be playing at.
 
Since you’ve gone from strength to strength, you’ve had a regular residency at Future in the North East, with Back to Basics being strongly affiliated as well. Tell us about your links with them. With Future It was just an idea for myself and a mate to put guests we liked on in our local area and also put local DJs on too who we thought deserved a chance to play out. We never expected to put on some of the guests we actually did in the end (Jamie Jones, Claude Vonstroke, Layo & Bushwacka!, Andrew Weatherall and even Faithless to name not even a few). At the same time I was living in Leeds and going to Basics all the time and struck up good friendships with the whole Basics crew. One day Ralph (Lawson) asked me to go for a meeting with him and Dave (Beer) as they had a position for a DJ booker and basically offered me the job on the spot. Over time Dave saw me play at afterparties and started to get me on in the back room of the club. That lasted for about a 3 year period and I decided it was the right time to just concentrate on my music 100% and left promoting both nights to concentrate on that.  I am so happy with how its turned out and the support I received on that decision as I am probably even closer friends with the Future and Basics guys now than I was before and still get to play at both which are very special parties in their own way.

 
Aside from that you’ve played a whole host of famous venues, Sankeys, Musika,Ketoloco, Wonderland, Ibiza Rocks, Ibiza’s Manumission and MIKZ in Berlin. Is there afavourite, do you remember a time when you looked out and thought, yeh, I’ve made it? I’ve never actually thought “I’ve made it” but I have looked out and thought “This is what I want to do” and that happened the first time when I was 18 and warmed up for Fatboy Slim on his album tour infront of 2000 people going nuts.That’s a mental image that’s always stayed with me because it was the first crowd I had ever played to on that scale.

Highlight of the summer so far? My release on Hot Creations is something im especially happy about.
 
You’ve just landed yourself that gig at Jamie’s Paradise at DC-10, massive congrats. You excited? When are you playing? Thanks very much! Yeah I really can’t wait, I’ve heard nothing but amazing reports of the first few parties. I will be playing on September 13th with Jamie Jones, Damian Lazarus, Robert James and Dusky. It definitely guarantees to be one hell of a party!

Will we be able to see you cropping up anywhere else in Ibiza or further afield this summer? Yeah I will be playing for Departure in Ibiza in August and then over to America for the amazing Burning Man which I can’t wait for.

What are you most looking forward to? To be honest im just looking forward to everything that’s on the horizon, its impossible to just pick one one thing with releases, gigs etc. I am just generally buzzing right now.

 
You’ve had releases with a number of well-known labels now, but the one to mention is the one forthcoming on Hot Creations, July 30th is it? Jamie seems keen, have you been discussing this release for a long time? Not really no, I have known Jamie for a good few years now through when I used to promote parties and he used to play for us. I sent him a track last year which he took for Hot Waves which is going to be coming out in the not too distant future I believe. Then I made “Ultraviolet” and sent it to him, he loved it and took it straight away for Hot Creations, a couple of weeks I started seeing Youtube clips of him playing it at gigs and the response it was getting which was amazing. Its released on Vinyl July 30th and Digital on 13th August. - Get it here
 
Your music has been described as warm, deep & twisted. Do you feel your sound reflects you well as a person? I would definitely say it does, I make records that reflect my mood at that time. I think you need to make records with emotion and soul otherwise you would just look back and think “Why the fuck did I make that?”
 
First record you bought as a DJ? Daft Punk “Around the World” and I still have it. 

 
The one set you’ve seen that has always stuck in your mind? Roger Sanchez in the Sugarshack in Middlesbrough about 10 years ago, he blew the place apart starting on Thomas Bangalter’s “Together” and coming on the mic at the end and saying he wanted to finish on his new record which he just completed and wanted everyone to hear it for the first time. It was “Another Chance” which ended up sitting at number 1 in the national charts a few months later for god knows how many weeks. Truly a special night and anyone who was there would agree.
 
Favourite recent acquisition? My signed Fresh Prince of Bel Air poster.

3 tunes to live your life by? So hard to answer this question but off the top of my head:

Miles Davis “Human Nature”

Mike Monday “When the rain falls”



One Dove “White Love” (Guitar Paradise Mix)

Listen to Denney On Pulse Radio