The biography of the Glasgow based house and techno duo Slam is almost overwhelming. Stuart McMillan and Orde Meikle have left an impressive legacy over the last decade as international DJs, event promoters, label bosses of their imprint Soma, and as remixers and recording artists producing the gorgeous "Alien Radio" album. From the outside looking in there seems to me to be a feeling of calm, yet dedication to the achievements of Slam. I ask Stuart McMillan down the phone line if he and Orde are like this personally. Stuart laughs and agrees, “Yeah we’re very dedicated. You’d have to be wouldn’t you? We’ve been doing this for a long time but the enthusiasm has never really waned for what we do. It just feels natural. I think it’s because of where we live. The infrastructure of Glasgow has that. It’s just made us get up and do the label, made us get up and do the club. I guess it’s just something we’re good at it and we stick with it.”

Similarly, when you look over all the activities Slam are involved in they also come across as keeping it very real. When I suggest Slam are low on ego Stuart is quick to reply about lack of ego, laughingly saying “I don’t know about that! I think it’s that the success for us didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a gradual thing that we’ve done for a while and I think when you’ve done it like that you tend to look at it on a bit more level pegging. You don’t get carried away with things. We just do what we believe in, but at the end of the day we’re respected for that in the long run.”

Looking back over the last 10 years and their involvement in the dance music scene Stuart explains it was all a gradual progression rather than a strategically planned career. “It was a bit of a whirlwind back then. We went from doing a club with 200 people to big events within the space of 6 months. It was a whirlwind and there wasn’t any time to catch your breath. And it went from doing those events to traveling around Britain and deejaying first and foremost, then Europe, then America. It all kind of escalated from there. When you talk about it in real terms and how long we’ve actually been doing it, it’s kind of frightening because it doesn’t seem like it has been that long. We’ve been quite wrapped up and busy doing it from then.”

Slam aren’t just good musicians, they seem to be good businessmen as well. With so many things going on such as Slam Events and the record label Soma I ask Stuart if Slam have a support crew. “Oh yeah of course,” Stuart explains. “With Soma we’ve got six staff that work on the label with Richard the label manager who we have known for years. Then our manager and partner Dave Clarke is in there as well, and he acts as a liaison between them and ourselves. We know what’s happening with the label and do all the A & R work for it as well, so we get to decide what’s coming out. But if we were to sit in the office day in and day out answering telephones it would be a bit much you know, to try and record and dj and do all of that, so we just try and kind of work it out so that we’re not doing lots of ground work there.”

Slam parties are legendary for their happy vibe and quality music. Stuart and Order first started doing parties in 1998 and since then have attracted thousands of people to their events. They now run a monthly night called Pressure at The Arches in Glasgow. Check the Slam website and you’ll see membership cards for Slam events, free downloads of sets, screen wallpapers, and t-shirts for sale. There is more than enough there to keep a Slam fan very happy! I enquire if through this Slam aim to give something back to their fans? Catching Stuart off guard, he admits he hadn’t thought of it like that. “I guess that’s why we’re still here after quite a lot of time. It just comes from being involved, and I just remember the time when we first started going to parties and to clubs and you don’t want someone who just wants to take your money, you have to give a little bit back you know. And I think that’s what’s been wrong with some other people. They haven’t given anything back. I think it’s very important if you’re doing something to do it well. It gets down to good customer service or whatever you want to call it.”

As Fabric residents, it is the turn of Slam to do the newest release from the Fabric CD series, the forthcoming Fabric 09. This new mix CD marks the fourth compilation CD for Slam. “The first one was actually in ‘95/’96, "Psychotrance". Terrible name and there was no trance music on it,” Stuart says smiling. “And then "Past Lessons, Future Theory", "The Mix", and then this one, which is the fourth one, which is not a lot really in a few years.”

The Fabric CD was definitely a challenge for Stuart and Orde. “Normally when we do our mix CDs we tend to do one house and one techno orientated. For Fabric 09 what we did was put it all on one CD and try to reflect what we do at Fabric. We’ve been doing five hour sets at Fabric and that’s kind of what we were getting at, where we start funkier but housier, but with that techno element in there and build it up. It’s hard to try and condense that into one cd!” Once you hear the finished product with its smooth journey from house into techno in one hour, you can’t help but be amazed. Stuart agrees, “I think it’s quite hard to achieve but I think we managed it. We also tried to get as many tracks in there as possible cause Fabric said “you’re doing a single CD” and we said “oh shit!” We’re not used to doing a single CD so we tried to get busy with it.”

In the weeks just prior to this interview I’d given their mix compilation Past Lessons, Future Theories a spin, finding it to have withstood the test of time. When I relay this to Stuart he agrees yet sounding slightly mystified adds, “Yes a lot of people have said that to me. We haven’t really changed what we are into. There’s a common kind of thread that runs through the music that we’re into, whether it be house or techno. We tend to always be about real Chicago sort of house and good techno and I think that kind of does stand the test of time. I think that kind of music doesn’t tend to date as much as some of the other fads.”

Slam return to Australian shores this week for a dj set as part of the Two Tribes tour. Wondering what we’re in for I tell Stuart that I’d heard he and Orde buy same records. Stuart replies, “Yeah we do. We’ve got really similar tastes and it’s crazy because I’ve never really met anyone with that kind of taste before. I wouldn’t say it’s identical but it’s fairly similar.” So does this mean they’re tastes mesh well for dj set? “Yeah well that’s the idea. We can get on four decks and we can work it together because we know each others kind of music inside out. We tend to be doing a lot more as a team than we were even four, five years ago. We tend to be a lot more of a unit than we were back then, I think that always helps. People used to know us individually or as Slam from our productions, but now it’s from deejaying as Slam as well. It just happened really. People have known us collectively as that we but I think we chose that as well.”

Not being able to recall many four deck-two deejay sets except for Melbourne’s De Bang De Phunk, I ask Stuart how Slam work it. “We do it from time to time. Sometimes it works more than others. More often that not we’ll do it separately. Like if we do Fabric, we’ll do an hour one, an hour off. When we do the four deck thing it’s usually because we’re doing a really short set like we’re playing at a Festival and we’re playing for an hour and a half or something like that. We get on there and get the best action happening. While Stuart didn’t know if they’d be playing four decks for Two Tribes he assures me that “If it’s four decks or individual I’m sure it will be real cool anyway. I’m looking forward to it!”

On Slam’s previous trip to Australia they performed live to support their Alien Radio album. So do they use any effects in their deejay sets? Stuarts kills that idea, “No. We’ve been through it all. We’ve done almost semi-live when we did a Pressure Funk thing where we had an MPC which is a sequencer-sampler, where we played tracks that we had written in amongst stuff. Now we do that using a CDJ1000. We kind of play loads of CDs as well as vinyl. We pick up loads of CDs from other producers and then bootlegs and stuff we do ourselves, and we throw that in as well. We get bored just playing records all the time so it’s good to have other version and stuff as well. We did a lot of that in Summer, when we did a lot of the 4 deck thing at Glastonbury and all those kind of festivals. We were using CDs then that we’d made especially for the gigs.”

Slam’s debut artist album, Alien Radio, was particularly well received and tracks such as the recently released Vitalic remix of “Visions” are still garnering attention for Slam. Is Slam working on a new artist album I beg Stuart? “Yeah we are. We’re supposed to be working away in the studio now. It’s sounding good what we’ve got. We’re well happy with it. We’ll hopefully be finished by August and it’ll be out next year. It won’t come out this year. I think we’d be incredibly optimistic if we thought we could bring it out this year. Realistically we only started working on it in November last year because after Alien Radio we toured that album and did lots of dj dates as well. So basically you’re thinking 2 years later after the album, oh we better do another one!” At least I’ll have Fabric 09 to keep me enthralled while I wait patiently for that next Slam album.