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King Unique unleash their Dirty House
The King Unique lads of Matthew Roberts and Matt Thomas are well known for simply making ridiculously fun tunes. These days, they are also expanding their talents so audiences around the world can experience them live with their Decks N FX performances, that consist of a mash up of sounds, edits, fx and any other aurally simulative material they can conjure.
The duo are currently on Australian shores and looking to expand their horizons so we caught up with them to see how life has been treating them, and how they will be treating us with their dirty house sounds.
When you guys are in the production process, do you both do similar roles or do you both bring something entirely different to he table? Essentially I am asking who does all the work!
These days Matt Thomas does the greater share in the studio (due to his expertise at knob twiddling, while Matthew Roberts throws more of his energy into the DJ side of things, wading through mountains of CDs and mp3s. A few years ago KU was more about the production work, so we typically spent 50 hours a week in the studio together, only doing the occasional gig. So to answer the question – we both do all the work :) And there’s always more queued up.
You guys have done a host of quality remixes, and not to mention some great original productions. Are there any plans to ever release a remix or an original album?
We actually spent the best part of 2003/04 working on an artist LP for JBO / EMI. Unfortunately about two weeks after we signed the deal dance music ‘died’ in the UK; a lot of labels shut up shop, the dance music mags went out of business and the super-clubs went bust. King Unique album anybody? We came under a lot of pressure to start making music that would cut it in the pop charts rather than just make great dance music. After trying that for a while we were totally fried, so we trashed it and got on with what we do best – dirty house.
We’re back on track with JBO and have just signed a deal to do three singles back-to-back with them. The first single “Flashing Lights/Curfew Time” is out on the 21st of November, with a remix twelve to follow shortly. “Flashing Lights” is a big room grunge-house monster with a dumb bass-line that’d make The Kinks proud. “Curfew Time” is a spiky slab of riff-house with a jungle-flavoured break down of Amazonian proportions. We’ve leaked a few copies out to some of our favourite DJs - Sasha, Tong and Lawler are all playing “Flashing Lights”, Nic Fanciulli and Pete Heller are big “Curfew Time” fans. Oh and we’re also about to start work on an interesting project with Underworld, but we can’t tell you much more than that.
Do you think the reason why many Electronic producers try to break it into the DJ market is due to perhaps the fall of vinyl sales and the rise of digital downloading? It appears that producing isn’t as fruitful as it once was?
Yes, it’s really difficult to make pots of money now, we’ve both had our Rolls-Royces repossessed! All the labels are really careful with their budgets at the moment and the A&R men are more likely to get the sack if they make mistakes. The shift towards DJ-ing has become a necessity for most producers, simply as a means of funding the time spent making records. That said, there are still a few like-minded producers we’ve spoken to - Axwell, Steve Angello and Soulwax, who feel the same way we do; we still want to make music despite the financial rewards available to full time DJs. It’s at the centre of what King Unique is about. That, and getting drunk in foreign countries.
"Yes, it’s really difficult to make pots of money now, we’ve both had our Rolls-Royces repossessed!"
When you play live are you more then two guys mixing it on decks or are their some dynamic live aspects involved?
Our "live" set is more of an enhanced DJ set rather than an ‘all-singing all-dancing’ stage show. We have always had samplers, laptops, effects and all that good stuff since we started playing together in 2001. Now we also use Ableton Live a lot, but not quite in the same way as people may have seen Sasha doing. At least half of our set is made up of mash-ups and re-edits we have done in the studio; while Matthew Roberts mixes these mash-ups off CDs, Matt Thomas uses Ableton to play FX, big whooshy sci-fi noises, vocals and stuttery-robo sounds over the top. Then the whole mix goes through a Pioneer EFX unit for further treatment. The result is pretty fat.
It’s always good to hear from producers as to who they think are their main influences are. Can you name any DJs/Artists/Bands that have excited you guys over the years?
The list could go on for pages and pages... James Brown, Derrick May, The Chemical Brothers, Marshall Jefferson, Mr Fingers, The League Unlimited Orchestra, Aphex Twin, Brian Eno, Danny Tenaglia, LCD Soundsystem, Carl Craig, Thomas Newman, Daft Punk, etc.
I keep hearing about a ‘King Unique Broadcast’. Mind enlightening us readers as to what this is and how we can listen to one?
‘King Unique Broadcast’ is a series of radio mixes, recorded for various shows like BBC Radio One’s "Essential Mix", John Digweed’s "Kiss 100/ Transitions" and Boris D'lugosch's "N Joy The Mix" show, and we’re very proud of every little minute of them. Each mix is done in the studio on our lovely fat computer, and many of our mash-ups and re-edits were made for these shows (such us Kool Uncle's "Big Dirty Dreams" and our re-edit of Mylo's "In My Arms"). We’re reliably informed that some King Unique stalkers have put up a site with all these mixes (do a Google search on "ku broadcast" and you’ll find it pretty easily). There’ve been 4 KU Broadcasts in the last 12 months, and in February 2006 we’ll be releasing our first official mix compilation "International Grooves", distributed worldwide with Intergroove.
You are playing in Australia & NZ shortly. Are you going to be there for long and try to enjoy the fast approaching summer?
We’ll have about 10 days over there. Somewhere between the airports and the clubs we'll definitely hang out for a bit, hopefully catch up with our old mate Majik Johnson in Auckland. As soon as the Sydney gig is over we have to get back - our kids will be missing us and vice versa.
Assuming Australia is a deserted island, what three things will you be taking there that you can’t live without?
Our G5 Apple Mac and a pair of big powered speakers. You’ve got to get your priorities right.
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Published / Tuesday, 25 October 2005
 6 Comments
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