How did your association start with Kemet?
In ’96 we were both playing hip hop at this club here in Atlanta called 688 and we found a connection right away with the styles of music that we were playing and the way we were playing it. Then at a club called Yin Yang I had started a house set with a John Coltrane track called Love Supreme and I mixed it into a George Benson house track that Masters at Work remixed. That was something that Kemet had also thought of doing and so after that we decided to make some music.

So do you bring different skills to the mixing desk?
Well Kemet was in Arrested Development so he comes from a DJ / hip-hop background and he’s a really skilled Engineer because he’s been around it for a while and I come from more of a live music background. I’ve played guitar in rock and jazz groups and I also studied singing so there has always been a live as well as an electronic aspect to what we do. No matter how I try, when I make music it still comes out as, for lack of a better a better word, pretty. For me that’s interesting because I think music is very much about balancing things that are pretty with other things that have a grittier side to them.

It’s currently fashionable to mix live and organic elements in with the electronic but you guys arrived at it quite naturally it seems.
I think the whole Afro / Brazillian thing has brought a lot of live elements back into the house and electronic music scenes but we basically had a vocalist / guitarist and an engineer to make music with so we really didn’t have a choice. (laughs) These days we’re bringing more syncopated rhythms and dissonant chords into the music than conventional four-on-the-floor house… but even on our earlier releases I think you could hear that.

There’s a really strong music culture in your hometown Atlanta isn’t there.
There really is. I really feel like we’re part of a tradition here. Of course there’s a really strong R’n’B scene from way back with Curtis Mayfield and people like that but also hip hop of course and more recently dance music, like a lot of people don’t know that Ted Patterson, a really well respected house DJ is originally from Atlanta. He was around in the late eighties and that influenced people who came here like Kemet and also Wamdue Kids. That’s lead onto people like Seek and on the more mainstream, R’n’B side of things people like TLC and India Arie and then there’s the southern hip hop stuff like Outkast also. The talent pool here is ridiculous. A lot of people, especially young, black people, gravitated to this place and it’s a lot less nervous as a city than other places like New York or Los Angeles which gives us space to do what we do.

You’ve done some side work with other producers like Chris Brahn from Wamdue Kids and Recloose haven’t you.
Yeah, I’ve done some vocals and guitar work for the Ananda Project. With Recloose I had the opportunity to do a vocal for him on a track called ‘Ain’t Changin,’ off his new album. That is a really good example of something that is very club friendly and yet at the same time there’s this real mix of R’n’B, house, and jazz all at the same time and that is something that is hard to put in a category

You guys also have a strong connection with France.
Yeah, Jeff K who runs Silver Network out there is a great DJ and we met him in a Miami Winter Music Conference party a few years back and we had a good vibe and he dug our music because it sounded a bit different. What I love about Jeff and what they do with Silver Network is that they take chances on new styles of music and so since then we’ve been back to Paris a number of times to DJ and every time they welcome us with open arms.

I suppose a lot of people only get to hear the disco house stuff from France but there’s heaps of great, deeper stuff.
Yeah they’ve got a great, deep scene going on. You know with house music, I don’t want to say there are no rules but there really are no rules. There’s a freedom about house music that sometimes gets overlooked. When you say ‘House Music,’ it really acts more like a connotation and I think one of the points of it is that it is limitless and that’s why you have such variety even just in deep house. When you’re billed as a deep house DJ or producer that can mean so many different things now and that’s good. Sometimes you go to big cities where some people think that house music is passe but there will always be heads for whom that is not true and I am one of them. And the bottom line is this: people aren’t going to move unless the music is moving the person who made it in the first place.

JustOne is currently touring across australia, his itinerary is as follows:
June 2 - Sunday: Monastery Nightclub - Brisbane.
June 7 - Friday: La La Land - Byron Bay.
June 9 - Sunday: Honkytonks - Melbourne.
June 15 - Saturday: Slip Inn - Sydney.