Looking at the types of artists, labels and tracks included in your 200 Electronic Explorations podcasts we can see for ourselves what music you’ve been feeling for the past five years. Where did your musical journey start?
Probably with John Denver… I can remember listening to a lot of Denver, Mayfield and The Beatles when I was a little nipper in the back seat of the old man’s car! My dad is more of a Archer’s kinda guy, Radio 5 or 4; his record collection was pretty weak back then but he did have some rare Beatles LP’s. His favourite by a country mile was Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds. I still have his unopened perfect LP copy in my collection. My brothers were my [musical] teachers as a kid. I was never really into chart music or that Top of the Pops crap. My brothers are two and four years older than me and were both into thrash and glam metal: Sepultura, Iron Maiden, Wrathchild, and music like that. By the time I was 12 I was bored of that and was into Pavement, Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, REM etc… I was a proper indie kid, josh sticks, hippy back street stores! I soon got bored of that. I found myself at Castlemorton Common in 92 just up the road from where I grew up, which as we all know now was responsible for the Criminal Justice bill... The music was incredible; I’d never heard anything like it. I was pretty young, very small and naïve. I was only 14, I stuck out like a sore thumb, but my brothers took me around, I would grab all these tape packs that all these people were passing out! That’s the moment I got the bug for electronic music... it was all happy hardcore gabber rave back then, acid house and ecstasy, that weeklong festival will never be beaten. So from 14 I liked hardcore acid, then I got onto acid house, acid techno, Detroit-techno UR-Metroplex-Axis, Birmingham techno, atomic-jam, Q-club, House of God, university doing dnb nights with Nicky Blackmarket and his crew to now with the podcast!
When you first started the show back in 2007 did you envision that it would garner such a solid reputation for high quality music or gain the massive following that it has?
There wasn’t much around in 2007, hard to think about it now but there wasn’t. Getting a host of Planet Mu acts on very early was key to making people take note about the show... back then all we had was MySpace for social media so I’d spam everyone who was anyone with links to the show... went crazy on all the music forums, was soon known as the music pusher but it had to be done. I did have a feeling EE would do well if I was consistent and made a show every week. Thankfully it’s worked. I’ve worked fucking hard to make it happen.
I love the fact that you are such a perfectionist with regards to the sound and production quality of your shows. I read that this was extremely important to you when you started out. Do you feel that Electronic Explorations stands out in this regard?
King Cannibal got in touch after I published his recent mix; he couldn’t work out how I’d given his mix more punch and clarity. It’s still the one thing I say to anyone who emails for advice: the sound quality has to be high. Back in 2007 pretty much everything was 64kbps, and these were shows like Rinse who promote bass music… more like tin music… that was then and obviously they have money behind them now and have the backing of a license which they’ve worked fucking hard for, but if you’re gonna make a download show which is predominately bass and sub then you’ve got to have the tools to make that happen.
My mate is an audiophile geek. We worked out the lame settings in foobar for a great sound at a decent size file; back in the day my shows were always two hours long, every single one, so your hard drive would fill up quickly. Obviously no worries anymore… everyone has 2 terabyte drives standard. Another mate devised a wavegain so all tunes I played were standardised –db… nothing worse than a very loud tune followed by a soft quiet one. I still get very poorly mastered music sent in, but that’s beyond my control. It’s not cheap to master music. I should know, I’m currently mastering over 40+ tunes for my forthcoming EE Exclusive compilation. Every tune will be unreleased and exclusive only to this comp. It’s gonna be amazing.
What other podcast or radio shows would you recommend for listeners wanting to broaden their musical horizons?
There are loads out there: the Yardcore show on sub.fm with mash4cash, Djrum, Methlab’s Codeshift and mega Raver rrratilin. They’re the nicest people in the world, got so much time for them, utterly creative types... Also on sub.fm, first Monday of each month Riddim n bruise show with Stormfield, Combat Recording’s boss man. Ill.fm does a show with scanone and a few others which are excellent, although I’ve not heard it in a while. Oli Marlow’s Sonic Router deserves more recognition than it gets. He and his team put a lot of work into that blog, although, and I know he’ll read this: he should review more darker side electronica! To be honest, I don’t have much time for anything else.
I always forget when the SWAMP81 show on Rinse is on so I download it, and I’m usually too fucking knackered on a Thursday to listen to Ben’s Hessle Audio show on Rinse so again I download that. The film review with Mayo & Kermode on 5live is a must; I never miss a show. FACT does some cracking mixes, same with RA and null&void (good website)...
I live on www.themixingbowl.org: that’s my home, been there eight years, we’re all one big happy family there… at least 400 daily people and we all know each other so well yet typical of the internet I’ve only met a handful! I’d call them my friends just as much as my mates I’ve grew up with back home.
Has your vision for EE changed at all since you first started it all those years ago?
My vision back in 2007 was to really push the darker side of electronic music. At that time I was well into the sounds of dubstep. Techno had taken a bit of a back seat, although it was always peeping through the cracks... I was really trying to push UK sounds as much as I could as I had an audience and I had collected a lot of contacts who in turn are now very good friends.
I’ve now gone back to my first love, techno. I fell in love with the dark techy side of dubstep at the perfect time, late 2005 and early 2006. I worked with Mary Anne [Hobbs] at the right time – I was in the studio when she broke the sounds of Burial back in March 2006. It was great timing as I was making a shit load of contacts but as time went on I got disillusioned with certain styles of dubstep. Only certain styles mind, say late 2009. I’m still very much a part of this scene but I’m like a lot of big name producers from that era who say the same and now call their music UK bass… the sound has progressed. All those labels I’ve just mentioned, I’m still supporting them heavily 100%, but some dubstep sounds don’t appeal to me at all. There’s a desert island discs interview with John Peel on BBC Radio 4 (iTunes) where he says something similar of his taste in musical genres, he just got bored of the sound he once loved and moved onto something else... in my case, I’ve gone back to my first love of techno and electro, and this new strain of electro coupled with UK bass which is extremely popular right now… the terms 808, 303, 909 seem to be on every page of every blog at the moment.
Do you listen to stuff outside of electronic dance music, or is EDM your main focus for music? If you do listen to other stuff, what other stuff floats your boat?
There’s so much good music out there. I’m a massive Sigur Ros fan, everything on Constellation Records, God!speed You Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion… I love The Beatles post ‘65. I’m not into anything on daytime Radio 1... In the daytime at work all I listen to is 5live because I love football and I like to know what’s going on in the world, but yeah my musical taste pretty much involves electronic music 99.99% of the time.
Do you have interests in any other creative scenes, such as film, art, theatre, comedy? If so, do these interests ever influence your music tastes, or cross over in any way at all?
I love film, I subscribe to Empire each month; the misses is an artist, she declined a job offer in New York, we own a cafe but she also makes felt artwork, mainly landscapes to sell to the tourists which come up this way… we set up a little gallery in the bat cave (that’s what I call the cafe coz the walls are ancient and unfortunately previous owners varnished them about 25 years ago so it’s very dark). My other half is making as many pieces as she can to hide the original dark stone walls. Shame she just can’t make them fast enough, keeps selling them as soon as they’re hooked onto the wall!
So yeah, I like art. I used to enjoy just walking around London’s east end, looking at graff and street art. I know nothing about it but I like to work out what they are trying to say and interpret whatever’s been produced. There are so many galleries up this way from the boring everyday to the obscure: the Lake District is a place of inspiration, so many famous poets and artists through the ages came from or settled here. At school I loved fine art and graphics classes, that and football. I didn’t give a shit about the rest, had no interest in science, hated maths and music lesions were a fucking joke, one recorder per 30 students, sharing two guitars between a class. I had no interest unfortunately. Football, I used to be pretty good before my left knee turned 90 degrees to the left at 18!
I know a father shouldn’t have favourites, but out of your 200 EE shows, which are the ones that you are most proud of, or that really stand out for you?
In my late teen’s I idolised techno producers such as Dave Clarke and Surgeon, so to get them both on the show, both pretty elusive when it comes to providing mixes to podcasts, is something I will never take for granted. I’m so honoured to have them both make something personal for the show. Surgeon listened to a few shows to understand what I was trying to promote, and for Clarke to provide a mix for my little hobby, I still pinch myself to this day. He NEVER makes mixes for anyone. I was asked for my favourite producer of the past decade recently, so having Steve Milanese mix exclusively three times on the show is just incredible. Along with Vex’d, they were both in my top five from the past decade. DJ Stingray, Shackleton, The Advent and Emika were pretty special too, but then Bong-Ra, ?kkord and Pinch etc have all made the show what it is today.
I’ve introduced a host of now very famous artists into the world. I think I’ve done my part in helping push their name and bring them some publicity at the very early stage of their careers: artists like Ramadanman, 2562, 16bit, James Blake, Kowton, Mount Kimbie, Broken Note, Pinch, Geiom, Scuba and FaltyD amongst the hundreds more who’ve been guests. No one had offered those platforms back then. Some artists don’t even respond to me anymore. That used to really piss John Peel off big time... I guess that’s life.
Now it’s like having an aging football team and the resulting need for new blood, trying to find the artists of the future. Artists like ?kkord, those two producers are simply incredible, same goes for producers like Kahn, Emika, Roly Porter, Downliners Sekt (I love that mix), Trevino, Memotone, Tommy Four Seven, George Lanham, Swarms and my favourite artist of 2011 Airhead who is now signed to R&S are my ones to watch. Dadub and all those from the outstanding Stroboscopic Artefacts label need a special mention because I love that label.
I’ve made so many close friends from making EE, friends I can count on. I’m very lucky! What are we all on this earth for? I would like to leave a legacy if I can. I’ve had a lot of friends die in their 20’s. They had so much to offer, great musicians... morbid, maybe... but it keeps me going and wanting to make a success of EE.
Which artists would you love to contribute guest mixes to the show?
How long’s a piece of string? Obvious names such as Aphex Twin, Leftfield, Orbital, Juan Atkins, Jeff Mills, Richard Devine, Bambaataa, Coldcut... I’d also love to get people like Loops Haunt back and Birmingham techno artists like Regis and Female, producers I grew up listening too, even my old boss from the summer of 2002 when I was still in university, Mr LTJ Bukem. Of today’s producers making a noise I’d love to get Boddika, he knows I’m after him, I think he’s getting fed up of me asking... It was nice getting the Hessle lads before they blew up, same with a lot of the dubstep heads... ah, Mala, now that would be nice, and I’ve been after Andy Stott since I even began publishing EE. His Ceramics EP of 2005 is one of my treasures.
You are in the rare and enviable position of being able to listen to a significant amount of new music, both signed, and unreleased. Can you describe for us how you feel when you are working your way through the mountains of music and stumble across a gem of a track?
This week I’ve been sent over 700 tunes because it’s the 200th show. I guess people want their music heard on a landmark show. It’s impossible to consume it all, there’s no denying it. I tend to queue up promos that promotional agencies have sent in first, then promos that record labels have sent in direct and then Soundcloud links and MP3s via my email address all in that order... so I sit on the couch, don headphones and scan through each tune. I can tell pretty much within a minute of each tune if it’s any good. The production will stand out. I like to think I have a good ear for good production. James Blake’s early dark dubstep was so good I sent Mary Anne a zip folder with about 12 tunes, I still have them all on the hard drive and six are still to be released. It’s some of his best work in my opinion and still unreleased. Airhead and Mount Kimbie are similar. I love all their production. I really need to start a label coz some the music is too good to be put on anyone else’s label and a lot of the time I get to hear it first!
In an alternate universe where you didn’t spend your spare time listening to amazing music or putting together your show, what do you think you’d be doing?
Riding my bike down the world’s best downhill tracks... it’s all I’ve known since I was 12! If I don’t get out into the unknown at least once a week I’d go fucking insane. I spend all my money on mountain biking. That or I’d move to Goa and just chill the fuck out for a while.
What has been the most surreal moment to date since you started the Electronic Explorations podcast?
Being asked to sign autographs’ outside a student union at ‘Tuesday Club’ in Sheffield one bloody freezing February night. I went over to see Mary Anne, someone recognised me then a mob of people came over. I didn’t know what to do!
Are you involved in the music scene in other ways? If so, how?
I used to help out with 44 Promotions. Alex Oxley lived up this way but woke up one day and made the trek back down to London about a year after I settled up here. I helped Alex put on a couple of nights with his sister Fern. He stumped up all the cash though. I didn’t deal with that side to which I owe him a great deal of gratitude. I got Milanese up here in my village. About 20 people turned up, it was at the same time when those record breaking floods happened up this way, but still 20 people for fucks sake! We also put nights on with Ninja Tune’s King Cannibal and Boomkat’s favourite Japanese artist Akira Kiteshi which was a huge success, thank fuck! We also put on nights with Reso, Scanone and Slugabed... that’s how I know Slugga, top chap, amazing producer... Coldcut have high hopes for him and rightly so, he’ll make Ninja pots of money.
In 2009, you had quite a lot to say on where you saw the future of music going. Do you still stand by your views or would you revise them based on changes in the music industry in the past few years?
I said that albums won’t survive, I got that wrong. They are doing very well and I read somewhere the other day that Adele has sold more copies of her album than sales of Thriller has ever sold EVER… so who said the music industry is all piracy, hey?! It seems the industry is calming down more than it was in 2009. The indie charts are gonna start again soon which is great news and there is gonna be charts for streaming tunes now so industry bigwigs can market tracks easier in the future. They should know what to sell and what not to push... It’s great to see the album charts awash with bedroom producers and indie names and not Universal Sony bollocks everywhere.
You live in an area of outstanding natural beauty - would you say that your surroundings have an effect on the type of music you listen to?
If I’m honest I seriously miss the big smoke of London. If it wasn’t for making a joint decision just over three years to make something of my girlfriend’s skill as an amazing cook I’d move back to London in an instant. I miss the youth, nightclubs, noise, smog, black bogies on a long underground journey, puke on the streets, culture and ethnicity... White Middle England is fucking boring and for people my age it’s not good for inspiration. I can see why a certain Idle Hands musician moved to Bristol as soon as he finished college... However it pays the bills and when I was living just outside London it did make me severely skint and quite miserable sometimes. I’m just having a moan coz it’s been so fucking grey up this way lately and I thrive on the blue skies... It is stunningly beautiful up here in the lakes, I can’t describe just how beautiful it is, best back garden in the world, but it’s also very, very grey up this way and fucking hell does it rain! I’m a southerner but I absolutely love the banter I have with northerners in the cafe… What the fuck is a barm cake? Sorry, never heard of it mate! Have a bacon butty instead, son!
Where do you see your future in the music scene?
My ambitions are still to work in specialist radio. I need to start at ways of making money and looking at EE as a business model.
I’ve now set up a donation button because it’s costing me a fortune to keep the show going. Hosting and the new website design is very expensive, that and the sheer amount of downloads I’m getting on a weekly basis; I’m desperate for help financially. People have been very generous already, but as for the future I’ve got to look into ways of making money so I could somehow do this full time. In the future I want to work with festivals, record producers live at clubs and gigs, put on club nights, hire the place out and do EE promotional nights... I think I may start that in a few years time in Manchester: it’s a great city with a lot going for it, the entire BBC Media have moved up that way in the past few months, the city will only benefit from this.
What would you like to achieve with the next 200 EE shows?
My ultimate goal is to do a live show on my own stage at Glade, which is something I must work towards. Glade is exactly my kind of festival, probably the best out there in my opinion. I’d love to have an EE stage. I want to make this show on a daily basis for two hours ‘live’ every single weekday, but that means capital and advertising. That’s my next project once the compilation is out, how to make EE viable on a daily basis.
Thank you very much, Rob, for taking the time out of your busy schedule to speak to us. Thank you also for the music you’ve introduced to the world over the past five years and for your continued dedication. In the absence of John Peel, we have to rely on people like Rob Booth to introduce the world to the enormous amount of unsigned talent that is out there just waiting to be discovered.
I hope that you all enjoyed that as much as I did, and here’s to the next 200 Electronic Explorations episodes!
Check out Rob’s site to listen to the 200 shows uploaded so far:
www.electronicexplorations.org
Follow Rob on Twitter - https://twitter.com/robbooth
Follow Electronic Explorations on FB - https://www.facebook.com/pages/Electronic-Explorations/145301018876343?ref=ts
For the 200th show, click here
http://electronicexplorations.org/?show=uhu
