Features
Sian gets back to his roots: “Remember why we got into this, or what’s the point?”
And shares a free download of his album's bonus track
As Sian readies to release his second album ‘Capital Crimewave’ on April 10, the Octopus Recordings label boss sat down with Mixmag to discuss the vision behind the new material, his thoughts on the dance music industry and to share a free download of the album’s bonus track.
Following the release of his debut album in 2002, Sian has released numerous dance floor focused tracks over the course of his career, but has not returned to the album format. The new material is a departure from what many listeners have grown accustomed to and offers a new look at his unique approach to production.
As the new material stands out from the label’s catalogue, Sian revealed that he hopes to reach new fans and give existing ones a new side to his persona: “That’s how I see it going already from promoting this music over the last few weeks. The kind of people that are coming to us are the kind of people who would maybe also listen to Bonobo or Modeselektor. Or just good music in general, not so specific.”
Listen and download the album’s bonus track, ‘Cardboard City’, and read our interview with the innovative producer below.
Purchase 'Capital Crimewave' here
So we just finished listening to your new album ‘Capital Crimewave’ and it’s a diverse collection of music from you. Was there a distinct message you were trying to convey with the material? Do you feel like it’s the culmination of who you are as an artist?
Yeah, I’ve always been into the more leftfield stuff as an artist. I started making more dubby electronica early on and then ended up playing bigger techno rooms and producing the more acid-focused, harder dance music. Then, being in LA, I crossed paths with a couple of really good hip-hop people. One of them is AG, who’s doing most of the vocals on the album. They’re working in a field with 808 drum machines and 909s, that's kind of analogous to techno in a way. His vocals almost slid into tracks I was working on, with slight adaptations. It flowed and wasn’t so contrived, I liked what he was doing and he liked what I was doing. These two worlds don’t normally meet, so it was great that the material came together naturally.
Your first album has a very down-tempo, trip-hop motif, which is brilliant for those that might not be aware. You haven’t released much of that style since. Do you feel like you couldn’t release material like that until you had an album format or else you might be throwing people off? Because with the album format you can just push the boundaries again.
For sure! Because I don’t know if that style belongs on a single. People expect singles on my label to be punchy acidy and big, raw techno stuff. If you throw a curve ball on a single, people get distracted, but if you do it on an album, it makes sense. It’s a listening experience.
Going back to AG, how did you get involved with him?
It’s two different worlds. We were laughing about that recently when we linked up the other night, saying that his world being hip-hop, he’s an underground hip-hop artist, but the commercial hip-hop scene is really so polar opposite to electronic music. Their message is a bit different than ours. Dance music is all about people being unified, chilling out and being immersed in rhythms.
We met through a friend of ours and he was telling me about how his cousin was doing really good stuff, then he played some of it for me at a party and I was like, "Who is this kid?" He freestyled for 15 minutes flawlessly. I thought his influences are so similar to mine, in a way. It would be on the end of Wu-Tang Clan and some of the now-a-days influence from 21 Savage. It might seem weird someone like me would be into that, but it’s more about liking the production, not the message. Both of us have that in common and he was one of the only people I know in hip-hop who was down to try something different.
You haven’t worked with vocalists much during your career. What does that aspect add to the production process?
This was a first for me. I’ve worked on band stuff before as a producer and I’ve worked in studios for about eight years producing other people, but this is the first time I’ve worked on vocals of my own stuff.
So the album is released on your own label, Octopus Recordings, which is really at its strongest point right now. What do you look for in an Octopus release?
It’s strange. It’s always that good feeling of asking myself, "Will I play this?’ I imagine myself in a certain scenario like playing a warehouse or playing a big or a small club. I don’t care about what anyone else thinks. I don’t care if it's the flavor of the month and the Beatport Top 10. I think about whether or not I want to take this and play it to a crowd. That usually rounds off a couple of things: creepy sounding, raw and it has something different in it, a little ravey sounding, in a way. All those weird things come into play and it just clicks with me.
Speaking of warehouse stuff, at the tail end of 2016, you kicked off the Octopus Warehouse release series. How did that material differ from other music in the label catalogue?
Yeah, we’ll be unrolling that series more in the future and will release it on vinyl. We’re digging deep into the catalogue and picking a bunch of tracks that we feel are a little more underground, and were doing a vinyl series of those. These are tracks we feel are a little more edgy and more suitable for people to collect on vinyl. It’s like presenting the music in a new way, cherry picking the tracks that firstly are going to sell for our distributor and that are what we’re representing. This is something people will want to keep on vinyl. Kind of like a DJ tool.
I saw something you said recently which resonated: “Its so important to be on the other side of the decks sometimes”. Can you elaborate on that?
I went to see a friend who plays a very wide range of music DJ. He’s from a rock band and plays a bizarre selection and, to be honest, it was one of the first times my friends and I were out on the dance floor dancing like how we used to do before we worked in the industry. Sometimes at my own gigs you can’t really just let go and get lost out there, but that teaches me a lot about DJing. I was re-acquainted with what it’s like listening to people build up a set through a whole night as a normal person, dancing away on the other side of the decks. I think a lot of people forget that. I know a couple of DJs that will do that, go out in a different city with their friends and be a clubber, which is really lost on a lot of people. They’re too busy bustling their way into a backstage or looking for wristbands. They just don’t really enjoy that feeling of going out and letting go.
People don’t realize that life as a DJ is kind of a weird and lonely lifestyle. You run around in the airport all day, you get to the hotel, you rush out with the promoter, you go and do the gig. Everyone else is having a great night, which is probably their once-a-month big night out and you’re behind this glass and then you head off to the hotel when all of them are going and having adventures. Then you’re off to the airport again. It’s weird - really weird.
You miss that adventure of being a club kid?
Absolutely! There’s nights where I don’t want to be on the other side of the decks. I’ve had some nights out in Ibiza where it was myself, Dubfire, Villalobos, Sven Väth and a whole lot of other people and none of us ended up backstage. All of us were out in the front, in a row dancing and no one was coming over to the bigger guys to bother them. Everyone was just letting loose. Those nights make me think , "Wow, you have to remember why we got into this, or what’s the point?"
Right now techno in the US is pretty strong. Movement is continuing to make waves, kind of carrying the torch for it. New York has a really strong techno scene. What are your thoughts about where the culture is heading? It seems like a tech house vibe is taking over.
One great thing that I always keep in mind is how the EDM net has brought all of these kids into electronic music in general. Maybe they start with Steve Angelo and deadmau5, but then they start to go a little bit deeper and once that big net pulls them in, maybe 30 per cent are going to discover DJs like Dubfire, Richie Hawtin, Adam Beyer and ourselves. Then some will go further and find out about the Romanian guys and the secretsundaze guys and go deeper and deeper. All of a sudden you have these kids who, two years ago, were dancing their ass off to Axwell are now going to Circoloco and bringing some of that home with them. If you get into food or cinema, you start with the most successful point and then if you’re intelligent enough to scratch the surface a bit more, you get more out of it. That’s the beauty. A lot of DJs in my field and techno are so anti-EDM. But they have to look at it in perspective - everyone starts with an entry point. It’s a gateway drug, so to speak.
For sure! It’s easy to find. It’s in your fucking face.
It’s all over the radio, at the festival your friends are going to. Anytime I’ve played Electric Zoo or EDC, I’m at the stage and looking at those kids, and they wander over to stage two and they might get smashed with a groove for three hours by Loco Dice. You can see them, they’ve changed. They walk away from that night like, "That’s something new." It’s really an amazing thing.
They don’t call it underground for nothing, you’ve got to dig in the underground to find this.
Exactly! Even if we get 30 per cent of those kids, that’s a huge amount of people. We’re seeing the benefits like never before - we would have never been able to pack Exchange in LA or bigger clubs like that, but now those kids, who were all into trance or EDM a few years ago, are finding out about us. It's the foundation of a lot of what we do and EDM gives us those opportunities to be able to access all those crowds and convert a few of them.
Back to this new album ‘Capital Crimewave’, do you think people are going to be surprised?
Yes definitely, I think if people followed what we’ve been doing then it’s not such a big jump. Some of Octopus’s fans would also be fans of harder hip-hop stuff, they’ll also be open minded about all kinds of experimental music. I don’t think they’re going to be too wigged out, but for those that don’t really know what we’re about, we might lose some of those fans, but gain some more of the festival goers. That’s how I see it going already, from promoting this music over the last few weeks. The kind of people that are coming to us are the kind of people who would maybe also listen to Bonobo or Modeselektor. Or just good music in general, not so specific.
It’s a risk. I know that it’s a big risk, but we made a conscious decision that we’re not afraid to lose a couple of the bedroom DJ kind of techno fans in order to access the kind of fans that are just festival goers. We’ve seen that already that there’s more of those into it than the people that just buy the Beatport Top 10. This type of diversity will allow us to grow into a better label.
What else are you looking forward to in 2017?
We’ve got a release from Pirupa coming up. Also we’re going to do some more stuff from a new artist we’ve signed. He’s really interesting, he’s building this killer live show. We have another from Victor Ruiz, and a solid EP by Jay Lumen. It’s a monster. It’s almost like 90s trance sounding, if you can imagine that. Plus a bunch of other stuff too.
