Carl Cox: The Legend

Cox has plenty going on outside music. He’s built a life in Melbourne, Australia, where for the last 11 years he’s lived between October and March. He owns 40 acres of land where he grows lucerne (food for racehorses), and has houses by the sea. He also has a collection of over 70 motorbikes, including his favourite regular ride, a Ducati Diavel (“Goes like hell, looks fantastic and makes me feel like a rock star”). He collects American muscle cars and owns classics such as a Plymouth Roadrunner 572 with a Hemi engine, and three Mustangs, including a 1968 convertible 428 Cobra Jet, and he even shipped over from the UK the car he bought when he first started achieving success, a 1989 Mercedes 560 SEC.

It’s more than just a collection, though, and extends to Carl Cox Motorsport, for which he runs his own motorcycle teams specialising in sidecar racing. His team are New Zealand national champions and have started to make real headway at the annual Isle of Man TT Races, an event that’s clearly a highlight of Cox’s calendar. He’s DJed at the afterparty for the last couple of years, hanging out with fellow petrol-head Keith Flint of The Prodigy. “All the time I’m DJing I can’t get to the boys while they’re racing,” he says. “I need to be there. Once the DJing eventually stops I’ll be going head-first into it.”

Australia is not just all about vehicles, though, it’s also the operational base for Cox’s recording studio, where he works regularly with producers Josh Abrahams and David Carbone. His last album, his fourth, 2011’s ‘All Roads Lead to the Dancefloor’ featured a host of Aussie guest artists. He premiered it as a live show at Stereosonic down under, but while he’s proud of it, he feels it was misunderstood, and there was little point in pursuing it further. He says it will be his last album.

“My music is as well-produced and thought-out as anyone else out there,” he says, with a hint of wounded pride, “But as soon as you put the Carl Cox label on it people go, ‘No, he can’t be a DJ and a producer’.”

He reminisces about producing. Remember, he’s had five UK Top 40 hits, which is more than most DJs can say. He recalls making his 2002 ‘Club Traxx’ EP on free software on his laptop, drinking vodka in a hotel room in Thailand, and how, from such unpromising origins, it went on to become a well-loved DJ staple. He enthuses about his 2011 song, ‘Give Me Your Love’, featuring the singer Hannah Robinson.

“It’s one of my favourite records I ever made,” he says. “It almost brings tears to my eyes because it was done with passion, not caring what people thought.” He pauses, then draws a line on this side of his career with an anecdote. “[In 1995] I was asked by The Stone Roses to do a remix for ‘Begging You’,” he recalls. “I did a breakbeat thing, still had guitars on, kept the vocals in, then completely forgot about it. I found it recently on YouTube. I listened to it with fresh ears. It was done in a pioneering spirit and it’s pretty cool. It wasn’t the best thing ever, but it reminded me that I have a discography of all these amazing tracks. I haven’t reached the same plateau of acceptance as a producer as I have as a DJ, but maybe it was never meant to be. I’m OK with that.”

Conversely, his productions remain in demand, with forthcoming material including a remix of the Dutch 1990 proto-trance classic ‘Yaaah!’ by D-Shake, a remix of Pan-Pot’s ‘Riot’, new material he’s recorded with Nile Rodgers, and a number called ‘Your Light Shines On’, an ode to his mum, who passed away earlier this year.

Cox’s mother was supportive of him as a Carshalton teenager, buying him his first decks, a pair of Garrard belt-driven ones that were hard work but taught him manic deck skills that have stood him in better stead than any sync button. He came up on the fringes of the south London soul-boy mafia, a long-term associate of Paul Oakenfold, whose Mini Clubman he regularly fixed up prior to either of their fame. His technical soundsystem skills were in demand as rave blossomed and he made sure that his name was on the flyers as the 90s exploded. It’s to those years he returned to when he played a rare classics set for Mixmag at Fabric on May 12.