Produced with love: Joey Negro is riding the recent disco revival

Dave Lee is the last man standing. There are very few DJs and producers left from the early years of British house, but Lee continues to thrive, still DJing, remixing and making dance music. Under a dazzling variety of aliases – Sessomatto, Akabu, The Sunburst Band, Hed Boys, Jakatta and most famously Joey Negro – he’s been producing music since 1988, clocking up hundreds of classic remixes along the way, as well as several chart hits.

Lee’s love of disco has always infused his music, originally in his use of samples and nowadays in the form of carefully curated compilations, and his latest album, ‘Produced With Love’, is no exception, drawing on the entire history of the genre and bringing it completely up to date.

These days, ensconced in his home studio in north London, he runs his own label Zedd, the primary outlet for most of his original music (as well as some brilliant and esoteric reissue albums). He’s a one-man dance music industry. As yet another disco renaissance is upon us, we caught up with Lee to discuss his first proper Joey Negro album since 1993’s ‘Universe Of Love’, Jocelyn Brown’s timekeeping and the mandatory use of pseudonyms.

Tell us about the album...

I prefer doing an album to a stream of throwaway singles that come out and last for three weeks on Traxsource. Originally the plan was to do an album that sounded like Chic; I got about three tracks in and thought ‘this isn’t a great idea’, but I kept a couple of those tunes on the album. I guess it’s a modern disco-type album.

It’s almost feels like a tribute to disco itself...

I think that’s just how the tracks turned out. The first few tracks I did with the Chic blueprint, the next few were songs I’d been working on and then seven or eight tracks that were consciously made for the album. At the same time, I also wanted to make tracks that I could play in a club.

We assume you started this quite a while ago because it has Diane Charlemagne, who passed away 18 months ago, on a few songs...

I suppose it was started about six or seven years ago. Having said that, ‘Dancing Into The Stars’ was written with [former partner] Andrew Livingstone in the mid-90s.

Who’s the best singer you’ve worked with?

They’re good at different things, really. Some are really good at backing vocals, some have a lot of energy but they’re sometimes out of tune, and some are brilliant singers but crap writers. Jocelyn Brown was really good. She came in eight hours late, but she just banged out the track really quickly in about half an hour. Definitely didn’t win on the timekeeping front though…

What’s the worst thing about the internet?

File sharing. For every one track you sell how many get downloaded for free? Ten? Thirty? I don’t know.

What are the biggest changes you’ve seen as a producer since when you started out?

The big change for me is that twenty years ago we had Unit Three Studios and we’d have to find three grand a month rent. We were reliant to a degree in getting outside work to pay the rent. But the days of getting eight grand for a remix are long gone. Nowadays people are doing remixes for a lot less than that. Also, there’s a lot less money in releasing music – even if you put out a fairly popular track. How much money would you make out of it now? Three grand, maybe? There’s not much compilation album money because there are far fewer compilations coming out. There are plenty of positives, too, but the income from producing is a lot less than it was. Now I have a studio in my house and I mainly work for my own label and I like being my own A&R man. All I need to ask now is ‘do I like it?’

You’ve been producing for nearly 30 years. Why have you outlasted your competitors?

I don’t know. Some people just seem to give up after they’ve had a bit of success. Invariably, for everybody, it will at some stage go downhill. You have that golden period for six months when everyone wants to write about you, but that ends and it becomes a bit of a grind. If you’re a trained lawyer or you have other qualifications, then maybe you decide that now is the time to go into another career. I had a period in 1991 and 1992 where I had quite a lot of success in a short period and it dipped down, and people were no longer excited by what I was doing. But then you just have to keep banging away until you create something that they are excited about. I always ask myself: ‘would I buy this? Do I actually like it? Is it any point in this record existing?’

Do you know when you’ve written a hit?

No… Yes. I think most of the things that have been hits I thought would be hits, but there are quite a lot of others that weren’t hits that I thought would cross over as well.

What about ‘American Dream’ by Jakatta, though? That seemed like a surprise crossover record.

I did think it had something about it which was just a bit different. Obviously it was the Thomas Newman music with added drums and I added the Indian vocal later. But then Pete Tong started playing it on the radio and then Jo Whiley. I do wonder how well it would have done if it wasn’t connected with the movie [American Beauty]. People loved the movie and its imagery so I think that helped.

What’s happened to all of your aliases? ‘Distorting Space Time’ on this album is totally a Sessomatto track, isn’t it?

Yes it is. And the Linda Clifford is an Akabu track, too. At one point I was thinking of releasing it as an album and having different artist names like Akabu and Sessomatto etc. But then I just thought, ‘is that just a really stupid idea?’ There were a few of my old aliases that were worth keeping, but others like Prospect Park, Mistura – they’re all interchangeable. They were useful when I was releasing loads of singles close to each other. Also, although I thought it was obvious, loads of people didn’t even realise half of these aliases were me. Is it better to stick with one name? I’m conflicted about it. Todd Terry released everything as Todd Terry, didn’t he?

Which is the best: DJing or producing?

I get pleasure from the actual DJing. I don’t get pleasure from all the travelling. If I had to drop one, from a financial point of view, it would be producing. If I won the Lottery – which I never enter, so I won’t – but if I did I would probably cut down on the DJing quite a lot and do maybe ten gigs a year. Having said that, it’s a good time to be DJing at the moment because
of the disco revival. I’m playing music I really like.

Are you still collecting records as crazily as before?

I still buy old records. Not as many as before, because I suppose it’s harder to find things you want to buy. I’m not interested in going to those modern record shops where they’ve got loads of shrink-wrapped reissues in the racks. I want to go in one that’s got boxes all over the floor and hopefully the owner isn’t on the internet!

What’s the best thing about your job?

Doing exactly what I want, when I want.