The Mix 064: George Daniel

There was one place to be on Saturday night at this year’s Glastonbury Festival: San Remo, with its rugged motel-like design and raucous party on-stage being the setting for the first birthday of dh2, the dance-focused sister label to Dirty Hit — with sets from Lil Silva, Sampha, Oscar Farrell, Daniel Avery, Kelly Lee Owens, Surusinghe and of course, in the 1-2:AM slot, label head George Daniel.

While the A* celebrity patrons dancing on-stage, including fiancée Charli xcx, may have been a draw, Daniel quickly set the bar for Worthy Farm early-hours action on his own terms. Across an unruly hour, he drew for blistering dubstep, rowdy UK rap vocals, and enough wobble to put your badly-placed tent poles to shame. It’s an impressive show of range, given that just 24 hours ago the drummer-turned-party starter had been headlining the Pyramid Stage alongside his The 1975 bandmates.

Read this next: The Mix 034: Kelly Lee Owens

Having first got into dance music during his time at City College in Manchester - with one of his tutors introducing him to rave master Luke Vibert, particularly his Kerrier District track ‘Let’s Dance and Freak’, Daniel has consistently held onto a love of electronic sounds. “The first proper club I ever went to was Sankeys in Manchester,” he tells us. “Timeless classic.” While The 1975 has been a focal point of his career since they hit the big time in 2012, Daniel is now delving into electronic experimentation, having spent the last year honing in on his solo dance project.

Whether that is his work on dh2, which has seen releases from Oscar Farrell, Surusinghe, Bodhi and Kelly Lee Owen’s debut album ‘Dreamstate’; as a DJ, taking to the decks everywhere from London’s Phonox to Amnesia Ibiza to New York’s Public Records; or as a producer, with solo and collaborative releases on dh2 including ‘Chlorine’, ‘volc3’ and ‘Screen Cleaner’ — while credits on Charli xcx’s era-defining ‘Brat’, including his remix of ‘Club classics’, has allowed him to reach scores of new listeners.

We caught up with George Daniel to reflect on the first year of dh2, finding a place to experiment in weird electronic music, and going from Pyramid headliner on Friday to taking over San Remo on Saturday at this year's Glastonbury.

dh2 turns one this month, can you tell us a little bit about where the idea came from for an electronic-focused label at Dirty Hit?

There’s always been a few of us at Dirty Hit who are massively into electronic music. The label started as a slightly drunk conversation at a 1975 afterparty that I was DJing at with a few friends and we spoke about putting on a night. The more we chatted about it, the more we mentioned potentially releasing something eventually and that quickly become a far more exciting prospect than just a club night.

How has the reception been for the label? 

It’s been amazing, I really wasn’t expecting people to trust what we are doing this early on. I was nervous to really go for it, because I felt like the potential for not being taken seriously was pretty high, and being in the band would leave things open for scrutiny.

dh2’s first signing was Kelly Lee Owens, how did that come about? Had you been a fan of her work for a while? 

Yes, massively. We had been listening to her since her early work. Her vocal on Daniel Avery's 'Drone Logic' and then her rework of Jenny Hval's 'Kingsize' was the first I heard by Kelly — and later her work with Jon Hopkins. It was just all very beautiful and impressive!

Where would you like to take it? Is there an ideal goal in mind as to where it can grow to etc? 

I don’t think I have a goal in terms of the size of the label or the commercial success of it. I’d say my aim is to create a brand that people really understand and trust the taste of. The scope of the music we’re putting out is actually pretty vast but I think we are finding the sound of the label very organically, just by putting things out that we love and trusting each others taste. It is working so far!

You held a special showcase for dh2 at this year’s Glastonbury. How was it to showcase the label and its affiliates at the festival? 

It was honestly perfect, we all agreed it was the best night we have put on yet. I think this is partly down to the community feel of sharing a stage with amazing artists, and this was the first time we have done that – or anything that isn’t a dh2 show in a venue.

How was it to play on the Pyramid Stage on Friday with The 1975 and then play San Remo as a DJ a day later? 

Quite something. It felt like Saturday was the perfect celebration of Friday, as well as the year we have had as a label — it was perfect!

How do you usually prepare for a DJ set? 

Just depends what I've been listening to and what the night is. I really love pushing myself to switch it up as much as possible and play new things, and there’s usually a mad rush to try find and tweak a couple demos that are good enough to play out that I haven’t played before.

You were introduced to dance music while at Manchester College right? Does the music from Aphex Twin/Luke Vibert/Squarepusher etc. that you heard while there still inspire you?

Yes 100%, I used to listen to a lot of Boards of Canada on my way in on the train and when I hear them now I feel really spooky levels of nostalgia for this eye-opening time of my life, it was awesome.

You have mentioned that dh2 gives you the “freedom to collaborate and experiment” — had working on electronic music been something you had wanted to do for a while? Is it a relief to be able to showcase this different element of your sonic palette?

Yeah I have been making all kinds of dodgy electronic music since I left high school at 16, it was always just a low pressure place for experimenting when I wanted to just practice the technical side of my craft or didn’t feel like trying to “write a song”

‘Screen Cleaner’, ‘Chlorine’ and ‘volc3’ sit in very different spheres genre-wise — is that a purposeful thing? Are you wanting to experiment with new sounds?

Yeah so those both were products of the above, very different ends of the spectrum of my messing about. I thought maybe I’d pitch 'Screen Cleaner; around to people but the more I worked on it, the more I thought 'Oh shit maybe this is the first track I put out'. 'volc3 was purely a weird little sampler jam on a Korg Volca sample that I always loved and when Oscar [Farrell] took the jam and worked on it he literally just took the two-track from the sampler and blew it out the park in one afternoon, it was the fastest finishing of any track ever! He sent me his first draft of messing around and I said “It’s finished!”.  

What are the similarities between working within an indie band context and creating dance music? 

I've mentioned this before but the early days of the band were massively based around loops and drones and pads, because nobody knew any chords! So there’s a huge crossover here actually in the first two albums especially.

How did you approach producing for 'brat'? What was the inspiration behind the super-charged ‘Club classics’ rework on the remix album?
 
I had just finished 'Screen Cleaner' with my friend Tim and Associanu, we were making something new off the back of 'Screen Cleaner' being so well received so we were literally just messing around having fun and no pressure, I then just threw the 'Club classics' vocals in and sped them up madly for absolutely no reason. I just knew at some point I needed to start a potential remix for 'Club classics'. Then Charli loved and it went from there.

You’ve also worked with salute, Coco & Clair Clair, Beabadoobee, No Rome and more — how important is collaboration for you in production? 

Yeah it’s definitely very important, I love working with my friends obviously but also when I work on my own for too long I can get stuck in not making decisions or not making them quickly and this happens so much less when collaborating, I think it’s essential.

What Is coming up next for you? 

Lots and lots of new music from everywhere but I need to decide what track to put out next for me, I think I know what it is, and it might be in this mix. But I also don’t know…

How did you approach this mix?

I wanted to do something slower / dusty that felt quite sample-heavy. I've been revisiting a lot of a '90s Memphis rap at the moment, combined with a constant Paranoid London obsession, Crackboy, 2d0gs etc. - those few things I was listening to really informed what I needed to do- and serendipitously the day after I finished the mix I bumped into [Paranoid London member] Quinn Whalley at Glasto at silly-o-clock… absolute legend. 

Megan Townsend is Mixmag's Deputy Editor, follow her on Twitter

Tracklist:
Elgato 'Zone'
2D0GS 'Unreleased'
Duke Dumont 'Street Walker'
Associanu 'Me Time in Milano' (George Daniel Remix)
Crackboy 'User'
Crackboy 'Kiddo'
Paranoid London 'Headtrack'
??? '???'
George Daniel & Oscar Farrell 'volc3'
Eskuche 'Passion'
??? '???'
Gingy & Bordello 'All Day'
??? '???'
2D0GS 'Puntz Return'
Smokey Bubblin’ B 'Rinse Out'
??? '???'
Villager 'In Town'
2D0GS '???'
Oscar Farrell and Sampha 'Dream Therapy'
Kelly Lee Owens 'Melt!'
??? '???'
Tracey ft. Riko Dan 'Sex Life'
HiTech 'AUDISHAWTY'