Ahead of the release of his House Masters album on September 2nd, we take a look back at what Armand Van Helden has said about his most iconic tracks, inlcuding collaborations with Duane Harden, A-Track (Duck Sauce) and Dizzee Rascal. A true House Master...
Armand Van Helden - U Don’t Know Me (Feat. Duane Harden)
“Its origin? Clearly ‘Stardust’! I had a word about it with Thomas & Guy-Manuel (Daft Punk). I suppose I can say ‘Stardust’ has been for me the past on which I jumped. But I would say I did ‘U Don’t Know Me’ more while thinking of Puffy (Puff Daddy/P-Diddy). This man has produced R&B and Hip-Hop and the reason why he got such recognition is the fact that he’s elaborated a killer recipe. He grabs a beat like anyone does, selects a sample or a loop that everybody’s supposed to know, then he blends everything and adds vocals, et voila! This is the Bad Boy formula which has made Puffy what he has become. So back to this conversation I had with Thomas, I told him how this idea of putting vocals on a Disco loop has been an inspiration to me even though I’d thought about it for quite some time before. That said, ‘Stardust’ happened to be the first in the genre. And I imagine how the loops on ‘You Don’t Know Me’ might sound familiar to you, as long as you’re familiar with the music of that period… The funny thing back then is that nobody in the industry had managed to come up with the origins of the loop I’ve been using, even though I tend to think this track has been built on a more Hip-Hop/R&B perspective than House.” AVH to In Da Mix Worldwide
CJ Bolland - Sugar Is Sweeter (Armand Van Helden's Drum 'n' Bass Mix)
“I basically made a deeper mix. If you listen to most house music at the time, it usually had some percussion that propelled it if the kick was pulled out. In the early rave days, listening to jungle, drum & bass, hardcore, they would do those stops and the ambient thing, with no beats. I made the bass very strong, like all the drum & bass records I was into. The reason I even called it “[Armand’s] Drum & Bass Mix” is because I was imitating the drum & bass guys. It came back around to the UK, and they started a whole scene up from it. To be honest, I didn’t experience that whole speed garage scene; I just wasn’t there.” – AVH to RBMA
Armand Van Helden - My My My
“This one was inspired by The Blueprint – I was really into that sound Kanye West and Just Blaze were making, those sped-up soul samples. I was kind of out of the loop after kicking back after “U Don’t Know Me,” and I needed to wade in the pool a little bit before I could make “My My My.” That music video, Southern Fried had their people handle it, but I liked it a lot – I thought it turned out great.” – AVH to Rolling Stone
Armand Van Helden - Witch Doktor (The Dark Ages Mix)
“I moved from Boston in late ‘93 and “Witch Docktor” came out spring of ‘94, so I had gotten right to work. I was out almost every night – it was club kids era, you know, but I was more on the fringe – and “Witch Docktor” was maybe the third record I did with those big New York clubs in mind. I needed something that could really fill out a place like Limelight, and “Witch Docktor” was the first time I really succeeded with that.” – AVH to Rolling Stone
Da Mongoloids - Spark Da Meth (Bangin Like A Benzi Mix)
“Me and Junior Sanchez were sitting up in my place. In the early days, it was a normal thing for people to like House and hip-hop. Wu-Tang was really the hot thing at the time. I go to Junior Sanchez, “You know, we should make a Wu-Tang of house music.” That’s how it started. The House scene lacked that unity. Junior actually took it to heart. I wasn’t that serious. At that point, whoever Junior liked became a Mongoloid. I’m still in touch with Junior ‘cause he’s from Jersey; he’s from this area. I regret till this day that Thomas, from Daft Punk, he goes, “We should take this Mongoloidz thing seriously. We should do a record.” We never did anything with it. I do kinda look back now, like, “That was a mistake.” I just never took it serious. I regret not taking them up on their offer because I think it could have been a magical thing.” – AVH to 5 Chicago
Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand
“A-Trak and I have a brainstorm, or maybe a brain-quirk. He spits out ideas and I spit out ideas, we throw them up against the wall and see what works. We usually end up laughing, that’s kinda how it worked for ‘Barbra Streisand’. We both have wacky senses of humour and we’re drawn to these things that make people sit up and listen. So we had the track without that part and realised we needed to add a something into where the gap was. The first idea was to put some sort of word there, some sort of silly sample. Then, instead of looking for a sample, we decided we should just say something, we should say someone’s name. Then I had a moment when I thought, we gotta say someone’s name, someone in music, who has nothing to do with this... After three or four shots we tried Barbra Streisand and both just started cracking up so we knew then, that would have to be on the track. We did try out a few other names but there weren’t too many. Neil Diamond was a contender, but just didn’t sound as good as Barbra Streisand.” – AVH to Skiddle
Armand Van Helden - The Funk Phenomena
“I didn’t think this would be a big record. It was third song on a three-song EP, and it blew up in UK first then jumped over to California and later Miami. It never caught on in New York – I think it was too different from that Masters at Work New York sound of the moment. I was actually in Amsterdam on tour, and I got to the hotel room and put on a music video countdown while I unpacked – and it was Number One! I couldn’t believe it – I didn’t even know it had a video. And I hated the video! It was just, like, a woman undressing, the most cliché dance video.” – AVH to Rolling Stone
Dizzee Rascal & Armand Van Helden - Bonkers
“I made the track and the label sent it to Dizzee, and we were both hip-hop guys, so we connected. And the beat is a rip-off of the song “Mars” by Fake Blood – not in a way where you’d say, “that’s fucked up,” but as my inspiration. I never thought I’d get a Number One in, you know, the lazy stage of my career.” – AVH to Rolling Stone
Armand Van Helden - Flowerz (Feat. Roland Clark)
“I had come up with that loop, and it was sitting on DAT – a ten-minute thing, filtering up and down and messing with it, dropping beats and putting beats back in, just a groove I had made. Roland Clark had been up to my place a couple times, and I made the track and three days later I was like, “Roland, you should sing over this.” I said I needed it very quickly – it was one of the last songs I made on that album – and he brought it back to me the next day with the vocals. He just sang freeform; there’s some verses in it; some don’t even rhyme. So I had to go through and do a serious edit job to build it into a song. But he intuitively channeled that record. He did do the hook in terms of those stacks where he knew that Flowers was a thing, and they’re insanely beautiful. The rest of that song I didn’t know really how to piece together, and that was the real work of that song, but everything else on that song was super easy.” – AVH to RBMA
Armand Van Helden - Ghandi Khan
“Steve Aoki wants to re-release Ghandi Khan. Every time I see him he’s like, “When do I get Ghandi Khan?” If anybody wants to find reason or logic in an artist that can do “You Don’t Know Me” or “Flowerz,” which are standard happy good-feeling up vibes, and then does a rap where they call trance Nazi music . . . Just think of Kanye West. He does everything that everybody doesn’t want him to do, every time. It’s not on purpose, and it’s hard for the public to understand this. When you make a song that is number one in the United States or Europe or whatever, there’s a moment when you exhale and say, “OK, I actually can make music for a living.” When that happens, you tend to get into a weird artist mode, where you get fairly abstract, because you’ve achieved that now, and now you can be super weirdo.” – AVH to RBMA
