About 10 years ago Leeds gents James Rial and Richard Burkinshaw randomly met in Ibiza. Both were already DJs and immediately saw common sonic ground, as well as the promise of a lasting friendship. In no time, they were DJing together and enthusiastically embracing the studio to help fuel their prowess on the road. Their subsequent rise as Audiojack would be instantaneous.
Rial and Burkinshaw already had a decade's worth of gigging experience each, allowing them to quickly escalate the Audiojack name - a name synonymous with electronic confidence, quality and variety. Debut studio production, ‘Robot’, released in 2005, duly cemented their fame - in fact, rocketed it to stellar heights in a matter of weeks. Remarkable stuff.
Even more remarkable is the fact that Audiojack has so comprehensively resisted the industry economics and expectations that follow success and often bottle and bleed it to inane distraction. Since ‘Robot’ they have drawn strength from worthy independent labels such as 20:20 Vision, producing smart house workouts like ‘White Noise’ and ‘Radio’. Four years ago they started their own free-spirited imprint Gruuv, which has provided a new platform for Audiojack’s maturing sound – as typified by big EPs including ‘These Days’ and, recently, ‘Machine Code’. Gruuv has also nurtured other budding dancefloor talent, releases via Black Loops, Dale Howard, Coat Of Arms and Marc Romboy (to name a few...) reinforcing Audiojack’s position as one of contemporary clubland’s key tastemakers.
All the while, Rial and Burkinshaw continue to tour their deep bass, warm groove magic everywhere from Berlin’s Watergate to Miami’s Electric Pickle via Ibiza (where they now live), London, Brazil and Singapore. And this month they release a brand new single, ‘Stay Glued’, for Defected subsidiary DFTD. Yet another feather in Audiojack’s already gorgeously plumed cap.
What better time than now to chew the fat with Rich?
So tell us - what are you gents currently up to?
Jamie’s been in Japan for gigs in Tokyo and Osaka. I’ve been in Sao Paulo, Brazil, playing in Campinas and at the Playground Festival nearby. We usually play together but sometimes on long hauls we have to split to make them stick, and we’ve both been DJing for almost 20 years so I’d hope we can play well enough on our own by now!
How has the dynamic between you and James changed over the past decade?
It’s stayed pretty consistent – we are still good friends and work in the same way we always have. We now live together again in Ibiza which has been really convenient for our music, working together and amazing for our lifestyle.
What was Audiojack’s original goal upon forming?
First and foremost we were DJs; we’ve both been DJing since the mid to late Nineties. Producing was our chosen route to DJ professionally but, ironically, we’re probably better known now for our productions. I’m not sure many people who produce music are better known for their DJing skills these days though, can you think of any?
Tell us about ‘Stay Glued’…
It’s a track we made with Kevin Knapp doing vocals. We originally released it in 2011 on Gruuv with remixes from FCL and Gorge. The FCL remix became a hit and was supported by lots of high-profile underground DJs. Defected have licensed the record for a re-release with new remixes from Sebo K, who has paid homage to the FCL version, and ZDS who have done a jacking techno number. We’ve also done a new mix and opted for a more abrasive techno tool, giving the package more diversity.
Describe your ideal studio formula…
We use FL Studio [digital audio workstation] and Ableton with lots of plug-ins and some Midi gear. We’ll have a plan of what we want to achieve if we discuss an idea in advance or we’ll just listen through some sounds until we find something exciting that we feel we can do something with. Then we get a loop going which we feel has the right energy, deconstruct it and build the track from the first bar. The next step for us is mastering new hardware to take our options with sound production and performance to the next level.
Did you ever imagine ‘Robot’ would have the impact, as a debut, that it did?
In a word no, and the gravity of that success didn’t really occur to us until sometime after. As it was our first released record we had no others to compare it to, so we just thought all the hype and commotion was part of releasing every record!
Does the gravity of success weigh heavily on you now?
We aren’t weighed down by expectations from the industry these days because we’ve always made the music we’re into at that time regardless of what’s ‘in’ and we’ve been doing it for long enough now to know that sometimes your style and sound will be aligned with what’s popular and sometimes it’s not. If you chase trends though you’ll always be one step behind the people at the forefront of new sounds and that feels undignified to us, our artistic integrity is important. Hype is such a huge factor in today’s scene; it’s definitely no longer just about the music in most places. Artists need a story or an angle and a team of professionals around them to get them the best media spots and online presence. We prefer to just be ourselves, without the camaraderie; without having to shout about what we’re doing all the time. Likewise, in the clubs, some people don’t go to parties just to dance to fresh music and have a good time anymore; they go to the ‘cool’ parties that everyone is talking about to be ‘seen’ and take videos on phones to show how cool it was on Facebook the next day. We prefer to live in the moment, rather than the memory.
How are you settling into your new Ibiza homes?
Yeah, we’re totally at home. We have a fenced plot of land in the middle of the island near Santa Gertrudis, with two ‘casitas’, or small houses, on it. We live in one each with our girls, so technically we’re neighbours, but we have more of an open house policy. It’s great having separate houses as you still get the privacy you need but we come together to eat, drink and, of course, it’s great for the studio and mixing records together. In the summer it’s easy to get inspired with so many clubs, but there’s something magical in the air that makes it a very inspiring place all year round, especially in winter when you have a blank canvas.
Do you miss Leeds?
Leeds is a great city to live in for people who want to go out partying and it’s a hotbed for new producers and DJs. But we wanted an earthier, more outdoors lifestyle, and living in a place that has 300 days of sunshine every year allows that. We don’t have a TV, don’t need one. It’s great for the soul to live near the sea and we’ve learned that simple pleasures are the best, cooking and eating together, exercise, growing our own fruit, vegetables, and wheatgrass, yoga...the contrast of our peaceful countryside with the sound of the studio, the birds singing, the cicadas chirping, the ants marching.... It’s amazing how many people ask why we moved to Ibiza, like it needs explaining! When we were young we’d spend all year saving up to come here for two weeks, so being able to live here is a dream come true. Everything is alive here, and as a result we feel more alive too. It’s a very inspiring place to live, and gives us a great creative space.
What’s next after the DFTD single?
We’re celebrating five years of Gruuv in May, so we’ll be putting together some special releases, a ‘5 Years Of Gruuv’ compilation and some parties. We’ve got some great releases from Tuccillo, Okain, Metodi Hristov, Sven Tasnadi, Black Loops and Emanuel Satie before the end of the year too. We’re also starting to create our own artwork, which is simply different grooves. We take a nice quality camera with us when we’re on tour and just walk around the city or countryside trying to capture as many variations of grooves as possible – from cracks in the pavement to the grill on the front of a car, or a mosaic on a wall. Just simple grooves to act as a background for our artwork. Nothing ground-breaking but having creative input into every area of releasing a record is very appealing.
And the gigs are still coming thick and fast – ADE, Turkey, London in the second half of October alone….
We’ve recently moved to USBs for DJing – we’ve never really embraced the latest DJ technology; we only left vinyl because we couldn’t play our own new tracks and now we’ve mainly moved to USB because CDs keeping failing in the players. That said, the thought of being able to take an unlimited amount of music to gigs is pretty exciting. We always play back-to-back. We usually spend a day playing through our new music ahead of gigs so we fully understand the tracks, are prepared and know what works where to create a certain energy. We got lazy and arrogant a few years ago and would just turn up and play new music we hadn’t properly taken in and our sets got clunky and didn’t always flow. You need to know your music and we owe it to those who are listening to do the best job possible. That’s also why we don’t get wasted while we’re playing because it’s insulting to those attending to mess things up because of our over-indulgence. Obviously, getting a bit loose can help things flow but we know our limits.
Clubland is so congested these days – how easy is it to stand out from the crowd?
The industry is only oversaturated in quantity, there’s still a shortage of high quality, original music out there. We’ve always said you can’t stand out by fitting in. That’s probably not helped us in the short-term as we’re often quite difficult for clubs to place on line-ups, or for trendy listeners to see which clique we fit into - none! But in the long-term maybe it’s given us longevity, where others attaching themselves to one little sound or movement cease to be relevant when that movement ends. We also strongly believe in not putting out everything you make. At least half our productions are scrapped. It’s impossible for every idea to be worthy of a release, so maintaining our quality over quantity approach hopefully means when we do put something new out people will invest a few minutes and check it out.
So, you’re satisfied with Audiojack’s journey to date?
We’ve sustained doing what we love as a career for the best part of a decade now which is much more than satisfactory – it’s unequivocally achieving the thing you wanted to be most when you grew up! We’ve never aspired to be the biggest thing in the world because all the shit that comes with it isn’t us; we just want to share the music we believe in with people that want to hear it and, over the years, build that into something that can allow us to keeping doing it for as long as we can.
‘Stay Glued’ is out now (digital) on DFTD – buy from Beatport / Traxsource / DStore
