Darren Emerson, to put it lightly, is a living legend. As a DJ, producer and ex-label boss his career, which spans 17 years, has been hugely influential. As a member of Underworld he helped mould the sound of The Junior Boys Own label. One particular record springs to mind, you may have heard it, it’s called Born Slippy. A track which holds the position of THE number 1 dance record of all time has not been challenged (not even by the Prodigy!). So as we celebrate 20 years of JBO we thought we’d better catch up with ‘Emo’, waxing lyrical about what it was like to get signed at 19, who discovered him, why he looks up to Andrew Weatherall and what was so special about Monday nights…..
Darren Emerson.. to put lightly... is a living legend. He is a DJ, Producer and former owner of the Underwater label. Hugely influential with a career that has spanned over 17 years. It was one of his biggest releases with Underworld, that came from The Junior Boys Own You’ve been to a number of different places this year, tell us about some of them.
Where are you playing in Ibiza?
Ibiza will be Pure Pacha. Which will be a Friday night and it will be myself and Sander Kleinberg. We DJ-d together at the EXIT festival and we did a back-to-back party set because it was their 10th anniversary. We’re old friends (me and Sander) so we might do a bit of spinning together and a bit on our own as well so it should be good.
You’ve been to a number of different places this year, tell us about some of them.
I’ve been here, there and everywhere really. At the moment I’m getting ready to go back to Ibiza (next week) and then after that I’ll be in France and then I’ve got Singapore coming up, the Underworld boys are going to be there as well which should be interesting. Over there there’s the formula 1 parties which means they’ll be loads going on so it should be quite fun!
But yeah I’m loads of travelling, writing in the studio, looking after babies and being a dad – the usual things really!
I used to be their resident, so it will be good to go back there and have some more good times!
Let’s talk about Junior Boys Own. In only three words, sum up what it meant to you.
To sum up JBO in three words I’d have to say, Good Fantastic Times. We had great parties with a great bunch of like minded people. They we’re mostly older than me as I was one of the young lads back then, I was the whippersnapper, but I knocked about with my brother and his friends so I was always knocking about with older people. Also people like Steven Hall, Terry Farley, Pete Heller and Andrew Weatherall were there and they were all cool guys.
You were 18 at the time, did you look up to those guys much?
Well yeah I respected what they had done, especially with the parties etc. And I always respected Andrew Weatherall, I was a big fan of his and he was doing some killer mixes at the time, he worked with the Village vibe and it was more alternative such as the James ‘Come Home’ mixes and the Happy Monday’s mixes. I was really inspired and into that kind of thing that they were all doing because it wasn’t all about house and techno, it was house but there was still that alternative side to it which I was really pulled in to.
I was going to a club called ‘Phuture’ on Thursday nights, and I used to love going down there because it was all about good music, not just house music. House music was exploding at the time, but down there (Phuture) they moved away from that slightly and played stuff from The Cure and a bit of Carly Simon and a bit of this and a bit of that and that’s what got me into alternative music even more. I was always an electronic kid, cutting and scratching in my bedroom and always into DJ-ing but that was what really pulled me away and also knocking about with people who used to be punks really opened my mind and got me into guitar music and stuff like that.
They were quite Rock n Roll times back then, I can remember!
Yeah they were, it was the Acid house explosion and everything was new and it was a new era and with a new explosion of music coming through. It was the acid house 303 sound and that’s what it was all about really.
Were you DJ-ing or already making records at that time?
At 18, I kind of adapted into making records as well. I was DJ-ing since I was 16 in the clubs in Essex and I worked my way up and then one day I was asked to play at the Milk Bar on Monday nights with Nicky Holloway. The first gig I did in London though was at Limelight, and that was on a Saturday night with myself and Johnnie Walker. Johnnie Walker and I played downstairs and it was really fantastic and proved to be a good break into London for me – the basement of Limelight’s.
From then I never looked back, soon after I played at the Milk Bar and that’s when THE people were coming down. I managed to get the DJ of the month awards in The Face and in I.D., both in the same month. It was all blowing up for me, and I was still only 19 and the Monday nights were really going off for us and it was packed! The night was called the ‘Recession Session’ and it made Monday nights a night to look forward to. You wouldn’t get that much nowadays, but the Monday nights were great and on Tuesdays I used to feel bad, turn up to work and not be able to do much!
Did the quite mental and druggy sound of Acid House pave the way for your own musical direction?
I was a proper house fanatic and I was listening to LWR which was a rock pirate radio station and I was a proper ‘train-spotter’, I knew everything that was coming out. It wasn’t like today when there’s thousands and thousands of tracks coming out on Beatport or Juno and practically anyone can make music from a laptop. In those days we used to go to the studio and it was when I met Rick (Rick Smith - Underworld) when he was looking for a DJ and they were in a rocky/new wav-y kind of band which had been dropped. He was then looking for a DJ and at the time I was the local DJ in Essex and I knew his brother-in-law and that’s how we hooked up. I started to show Rick what was good and bad in the dance scene because he didn’t really know much about dance music. But I wanted to get into the studio and I was getting into alternative music and I knew that this wasn’t normal thing cos they were a band with guitars and stuff like that and Andrew, Terry and Pete were doing remixes with the likes of Primal Scream and the Happy Mondays. That was my reason for going ‘Well I want to do a little band and I’ve got these couple of guys who are in a band and we’re just see where we can take it’, that’s where it all started off.
I was teaching Rick all about good dance music and he was teaching me a lot about the studio and before long we were writing tunes and then we started to get a few remixes under the name ‘Stepping Razor’. Karl came back from L.A. We started cutting up Karl’s vocals in a William Burrows kind of style and that was the birth of us working together. I was DJ-ing but was also able to be in the studio with two talented musicians.
How did the introduction to Junior Boys Own come about?
I think Andrew came down to check me out one night at the Milk Bar and he liked what I was doing because I was really mixing things up and cutting things and scratching things up - nowadays you just have to hit a loop button, but in those days I used two of the same record and that was my style.
Me and Rick had quite a few tracks by then too, and we went to Kensal Rise and JBO had an office there. We were actually going there to meet pop promotions (a different company) and we started talking to this guy called Jonathon who we thought could maybe be our manager. We thought that was the way forward, and we played him one of our tapes. In the corner was Steven Hall, I knew him a little bit, and after we played the tapes to Jonathon the meeting finished and Steve got in contact with me said ‘I really like that stuff, it’s really good, lets have a meeting’, and that’s how we got the show on the road with JBO.
When and how did you start playing at the parties for JBO?
The one that sticks out is the one where Andrew asked me fill in for because he couldn’t make it and he requested me to play for him. I was honoured because I looked up to Andrew and thought it was a fantastic thing to be asked to do, at a young age as well. It was in Bogner Regis so it was a weekender, I remember going on and doing my usual thing of using two records and starting off with a long intro. I remember Norman Cook was there and it was the first house party he’d been to, and he always says now in interviews that I was the first person to get him into house music. I remember using Robert Owen’s ‘I’ll be your friend’ over and over again just looping it and going back and forth. Justin Robertson was playing there as well, it was really good fun to play that weekender. I remember waking up the next day and feeling a bit hazy sharing a hair of the dog with Charlie Chester! I spent that Sunday with him at the bar having Sunday afternoon pints.
We think that ‘Born Slippy’ is the biggest dance record ever made. Do you agree or can you think of a dance record that was bigger?
I was actually in Miami with Liam Howlett from the Prodigy, and he popped up one time when we we’re talking and said ‘I was reading the NME and there was the top 100 dance records ever made, and you we’re number 1 and we were number 2!’ We laughed about it, but the Prodigy are definitely up there, they’ve got the big tunes such as ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ & ‘Firestarter’ haven’t they? But I’ve heard ‘Born Slippy’ so many times. It’s hard for me to say. It seems that a lot of people still like it and I still play it when I’m DJ-ing at a big arena party or in a big room venue. I do mash-up’s of it just to make it sound better for me because I’ve heard the original so many times. But it still goes off and people everywhere know it and still demand that I play it.
Which other JBO tracks did you love and/or play at the time?
Definitely X-Press 2 tracks, they’ve done some fantastic and big tunes and I love what they’ve done. That track was an early one which really stood out. Boca Juniors and the track ‘Raise’, that was a great track, i used to love it. Also ‘The Dust Brothers’ which is what they were called before they turned into The Chemical Brothers, there was track called ‘Songs Of the Siren’, I got to know that track when I was playing on a Thursday night in a club called The Drum Club and I remember this quite shy guy with curly hair coming up to me with a white label with the title ‘Songs Of The Siren’ saying ‘This is our new one’ and it was Ed (Ed Simons from The Chemical Brothers).
I thought it was a great track with really haunting vocals on it, and it was the one which really kicked things off for them.
Do you miss being a label boss at the moment?
At the time it was tough for me to say ‘Ok I don’t really want to do this anymore’ because id been running ‘Underwater’ for the previous 14 or 15 years and started it up when I was in Underworld in 1994. I think spending 15 years running an independent dance label was pretty good going, I had a good innings. But to be honest I think it was the right time to move on, I don’t miss it at all. It was good though, we did have fun times, we did some great parties and I was doing nights in Ibiza and we had a residency at Pacha for four years.
But times change and you have to move on. We were selling vinyl at the beginning! Now record sales have completely gone. I had to change with the times and I didn’t want to be doing it anymore because I wanted to focus on doing some of my own stuff again. I was looking after a lot of other artists and their creativity and not myself and my own creativity.
Tell us about any of your projects or up-coming dates that you’d like to push.
There’s my digital label which will be called ‘Hard4slow Records’, and they’ll be plenty of tunes coming out on that in the near future. I’ve also got a lot of DJ-ing coming up soon, I’ve got a Singapore party coming up soon and I’m off to Pacha in Ibiza next week with Sander and then I’m off to Paris the week after that doing a party. I’m looking to get the album I was telling you about finished because at the moment I’m just sifting through a load of different mixes which are spread over quite few files, and I’m looking to get a mate of mine called Steve Doug who is the Chemical Brothers engineer, in on it too. He’s heard it and he says he’s loving it so, it will be good to get him in to help polish it off, and then find a home for it and put it out!
