Pete Tong On the Mainstream, Minimal & Ministry (Interview) :: Skrufff.com

[Philip]

Recently adding a new Thursday night show to his Radio 1 portfolio, Pete Tong remains dance culture's single most influential tastemaker, off the back of his now 12 year career presenting the station's Essential Selection. Nowadays widely downloaded via the web, the show remains the definitive platform for dance music worldwide though with Pete recently losing its first hour he's canny enough to recognize the station's role in making it so key.

"Am I particularly happy about not being able to start at 6'oclock? Not particularly. But did I think I'd be on at 6pm forever? No," he points out.

"Did I think I'd be on at 6pm for 12 years? No. Change is inevitable but I've always seen change as an opportunity."

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): You recently started a new Thursday night show on Radio 1 though lost an hour of your Friday night Essential Mix, how much of a worry is it for you when Radio 1 do their periodic restructures?

Pete Tong: "I think it comes to a point when you have been there as long I have

that you can't worry, really. I'm aware of the great time slot I'm on with the Essential Selection and I'm eternally grateful for it; you try and do your best. My instincts haven't let me down too much in the past and I know probably more than anyone on the radio, probably anywhere in the world, that I've been able to evolve on the radio, as good or better than anyone else in my genre. That's because I've constantly got a hunger for new things. I've always seen myself as being like a funnel, bringing what is considered one year to be underground to the overground. You are constantly also dealing with fashion, which is the fashion of how hot and cold the perception of club/dance /electronic music is at any one particular time.



Skrufff: The Thursday show has a more mainstream flavour than your Friday show, do you share the same enthusiasm for mainstream music or do you se any difference in mainstream and underground?

Pete Tong: "I just think good is good and bad is bad."

Skrufff: How do you decide between the two of what is going to be appropriate?

Pete Tong: "Firstly you start from the position that you are on the radio, and you've got to be entertaining. We play to an audience of roughly two million people at the start of each show on a Friday night and if you were playing to a stadium of two million people, you wouldn't play a bunch of minimal techno records at the start of your set. You've got to act responsibly. I think I've been really successful at entertaining people and turning them on to something new. I don't think I've ever played it easy and gone down the route of lowest common denominator. It would be easy to hold a bigger audience longer on the show I suppose by packing it full of hits, but I don't think I would have been there for fifteen years if I'd done that."

Skrufff: What is making you excited musically at the moment? I know you were into the minimal last year?

Pete Tong: "The whole minimal thing last year was very healthy, it stripped out a lot of stuff, gave things a freshness and a newness. I think if you look a year later, minimal has almost disappeared. It's morphed. I'm still playing an awful lot of records from Germany but they are not really that minimal. I think things have got a little more soulful, a bit blacker again. A lot of things coming out on labels like Compost and Sonar Kollectiv have been really, really good. The whole sound that Ame have brought to the table I suppose is really where my head's at. It's techno roots. Definitely the roots of Carl Craig and Derrick May and Detroit, a little bit of Chicago as well, but now it's had that huge influence from the Germans. That's what's been turning me on the most.

I also think British production has got better and better and I suppose in a way we have had a house music revival. People like dancing to what they know but they don't like to admit to it and they don't want it all the time. Clubbing is hot again and London has been unbelievable for the last two years. You can walk around London on a Friday or Saturday night, Thursday sometimes as well and Sunday and go to every one of the famous clubs in London and they are all rammed. Then the after-hours scene has been a revelation. You've almost got 24 hour clubbing in the capital. Half of it is illegal, but the fact that people want to do it is great; that rubs off and has a healthy effect. I never wanted to play to a roomful of boys or people in a K (ketamine) hole. I want a mix of people, I want it to be sexy, I want girls to be in my club, I want boys to be in my club, I want gay people to be in my club. Mixed clubs are always the best."

[Philip]

Skrufff: Do you think there is more a mix going on still?

Pete Tong: "Where I play I think that's the kind of thing I attract. I did Ministry of Sound this year and I honestly didn't know what was going to happen, I played at Turnmills for years, I touched on The End, I'm not really a Fabric DJ but I've always wanted to play in London. I thought I'd gone as far as I could with Turnmills, in terms of the room I couldn't do anything different, I've been playing there for ten years probably. I love Danny Newman and Paul Newman, but having done Pacha, it's completely reinvigorated me in terms of DJing, then I wanted another space in London. So I was looking around. The End is a great club, but their nights were pretty full and actually for me, it still felt like Turmills Mark 2 or Turmills Mark One .It's a great club again The End, and I love Layo but it's not exactly a big change for me if I had been able to switch to The End.

So I started looking at Ministry. I thought 'Strip away your preconceived ideas about the brand ˆ this club is fierce. Absolutely brilliant'. It was designed passionately around the idea of Paradise Garage meets Zanzibar, meets early days of Twilo ˆwell it was before Twilo's time even. It is a phenomenal space. I think it had a revival without anyone really spotting it and doing really well. We've just completed our third party and it's been absolutely off the hook."

Skrufff: What drives you to keep pouring all this energy into new projects?

Pete Tong: "It's an addiction of playing records. It's always been the best buzz, playing records in a club. It's like an eternal puzzle. You can never really sit and say you have cracked it. There's always another gig, records change, I get bored quickly so I can't be one of these DJs that plays the same records each year and I've got more into technology in the last few years, which has given me another lift. I've switched to Ableton this year."

[ramon]

very good read

detroit influencing germany and vice versa is it 1992 all over again?