Boiler Room Interview
We hooked up with Thristian Richards - the founder and director of Boiler Room, London and Berlin’s seminal live stream music show.
So how did the whole concept of the Boiler room come together, where did you get the idea from?
Well me and Blaze basically kind of, who sits next to me there (points over to the office) who’s like the blonde guy, on the phone, usually is. This guy Femi who’s just set up NTS Radio, Blaze asked me and Femi to go down, I can’t remember what he said, he said something like can you do us a mixtape, then it turned into can you come into the office, and then we’ll UStream it . and then just off the reaction that we got from just doing that, like our mates basically, and sending out a few Twitters and what have you, we realised it could be quite fun. Then like, Femi’s quite well connected and I used to work for Gilles Peterson so I know quite a few people, we just started inviting people down just saying like “It’s Tuesday night, we’ve got rum, we’ve got weed, we’ve got two turntables (laughs) and we’re gonna like, stream it.”
It is on quite early, like from 8-11 right?
Yeah, 8-11pm which I dunno yeah it was quite weird. It was originally 9pm until midnight there’s no real reason. But that’s kind of helped us loads with licensing and calling up a private party and getting away with doing it in certain places because obviously...I think it was a combination, I think we were doing it from 9pm ‘til 12pm and then we realised that like you don't really get in trouble if you make noise before 11, where we were before it was quite noisy and we had the police turn up a couple time actually, so that when we finished at 11, they’d like turn up at 11. It’s good, it’s quite a good time because you can finish work and when we went we had just finished work...and you finish early so you can get home.
How long has it been going for?
A year and a bit, probably a year and a half now. Like that whole thing about it being early, it’s something that I forget that is quite unique to it, cause it never was a club session or a rave and it kind of like borders it, now obviously, and obviously when you do it with people like Secretsundaze as well and they’re not used to, they are more Secretsundaze than Boiler Room, but they kind of understand that there’s something else there. It’s just quite funny because like you know, obviously everyone thinks “oh it’s really early, is it actually going to kick off, like are people going to dance at that time?”. By the time you get to 11pm, everyone’s fucking totally smashed, and like it might as well be five o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, like. I kind of stop it dead on 11pm on purpose most of the times, just because I really like the energy of like “...It’s finished!” and it’s a broadcast as well, so it’s like “The broadcast is finished” like that’s it.
You know in general that like every 45 minutes the DJs will change, the DJs are under pressure to like squeeze what they’ve got in to 45 minutes. It’s not easy for DJs really.
I know, I bet everyone always thinks so much went into it, everyone sitting down for ages trying to find a name.
Like “Oh my Dad’s a plumber! He like services loads of boilers!” (laughs) no it wasn’t anything like that, it was simple, “oh look...there’s a boiler room there”.
It’s quite a fresh idea and heavily based around technology. Have you ever had a terrible technological meltdown?
Oh yeah all the time, like all the time!
Do you get quite stressed?
I’m quite a calm person on the outside, but I do get really stressed. Like I am, safasf and Charlie know. Like my eyes get wider, I’m pacing up and down, like I’m usually pacing up and down with my hands in my pockets, one of those ones.
I don’t blame you for being stressed!
Yeah and when we first moved to Corsica Studios we had a Young Turks night, and Young Turks were pretty kind of like at the peak of their hypeness at the time. Jamie XX had just released the remixed Gil Scot-Heron album, or it was like around or whatever, and we got so many hits that it like totally crashed the website for like an hour, like totally crashed it before like I think Young Turks or The XX tweeted it and Facebooked it and just that surge just totally just fucking screwed it. That was it. It was like we don't even know, like we had to wait for the whole website to reboot, like some fucking back end shit. I was just like “How much is this going to cost me” and he was like “Yeah it’s going to cost you like however many hundreds of pounds”.
Like I was like OK there are like 500 people outside, fuck knows how many people online, more than we’ve ever had before.
…and it all crashed.
and it all fucking crashed! and it’s gonna cost a couple of hundred pounds, this is fucking great! (laughs) that was definitely a pacing up and down night for me.
How long have you known Gilles Peterson then?
Yeah, I’ve known him six years now.
He’s a really cool guy.
Yeah, he’s amazing.
What about the name ‘Boiler Room’?
We were originally just going to do it in the boiler room of a warehouse and that was it. There was like a sign above the door or something and it gave us a good option for a logo. We were like “oh look, it’s the boiler room, that’s quite a nice name”.
I can imagine he was really cool to work with...
Yeah he was fucking amazing, we are like best of friends now.
So how did the whole concept of the Boiler room come together, where did you get the idea from?
Well me and Blaze basically kind of, who sits next to me there (points over to the office) who’s like the blonde guy, on the phone, usually is. This guy Femi who’s just set up NTS Radio, Blaze asked me and Femi to go down, I can’t remember what he said, he said something like can you do us a mixtape, then it turned into can you come into the office, and then we’ll UStream it . and then just off the reaction that we got from just doing that, like our mates basically, and sending out a few Twitters and what have you, we realised it could be quite fun. Then like, Femi’s quite well connected and I used to work for Gilles Peterson so I know quite a few people, we just started inviting people down just saying like “It’s Tuesday night, we’ve got rum, we’ve got weed, we’ve got two turntables (laughs) and we’re gonna like, stream it.”
It is on quite early, like from 8-11 right?
Yeah, 8-11pm which I dunno yeah it was quite weird. It was originally 9pm until midnight there’s no real reason. But that’s kind of helped us loads with licensing and calling up a private party and getting away with doing it in certain places because obviously...I think it was a combination, I think we were doing it from 9pm ‘til 12pm and then we realised that like you don't really get in trouble if you make noise before 11, where we were before it was quite noisy and we had the police turn up a couple time actually, so that when we finished at 11, they’d like turn up at 11. It’s good, it’s quite a good time because you can finish work and when we went we had just finished work...and you finish early so you can get home.
How long has it been going for?
A year and a bit, probably a year and a half now. Like that whole thing about it being early, it’s something that I forget that is quite unique to it, cause it never was a club session or a rave and it kind of like borders it, now obviously, and obviously when you do it with people like Secretsundaze as well and they’re not used to, they are more Secretsundaze than Boiler Room, but they kind of understand that there’s something else there. It’s just quite funny because like you know, obviously everyone thinks “oh it’s really early, is it actually going to kick off, like are people going to dance at that time?”. By the time you get to 11pm, everyone’s fucking totally smashed, and like it might as well be five o’clock in the morning on a Saturday, like. I kind of stop it dead on 11pm on purpose most of the times, just because I really like the energy of like “...It’s finished!” and it’s a broadcast as well, so it’s like “The broadcast is finished” like that’s it.
You know in general that like every 45 minutes the DJs will change, the DJs are under pressure to like squeeze what they’ve got in to 45 minutes. It’s not easy for DJs really.
I know, I bet everyone always thinks so much went into it, everyone sitting down for ages trying to find a name.
Like “Oh my Dad’s a plumber! He like services loads of boilers!” (laughs) no it wasn’t anything like that, it was simple, “oh look...there’s a boiler room there”.
It’s quite a fresh idea and heavily based around technology. Have you ever had a terrible technological meltdown?
Oh yeah all the time, like all the time!
Do you get quite stressed?
I’m quite a calm person on the outside, but I do get really stressed. Like I am, safasf and Charlie know. Like my eyes get wider, I’m pacing up and down, like I’m usually pacing up and down with my hands in my pockets, one of those ones.
I don’t blame you for being stressed!
Yeah and when we first moved to Corsica Studios we had a Young Turks night, and Young Turks were pretty kind of like at the peak of their hypeness at the time. Jamie XX had just released the remixed Gil Scot-Heron album, or it was like around or whatever, and we got so many hits that it like totally crashed the website for like an hour, like totally crashed it before like I think Young Turks or The XX tweeted it and Facebooked it and just that surge just totally just fucking screwed it. That was it. It was like we don't even know, like we had to wait for the whole website to reboot, like some fucking back end shit. I was just like “How much is this going to cost me” and he was like “Yeah it’s going to cost you like however many hundreds of pounds”.
Like I was like OK there are like 500 people outside, fuck knows how many people online, more than we’ve ever had before.
…and it all crashed.
and it all fucking crashed! and it’s gonna cost a couple of hundred pounds, this is fucking great! (laughs) that was definitely a pacing up and down night for me.
How long have you known Gilles Peterson then?
Yeah, I’ve known him six years now.
He’s a really cool guy.
Yeah, he’s amazing.
What about the name ‘Boiler Room’?
We were originally just going to do it in the boiler room of a warehouse and that was it. There was like a sign above the door or something and it gave us a good option for a logo. We were like “oh look, it’s the boiler room, that’s quite a nice name”.
I can imagine he was really cool to work with...
Yeah he was fucking amazing, we are like best of friends now.
