NEWS
EVENTS
DJ Fresh Interview
Drum and Bass | Wednesday 28th November 2012 | Jenny
In the midst of his Nextlevelism tour, DJ Fresh, took a hot minute with TGN before his gig at the Forum Hertfordshire.
Hey! How are you doing?
Doing good, really good thanks.
You released your first track ‘The Nine’ when you were just still in your teens. Have you achieved what you set out to?
Yeah 19 years old! Did I know back then that it was what I wanted to do? I don’t know! Back then I had really strict parents who wanted me to do something with business, so I went to university and did Business Information Technology. I dropped out after 6 months though, I had my first record out and felt I had to choose one or the other. Fairly recently, in the last 5 years I’ve let myself feel comfortable with the idea of being a musician. I’ve always done other things; I have my own record labels, websites and I had an anti-piracy record with a guy who signed The Cure back in the 90s and started XFM. So I’ve always had my hands in various…whatever the phrase is! It’s only recently I’ve decided to concentrate on music.
How did you find the festival season? Any favourites?
Yeah, V festival was amazing because we played to such a large audience - maybe a total of about 60,000 people on the second day, the second stage and arena tent were overflowing. We just had such a great reaction to us and the live show only started a year ago. It’s gone so quickly and we feel like we’ve gone so far in such a short space of time, to have an idea for something and then realise it and for it to be so successful.
Your about to stop by The Forum, Hertfordshire as part of your tour. What do you enjoy about touring and the live shows?
I love the crew, the band and the creative people involved -from the tour manager to our lighting guys, the sound engineers and the band themselves. It’s just great having creative minds around you all the time and having that feedback; you come off stage and you’re all in it together. I’m kind of used to doing that on my own with DJing. It’s great to come off stage and have that sounding board, this big team that’s constantly working and trying to make it better and better all the time.
How do you get ready before going onstage?
We do tend to get pretty nervous in the dressing room. (Vocalist) Fleur does this weird gurgling thing where she does vocal exercises and once you hear that in the dressing room you know it’s time to start panicking. Kodish sits there with his snare drum, just rattling away and I’ll usually be walking in circles! Rich will be looking at the floor nervously and Jay will be cracking open several beers. Usually before we go on stage we do this thing; it’s kind of weird how it came about. In our first rehearsals Messy MC was messing around on the mic and said to Rich the guitarist “SHOW DEM!” Rich turned round to him and said “Yeah I will!”, so after that “SHOW DEM” kind of became coined by the band. We have “SHOW DEM” moments when we link hands or deliver a motivational speech at a gig and at the end we all stick our hands in the middle and shout it! It kind of takes everyone back to that first moment when we only started working together and reinvigorates everyone. We’re definitely a bit of family; various members have been working on different projects together. Rich has been doing stuff with Fleur, I’ve been working with Paul. You can see on stage, it’s a very tight unit. I think people can feel that vibe.
Any crazy fan experiences?
Yeah I’ve had some pretty mad stuff. I’ve got a guy that comes and does bits of work out my house and he comes round every time with millions of things for me to sign! But it’s weird; a lot of people with kids seem to be fans of mine. There’s always people I bump into who have really serious jobs and turn around and say “Sorry mate, could you just sign this for Emily? It’s for my daughter.”
You’ve collaborated with everyone from Professor Green to Rizzle Kicks, is there anyone else left on your list?
Yeah loads of people - from the more obvious huge bands and names like Rihanna to world music, instrumentalists and things. Everyone you work with offers you a fresh perspective so basically I want to work with loads of people! It’s just finding the time to work with them.
If you could fill a swimming pool with anything, what would it be?
Gold dust!
By Jenny Allbrook
Twitter: @JennyAllbrook
