This week’s interview & mix comes from Better Looking Half
Introduce yourself and tell us about the part of the UK you’re from?
Adam: Hello! I’m Adam, he’s Tom.
Tom: Hello!
Adam: By proxy we’re both Essex boys, from Chelmsford. We started a local club night called This Is Sick in 2007 together, playing our crusty, rum & coke stained French house, electro and fidget house vinyl records in a jazz club to a 100 or so people and the rest is history.
Can you tell us a bit about what you’ve been working on recently?
Adam: I’m deputy editor of DJ Magazine in London so I’ve been very busy writing, reading putting magazines to print and I did a quick DJ tour of Brazil during Carnival.
Tom: We’re residents for DJ Mag Sessions, so regularly play at Egg London and various parties in London. We also run a Better Looking Podcast series via our Soundcloud. I’m a partner in the digital creative agency Neverbland so this takes up a lot of my day-to-day…
Tell us about some of your British DJ heroes?
Tom: One of the first club nights I went to in London was Trash. Experiencing Erol Alkan mix together an eclectic set of punk, noise, electro and balls out techno was a big influence in my early days of DJing — now, in a similar vein, I love how good Jackmaster can make a wildly diverse set sound. Will Saul and a lot of the British artists on Aus are very much up there in current influences too and we feature Fold and Sei A in the mix right here.
Adam: Without doubt Optimo (Twitch and Wilkes). I did four years at Glasgow University, so Sundays at Sub Club used to blow my mind. Also a big fan of Bicep, DJ Harvey and Andrew Weatherall.
And can you talk us through the mix?
Tom: Like most of our mixes we mix freestyle in the DJ Mag office studio on a pair of CDJ2000Nexus, bounce off some ideas and hit the record button and go for it once we have an idea of what works and what doesn’t. We wanted to represent some of the best of UK dance music around at the minute while staying true to our eclectic approach to house, disco and techno, with one of two foreign faves in there too.
Nice, talk us through the British music featured in this mix? Which British artists are you most excited about?
Adam: The opening track on the mix is taken from Bibio’s new album on Warp. He’s a hugely underrated artist who merges electronic funk, soul and folk with house stylings. Midland, Dusky, Atjazz and Alexis Raphael are making some of the best house/techno about at the moment, while Lee Walker, Truce and Fold are new names to definitely watch out for.
Great and what’s on the cards in the immediate future?
Adam: Upcoming gigs include Groovefest Malta, Solidgrooves and DJ Mag Sessions at Egg London with Dennis Ferrer and Tania Vulcano on 30th April.
And finally, where is the best place in the world you have performed and why?
Adam: I’d have to say Havana in Cuba. It was a really special experience playing to such a fun, culturally thirsty crowd.