This weeks interview & mix comes from UK producers Outboxx.
Selector Afterdark – Outboxx by Selector After Dark on Mixcloud
Hello Jake, can you just introduce yourself?
I’m Jake and I’m from Outboxx. Outboxx consists of myself and a guy called Matthew Lambert and we often collaborate with a singer called Naomi Jeremy. We’re based in Bristol, our hearts in house music and we’re pretty proud to come from Bristol because it’s got an amazing scene.
As Outboxx we started a few years ago now, towards the end of 2011 when Matt and I got together for a jam through a friend of ours. The first time I met him he came to my room and started playing around with a keyboard and suddenly realised he had all these great melodies so pretty much the first time we sat down in a room we wrote a tune together. We sent that to a friend who owned Immerse Records at the time just for some feedback and he signed us on the spot so we kind of got thrown into it; pretty much the first day we ever jammed together turned into the first release. We didn’t even really have a name so we were sitting in there just trying to come up with a name and it all just kind of rolled from there.
We mainly tried to release on labels from Bristol because we feel like it was important to come from the place we consider to be home and there’s some amazing people and so much energy around you, that it makes sense for us to keep doing that. So the majority of our labels up until the last one have been based in Bristol. For the last one we decided to release a single with Local Talk as there’s not that many labels out there that every release they make is so strong, so we’re pretty proud to be involved with them as well.
Cool, what have you been up to recently?
We’ve just released our most recent EP on Local Talk called The Planet Love and that’s got 3 cuts that we wrote over the last 6 months or so. We tried to incorporate an exciting sound but also always trying approaching the sound with a kind of nudge to the deep. So Track 3, Denim Dreams is probably our favourite on there after extensive listening because it just gave us a chance to play with some melodies and have some fun with percussion.
Excellent, talk us through the mix that you did for us..
We were getting ready to plan the mix and we were sat down in the room and we started playing some records. Sometimes when you get on the decks it’s just like you have all these amazing tunes and you just get a vibe; the moment just felt right so we just hit record and just did it there and then. There may be a few sketchy mixes in there but hopefully that represents the human side of vinyl culture.
Nice and talk us through some of the British talent in the mix?
House music is coming from a great place in Britain at the moment. Even if you just focused on the microcosm of house music in Bristol you’ve got so much exciting stuff. Behling + Simpson were in the mix and so was JL, both of those guys are from Bristol. If I started reeling off names we’d be here all day – there’s just so much exciting stuff, you just need to go out to clubs in England and you can hear it all. For a while it has been a 90’s US garage sound but more and more it’s coming into the new UK stuff, which leads on from that US, sound. It’s so exciting that there’s new stuff coming out that captures the same feeling that the old house music used to.
Exciting stuff, who were the British DJ’s that really inspired you in the first place?
When I was growing up what really inspired me was the US DJ’s like Kerri Chandler who really kicked things off. But before I really worked out what house music was I was more into the dancey stuff like Boards of Canada who were probably the biggest influence. At the same time I got into Aphex Twin as I started to get into the more modern stuff.
Now what’s on the cards for the immediate future?
We’ve been writing a fair amount recently. Until about 2 months ago we were spending a lot of time writing and then we just got inundated with gigs, which is an amazing thing, as I absolutely love gigging. Going out and playing records is probably one of the most amazing things you can do. Now we’ve got a couple of weeks off so we’re going to go into the studio and make up some new sounds. We’ve got a few gigs lined up; our next one is a Local Talk one in London, which is set to be an amazing party. We’re looking to release a new EP and we’ve been in touch with BRSTL and Futureboogie as well as we’d love to be associated with those labels.
And finally this being a global show where is the best place in the world you have played?
It always amazing to get to travel and its always great when you’re there and you realise that all these people are as into what you’re into as you are. Music really is an international language and brings everyone together. So last summer we played a bunch of festivals and one of the highlights has to be Garden Festival in Croatia. We went over there, everyone was so happy. We played live and the sun was setting over the beach. There weren’t that many people there to start with and by the time we finished it was really buzzing and there was a great vibe. I really like Croatia because it’s such a mix of people having a great time.