By Parker Stephens

On a stormy night in March, ConnectATL and Cleaning up the Dirty South joined forces to bring one of dance music’s most unique and talented icons to our city for a very special night of music. I had the chance to sit down with James Holden a few minutes before he went to work.

PS: On behalf of Atlanta, I’d like to say welcome and thank you for coming. It’s always a pleasure to have you on this side of the Atlantic – let alone our city.

JH: Thanks, it’s a pleasure for me as well. It’s definitely different than Europe – but different in a good way.

PS: Sorry you had come to in on such a dismal night, our weather is one of the best things we have going for us – of course you have to come in on one of the most miserable nights…

JH: (Laughs) I must have brought it with me.

PS: I want to start off by talking a bit about your most recent releases. At the Controls, your mix CD, and The Idiots are Winning, your EP have both been recently completed, how does it feel to have these two behind you now?

JH: It feels good, now that I’ve done the EP I really want to get in the studio and make a proper album. Sometime this year I hope to get busy on that.

PS: I have always been a huge fan of your mixed compilations – your Balance 005 mix remains my most played mixed CD ever. What is your inspiration for these CDs as opposed to what you play in a live setting?

JH: Yeah, these are the tunes I’m listening to around the house…I mean, I hardly ever listen to two hours of techno at my house, well occasionally - probably a Richie Hawtin CD if I am. I’d rather listen to a random play of all types of music… For me the mix CDs are just fun (laughs). It’s like you’re out with your best friends and your just playing your favorite tunes. Afterparties are one of the best parts of going out, probably the best part, and a mix CD is just that a reflection of that – something relaxed.

PS: Concerning your own tracks, you have always seemed to me to be a sort of digitial punk in the production of your own music. Do you still rely on free or cheap software in the creation of your tracks?

JH: I do, but nowadays I have some expensive toys too (laughs). I feel that if I’m making money from my music I should put some back into music technology. I still love Buzz – it’s just a bit different than everything else… You hear a lot of this minimal stuff – you hear a lot of records and you can hear it –they’ve got Ableton, they got that plug-in and I can hear the pre-set of that other plug-in and what’s there other than that? Nothing. So I’m buying cheap drum machines now off ebay that I use in my studio– I never pay more than 30 pounds for them. I bring them home so I can rewire them to see what kind of glitchy noises I can get out of them – or I’ll try to add some knobs to see what happens. Basically everything in my studio is kind of unreliable (laughs). I’ll just press record, have a whiskey and see what happens. But now I want to make an album and I want to have a live show, but the problem is if Buzz crashes it just makes white noise that’s much louder than the music you were playing. If that happens on a 10 kilowatt system it’s going to make blood come out your ears. So I’ve got to find a way, if not to be completely in control, just make sure that never happens.

PS: You mentioned the possibility of a live performance- I’ve heard you were considering forming a band, is this something in the works for you?

JH: It’s going to happen, but later on – I just have all these ideas in my head. What a lot of people don’t know is that before I made dance music I was making ambient music and playing piano. And now all that stuff is just piled up in the back now – it’s almost like I’ve got so many songs and ideas for other types of music that I can’t be bothered to make another techno record. I mean until I get this stuff out of my head I won’t be able to produce more techno. I’m definitely not ruling out making another dance track, I like dance music (laughs), but I’ve got to get some other stuff out first.

PS: I want to speak a bit about your label, Border Community. Some others on the label have had recent releases, most notably Nathan Fake’s ‘Drowning in a Sea of Love’ and Petter’s ‘Some Polyphony’ have both been making waves. I have noticed that although each Border Community release stands on its own as a unique piece of music – there do seem to be some unifying strands there. What would you say binds together the eclecticism of the artists on your label?

JH: Well, we were pretty much all friends even before the label. We work together a lot and we all have our different strands. Petter’s got that Swedish type thing and Nathan is just crazy at the moment (laughs), he’s doing things that are absolutely off the hook. But there’s definitely similar things going on with us – none of us are 100% techno fans. We tend to look up to bands more than we look up to DJs and I think that’s a common thing that we share. We’re all trying to make something that doesn’t fit in anywhere else. Now that we’ve been going awhile – we’ve definitely gone through all these different learning experiences. There are people now speaking of Border Community as a sort of genre of music – which we never intended to happen. To be honest, it annoys me a bit and I think we’ll have to do something different…

PS: I can tell Border Community as a whole carries a certain animosity towards the act of labeling your music as a particular genre – even as a Border Community genre. Does that provide the stimulus to produce new and different things or do you just try to produce whatever it is your feeling at the moment?

JH: Well both really, you can’t just go against it… you’ve got to have some idea of how to go against it first. It’s really more about trying to relax. I’m starting to meet more people who make other music, not dance music, just albums. I had lunch with Carin Hepton (sp?) the other day and his attitude towards music…I dunno, is where I was before I got signed to a crappy dance label and it’s where I’m heading now that I’m freeing my mind from all these scenie-bits-of-shit. He’s just so relaxed, his new album is so difficult and he knows it will only sell a tenth of what his others did, but he doesn’t care because he knows what he wants to do and there’s no way anyone can judge it – it’s beyond judgement because it’s his own personal thing. If I could just get to that stage, I dunno, that would just be really cool (laughs). Also, up to this point, anything that has been labeled as sounding like me, I’ve almost always hated it….thinking back even in the old days with the twinkly progressive stuff, there would be some elements that I would have used, but then there would be ten things that I would just hate about the record – just annoying clichés. Now it’s kind of the same thing, but with this neo-trance stuff from Germany…they will use a synth and the same sort of sound, but with certain elements that will always ruin it for me… I want to make something you can dance to, but that doesn’t have all these clichés.

PS: Thanks very much for taking the time to speak with me, James. We’re all looking forward to tonight.

JH: Thanks, I hope everyone likes it (laughs).