zweikommasieben’s Remo Bitzi spoke with Oscar before the event about football fan culture, the Japanese artist NHK and beatmaking, among other things.

Remo Bitzi I want to talk about football. Are you into football?

Oscar Powell Yeah. I used to be obsessed with football when I was in university. Totally. But now I’m actually a bit sick of it.

RB Why that?

OP I don’t know – it’s not a reaction to the state of football or anything. I think it’s just a question of priorities. I used to be so obsessed, but football in England is pathetic in a way – it’s like a religion. It can suck you in and get you into the state of mind in which you’re afraid to miss a match. You tend to organize your day around it all. I think in the end it’s just a waste of time…

RB Which team did you support?

OP Manchester United, even though I’m from London. I don’t know, I love football but I guess when you make a decision to dedicate your life to something that doesn’t really relate to it, it becomes difficult to stay passionate about it. You only have enough space in your brain for a certain amount of things. Are you into football?

RB Actually not that much.

OP Why did you think I liked football?

RB I’d had no idea if you did – I’d just wanted to talk about it because I have this weird obsession with football, or rather with the fan culture surrounding it. I live in between the stadium and the train station here in Lucerne. The fans pass by my flat before and after the matches. Just recently they started going nuts – smashing things, provoking the SWAT team that’s standing by. Being confronted with it every second weekend, I’ve developed a bizarre fascination. On the one hand I know it’s stupid, but on the other hand the fans in the street totally transfix me – they’re fucking intimidating and impressive at the same time.

OP It’s kind of tribal.

RB Absolutely. I reckon in England it’s much stronger.

OP Yeah. It’s just so aggressive as well, fan culture. For years I pretended to be a part of it, but I wasn’t. It was always a little bit alien to me, and intimidating and scary as well. I can understand why people want to dedicate their life to it, but I just have better things to do. And when you go to a football match you realize it’s actually a pretty disgusting culture.

RB I agree. They vandalize, chant racist and sexist and homophobic stuff, and nobody gives a shit – it’s just accepted. If you were to do that after a party…

OP …you’d get shut down. I know, it’s weird. It’s like a bubble.

RB Yeah. I think the thing that fascinates me the most is that nothing ever happens in the end, but each time I see a couple of fans in the street I know the heat is on. And that’s exactly the feeling I get when listening to your music, too: the heat is on.

OP That’s interesting. You know Luke Younger –Helm?

RB Oh, yeah, I just saw him perform the other day at Oslo 10 in Basel.

OP He’s a friend of mine. He emailed me when he was listening to some of my work and I can’t remember the word he used to describe it – “cocky” or something – like being up for a fight.

RB Yeah, exactly. To me your music sounds like how getting a punch in the nose would feel.

OP I don’t think of it like that. I like the fact that that’s how people hear it, but it’s not like I sit down to make a track that’s confrontational – for some reason it just comes out. Personally, I think my music sounds funky. [Laughs] But I like to have this aggression in music. Not necessarily just aggression – it can be light as well – but it’s about that sense of confidence that comes with a musician or an artist in any discipline being sure of what he wants to say. I think that’s a very powerful effect. I’m not saying I’ve completely gotten there yet, but it’s the feeling that you know exactly what you try to do or say – it comes across really clearly rather than touching around the edges. I think it’s better, if you want to say something, to say it really loudly. When I started making music I hadn’t really found that part of myself. It was only after people started responding to my work that I developed that confidence. As a result I started pushing my music further, and it became more powerful. After a while the challenge is to not push it too much, I guess – otherwise it becomes a total headfuck. That’s what’s happening with my new stuff – I think I am pushing it too far. [Laughs]

RB Let’s talk a bit about your triple occupation as a producer, label owner and DJ. How does that all come together?

OP I’d been working full time in advertising for eight years, and I left in January. Since then it’s just been music. It’s my life now, which is a beautiful thing – even if there are, of course, downsides, like struggling for money. I never really make divisions between the three parts: everything merges into one. It’s one big mess. Running a label is basically just writing emails. Fortunately we work with Boomkat for distribution. It’s an incredibly organized and passionate company. They basically keep me on track. And I have a partner as well, Jamie. He takes a lot of the work off my shoulders.

RB Does he produce himself?

OP He doesn’t produce, but he’s a good DJ. And yeah, he’s meant to take care of more of the day-to-day business. But he’s a lazy bastard as well. [Laughs]

RB There are a variety of things happening on your label Diagonal, yet I’m sure there’s a common thread through it all – could you describe that thread?

OP I have different ways of looking at it. I think the sound of the label is changing a little bit. I mean the broad, overarching thing is the idea of “club music”, hence the name of my EP. I’m fascinated by what makes people move in clubs. I’m always asking myself how to produce that effect without directly imitating the structures that we all know and love. But in terms of the actual qualities of the sound, it’s pretty difficult to put my finger on something in particular. For some reason something just clicks when I hear music that I think would fit with the label – it’s just a particular feel. Maybe no one else can spot a pattern, but for me it does make sense. Hopefully over time it will become apparent. I think it could be nice to have a trademark sound as a label, for it to be possible for someone to think in a few years, “this sounds like a Diagonal record.” But I don’t know whether or not that will happen.

RB The fact that there will be a Diagonal release by NHK came as a surprise, for example – Nik, a friend of mine from Zurich who runs a label called Hula Honeys Records told me about it and I was like, “wait what!?” I think he’d known about it because he’d tour-ed with Kouhei. After listening to your latest radio show for NTS I looked through the track list and spotted NHK’s name, but I hadn’t thought of NHK while I’d been listening – it was so well integrated. So I think it makes sense…

OP I always loved Kouhei. His sound is incredible – so wild and so distinct. I remember when I put out my first record, I wrote long emails to all the people that I loved in music, saying, “This is why I love you, blabla,” and then, “this is my new record.” I must have written 500 words to Kouhei, and he just replied: “I no understand much English but thank you.” So that was when we first chatted. We stayed in touch and now he is doing this EP for Diagonal. The back and forth with Kouhei regarding the record was quite difficult because he didn’t understand what I was saying sometimes. I was like, “Hey man, this track needs to be shorter cause it wouldn’t fit on the EP,” and he would make it longer. [Laughter]

RB Will you be putting out more of your own stuff on Diagonal?

OP I’m doing a single with XL Recordings, which is pretty crazy – it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. They said, “send us music.” I sent two tracks that I’d wanted to put out on Diagonal and they loved it, so it wasn’t like I had to change any sounds. After that it’s all going to be on Diagonal.

RB Alright, let’s talk about your DJ practice. I watched your first set for Boiler Room and the one on URSSS and I found it really refreshing to see someone DJ like you do. There’s not a lot of beatmatching going on in your sets, which is pretty unusual, even in an experimental context. So I was wondering if you are able to beatmatch at all.

OP Yeah. When I was younger I used to DJ nonstop – jungle, drum’n’bass. But then I went through a phase during which I stopped buying records. As I started to make more music I picked up buying records again, and after putting out records I got DJ gigs. I started to think about DJing again, about what kind of DJ I want to be. And then again it’s like what I said about making a tune: you gather confidence to try new stuff and get more wild. So the DJ thing has developed stylistically a lot over the past two years. But yeah, I do beatmatch a lot. But I also do other stuff like… well, I don’t know, you’ll see tonight. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. [Laughs] But most of the time it’s surprising and crazy and wild. I don’t mind stopping records and playing them from the top. Sometimes it’s good to beatmatch, sometimes it’s good not to. It’s just about a feeling you get right then and there. But yeah, the DJ thing is really exciting for me. It’s one of the things I think about when I’m falling sleep at night – like when I was 16. It’s one of the most incredible feelings in the world to have a good show. It’s amazing.

RB I read in an interview that you love DJing too much to play live at all…

OP Well, I am trying to do live at the moment.

RB How come?

OP Because Unsound asked me to do it, and I wanted a challenge. You know, sometimes it’s good to challenge yourself in life. I was always resi… not resisting it, but yeah, I love DJing and I want to stick to that, but then that becomes a crutch as well – like, “oh, I’m a DJ, I’m not gonna try live.” I don’t really know if I’ll enjoy live until I try it. Everyone is a little bit of a narcissist at heart, and playing your own music for an hour can’t be too bad. [Laughter] But yeah, sometimes it feels as if DJing is an inferior form of music making to playing live. But actually I would rather see an amazing DJ than the majority of live shows, because in a DJ set anything can happen. I love that feeling of surprise. Unpredictability. With live shows you have a rough idea of what’s coming next, whereas a good DJ can change course straight away.

RB Yeah, it is more spontaneous.

OP And I think spontaneity is something that is important to my music. So that’s why I connect to it.

RB You play both records and CDs. Is there mainly unreleased music on the CDs?

OP Yeah, I’m always playing stuff that hasn’t come out. New stuff. Doing this was a big part of the London culture in which I grew up: jungle, drum’n’bass, even dubstep – the whole dubplate culture, which is a very UK thing. People would test tracks for a year in clubs before releasing them so that they’d have time to figure out, “oh, this is working, this is not,” and then change things. I’ve done records I wish I’d gotten the chance to play in a club before releasing – there are ways in which I could have improved the tracks. Now, with all my DJing, I’m fortunate because I have the chance to test things out. This dubplate culture was also really exciting to us as fans – to hear the newest tracks that only a certain DJ had was always really exciting. The Metalheadz people had their dubplates and other crews had their stuff. It was like a friendly form of football hooliganism – like who had which weapon. When someone had the track that none else had it was amazing. And the most incredible thing was that this existed even without the Internet: people knew of dubplates, which shows how dedicated the scene was. People would go to every night, listen to every radio show. You had to be actually in the scene, in the club, in the record stores. I don’t think you get that anymore because everything’s getting so spread out. No one ever knows what anyone is really playing… I never thought about it, how that culture of obsessive knowledge existed pre-internet. If you think about how people found out about information: record shops, pirate radio and tape packs, rave cassette packs that you could buy, like a One Nation box set with all the tunes that you could listen to for a whole year… that was it. But now everyone has so much information and nothing ever cuts through…

RB You wish it were more like in the old days?

OP Yeah, I wish I had a tune that no one else has and everybody knows I have. That must have been a great feeling. Now you play something new and everybody is like, “oh, whatever, it’s a new techno track.” [Laughs]

RB What about the community aspect – do you wish it were stronger these days?

OP Yeah, definitely. We did a Boiler Room in London on Monday together with L.I.E.S. That was interesting because it was the first time that I felt there were loads of people in the same room that would do similar things. There was Will [Bankhead] who does Trilogy Tapes, Ron [Morelli] from L.I.E.S., there was us. And it felt like an actual community. We also recently did a night in London together with Hospital Productions. Dominick [Fernow, aka Prurient aka Vatican Shadow – see zweikommasieben #9] did room one and we did room two. And we are releasing all the sets as a tape pack, as I was saying before. It’s coming out on Boomkat’s Reel Torque label. Conor, who also does The Death Of Rave and works for Boomkat, does that. He’s been there for ten years and he’s an incredible guy. Boomkat’s impeccable taste is largely thanks to him. Anyway, there is definitely something happening in underground club music or dance music or club culture – whatever you want to call it – but it still feels fragmented. I wish people would support each other more, do more collaboratively and not try to outdo each other.

RB I know what you mean… Anyway, it’s about time to wrap this up. The last thing I wanted to talk about is Sleaford Mods. They were playing here in Lucerne the other day. The concert was part of a rather unexciting festival. Nobody knows why, but the festival booked them. Anyway, we went there to see them play and they were fucking great! It was just around the time we had to do the booking for the night tonight and while listening to their concert it suddenly seemed crystal clear: “We need to book Powell!” Something about Sleaford Mods had reminded us of you. There seems to be a link between your music and theirs. Would you agree?

OP Yeah, I agree. I don’t know much about them, to be honest, but I have the album. I remember the first time I heard it I was in San Francisco in a record shop – I was on tour. The bass lines were so sick. It reminded me of Public Image or something, this groovy bass line… it’s beautiful. And the pure Britishness of the vocals – so amazingly English. So I really responded to the actual music. I want to do a remix of them – I would love it so much. But I don’t think they’re the kind of guys that are into remixes. I don’t know if we are similar culturally. They are tough fucking guys.

RB Well I wondered if they really are the kind of guys they promote themselves as or if it’s a project and they just play their roles very well…

OP I think they are.

RB Yeah, me too. But still, it would be funny if it were just an act.