The day after the set, Jamal Al Badri and David Huser from zweikommasieben talked with Stott, an excellent storyteller, over breakfast.

Jamal al Badri Let’s talk about your set yesterday. You played lots of different kinds of music. Why did you decide to have such a diversity in your set?

Andy Stott The set changes quite a lot. The stuff I played last night is all really new material. I just wanted to see if the reaction was ok. Obviously it’s a conscious decision to build the set like that. But in the end it is just the music that I am writing at the moment. That’s why it’s so varied.

JB So have you been researching a lot of different music? Or are you more just jamming around?

AS Exactly. It’s just what comes. I sped things up a little bit since the last release. So that is just what I am doing at the moment.

JB Do you have any idea where this change in tempo is coming from?

AS No… No, I don’t know. I think it’s just different phases. The music from Luxury Problems as well as Passed Me By and Stay With Me felt right at that speed. And when I was messing around making those new tracks, they felt right at this speed. I always try to do slower versions but the tracks I was playing yesterday just felt right at that speed.

JB So you don’t really know what the final tempo will be when you start writing music?

AS No, my tracks usually evolve around a sound. I tend to find a sound and start messing around with it. And from messing around, a melody comes together. I record that and then I start messing with percussion. I speed that up or slow it down. The stuff I played yesterday had a lot of breaks. So recently I would put in breaks. I thought it works better than a kick drum. From the hits and the percussion I’ve got a very basic platform to work from. I start adding bass and effects like compression and stuff like that just to give it a bit of character. And then usually when I think I got something I go and take the dog for a walk. [Laughs] Then I come back and if it still sounds good I carry on with it.

JB In your set yesterday there were some parts that seemed to refer to jungle, and there was also an acid track. Do you remember when you first got in touch with those kinds of music?

I tend to find a sound and start messing around with it. And from messing around, a melody comes together. Andy Stott

AS I was listening to jungle when I was at school. That would have been 1994. I used to listen to the slower jungle that was played in the north [of the UK] starting in 1990. You would call it hardcore. When you say hardcore a lot of people think it is really fast, but in fact it’s slower jungle. So when I was at school, when I was 13, I was listening to that on the radio. It was cassettes then, so often I stayed up at night and started to record when the show was on. I thought the music was really good but I was always tired. When the tape was finished, I had to turn it over and then finally I could go to sleep. I would listen to it on the way to school in the morning. The show changed from hardcore and became faster. So even as a kid I was listening to jungle. After that I went to secondary school and I met different people — there was a guy called Kevin, Kevin Stewart, who was actually Claro Intelecto’s younger brother. So me and Kev grew to be best friends. And I used to go to his house and Mark [Claro Intelecto] would be there. He knew I was into music and he started giving me these CDs. It was Mark who got me into Drexciya, Richie Hawtin, Jeff Mills. That’s when I got into acid. I thought I had been listening to really underground music, staying up late listening to the radio. And then I started hearing stuff that even the radio wouldn’t play. I was like, “What the hell!?”

JB Did you also go out to clubs or was it more like getting music from other people and listening to it at home?

AS This is the thing: when my friends and I got old enough to go to clubs I was already into old techno and Aphex Twin and all that stuff. A lot of my friends had older brothers, so we used to go out with them to horrible clubs. They had no taste in music. They just went out to get drunk and chase girls. So that was what we were doing too. And it wasn’t till like after a good few years of doing that, that we went out to a club in Manchester that was playing all this kind of music we actually were into. We had no idea that we could go to clubs and hear Jeff Mills, Aphex Twin, Drexciya. There weren’t many girls there, but… [Laughter]

JB What kind of club was that?

AS It’s a small place in Manchester. It was called… What’s it called? We used to go there a lot! [Thinking, and after a moment letting it go] There was another one called Music Box, which is now a supermarket. They just tore it to pieces and put a Tesco there. That’s fantastic. I drove past recently. I’d had no idea. What was the other club called? [Thinking] I can’t remember — that’s really annoying… [Suddenly] The Park! There is this motorway that runs through Manchester that is called Mancunian Way. The club was just off the motorway. We used to go there, yeah. There were good DJs, good vibes. Once there was a fire. I think it was a New Year’s Eve party. It was definitely around Christmas. The club was filling up with smoke. People were yelling that there was a fire and running outside. The only person that didn’t hear anything was the DJ. He must’ve thought the smoke machine was going mental. So everyone was outside and then we were like, “Where is Darren?” Someone went to get him. He was still mixing. “Darren, the club is on fire!”

[Laughter]

JB When did you get involved in producing music yourself?

AS I’d say 2004. As a kid I had a little Roland synth, which I still have. Over the years I got to know Mark [Claro Intelecto] a lot better through hanging out with Kev, his young brother. I bought another bigger piece of equipment from Mark — another synth. So just over the years I got new bits to develop sound. I had no idea that one day I would be releasing music. I was just doing it. Eventually I bought a computer, which had some software on it. And I was making music and showing it to my friends. They said, “It sounds like what we would listen to.” At the same time Mark was in touch with a label called Ai Records. Their distribution was in Manchester and Mark went down and had a chat with the distributor about his own record. Turns out that one of the lads there had started a label himself. Mark told this guy that he had a friend who was messing around. After that he told me to get six or seven tracks onto a CD and give it to this guy ‘cause he runs a label. So one night we went to this club Music Box that I mentioned before and I got introduced to this guy. I gave him a CD and it was not long after he e-mailed me: “You wanna come down to the office for a chat?” On that CD there were maybe two tracks that didn’t need work. The guy said I just needed another two tracks and I would have a release. That was it, the Replace EP that I think ended up coming out in 2005. That’s when it all started.

JB And from that point on you had the ambition to do this full time? Or was it still just fooling around?

AS Still fooling around. I had more and more releases, and I was getting shows. I thought, “This is what it’s gonna be: I’m gonna work Monday to Friday and I’m gonna do the show maybe once a month on a weekend.” I was getting quite a few shows before Passed Me By came out. But when that was released the interest went crazy. I was saying to someone yesterday it was hard because I would be working, going home and finishing tracks, doing remixes, going back to work, coming home… At the same time I was trying to see my girlfriend as well and keep up with friends. And before it would be one gig in Manchester, one in London — not far away. But then I was getting more gigs in Europe. So I would finish work on a Friday, fly out, do a show, and then go back to work. The worst one was in Japan: I was on the plane longer then I was actually there. Then, my girlfriend and I got pregnant and we had to sit down and talk. I was like: “There is no way I can raise a child properly, work a 9 to 5 job and take the music seriously.” So luckily I made a change and left work. That was just last October. So this is my first year as a full-time producer, which is really exciting.

JB How is it being part of Modern Love? Is there a lot of exchange going on between the artists? Or is everybody just doing his own thing?

AS No, it’s like: the lads from Demdike Stare, we know each other quite well through the label — that’s where we met. Miles used to do Pendle Coven. So when I started with the label, he was doing Pendle with… have you heard of G.H.?

JB Yeah, I love his EP!

AS So Gary, who is G.H., is the other half of Pendle Coven. When I was at the label I used to go to their studio and we’d just fool around. You remember the releases on Hate? Miles and G.H. and I did that. It’s what we were talking about earlier — some early ’90s hardcore. So through doing that we all became very good friends. I also met Sean, with whom Miles started Demdike Stare, through the label. Now he lives just down the street from me. We see each other quite a lot. Everybody knows everybody at the label. There’s not that many artists though. On the other hand there are artists like Dominick [Vatican Shadow] — he’s not on the label or anything but I’ve met him so many times through touring, also Sean and Miles have met him so many times. Now he’s sort of part of the family. It’s really, really good…