TRISTAN interviewed by Jungle Jim

I first heared Tristan DJ at the Matsuri launch party at Tyssen St. many years ago and was extremely impressed. Since then he has remained in that very exclusive group of Djs (along with Avi Algrenati, Dino Psaras and Max Lanfranconi) who I have never heared play a naff tune.

Tristan is now 29, and was born and bred in London. About ten years ago he moved to Leamington Spa.

"I was at Warwick University and found there was a good scene, a good crowd of people up there. Psi Wylde, Sonya and Paul from Man Made Man, Andy Guthrie from Prana, 1ooth Monkey Project and Toby from Banca Da Gaia. In a medium sized town, within a couple of square miles there were five or six studios, putting out some good stuff.

"I ended up staying there for about ten years. I was the youngest of the social group and a lot of them are now having kids or moved on. The scene fragmented and I thought right time to make a run for it, so I've come back to London, landing in Queen's Park. Flying Rhino are about to move and if you look out of my studio window, you can see their (new) office."

Tristan has had music released on several different labels, I asked him why he chose Twisted Records for his new (superb) album.

"Twisted are a small outfit whose emphasis is on quality rather than quantity, they've only had a handful of releases in the last year or two. I personally get on with both Simon Holton and Simon Posford, they're good friends, that makes a big difference.

"Rather than be with a bigger label and be a smaller fish, I can be with a label that's got good quality artists on it and they can dedicate a lot of their time and energy in pushing the album and making the best of it."

Tristan has worked with a lot of the top trance talent, who does he like making music with most?

"I very much enjoy writing music with Sonya and Paul from Man Made Man, we're very very close friends and kind of on the same wavelength and we have a real laugh when we're doing it. We each have our own role, Paul is a sound production man, Sonya's a genius on the computer and I kind of twiddle on the synths.

"Also working with Sean Process, very intelligent guy. I learned a lot from working with him."

Before Trance? ?

"I was into Jungle. I started partying 88-89 when it was just dance music really. What I liked was drum and bass music, not like drum and bass today, but fat beats, percussion and bass line - double-time kind of dub. That evolved into Hard Core and Rave. In 92-93, it all became a bit fast and crap.

"Then I went to India for the second time, that was the turning point. The first time I went there I didn't really discover Trance.

Music other than dance music? ?

"As a teenager I was into Hendrix, The Doors. I used to play drums in a band, kind of Progressive Jazz, that had quite a big influence. I still like Jazz quite a lot."

"These days I listen to all sorts, not just Trance. When you make Trance and you've sat in a studio listening to it 12-13 hours a day, quite often the last thing you want to listen to when you're chilling out is more banging Trance."

This year has seen Tristan playing some very impressive parties - Solipse, The Voov - how come his dates in England have been so rare?

"I've not been asked. I'd love to play in England. First of all my friends are here and that's the scene that I'm coming from, plus I wouldn't have to travel to get to work. Also the scene in London is great. I wouldn't say it's where it was born, but a good solid bass of it's origins come from here."

Apart from the big parties that everyone's heard of, where has he enjoyed playing?

"I played in Thesaloniki for an outfit called Frequencies last weekend and I had no expectations. The guy who was doing the decor called up the morning of the party and said he was ill, so there was no decoration, no lights. Just one room, a thousand people and a stage and yet somehow the party was absolutely amazing, the vibe was superb.

"That was my last party of the summer. I've been working every weekend for the last six months and I don't want to burn out. it was a great way to wind up the summer."

Like most Trance musicians Tristan has a studio where he lives, is this essential?

"Psychedelic Trance makes great demands on your time, it's very labour intensive. If you work in other people's studios and you've got to pay for studio time, it's going to cost a lot of money. Owning your own studio does as well, but you're not working to a schedule. So the answer is yes.

"I have my studio next to my bedroom, and I love rolling into work in my boxer shorts, with a mug of coffee. I don't wake up in the middle of the night and have to go and do it, but I work as and when I like. I'm fairly disciplined, I try and get in there every day, but I love what I do and so I've got the motivation to do it."

I asked who he plays a lot when he's DJing.

"Who's the hot sound of the moment? Well I'd say Atmos jumps to mind. The Germans are really doing it at the moment - well they always are - really deep solid grooves, their parties just go on for ever."

Tristan was in The States for a month this summer, including Burning Man.

"It was great, it was quite chaotic. We drove from San Francisco, it's a good 10-11 hour drive and by the time that we got their we were all pretty tired. It was a month into the tour and I just wanted to meet up with all these people and explore some altered states.

"As it turned out, it's so big and there's so much going on and everybody participates that we all burst like a dustcloud into the dessert and my feet didn't really touch the ground and I was in a bit of a spin the whole time, but I did enjoy it - a very creative space."

So where to for the millennium?

"I was debating whether it was going to be Bali or South Africa and I think they'll both be great events. My heart is with Africa simply because I've been there, the parties there are great, I know Grant and Clyde, they're great organisers. We're going to stay out there for five weeks. I'm playing at a party out there at the end of January as well. I need a holiday."

SEMSIS interviewed by Jungle Jim

Brighton rules OK! Sea air, great food, cool shops, desirable residences...oh, and probably the greatest concentration of trance talent on the planet! Names like Dino, Joti, Atomic, Chaos Unlimited, Cydonia, Psychaos, Tortured Brain, Vinnie, Dervish, Purple, and of course SEMSIS.

SEMSIS is Nick Smith and Ian Rive, they have been together since late '93. I visited them at Nick's Brighton studio. So what is it about Brighton?

Serious about having a laugh

NICK: "It's weird isn't it. Basically, we're the boys!. We're up for having a right good laugh, writing good tunes that everyone enjoys, we're very serious about it as well....
"We're all mates, we've known each other for years. It's like a melting pot isn't it, when you've got so many creative people together, you just bounce off each other, if you're mates as well, that's like an added bonus isn't it?
"More people are moving down too. Ben from Juno, Jimmy from KLF...."

Exclusive relationship?

SEMSIS is not an exclusive relationship, Ian is also part of Cydonia with Dino Psaras And Steve Ronan, while Nick also records and performs as Menis. To try to get inside their relationship I interrogated them separately.
IAN: "This is like Mr and Mrs isn't it? When they swap places and put the headphones on"
I asked Ian to compare working with Nick to working with Cydonia. No one who knows Ian will be surprised that he was Mr Diplomacy.
IAN: "We have good days and bad days with everyone I think, sometimes someone's into it and sometimes someone isn't. When everyone's into it everything roles along much easier."
Nick was more effusive.
NICK: "When I first started making music I didn't have a clue and Ian took me on board and guided me for a good number of years, which I respect him for deeply.
"I like whacking ideas down... he likes moulding them into place and tidying them up, sometimes a bit too much, then I call him 'the steriliser'."

Death metal on samplers

Most productive collaborations involve people with different musical roots, SEMSIS is no exception. Nick grew up with his father's hippy stuff (CSN, Jimi, Janis, Jefferson Airplane....) and Jazz, progressing via Philip Glass at 13-16, and a brief spell as a mod with the Jam and The Who. Then dance music, Joey Beltram, KLF.
NICK: "Then I got into house with Dino. First club I ever went to was probably the Zap in Brighton, Chris Coca used to do a night down there on a Saturday nights, sort of hard house.
"Andy (Psaras) went to Goa, came back, then Dino went, came back with that 'Do you believe in the power of American natives...' do you remember that one? Then we started going to the parties, about five or six years ago."
Ian on the other hand grew up with Frank Zappa and punk, followed by a degree at music college in the late 80's
IAN: "I went off on a serious American techno-jazz thing for a while. I liked On U Sounds System quite a lot, cause they were kind of techno but on a dubby funk front Then I ended up with Spiral Tribe doing gabba (shock horror!). We used to do live sets with Spirals, that's how the live thing came about....at squat parties in Ladbroke Grove.
"The squatters, they were doing death metal and we got a few samplers and stuff and it all turned into death metal on samplers really. The lads were squatting this huge loony bin, under the West Way." The gabba "slowed down to trance."

Letting go

The SEMSIS album "Letting Go" is a fine piece of craftsmanship with solid dance floor stompers that can still be enjoyed at low volume. The boys had slightly different satisfaction ratings with their work, guess who was more self-critical:
IAN: "It's a bit one dimensional, a bit heavy and angry. We initially set out to do something that was a lot more experimental and we lost our bottle 2 or 3 tracks in.
"I'm happy with it. As a piece of work it's really good I just wish it had been more variable.... it could have been a double album really, with them (the released tracks) as the trance tunes and interspersed with lots of other things."
NICK: "I'm really happy with how it came out. We didn't set out to write eight or nine killing dance floor madness... we tried to approach it from a bit of a different angle, and it's come out good and varied.
"You can sit in at home and listen to most of it without it driving you really mad, and you can also go to a party and listen to them and they do hold their ground."

Eclipse

In Cornwall this August I was privileged to see and hear both SEMSIS and Cydonia in the space of three days, with the solar eclipse as an interlude. Both surpassed expectations, although Cydonia, in the Blue Room tent at the Lizard festival, had the significant advantage of a state of the art PA and professional staging. In contrast, Nick and Ian had to make do with a less than adequate PA and were standing in mud throughout at the Ahimsa party on the Thursday.
IAN: "I had a couple of friends that I was staying with down in Cornwall I hadn't seen for ten years and they came to the party to see us play.... it was a lovely afternoon, there were about 70 people sat out in the sun, loads of friends I hadn't seen for ages. There were only about 30 people in the tent , but they were really giving it. The whole experience was really pleasant, but as a full on trance party it wasn't really happening was it?"

Best SEMSIS live gig?

IAN: "Best gig we ever did was Science Fiction with Sid Shanti. we were using the MMT8s so it was all live, the whole studio was on the stage. Nick was playing the MMT8s and I was on the synths and stuff and we just ran the best fucking perfect. 25 minutes it took us and it just went back to back, Nick didn't make a single mistake, we were right on it and Sid Shanti was going 'was that it?' and we were going 'fucking hell it was rocking wasn't it Sid?' "

Other music

NICK: "I'm not a purist, I'm into all types of dance music. I won't lock myself into one genre. I listen to from Kevin Sanderson up to Boards of Canada, on Warp, who are a really nice breakbeat outfit. There's nothing wrong with broadening your horizons and getting as much in as you can.
"Record labels, obviously Atomic, but outside Brighton, I think Qube are on it, hello Mike and Shirin, I like their style, I like their attitude."

IAN: "I don't really listen to very much music at all generally, it's really bad on my part. I have the radio going down the studio and all I listen to is current affairs programmes all the time." So where does Ian's inspiration come from?
"When I'm playing, I just sit there and listen to Dino. D's got so much new music, good music, if there's any good new music he's playing it. Or Van Der Vlugt, Vanders is a darling, I love him dearly."

The Future

There are no firm plans for the next SEMSIS album, but there will definitely be one, both Nick and Ian are keen to do more work together.
Cydonia now have a studio in Brighton too.
Nick plans a new Menis album in May. Mark Van Der Vlugt will be joining that project.

Martin Freeland aka Man With No Name by Jungle Jim

Long time fans of Man With No Name may have been surprised at how long it took for the second album to come out. When it finally did, in June 1998, many will certainly have been disconcerted by the presence of vocal tracks. I asked Martin (Man With No Name) Freeland to explain this behaviour.

"I don't have any problems with making tracks with vocals on, I don't think vocals in themselves are an offence, but I do have a problem with making albums with tracks that are incompatible. I would have been happy to make the vocal tracks as a different act. Personally I don't feel they're compatible with the sort of music that I'm into making as 'Man with no name".

"The vocal tracks on this particular album are mainly due to record company pressure. The problem stems from getting involved with a major label. Major labels are basically interested in unit sales, regardless of the kind of music that they're selling, whereas independent labels are set up because somebody likes music.

"What happens (with a major) when you sign the dotted line, you find that the goal posts move as you go through the deal. You start off with a situation where you're going to do an album in your style, because that's what you got signed for, then at some point during the proceedings, the men in suits on the sixth floor decide that instrumental music doesn't sell, etc, what we need is radio, bla bla ..Then they start to put pressure on the A&R guy to put pressure on you to do something other than what you'd normally do.

"Although I had artistic control over the music, I don't have control over the spend. The implication is, if you don't bend to the way that we feel you should be presented they won't work your album - they won't invest money in it - and therefore it will sink without trace.

"I actually finished an album in January 1997, which was an instrumental album, and had I been on an independent, would have been the album. Eighteen months later the album has actually come out with tracks that feature vocals.

"You're not in a situation where you're able to go elsewhere because you sign an exclusive agreement as an artist with that label. The complication is that although Paul Oakenfold signed me to Perfecto Records, ultimately that label was part of the East West branch of Warner Brothers, therefore, all but the A&R was East West - a corporate machine interested in selling large quantities of records.

"Another problem with that set up is that they tend to go for the domestic market before the rest of the world. Previously I've always sold as many records in other countries, particularly Scandinavia, Israel, Germany, France as I have in the UK. With the way majors are set up, if they don't break you big in the domestic market, they don't bother at all with the international market. I probably won't sell as many records abroad with a major as I would have done with an independent.

"Having delivered what they asked me to do, they still didn't work the record, so I've ended up in exactly the same position, only unfortunately eighteen months later than I needed to. If I'd have been doing things the way I was three or four years ago, I would probably be starting the third album after that - on my forth album by now.

"It's an experience I've had that I've learned from. I sometimes think I should have known better because I've been doing this for a long time. At the time it seemed like the ideal thing to do.

"Paul (Oakenfold) is a great guy, [hear hear!] he's totally into music. He has the independent records attitude, he wants to sell music that he's into. East West couldn't give a shit if I turned country and western as long as it sold lots of units. I firmly believe that if you're really into music you should only ever do what you really want to do, if you try to make music that is just what other people want it won't come out right.

"I have to look forward now rather than back. If I keep looking back at what didn't work I could get really upset about it, because I know for a fact that I could have done as well on a small label - with the exception of profile.

"I have to say that over the last two years in the mainstream market the Man With No Name ident has grown, but that's largely to do with Paul Oakenfold more than a record label because the press side of things at East West was abysmal.

"There was nobody in the press department who had the slightest idea what trance music was, or the slightest interest in what it was. (Actually there was one girl who was quite OK, but she left about six weeks later.) You're talking to people who are into Simply Red and you're trying to explain about underground trance and they're not really getting the point.

"Although I've had higher chart positions with the singles, it didn't transfer into massive album sales. Vavoom charted at forty three in the top sixty which wouldn't have happened with an independent. Basically the records were sold in shops that return to the chart rather than shops that don't return to the chart, you don't see Blue Room or Dragonfly records in the top sixty, although they probably sell as many.

"I know that I sold more of the first album on Concept In Dance in the UK than I did on Perfecto in the UK. That is pretty dreadful, bearing in mind that my profile is much higher, it's the second album and you've got a corporate machine behind it rather than an independent label.

"Fortunately for me, internationally there are people out there who are looking for my music. I think in the fullness of time, it will pick up to where it should have been. The album selling was what I can only describe as absolutely dreadful and a disgrace, to me and Paul and the people in the club promotions department who have worked the singles really hard.

"Taking it outside of the trance scene, I would say that if you asked a dozen people at a dozen people at a house night-club, say Cream for example, to name one trance artist , they would all say Man With No Name, so it's good that it's crossed the boundary. The strange thing is that I don't think the vocal tracks had anything to do with that."

In my opinion, tracks like Teleport and Floor Essence were in fact responsible for the crossing of boundaries. Martin agreed:

"The thing with Floor Essence is that it's not actually a Trance track, it's a House track and the funny thing is that the House press always write things like 'the best Goa Trance track ever, Floor Essence', and it ain't a Goa Trance track, it's a House track."

Is Martin still totally committed to Trance?

"In my experience, every time I introduce someone with any kind of musicality about them to the trance scene they go 'Wow, I can't believe that the vibe could be as good as this, I've never experienced something as good as this.'

"But getting people to go to a party for the first time is like pulling teeth, because they think they know what they're going to get and 'I don't like dance music, I don't like techno, bla bla bla ..' and then they go 'why didn't you make me come before, this isn't techno, this is really good.'

"I've been partying for seven years, and I've never had anybody come out of a party yet who's gone ' oh no, that's not for me,' they always go 'when's the next one?'"

I suggested that the name 'Trance' could be a problem.

"We never did come up with a good name. 'Goa Trance' is the kiss of death, if it's got the word Goa in it, then it's 'put it in the bargain bin', it conjures up this idea of cheap squiggly noises.

"'Psychedelic Trance' kind of implies that you need to take LSD. Lets face it, the vast majority of the people in the world are never ever going to experiment with LSD and that probably puts them off even checking it out. I know for a fact that you don't need to take any kind of substance to enjoy the music.

"'Trance' itself implies that you just go off into a trance, but you don't, you just get lost in the music.

"All the other names have been nicked. You can't call it techno because that implies a certain style of music. We need to come up with something else. It's not so much trance as hypnotic music."

Martin is now a free agent:

"At this moment, I've had the letter which says that regretfully, they are not going to exercise their option, I am now free to offer my recording services to whoever I want, so that's precisely what I'm going to do.

"Another thing that 's annoying me is that there are compilation companies asking to put my tracks out on their compilations, and East West won't allow them to do it, for their own personal reasons, I don't know what they are, but I can't see any justification for saying we don't want to make money. They're not doing me any good, and they're not doing themselves any good."

So independent labels take note, Man With No Name is now a man with no contract - presumably not for long!