FaltyDL interview: "Learning how to moonwalk."

It’s a beautiful October afternoon in Park Slope, Brooklyn. It doesn’t feel like Fall (when in Rome): the sun is baking, slamming down on my disorientated shoulders as I wander up the wrong road trying to find Gorilla Coffee where I’ve arranged to meet Drew Lustman, better known as FALTYDL, having bumped into him a few days earlier at the Mount Kimbie gig at The Bunker. Is that 5th? No, it’s 6th. Okay. I double back on myself and hurry along. I’m listening to ‘Bravery’, his EP released on Planet Mu last year. My headphones are making my ears overheat, intensifying the lucid beats of Play Child et al. The rapid follow up to his excellent debut album ‘Love Is A Liability’, it’s one of the many reasons Mr Lustman has steadily gained a reputation as one of the most exciting and unpredictable groove-makers around. His lush and languid productions have spanned garage, 2-step, house, techno and dub. Sometimes a confident, cyclic combination of all of the above. Just this year he’s released two 12“s on Planet Mu – Phreqaflex and Endeavour (listen above) – as well as an EP ‘All In The Place’ on Rush Hour Recordings. He’s also remixed The xx (featured here), Mount Kimbie (interviewed here), Computer Jay (download his Dummy Mix) and Planet Mu labelmate Oriol (interviewed here). In a word or three, he’s pretty goddamn stellar. We take a seat outside Gorilla Coffee. Drew is on home turf, he lives just a couple of blocks away, and is relaxed, upbeat and happy to while away an hour in the sun chatting about his upcoming new album on Planet Mu (due early next year), the music that’s buzzing him up right now, footwork videos and teaching kids how to moonwalk.

I first heard your music through Planet Mu.

Oh you know Marcus? Marcus is the man.

Yeah, he’s great.

He’s very honest. He’s a brilliant A&R guy too. He was at Rephlex, Warp, Hyperdub now too. He’s incredible.

It’s really nice when you get those people who know what you’re going to like. He was going on about Oriol’s album…

Oh he’s so good. So good, right?

Amazing!

And so summery, it was perfect timing to come out then too. I hope it’s doing well. It should be doing really well.

Yeah, more people need to pick up on it.

It’s so well produced. I drooled over that album when I first got it, I was like, wow, this is so well produced.

It’s gorgeous. So yeah, I heard your stuff through Mu and I was just actually listening to ‘Bravery’ on the way over here. It’s really long for an EP – 8 tracks!

It’s like a mini-album.

Generous.

It’s funny, I wrote those tracks right after finishing my album, ‘Love Is A Liability’. Two months after that I wrote all those tracks. Mike (Paradinas) was like, let’s get them out there and see what happens. I’m glad we did it that way.

So when did you start making music?

I’ve been playing music my whole life, in bands and stuff. When I was 5 or 6 I started playing instruments.

Rocking out?

Yeah and some classical too. I played upright bass in an orchestra and also in a jazz group. I never really learned how to play it that well. I think I was 22, 23 when I decided to try and start making electronic music. That’s when FaltyDL came about.

What prompted the move into electronic music?

I’d always been listening to it but also I’d just got so fed up with unquantized music, like playing instruments it’s always difficult to try and recreate the same sound, and if you’re tired you can’t play it as well.

What did you call it…un…?

Unquantized, like untried music…it’s like if you’re DJing or playing, performing live you have all your sound files, they already exist. You don’t have to recreate them right there on the spot, you can rely on them already existing, on being there. Whereas playing gig after gig in a band I found very tiring. I got fed up of not being in control really. I wanted to do my own thing. I wanted to saturate my ego…[laughs].

What had you been listening to?

I guess I started listening to rock and roll when I was younger, through my dad. Frank Zappa, I listened to a lot of Cream, Led Zeppelin. Stuff like that. A lot of British records. Like big rock bands from the 60s and 70s. Then I moved into jazz, through the Miles Davis experimental stuff, like his ‘Live At The Philharmonic’, ‘Live-Evil’, ‘Bitches Brew’ and stuff like that. That was a great entry into jazz for me because it was interesting in its craziness and it’s electronic aspects. It was sort of rocky too, there are a lot of rock drums in those live groups of his.

The kind of electronic music that you make feels a lot of me like getting into a world, in the same sort of way that Miles Davis created this world through jazz, getting people into a different psychic state…

I would love to achieve that. Sometimes I think at my best I can sort of achieve a world that you can get drawn into in a song. Now I find myself teeter-tottering, one foot in the rave, one foot in the listening experience. I’m trying to find a good balance between that because I want to keep getting gigs and keep DJing and I want to play my stuff out. I’m actually just finishing up my new album now and it’s very much less aimed at the dancefloor. It’s more me just making music again. Not that there’s anything wrong with making dance tracks, I think that’s incredible…what was that? [Brushes away frankly humungous winged insect thing.]

It was just a little, like…

Little guy?

A fairy.

Just a friend.

Yep. It’s gone.

So yeah, it will be interesting to see how it’s received because it’s definitely different from what people have heard from me so far.

There’s something about your sound that I wouldn’t necessarily…um, it feels quite London. I don’t know if it’s because there’s a lot of music coming out of London at the moment that it sits comfortably with – electronic music that is quite textured, emotionally rich…. Everyone is hating on ‘post-dubstep’ but it’s really hard to pin a name on it, probably because we’re right in the middle of it.

Right, exactly. I mean, I immerse myself in that, it’s all I really listen to. Only because it’s not all I want to listen to, it’s just all I can see at the moment, who I’m talking to at the gigs I’m playing, know what I mean? If that comes out it’s just because I’m listening to a lot of English electronic music, totally.

So…Cream, Miles Davis…what was the first thing that got you into electronic music?

Early Aphex Twin definitely, like the ‘Richard D. James’ album. Also early Mike Paradinas stuff – ‘Lunatic Harness’…‘Tango N’Vectif’ – that’s even earlier. That stuff just seemed so alien to me because I’d listen to hip hop and think, okay, I sort of understand how this music is made. Because I always looked at music…and it’s unfortunate that I looked at it that way…but from the point of how it was made because I was trying to become a musician.

It’s only natural…

Yeah, yeah, it was natural but it is nice to just lose yourself in it and not worry about that.

Yeah. Do you want a pretzel?

No, I’m fine. I’m actually going to have a cigarette if that’s okay?

Yeah, go ahead.

What was I saying…yeah, hip hop made sense to me the way it was made. One drum beat is sampled and it’s sort of looped and it’s slower. But listening to Aphex Twin and stuff like that, and then jungle, it was like, how are they making that? It was sooo wild to me, these cut up break beats. So initially I wanted to make jungle and crazy break beat stuff. Even DJ Shadow’s stuff, his faster beats, that totally boggled my mind and made me want to make music like that. It still makes me want to make music.

I guess it’s like that whatever your craft is. Like with writers, when you read other people’s work, things jump out at you and you’re always looking at why and how they’re doing it…thought patterns I guess.

Absolutely. Why are you writing? Why do you do what you do?

Oh…um, I just have to get it out. Yeah, I think…

Do you also write fiction, non-fiction?

Little bits. It’s mostly just noticings. I generally write random noticings. I like finding patterns in stuff. Like when you’re reading one thing and it starts making you notice things about the world, seeing how things are joined together.

I notice patterns in music too. I sometimes try and write music in patterns as well. Not just in A-B, A-C, music form patterns but sometimes I look at the keyboard and I try and write symmetrical melodies…

Oh wow…

…which often sound discordant and don’t make any sense really but I’m just drawn to it because it’s so tactile and so immediate and…what’s the word? So gratifying to sit there and make some sort of pattern on my keyboard with my fingers. I’ve done that a few times and gotten away with it but not often.

Do you always start on the keyboard then?

Sometimes. My keyboard is a sampler. My left hand is always on the keyboard and my right hand is on the mouse. But uh, yeah I start on the sampler and mess about with the pitch.

That’s really exciting…like only you would know that pattern was there but it doesn’t matter that it’s only you that knows…

Yeah, yeh, yeh.

I guess the world can seem very big and confusing and unexplainable so finding little bits of patterns is just like, ahhhhh. Like making little bits of sense of things.

I’ve just been listening today to Gold Panda.

Brilliant.

Heard the new album?

Yeah, it’s beautiful.

I just ordered it. You can’t buy it in the states yet. You can’t even download it, you can’t buy the MP3s anywhere. But I’ve been watching the videos he’s made and it’s just so gorgeous. That’s where I’m at right now. That one track Snow And Taxis and the first one, You.

Oh yeah…

It’s so honest. It’s funny, that Snow And Taxis track, it’s like a funky tune, a funky beat, I am totally going to drop that in my sets now. I can’t wait to play that in a club when I get it.

There’s a lot of warmth there.

It seems really honest. He’s a nice guy too, I met him.

He’s so down on himself!

Yeah, yeah, yeah but I think that’s part of his charm. Have you read his Twitter? It’s hilarious.

He’s brilliant.

I think he knows what he’s doing. I played with him in Amsterdam. It was me, Kode9, Kelpe and Gold Panda, which was just a phenomenal line up. It was sort of an under attended, smaller festival but it was a really fun time. Kode9 played and did his thing, I played and did my thing, Kelpe has a live drummer and I was talking to Gold Panda before he went on and he was a little bit, I don’t want to say nervous but he was trying to figure out where he fitted in on the line-up, next to me and Kode9 doing more traditional DJ sets. He just went out there and did his live thing, he was hopping about on stage and everyone was into it. I got lost, I was out there in the crowd too; it was incredible.

Yeah, he’s brilliant. I saw him with Caribou a little while ago. Caribou was great…

Live band?

He was doing live but it wasn’t a full live thing…I couldn’t really see properly. But Gold Panda was amazing.

That’s like a dream line-up. I would love to see them both together.

Hounds Of Hate played too.

Who?

Hounds Of Hate, it’s a couple of Canadians based in London who make really slooooowed down jams…

Is it like that witch house? [smiles]

No…

I just keep trying to figure out what that is, I keep hearing about it.

I guess that’s like oOoOO, White Ring…

Salem…

Yeah. Balam Acab…

It seems like they’re very influenced by some footwork stuff and Burial and some vocal manipulated stuff. It’s cool.

I guess part of music writing is finding patterns between bands. All these people in different cities who maybe haven’t even heard each other…

Artists don’t often want to hear they’re being compared to someone else, whether it’s good or bad. We’re the most hard to deal with people. I don’t envy your position having to deal with a lot of Madonnas.

Ha. They’ve all been nice. Who are you putting the album out with? Planet Mu?

Yep, the next one’s on Planet Mu as well. I just had two 12”s with them too.

Endeavour?

That was the second house one. I was really happy with that one. It’s my favourite release to date I think. If I’m allowed to have a favourite one.

So you were saying…

[A homeless-looking guy asks Drew for a cigarette and tries to pay him for it.]

[To the guy] No, no it’s fine.

I’ve never been offered money for a cigarette before. Sorry….say that again?

You said the new album is quite a departure from the dancefloor.

I think so, but I don’t know. The DJs I enjoy seeing are the ones that don’t care so much about what they’re playing but they’re very good at keeping people dancing and active. I guess that’s my own fear of not having myself play in clubs. But I think there are more tracks on it that are not hyped up, big tracks.

A lot of music that people would classify as club music I listen to in the middle of the day, walking around on my headphones.

Yeah, totally. I listen to a lot of aggressive stuff walking around sometimes. Some people find that balance so well. I was listening to Martyn’s album again recently. That just works so well at home and so well in the club too.

What inspired this album? I hate the word ‘inspired’.

I hear you. Like part of the initial inspiration was just to do another album. Because it was like, I’ve done my first album and I think they say you have an entire lifetime to make your first album and then a year to make the second one. So I felt a little bit of pressure just from myself to try and do this for a living, to get an album out there. So that was the initial internal pressure. Also I think I had something to say on this album because when the first one came out I went out and tried to play it out and it didn’t work so well. So I became a better DJ by playing lots of other people’s stuff. I think my sets have got better and better and I’m confident as a DJ now. I wanted to make some tracks I could play out, so I made Phreqaflex. I could play those out. So now I sort of feel free to do what I want again. Not that I didn’t feel free at the time…

Well, it’s like working through certain things…

Yeah, absolutely. I have no idea what my third album is going to sound like. Who knows. I’ll start that tomorrow.

What I liked at the end of Endeavour was that tiny little vocal. It wasn’t anywhere else on the track, I really liked that. I liked the way in which vocals are being brought in at the moment, with James Blake, Mount Kimbie both singing on there tracks.

Yeah, that James Blake new EP is great too.

With I Only Know (What I Know Now) – that one?

Yeah, that’s incredible.

Would you ever sing?

Yeah, definitely. In fact I have actually. I’ve used small little bits of my vocals in tracks.

Oh I didn’t know that.

Well, I dress them up so much and mix them in with so many other sampled vocals that you couldn’t even tell. If I want just one syllable I just record it into my iPhone and send it to my email so it’ll be this awfully compressed version of it but that’s sort of perfect because it sounds like a sample. Kind of dusty. Just those little aspects, I’d like to sing more, maybe. I’m actually trying to find vocalists now for a couple of tracks.

Do you know what sound you want – do you approach it in the same way as you approach a sample?

Well, I mean…I was talking to Mike Paradinas and he was saying he could find some vocalists that I liked the tone of their voice and have them to do some improvising, then I could treat them like samples I’ve found and use them in my songs how I want to use them. If I worked with a vocalist I really loved I would let them do whatever they wanted to do. I don’t know…I often like finding a small sample and using out of context by accident in some way, you know what I mean. That’s part of what I leave up to chance in production, it’s like – is it going to work this way? Just try it and see if it does or doesn’t.

I like that – leaving thing to chance.

Every time I think I know what I’m doing, it just sounds awful. So I try and just play when I’m making music.

Yeah, see how it goes… The electronic scene in London is still underground but it’s getting bigger and bigger, there is so much going on. It’s really, really exciting. And there’s always so much going on in New York. For a while anything than anyone was writing about was from Brooklyn.

Actually I’ve only been in Brooklyn for about three months. I was in Manhattan before that.

Oh right…I mean it in a good way, that there’s so much going on. Do you feel part of a scene over here?

Yeah, I guess there’s a scene for everything here. I guess the one that I associate with, friends that I talk to on a daily basis are the people that are involved in Dub War – Dave Q, Alex Incyde, Joe Nice – those are guys that I hang out with regularly. Joe not so much because he doesn’t live here but Dave, Alex and I get together often. Mike Slott, who makes all sorts of music these days but is known more for his hip hop. But it’s funny, I feel like if I lived in London I’d be going out a lot more to music, to shows and stuff. But here it’s just maybe once or twice a month I’ll go out to hear music. So it’s hard to feel like I’m in the middle of a scene. But I think that’s probably good, for me at least, it’s a little bit more relaxed. Also, how fast things get around on the internet, it doesn’t really matter if you’re there or not. I mean, it does matter to some degree because you got to experience it, y’know, and really know where it’s coming from but at the end of the day, it’s like I’m going to hear something as soon as someone else does.

It does feel like the internet has stepped its game up in the last year or so.

Yeah… That being said though, I think it’s important to say that, for instance, let’s take something that is still relatively young like dubstep, which is 8, 10 years old or whatever in its roots and it’s like, if you weren’t living in south London at the turn of the millennium, then you didn’t really understand…

Or even if you were…

…you might have totally missed it. Absolutely. That started as a small core thing, y’know. You can only really understand something so much, and I can talk to some of those producers on a daily basis and I still don’t understand exactly where it came from, which is fine. It adds more mystique and it’s even more interesting to me that way, y’know.

How do you…I mean, there’s house, dubstep, garage…where do you like to classify your music? Do you have any bugbears?

No, I think most of the stuff is just garage, y’know. Early on I got dumped into dubstep and that’s fine. I don’t think my music was obnoxious, and I don’t think it hurt the name for dubstep.

No!

But I mean for instance, I just saw the Endeavour 12” on a website the other week in the dubstep section and that’s just – there’s nothing in there that’s…all those beats in there are 110bpm, there’s just nothing at all in common there. But…so…where I classify it doesn’t really matter because it’s just going to be wherever people want to put it.

Yeah, that’s true.

Bass music, that’s a new one – or not a really new one but people are saying that a lot. I don’t think that really narrows anything down. I mean, basically anything that has bass in it whatsoever…? I don’t really know what that means [laughs]. I do feel sort of sorry for anyone that gets sort of wrapped up in where their music is classified because I think it means you’re not really living your life, to some degree. You’ve got to find peace with that and understand that’s what comes with the incredible job that we have as artists – you get to sit there and makes tunes to travel round the world and play. So a few people say that it’s something else… [shrugs], like, we could be sitting behind a desk somewhere doing a 9-5 and making barely enough money to pay our bills. I think just to be grateful for what we have.

Where’ve you been this year?

I’ve been to Europe about four times this year and I’m just about to go again.

Yes – you’re playing at the Dollop night at Heaven, aren’t you?

Is that a big club, Heaven?

Yes, it’s massive. It’s been going for ages. I saw Holy Fuck there earlier this year with SBTRKT, which was brilliant. Sounds good in there.

Yeah, I’m excited to play there. Actually, this will be my fifth gig in London. I’ve played a lot of different places but none of them twice so I wonder if I’m not getting asked back for a reason. [Laughs.] They’ve all been really good. I played Plastic People about a year ago and that was incredible. That was like my second gig ever in Europe, the first was a couple of days earlier at Fabric which was nuts. So those two gigs were sort of an eye-opening experience. Talk about opposites! I mean, if you can imagine, I’d never really been to a big club before…

So when’s the new album coming out?

I’m hesitant to say because there’s still a few things that need to get sorted out first…

Ballpark?

Sure…first quarter of 2011. February, March – somewhere round there and maybe an EP just before. I’m also doing stuff for [Loefah’s label] Swamp81 now too so there’ll be a 12” with them as well.

Do you approach the music differently if you know it’s going somewhere else or do you make the tune first?

That’s what happens, I make it first and don’t really know where it’s going to end up. Often I don’t think it’s going to end up anywhere. The stuff that Loefah is keen on of mine is this afrobeat stuff I’ve been doing. Somewhere between the Endeavour house stuff I do and some weird funky stuff. A lot of African rhythms. It’s pretty rad.

Awesome. So when do we hear that?

I’m not really sure. Hopefully before the end of the year.

And what’s the album going to be called…do you have a name for it yet?

I have a tentative name. I think it’s going to be called ‘You Stand Uncertain’. Which should be the name of the title track. But that could all be changed so we’ll see.

I really like that.

Thank you.

It’s funny. I think as you get older, things get more and more uncertain…

Uh-huh. I think that’s part of it. I mean, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m getting more honest with myself and I think the music is very honest because I don’t really know…I don’t think I have all the answers anymore. I think when I was younger I thought I knew everything but now I’m just along for the ride and just hoping I do alright.

Exactly. As soon as I started to think, yeah I don’t really know what I’m doing or what’s happening, as soon as you let yourself feel that you feel a bit calmer.

And it’s not necessarily a lack of confidence.

Oh no, no.

It’s more of a confident thing to admit that you’re a little bit clueless.

What do you want your music to make people feel?

I don’t want to dictate that too much because I know when I hear music and I talk to someone about it and they hear something completely different I don’t want it to tarnish what I feel. Although I’m open to ideas about how other people are feeling…I love the personal experience with music. That’s what turned me on to music in the first place was like, whoah…I’m feeling something but I’m not seeing an image, I’m only hearing something and the rest is up to my imagination. Like…check out this guy…[a huge dog walks past]

It’s a bear-dog.

He’s amazing…. Yeah, I just want people to feel whatever they want to feel really, y’know. Even if it’s bad, I’m okay with that as long as it’s an authentic emotion.

Yeah, as long as it’s not ‘I don’t really like music’. That does not compute. That’s like saying ‘I don’t really like emotions’. It’s the thing I have in my ears every single day.

I think even people like you or I need a break every once in a while, to get that fresh ear experience again, to get back to that place where it’s like listening to it for the first time then you get be touched by it again. Because I just tire myself out. I’m checking Boomkat, I’m checking downloads, I’m checking podcasts and I’m making my own music and it’s like enough is enough. So I just take a break and then I can come back and get excited about it again.

What do you do to take a break? Do you have a day job or do you do music full-time?

It’s incredible but I’m fully sustained on music at the moment.

I am high-fiving that.

[Laughs] I think part of that in all honesty though was moving out of Manhattan to Brooklyn, moving in with my roommate, my best friend who actually does a lot of my artwork. He did the ‘Bravery’ cover and stuff.

Oh great – I love your font.

Yeah, he did that.

Cool – it’s lovely when you see everything together…

Yeah, he’s really great, very careful about making sure it all makes sense together.

Patterns again.

Yep, patterns again. I’ve also been making financial decisions that make more sense – not going out as much. Between the amount of music I release, the publishing, the heavy gigging, it’s just been incredible. I don’t expect it to always be this good. I don’t want to expect that or relay on it. Before this I was substitute teaching as well as doing this.

Cool teacher!

[Laughs] Sort of cool. It was fun. I did that for a while. I taught pre-school for about three years, taught 5 and 6 year olds. Then the last couple of years I substituted in a middle school in New York.

What’s teaching like?

Well, at a substitute level, it’s either the cool or the awful teacher that comes in that you don’t know and they spend 45 minutes with you and you can either give them hell or hang out with them. I wanted to be the cool teacher but also, I taught this in really rich school and I knew the parents has these really high expectations on their kids so I couldn’t just totally let them go wild. They had to get their homework done or else they were just going to go home and just be crazy at home. So I had to find that level of being strict but also letting them not stress out too much – these 12 year old kids stressing out about work. Oh god. It was funny, I would make deals with the kids. I’d be like, ‘alright, we’ll study for 30 minutes and then for the last 15 minutes of class I’ll teach you how to moonwalk’. It’s like the one move I know how to do. So we’d take our shoes off and I’d teach them how to moonwalk.

Bribery and corruption is the only way.

And it’s a good thing, learning how to moonwalk!

Yeah! What are your dreams with FaltyDL? Are you already planning ahead on album three?

Well, I don’t really know what’s possible with the lifetime of doing this because the people that I look up to are still relatively young. The older generation aren’t that old – like Mike Paradinas, Aphex Twin, Luke Vibert, guys like that in their late 30s, early 40s. By most standards that’s not old, not even mid-life. So they’ve done really well in carving a niche for themselves. Hopefully I can carve a niche for myself to be able to sustain it. And also feel like I’m still making fresh sounding music, which is something that Luke Vibert does. Y’know, 15, 20 years in the business and he’s still freaking out incredible music. That’s what I would love to do. Just keep making albums.

Do you have the desire to…make a jazz album one day maybe?

[Laughs] Er…I’d like to sample more jazz albums. Oh maybe, I might even get bored with the computer again in a year and start playing instruments more. I’d love that – or maybe find some middle ground, like what Bibio’s done. He did some stuff on Mush Records and then got signed to Warp about a year ago. He’s playing acoustic guitar and he makes his own microphones out of you know, wires and cables and transducers and stuff or whatever you need to make a microphone for a super lo-fi recording. But then he sequences it in MPCs and it’s just this incredible music. So to me that seems very inspiring. There are all these digital ways of making something sound warm and I can spend three days on a track making it sound amazing but it’s like I didn’t really leave my underwear or my chair doing it. There’s nothing really exciting about that so I’d love to get out and do more field recording and play instruments, play different types of places instead of just smelly, dirty clubs.

I love the idea of going and collecting sounds. It makes me think of kids with big bags, collecting sounds and taking them home and making something with them.

Yeah, there’s also something really cool and intriguing about just making, like you said before, dance music, club music like at home. I think that’s cool too. To be able to do both would be cool.

Yeah. So who’s getting you excited music-wise at the moment apart from Gold Panda?

Um, Doc Daneeka, he’s a UK funky producer who’s done some stuff for PTN, which is a sub-label of Ramp Recordings. He’s also started his own label called Ten Thousand Yen. Loving his production right now.

Do you love stuff more when you don’t know how it’s been done?

Yeah, that’s always interesting, I do like that. Doc Daneeka makes sequencer based music so I don’t know what the sound sources are but I can sort of conceive how it’s created so that’s not so much of a big mystery but, like, it’s still interesting that the music that they’re making and the sounds they are using is awesome and fresh and interesting and new. So I respect that a lot. The Mount Kimbie album too, I thought that was beautiful, I definitely thought that was great. There is so much music that is inspiring me now, it’s hard to think when you’re on the spot. I just don’t want to leave anything out. I have to say I’m very inspired by all the footwork tracks that are being put out on Planet Mu. The Nate stuff, the DJ Roc, the Rashad and all that. And the ‘Bangs & Works’ compilation which is a whole other ten artists, and not to jump on that train that a lot of people are jumping on, but what inspires me about it is that it’s this self-contained community…

Yes!

…of 18-22 year old kids, maybe younger, maybe older, that are just totally inspired by what they’re doing and making some dirty awesome music…

And the footwork…and the dancing!

The dancing is absolutely crazy! I could waste a whole day just watching YouTube videos of that. I saw this one video of a teacher in class doing footwork dancing, a 40-year old woman doing crazy footwork dancing for her kids and they were going crazy for it.

That’s just…it’s almost more exciting than the music to me, the fact that it’s actual a collective, community…

I get the feeling that most of those producers are very interested in getting a wider audience so this is a great opportunity for them but also that, like, it comes from music that’s been around for a long time – juke and booty house – but it just seems really fresh and really hard. It’s fresh to my ears, definitely.

Yeah, totally.

Ramadanman, everything he’s done in the last 18 months has totally blown my mind.

All the Glasgow lot too…

Yeah, totally, totally. There was an incredible party here that I missed by a couple of days. I was out in Seattle but it was Hudson Mohawke, Rustie, Mike Slott…all those people. Machine Drum – he’s been around forever. I used to drive to New York in 2004, 2005, right as I was starting to make music and I didn’t know what I was doing. I would drive to New York, to Brooklyn, to go to his rooftop parties. He had this one rooftop party – it was like 300 people on a rooftop, a totally illegal party, just somewhere round here, right off Flatbush Avenue, Park Slope and it was just crazy. Jimmy Edgar was playing, Machine Drum was playing, a couple of other DJs, there was some woman walking around on stilts. It was such a scene for me, I was like, what is going on here? I was totally sober at that party too, just going ‘this is amazing’.

Cool…I’m going to let you go and enjoy this day now, it’s so beautiful.

Yeah, the sun helps. Thanks!

Catch FaltyDL with The Invisible, Walls and Untold (ticket details here) at Dollop’s new night at Heaven on Wednesday 27 October.