Sauce

Esteemed dancefloor movement engineer and member of the DJ collective Bang Gang, the fabulously named Jamie Doom is setting his sights on Hobart, aiming to give patrons of Syrup a double-dose of sound with fellow Banger Gus The Hoodrat. He spoke on the pros and cons of when DJing becomes a duet …

You’re playing Syrup in Hobart with Hoodrat, I understand.
That’s what I hear! That’s what my manager tells me! [Laughs]

Well, let’s hope he’s right! How will you guys be performing? Will you be playing one after the other? Or will you be mixing together?
Well, it kind of depends on what the club gives us. Like, me and Gus kind of like playing at the same time. If there’s a double setup, you can play with two people. If there’s only one setup, then … you’ve got to make do with what you’ve got, really. Gus and I, because we play a lot together, we kind of know how each other mix and stuff, so we can play quite “together”. Someone will play a few songs, and maybe someone will loop or the other person will mix, or someone do effects … half-playing back-to-back, half playing together at the same time. There’s only so much two people can do, though, on one setup.

Like you were saying, you guys have been mixing for quite a while. Has it gotten to the point where, if you guys are mixing simultaneously, you don’t even have to talk to each other at all? You just know where each other are going?
Kind of, because we like the same music … It’s obviously a lot easier to play together when you know each other’s songs, because you know when [there’s] a breakdown or a good bit to loop up or when the vocals start or whatever, you know? So if you know someone else’s songs, and me and Gus do because we play together so much, and we like the same music … and I guess we have a relatively similar style of mixing … it’s pretty easy to do, I guess. I guess the more we do it … Having said that, sometimes it fucks up. That’s what happens when you play together. [Laughs] But … if we have two full setups, we can properly play – like, he’ll play something, I’ll play something. And if you do that, obviously you can mix a lot quicker, because you can be teeing-up … one song while Gus is still doing the previous mix. So you just go back-forth-back-forth and it’s really quick … With things like looping and stuff now – you can just loop a song up, and the other person can mix into that loop – it kind of gives you a lot more freedom, because you can decide where you want to make the loop, and then Gus can be mixing in the next song … Sometimes we’ll kind of go, “oh, do this, do this” … [We] can kind of look at each other and read the other person’s eyes a lot … like, “One, two, three, four, on the floor” kind of thing. But we try not to plan things out too much, I guess, so we kind of just have to adlib.

So there have never been any instances where you’re mixing alongside each other and one’s looked to the other and gone, “What are you doing, man? That song’s shit! Turn it off!”
… I guess sometimes, but, you know, that’s what happens when you play together! [Laughs] I guess the mixing we kind of do can be quite high-risk, because when you’re mixing quickly and using lots of vocals and mixing with two people … and mixing with loops … there’s a lot of potential to fuck up, really. Compare that to one guy playing for himself, mixing intro into outro every seven minutes – if you’re fucking that up, you shouldn’t be playing, really – you know what I mean? So we’re like, “Well, we’d rather do something a bit more fun, and if it pulls off, it sounds really good.” But the flipside of that is, every now and then, [there’s] maybe a fuck-up.

And if it fucks up, you can always blame the other guy!
Yeah – but you know, there’s always effects and little things to make a fuck-up sound semi-deliberate, anyway. [Laughs]

Your visit to Syrup – what kinds of sounds will you be dropping on the night?
I haven’t been to Syrup, so I don’t know what kind of club it is … What we’re playing at the moment … we kind of play little bits of everything. I know that sounds almost kind of clichéd nowadays, ‘cause everyone apparently plays a mash-up or whatever. But we do, really. I think that’s the one thing we really like doing. We like all that French noisy stuff … all that really popular new French sound that’s coming out … and we really like the UK fidget house sound … They’re actually really quite contrasting sounds. And obviously we also like all the Aussie stuff, which is primarily our kind of crew; like Modular and kids who are doing stuff on our own record label and stuff. And then there’s the German and the … whatever. I guess they’re the four main sounds, and, although we really, really like them, I’d never play a straight-up set of French noise, or a straight-up set of fidget house … All that music’s great in small doses, and it has a lot more punch when you’re kind of moving between it, rather than playing, straight-up, two hours of fidget house or something … I guess our style is to really jump between everything, and kind of balance out … If it’s a really hard song, we’ll balance that one out a bit with something a bit more poppy and fun … That’s just the kind of music we like listening to in clubs, so that’s kind of the music we like playing, you know? I get bored … Like, I love dance music, but I just don’t think the way dance music is made anymore, or maybe it’s my attention span or something … To go and listen to three hours of a straight-up sound – to me, it’s just boring. So I guess that then just affects how we play. It’s really bits of everything. I know it sounds cheesy …

If you want to mix it up, you could always – in the middle of a house set – just drop some Autechre or something … some extreme German electro noise terror!
Yeah, we haven’t quite got to Autechre territory yet! [Laughs] Maybe Mode Selector …

Squarepusher?
Oh yeah, maybe!

Aphex Twin? There’re so many possibilities! Now, the moniker … I’ve got to ask – “Jamie Doom”. How did you settle on “Doom” when you were picking one? Were you a fan of the video game?
I don’t know – it doesn’t really have any great meaning. When we started the party, which is kind of where everything came out of, I didn’t actually DJ – we just kind all hung out and promoted the party, I guess. I was the last one to start, and because of that, I didn’t really have a DJ name. So I just kind of put it to the rest of the guys … And then Benny, who’s DJ Damage, he was like, “Ah, you need something kind of timeless and kind of sinister,” because I can be quite moody! [Laughs] So that was it – nothing deep and meaningful in it! That’s about it!

Why was the group formed? What are the advantages of having several DJs under one banner, so to speak?
I guess … I don’t know if there are any advantages … It was half formed out of accident, really. Primarily, it was us putting on a party, and the whole Bang Gang DJs – as a group outside of the party – didn’t exist. That was the name of our party – we all promoted it, we all played records. And then, I guess … as that kind of got more popular, people started asking us to play outside of the party, and so it just carried on from that really, more than anything. And it is fun, also, to play with other people, you know? It’s a lot more fun … I don’t know if I could do the whole traveling DJ thing if I was by myself. It just would become way too much hard work, you know? And we wouldn’t want that! [Laughs] Yeah, it was kind of just [that] we all liked hanging out, and we were already doing it, and that’s just how most of the gigs came to us anyway, you know? It was kind of always offered as a group, and the more you play as a group, the more you get … more bookings of the group … It expands musical resources, you know? You’ve got five people finding old songs or new songs or whatever … It can kind of give you a whole different edge. Like, I’ll think I’m up to date with music, and then I’ll play with Adrian, [and] I’ll be like, “Oh, what the fuck is that? What’s that? What’s that? What’s that? What’s that?” You find all this music that you probably wouldn’t find if you were just digging around by yourself. I don’t know if there’s any advantages! I don’t know! We probably just like hanging out to much!

Jamie Doom and Gus The Hoodrat play Syrup in Hobart on the 29th of September.

Listen to the full interview Below