DJ Ron Slomowicz: Hey Jack, you enjoying the US?
JustJack: I am indeed. How are you?
DJ Ron: I'm dong great. Is this your first time over here?
JustJack: It's my second time, but it's my first time in New York.
DJ Ron: Where did you go before?
JustJack: I went to DC.
DJ Ron: Were you there for a show or just to hang out?
JustJack: Actually I went when I was five, so I was there with my parents just visiting some friends, that was a long, long time ago. I don't have many enduring memories so it's pretty much all fresh to me at the moment.
DJ Ron: I don't know that much about your background and that, were you a DJ first or were you a singer?
JustJack: I was DJing first, small sort of parties and promoting my own kind of parties. It wasn't a big deal it, I just has a big interest in the music and bought a lot of vinyl.
DJ Ron: Weren't you also a breakdancer?
JustJack: I did do it, but I wouldn't class myself as a breakdancer. I thought I was pretty good and then I realized after a while I probably wasn't that good. Basically breakdancing was what got me interested in electro, hip-hop and music in general. It wasn't that much of a big deal for me, it was something that a lot of people were doing at that stage.
DJ Ron: And what actually inspired you to start making the music?
JustJack: I'd just finished a degree in furniture design and I think I realized that I didn't want to do that as a career and I wasn't enjoying it; I needed something else to do. I met someone who was doing a media technology course and I went and I learned how to use a sampler, keyboard and a computer and then bought some equipment and it just literally went from there. It wasn't a kind of conscious decision, I didn't have a sort of flash "I've got to go and make music" vision. It just kind of evolved really out of loving music and becoming that I love to know what to do with my life.
DJ Ron: What's the first record you even bought?
JustJack: The first record I ever bought was Run DMC - Tougher Than Leather.
DJ Ron: Great choice. OK, I've got a really stupid question for you, what the heck is 'alt-hop'?
JustJack: My name.
DJ Ron: A L T - H O P?
JustJack: Oh, Alt- hop, sorry. I thought we'd got a cross line there, my surname is Alsop but I thought you were asking me what my surname was. Alt-hop, I don't know, that's a new one on me mate, I haven't actually heard that yet. I would think alt-hop is influenced by hip-hop, though not strictly hip-hop but I would say that's a new one on me.
DJ Ron: That's what they used to describe your sound in the bio and everything. The UK scene seems so specialized with the musical tastes, especially in the club scene where everything is so specialist. How were you able to create an album with such a variety of influences on it?
JustJack: I just ignored the specialists. I mean I can't stand purists, I don't really like them, I never really did. I used to go to record shops where people would know every kind of deep house record or every hard house record or every kind of a particular hip-hop from a particular area or whatever. I was never a kind of purist so I just kind of ignored all that and just listened to exactly what I wanted to listen to and kind of had opinions on lots of things. Having said that, I'm extremely fussy about what I buy, I mean I'd go to record shops and listen to fifty records and buy two of them. I like all different kinds of music, and so obviously when I can to make the album, I wanted it to have a kind of diverse feel to it, and just because I thought it would be more interesting if I could sort of bring in lots of different influences.