RS: Right now are you all focused on production, remixing, or the website?
Ricky Simmonds: We've never really been big on remixing. When
friends have asked us to do mixes for them is when we got in to that,
but we've never been actively seeking remixes.
Stephen Jones: We are too busy with making our own music. I won't
say our work on Audio Jelly is done at the moment, but we've got to a
stage where there's a small sort of respite in what Rick and I need to
do. We can step back for a few months and concentrate on releasing
and getting the new Lustral album out and about.
RS: In the studio are you Mac or PC?
Ricky Simmonds: A Mac with Logic.
RS: Do you all do any live shows or tour-outs?
Ricky Simmonds: Very occasionally. We haven't done one for a couple
of years now because we've been obviously busy with Audio Jelly and
the Lustral album. When we do tour we do about thirty minutes or a
forty-five minute live set and about a three-hour DJ set thrown into
one. So anyone that comes along to one of our shows, you've got to
listen to about four hours of us, which can put a lot of people off.
RS: When you say live sets, is that you guys playing keyboards and vocals?
Ricky Simmonds: Yes, we play live keyboards and then we run Ableton
on a Mac for the drums and the live vocals.
Stephen Jones: But we have all the lighting mimed.
RS: What advice do you have to up-and-coming producers?
Stephen Jones: Stay away from dance music.
Ricky Simmonds: Don't do it if you want to make any money. Well,
actually, there is something in that, don't go in to it trying to make
money.
Stephen Jones: Ten years ago you could like make one or two records
and make not necessarily a fortune, but you could make a living out of
moderately successful records. Unless you have a massive hit
nowadays, you can't make money just out of making music. So the
advice I'd give is yes, if you want to make money go in to it and do
it, but do other things like DJing, maybe running your own label.
RS: The theme in dance music lately has been focusing on lots of
revenue streams.
Stephen Jones: Yes, lot's of revenue streams. Concentrate on
quality, go from the heart, anything that's always manufactured sounds
like it. If you try and do something to a certain style because you
think that's the way to go, by the time you actually get it out there,
that particular style would have changed and evolved and moved on and
you'd probably end up having kind of a light copy of what you were
trying to go for. So go from the heart.
RS: With soundtrack work, what have you done lately?
Ricky Simmonds: Not too much lately because of Audio Jelly, writing
and recording the Lustral album, that's taken up the last couple of
years. We had a track on the Swordfish soundtrack and some tracking
in the Sopranos. We'd love to do more of it but it's just finding the
time, that'll be for later on down the line when we're about sixty
years old and not very current anymore.
Stephen Jones: Next year then.
RS: At least here in the US, the iPod dominates the world and
there's a link for iPod and iTunes. How does Audio Jelly fit in to
the iPod world?
Ricky Simmonds: Well you can play anything you buy from Audio Jelly
on your iPod, that's for sure. There's one distinct difference,
anything you buy from iTunes is DRM-wrapped whereas we're kind of
unprotected MP3s. Although the iTunes customer base is obviously a
lot larger than Audio Jelly, they are different because it's more of a
general clubber/punter type of audience, whereas the DJs do tend to
go more for Audio Jelly and other sites like ours because you've got
the higher bit rate of 320 which DJs obviously need more than a 128
without the protection wrapped around it as well to make life
difficult for you. But as I know it, you can play our files anywhere,
can't you?
Stephen Jones: You can indeed. mp3 files, it's the only format still
in the world that is compatible with every single media player.
RS: What do you want to say to all your fans out there?
Stephen Jones: Thank you for supporting us all down the years, and
I'd just like to sing a little song I've prepare.
Ricky Simmonds: I'll just say that I've got five cats to feed and…
Stephen Jones: And an album to flog.
Ricky Simmonds: Yes, and an album to flog, so the two go
hand-in-hand. So please, please, they're really cute cats, I want to
have them for a few years. I've had them for three or four years so
they've got a long way left to go, and if the album doesn't sell,
they're toast. In fact they won't be toast, they'll be a roast. So
please buy the album.
Stephen Jones: In addition to that, can I plug one more URL? Go to
Myspace.com/lustralmusic, and sign up.
