The hottest producers on the club scene, the Freemasons (the team of Russell Small & James Wiltshire) have spent the past two years topping the UK and US club chart with their productions ("Love on My Mind," "Watchin," "Rain Down Love") and remixes (Beyonce "Déjà vu," Angie Stone "I Wasn't Kidding," Faith Evans "Mesmerized," Blaze featuring Barbara Tucker "Most Precious Love"). With the release of Shakedown, a genre-defining 2-CD set of over 28 productions and remixes, the Freemasons compile their best work for mass consumption and insane partying.
DJ Ron Slomowicz: How did the two of you meet up?
James Wiltshire (of Freemasons): We met up when Russell was working as part of Phats &
Smalls. They sold a lot of singles throughout Europe and were one of
the biggest selling dance acts in the early 90s. They came up to
London to do some work in the studio there and I knew Jason from years
ago and we got working together. I moved down to Brighton from London
after a brief stint in Sydney, wanted to be by the seaside basically,
and then Russell and I just started working together over a period of
time. I think we spent about a year and a half working together just
putting tracks and ideas together before we actually came up "Love on
My Mind."
RS: So, where did the name Freemasons come from?
James Wiltshire: It comes from a bar at the top of the road where we work
called the Freemasons Arms. Brighton's actually got quite a tradition
for freemasonry and there's a pub that's been there hundreds of years
as a licensed premises and we used to go up there at lunchtimes. So
when we needed a name we were looking down at the menus.
RS: Did "Love on My Mind" started as a white label with a
sample? Or did it start off with the original vocal?
James Wiltshire: There's two vocals effectively. It's really two parts of
two different songs put together. It's from the classic Jackie Moore
record "This Time Baby" and secondly, it's from Tina Turner's "When
The Heartache is Over." So originally it was on white label, it
wasn't an original vocal, it was actually a sample and then as we went
into production we changed it.
RS: How did you find the vocalist for it?
James Wiltshire: The vocalist, Amanda Wilson, was friends of other
producers that our record company knew, producers called Mauve, and
she came highly recommended. We hadn't actually met her before but
she came down to Brighton to sing on actually the day one of my old
flat mate tried to burn the house down which was quite upsetting, but
she went in and she just blasted the track straight through. It was a
really good session and we've been working with her ever since.
RS: Awesome. And the next single "Watchin" started with a
Deborah Cox sample, right?
James Wiltshire: Yes, that was particularly funny. We found a Deborah Cox
sample and we were using it and then obviously we re-vocalled it.
Amanda did a fantastic job at re-vocalling it because Deborah Cox is
an amazing singer, so to find someone who could reach the sort of
notes and the power that, or anywhere near what Deborah Cox could do,
we were very lucky with Amanda again.
A few months after we'd done "Watchin," we were contacted by Hosh
Gureli at Sony BMG to start doing some remixes for him. When we got
the Deborah Cox record back, because it had gone to our record company
so they could take the details off and start doing the sample
clearance and the publishing clearance, we saw Hosh's name on the
bottom of it.
RS: After "Watchin," you did "Walken," and that was a completely
different sound for you.
James Wiltshire: Yes, absolutely. Dance music changes across this
country and we always find that technology dictates the sound and the
amount of computer software that was coming out that was harking back
to old electronic analogue devices and obviously taking that a step
further, so the music we noticed was actually changing around. We
were interested in it but we found some of it very dull and very
boring because it was only on one note. We wanted to do something
along those lines and we used a massive synthesizer program called
Reactor to come up with a main riff and it was a nice sort of
diversion just for a little bit to go down those routes.
RS: So you did the "Walken" record and you also did a Walken
remix of "Watchin" as well?
James Wiltshire: We did a Walken mix of "Watchin" and it had a similar
tone, a little bit more funky than "Walken," which was actually quite
tough. Then we moved on to "Rain Down Love" from there.
RS: Nice. How did "Rain Down Love" come together and how did
Siedah Garrett get involved?
James Wiltshire: Years ago, I was working with a keyboard player called
Neil Cowley up in London and he was part of the Brand New Heavies
which he joined after all of the stuff which he's released in America.
Siedah and he became good friends, so when we were writing together,
we popped over to West Lake Studios and recorded some demo vocals.
That's when the original version of "Rain Down Love" was done, but to
a completely different backing track. Russell and I pulled the
acapella out soon after we'd just finished "Watchin" actually and
started working on "Rain Down Love."
RS: The video is hot, where did the idea for the Daft Punk
tribute come from?
James Wiltshire: That came from the director actually. She was a young
director just started off in London but had a lot of people very
interested in her within the business up there. When we saw the idea,
we thought it could be fantastic and it really worked well. It was a
great day shooting actually, there was some very funny people involved
and the dancers worked very hard all day, so we couldn't ask for
anything better really.
