RS: You've just put out Shakedown, the two CD set, what was the
inspiration to do a combination remix/artist album?
James Wiltshire (of Freemasons): We always find that as dance producers you get known for
your remixes as well as your productions, and especially seeing we had
some big tracks like Faith Evan's "Mesmerized," Heather Headley's "In
My Mind," and some of the other things we'd done directly for the
United States. We actually really wanted to include both of them on
there because you get known for that in dance music and you really
should be offering as much as you possibly can if someone's going out
to buy what you've done. Also it reflects exactly what we do
DJing-wise as well. We're one of the few sets of DJs who pretty much
play what we make.
RS: How hard was it to get licensing on all your remixes for Shakedown?
James Wiltshire: Very easy. Luckily, we've had a good relationship with
all the people that we do the work for and quite a few of the record
companies as well. So there were a few we had sticking points with
but none of the big ones were difficult at all. We were very, very
chuffed that Beyoncé's record company allowed us to license it very
quickly as well because that was a key track for us as well. Our
remix of "Déjà Vu" sort of defined last year for us really, so we were
very chuffed that that happened. We were very lucky and we hope it's
something that will continue in the future so we can keep on doing
them as well.
RS: Of the tracks you've remixed so far, what's been the most challenging?
James Wiltshire: The most challenging is the one we're on at the moment.
RS: Which is?
James Wiltshire: It's a top secret Beyoncé mix. After the response that
we've had for the first two mixes that we've done, it's obviously a
partnership that's working well so we want to make sure this is the
best possible one that we've done so far. Within that it means an
awful lot of quality control and an awful lot of making sure that the
'I's are dotted and the 'T's are crossed.
RS: Is it "Irreplaceable"?
James Wiltshire: No, it's a track that's not on the album. That's all I can say.
RS: I know Hosh is known for his callbacks, how's he been with
you guys? As in 'could you change this could you change that?'
James Wiltshire: We've got a huge amount of respect for Hosh. We haven't
met anyone like him. There's certainly no one I would say in the UK
industry within dance music who's as passionate about dance music as
he is and also so knowledgeable. He's been doing this for many, many
years. Obviously when you get hired to do a remix, our view is that
people know what they're saying and know what they want, they know
their market and they know how to promote it. We've been very lucky
that on a few occasions, a few remixes that we've done have just gone
straight through with them and we've been incredibly chuffed with
that. There was a couple where we had conversations about it but in
general we had a brilliant relationship with Hosh and we hope it
continues.
RS: So how do you and Russell actually work together. Does one
of you do the beats and the other one does the keyboards? How do you
collaborate?
James Wiltshire: Well, Russell is much more from a DJ background so his
input is very much from the vibe and the musical side of things, a lot
of examples and things like that. I'm from a musician and a player's
perspective and we both help out on the technical side as well. So
it's just a really good team. We've both sort of admitted in recent
years that this is a perfect sort of working partnership and one that
we're lucky to have and not a lot of teams actually do it. We don't
mind being in the same room together for eight hours a day for five
days a week.
RS: You just mentioned Reactor, what software do you normally work in?
James Wiltshire: We've probably got just about everything you could
imagine actually. We went through a stage and got addicted to it and
just bought everything because there's so much stuff out there. The
main sequencing program we use is Logic Pro, we use a lot of ProTools
now as well because we've done an awful lot of stuff for the US and
that's become the industry standard over there. But in general
there's pretty much no hardware left anymore, it's just computer
systems.
RS: Do you approach a remix for the US differently than you
approach a remix for the UK?
James Wiltshire: No, we approach all remixes actually in exactly the same
way. We try and do exactly what we think is going to fit with the
song. The song is always the key to it, we won't take anything on if
we don't like the song, there's just no point. You've got to sit and
listen to it for nine days and also people are paying you. Anyone who
commissions a remix wants the best possible result that you can do,
they want you to make effectively one of your records for them. So
we're very careful to make sure that we only take on something that we
really want to do and that we love. So that happens across the board,
we've taken on some very small independent things and some things from
major labels as well, but always with the same view in mind.
RS: You just mentioned the Beyoncé, what else do you have coming
remix-wise?
James Wiltshire: Remix-wise, we're going to be doing a bit of work for
X-Press 2 but at the moment we're concentrating on getting some of our
own stuff together. We're at the stage now that we need to get our
fourth single out in the UK and actually start working on that,
because dance music in the UK really changes quite dramatically with
fashion. It's far too trendy sometimes for its own good. We've got
an awful lot of options for singles here, so before the summer comes
we're going to spend quite a lot of time actually working on getting
our own stuff together for the rest of the year.
RS: What do you think the fourth single's going to be?
James Wiltshire: I don't know yet. We've got so many options it's a bit
dangerous to say at the moment and some of which aren't even on
Shakedown as well.
