RS: Well going back to official remixes, you remixed one of my
all-time favorite bands, New Order. How did you get involved with
that one?
Lee Coombs: I actually got asked to do it by Pete Tong who was A&R
for London Records at the time, which is nice. That was quite a long
time ago now, back in 2001. It was just one of those times when I
was getting a lot of remixes and Pete Tong was a fan, or still is, I
don't know, of my music and he asked me to do it.
RS: Are there any artists you would love to work with that you
have not worked with yet?
Lee Coombs: I can't really think of anybody off the top of my head.
I mean there's obviously loads of people that I'd love to work with.
What I'm doing at the moment is learning all these new tricks, as I've
got all this kind of new technology in my studio and I'm learning all
these tricks that just enable me to do everything I want on my own.
So instead of writing music and taking it to another studio to mix it
down, which is what I've done for a long time previously, I'm now
becoming totally self-sufficient, and my own best engineer.
RS: Are you working in Logic or ProTools?
Lee Coombs: Cubase 4. I'm just finding out all these amazing things
that it can do, it really is the latest technology in, you know,
computer music programs.
RS: Are you planning to take it live on the road or are you
sticking with CD DJing? How are you doing your live gigs recently?
Lee Coombs: I'd love to do it live, but it's a huge operation. What
I wouldn't want to do is stand there with a laptop and have one thing
in front of me. That still to me isn't live and a lot of people do
that and call it live. Doing anything else is a major operation so it
kind of, I just haven't gone down that road. I was going to do a live
show with Katherine at one point a few years ago and I was looking at
getting percussion players. The logistics are just huge, you really
have to have an album on a major record label and things like that to
sort of make it.
RS: Well you've got a new artist album in the pipeline, how's
that coming about?
Lee Coombs: I've written all the tracks now and am going to end up
with twelve. I've got vocals on five or six of them, and I'm just in
the process of mixing them at the moment. I am really excited about
it but you never know, do you, what it's going to be like until it's
completely finished.
RS: Who are some of the vocalists on there?
Lee Coombs: Vocalists are Katherine for one, I've got a vocalist
who's from Oakland in California called Seasons and he's just the
funkiest guy I've ever met. I suppose you can call him a hip-hop MC
but he's more into poetry, kind of just talking and stuff, and it's
really original. I've got a guy called Bricks who's a front man for a
rock band in Orlando. That's someone I did meet in Orlando that I
have started doing music with. He's really good and we've done a
cover of an Echo and the Bunnymen track called "Rescue." I think
that's going to be one of the singles. We're working on another one
right now.
RS: . What direction sound-wise are you going with the album?
Lee Coombs: Sound-wise, well it's definitely going to have a lead to
a dance floor flavor because that is what I do and obviously what I'm
known for. I'm trying to go a little bit deeper with it and make it a
musical journey and give people big, chunky sounds that they canget
into and listen to with whatever they're doing. You don't have to
dance constantly to the album but I want it to be a great, listen in
the car, the sort of album that people want to turn up in the car –
really atmospheric and gets peoples' moods going. There's a lot of
tech-funk sound.
RS: Is that where you see the music going right now or what do
you see coming next on the music horizon?
Lee Coombs: I don't know. What I'm seeing at the moment, is all
nodding back to where we started again. There's all these rave tunes
coming out at the moment which is back to square one again. So every
sort of ten years all these rave tunes come up and you just apply the
new technology to it and it creates a new kind of strain of it. So
yes, I mean I'm kind of feeling the old school again at the moment.
RS: Yes, I'm noticing like some of the remix guys are using the
actual original rave noises in their new productions, and it's blowing
my mind.
Lee Coombs: Yes, I've been doing that as well. There's a few on the
album, a couple of tracks. I've done a collaboration with Uberzone
which is a really hot track, that's got a big rave piano in it.
RS: Well is there anything you'd like to say to all your fans out there?
Lee Coombs: I've got an artist album coming out hopefully around the
early part of next year. Look out for the singles on Lot 49 records,
which is my home basically so all my music, all my own productions
will be coming mainly from there. I've got a lot of remixes coming out
but yes, I mean just check the MySpace and the website for everything
coming up, it's all there.
Also it is very amazing that all these people just keep contacting me and saying how much they love the music. People contact me saying that they still love the New Order mix I made, and it hasn't left their record box yet. That just blows me away when people say things like that. For my music to still be with them and there's all this other music going on in the world, it's very humbling. So yes, I'm very grateful for everyone being into what I do.
Posted October 14, 2008
