GTA: How do you go into attacking a huge set?
SL: Well, what I usually know, no mater what the gig is—you know, small or large—I know my intro. I sometimes often write intros for a particular country or a particular club, and I usually know thereabouts what I’m going to start with the first maybe two or three records, which is my mood setter. You know, for 20 minutes I’m just setting a mood, setting a sort of vibe on the dance floor, you know. Usually playing after another DJ, they’ve done their own thing, sometimes DJ’s have played it quite tough before me or whatever, so I tend to just stop and start all over again. It’s about me, what I’m doing. I’m starting from fresh. Here’s my intro, here’s the start of my audio journey, you know. I’m going to really try and create an atmosphere the way I do in a club, no matter what’s happened before me. So the first half-hour, 20 minutes, I’ve pretty much got an idea of what I’m going to do. After that, I read off the crowd totally.
GTA: What was the most difficult gig you’ve had where you had to follow someone? I know you’ve followed Oakenfold before.
SL: Yeah. Actually, I don’t know, you know? I don’t ever find it difficult to follow anybody because of the reason I’ve just stated. I just literally—at the DJ Awards this year in London, at Turnmills, I followed Tiësto which was quite amusing for me because, you know—chalk and cheese right there! You know me and Tiesto! [Laughs.]
GTA: Right, you have very different styles of music!
SL: Totally opposite! As a guy I love Tiësto; we’re really good friends, and we were both laughing about it. But you know, it’s the kind of thing where Tiësto’s got the bpms at about 150 bpms, and I’m starting at 125, so there’s a huge, huge difference in, you know, dance floor antics right there—the sort of rhythm—everything was so, so different. That was a bit of a challenge. But again it was easy, really—just start from the beginning.
GTA: Just elaborating a little bit more on your particular style of music, I find also there’s a definite sexy vibe to it all.
SL: Absolutely.
GTA: There’s something very sexy and—I dare say—things get downright sleazy at times!
SL: Yeah.
GTA: Do you see the dance floor as a place for that kind of madcap debauchery in addition to the “utopian community” that everyone envisions?
SL: 100 percent! Yeah, 100 percent! That’s the—I think—you know—let’s look back; let’s get really deep into this and look back at like hundreds of years.
GTA: Alright.
SL: Dance was seen as a form of sexual expression.
GTA: Yeah.
SL: And so for me, the dance floor is supposed to a sexy place. It’s supposed to be somewhere you can just let yourself go and just really flaunt it out, flirt it out, you know? Sleaze it out, filth it out, dirt it out, whatever! Just get down! Just get down and enjoy—you know, everybody loves to flirt, right? It’s a great feeling to flirt or to be flirted with, and dancing is a pure form of flirting, so if I can provide an audio soundtrack to that which is very sexy and sleazy and funky and, you know, just there and just solid and chunky and dirty—I mean, that’s really what I’m about, and today about music, a bit more than I was perhaps a year or two ago where I was really taken in by the darker side of house music. And I still have that element in my music now, but what is really, really important for me—as you just rightfully said—is to get the dance floor sexy and to get it filthed up. “Let’s have a party,” that kind of thing.
