Name Justin Berkovi Occupation Inimitable DJ. producer, remixer. live act. multi- faceted designer . . . the list goes on
Aye, so Berkovi’s got his fingers in a few pies. What about the music? He's pretty hard to pin down but he likes his punishing. quirky techno and experimental electronica. Over the last decade Justin‘s trodden his own path of uniquely deep. inventive. sometimes bonkers and often gruelling assaults over five solo albums, a live one. innumerable 12ins and remixes. and a fair clutch of mix CDs. In the best tradition of chin- stroking, mind-bending, stomp- inducing music. the Brightonian was a significant name in the No Future scene of the late 90$. punting inspiring techno when the genre was in a quagmire. My hero. Shouldn’t you be dropping names? Maverick renegades work alone but all sorts have recorded for his Predicaments and Nightrax labels. Also. if yOu want validation that his Anglo-Detroit- Germanisms are something pretty special. the patron saint of ‘Out-There' John Peel declared Berkovi his favourite of all techno producers. playing almost everything he released and calling him in for the musical equivalent of Eamonn Andrews/Michael Aspel's big red book.
A Peel Session - now we’re talking. Anything else for the record? Well we should really stress that besides his penchant for super skin-tight productions and experimental structure. he‘s the boffin on the freaky sound frontier. Yamaha and Roland have even procured his expertise in sound and pattern design.
Okay, now you’re just showing off. Why do we need to know all this? Figured it best to warn you he's on his way to Scotland. His sounds might be alluring but he takes no prisoners.
(Mark Edmundson)
I Just/n Berkovr plays Relentless, The Sub Club. Glasgow, Fri 75 Jun.
32 THE LIST 37‘: Jun Z’W’J/
PLLCTROPOI’
SIMIAN MOBILE DISCO
Blitzkreig Bop vs Death Disco at the Arches, Glasgow, Fri 8 Jun
Happily enough for them, quite possibly the biggest moment in electropop duo Simian Mobile Disco’s entire career came about through no fault of their own. Of course, James Shaw and James Ford had already done the whole ‘boys with guitars’ thing as one half of the reasonably unsuccessful post-Britpop band Simian, whose career had already come to a halt when Justice’s remix of their old track ‘We Are Your Friends’ finally made it big.
To Shaw and Ford — whose career as their own tour DJs had already mutated into the dancefloor-friendly Simian Mobile Disco - it was a godsend in terms of recognition. ‘The remix had already been out two or three times,’ says Shaw, ‘so we were already pretty much sick of it by the time it got to the stage where it
HOUSE DIESEL Motel at Liquid Room, Edinburgh, Sat 16 Jun
As one third of house supergroup X Press 2. Diesel. real name Darren House (no really) has never held his fingers far from the pulse. be rt in the studio knocking out Ibr/a anthems such as "Mu/rk X> Press" or ubiquitous (:hart phenomena like ‘l_a/y'. or playing the cutting edge house rnusrc he loves to enthusiastic crowds the ‘.'.vor|d over. 'I like to term my music "house music" and It's sort of ey'e'y'thrng Within that r be rt techno. be rt drsco~orrerrtaterl. be it African, deep. uplifting >- but hopefully ‘.'~./rth the emphasis on quality'
It wasn't so very long ago that there was rather a lot of talk about dance music havrng had its day. but for [)resel that was always just rnedra hyperbole. 'The thing is. things never really die. they Just go underground. lhrs rs the best place really because that's Where they regenerate and '-.'./her~:> the ideas start to build agarn.‘ he claims. careful not to put the horse before the cart. '[)an(:e music had a spotlight on rt for so long in the 90s. pretty much that whole decade. which rs a long time. The problem is. when rt rs the mainstream choice. it can only go one way. So maybe I am being optimistic but dance music rs really healthy at the moment. the spotlight isn't on it and It's al|o\.'.ied to Just go under the radar. rust slightly. and develop on its own. l don't think its dead. I think it's r‘ejtr‘»./eriatrrig rtsell.' lMark tilrrurrrrls<>rtr
wouldn’t go away. But it’s fair to say we got a lot of work off the back of it, there’s no doubt about that.’
Now the NME-favoured pair’s debut album Attack Decay Sustain Release is out this month, following on from remixes for the likes of The Rapture and Klaxons (and of course Ford produced the new Arctic Monkeys long player, Favourite Worst Nightmare), and their live/DJ crossover set is much in demand at club nights of all genres. ‘At a lot of our early Mobile Disco gigs people didn’t actually know we were making electronic music,’ says Shaw. ‘So, often we wouldn’t know who had booked us, it might be a techno night, an electro night or an indie night. That meant we had to adopt a totally mixed-up style, but it also meant we had to fend off a lot of people making requests for The Strokes. It’s like, “no, bugger off, I hate The Strokes!”’
So now you know who not to ask for readers. Just leave it to the professionals. (David Pollock)