Kirk Degiorgio

Kirk Degiorgio

I’m Kirk Degiorgio. I don’t know how many of you out there know who I am. I’m kind of mainly known as a techno producer from the UK, but I’ve dabbled in a couple of different genres. My main pseudonym is As One, I’ve done albums for Mo’ Wax, Ubiquity, Versatile. I’ve done albums as Future/Past for R&S and a few other labels, and I’ve done music under my own name for the New Religion label. You might have seen those names around. That’s who I am.

Benji B

How’s the rehearsals going for tomorrow night?

Kirk Degiorgio

The rehearsals are going fine. I’m using this laptop, so he’s got to come and fix it ‘cause I’m using it tomorrow. I don’t know what you’ve done to it! But yeah, it’s the kind of thing that’s sending chills down my spine whenever I'm in the rehearsal and I hear what those arrangers have done with a couple of my compositions.

Benji B

Have you ever been in a situation like that before? Have you ever had an experience like that, hearing someone interpret your music?

Kirk Degiorgio

Only once before, which was equally as emotional actually. I did a co-write with Fela Kuti’s drummer Tony Allen, and he performed it live in Paris and for me that was a bit of a head trip as well. Only once before, but never on this scale.

Benji B

So, for those people that aren’t familiar with your music, obviously your influences reach far and wide, as we’re about to find out. But musically as a producer, how would you best describe the music you make?

Kirk Degiorgio

I would say it’s pretty eclectic. You can’t really categorize it easily, but it’s soulful electronic music. But sometimes it’s not even electronic, so, uh... It’s just music. It’s really hard for me to categorize my style, and I think the record stores have a problem with where to put my albums, usually, as well.

Benji B

Do you find that’s a problem, being someone who produces electronic music under various different styles? Do you feel it would be easier if you did have a category?

Kirk Degiorgio

It would be easier for the record shops to sell it, but as an artist it’s great because I can keep people guessing, no one’s going to have any preconceived ideas about what my albums are going to be like, because it could be anything. So artistically, which is what my main interest is, it’s an advantage. Whereas a marketing and promotion and that kind of thing, it’s probably a disadvantage.

Benji B

So, let’s talk about some corner stones in your musical influences, because I know that basically makes you who you are, musically, and you wanted to touch on that.

Kirk Degiorgio

Yeah. The big thing that happened to me... I don’t know how young you guys and girls were when you first had that revelation about music, but it happened to me when I was 11 years old. I don’t really remember knowing anything about music or caring about music until I was 11 years old, when I used to go and visit my aunt, in London, I lived about an hour away. She used to go to these soul clubs in London. And just the fact that she used to come in late and talk about these great nights where everyone had a great time... I was 11, and I used to just think, “Wow, I can’t wait to go and do what she does.” And I used to hear music coming out of her bedroom when she was getting ready to go out or the next day or whatever, and it was all music that I’d never heard before in my life. You didn’t hear the music on television, didn't hear it on the radio. And one day she just kinda grew up and grew out of it and in 1979 she gave me a stack of 7”s about this tall [shows stack size with his hands], and I used to play them on my mum’s record player. And they were things like James Brown, Sly Stone, Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang, it was all kind of quite mainstream, commercial black music that had been successful in the clubs in England.

Benji B

And where were you living at this point?

Kirk Degiorgio

I was living in Ipswich. I was born in London, but after about four years my mum wanted to bring me up in a more rural environment, so we went out to Ipswich.

Benji B

And how did that affect what access you had to music?

Kirk Degiorgio

Luckily, Ipswich is still within range of the London radio shows. Which is incredibly lucky, because I think one of the main reasons and influences on people’s taste in music when they’re young is what they can hear at home on the radio. Ipswich is only 60 miles from London, so I could just about pick up the radio stations of London. And also, there was a lot of early pirate stations around Essex and Kent and they were sort of pure soul stations. So I started reading magazines like Blues & Soul and Echoes, and just being able to see the same artists that my aunt had given me, and then I used to read about the radio shows in the listings and I used to tune. And then I used to buy those little C-90 cassette things, and my mum gave me a little tape deck that had an external microphone, and I used to put the microphone right up to the radio the speaker and pray that she didn’t go, “Kirk, your dinner’s ready,” or whatever while a song was playing. I used to tape all those radio shows, for two or three years.

Benji B

I’m from London, too, so we're lucky to have access to that pirate radio. Can you just fill people in on the spectrum of music that you might hear across the dial on any given weekend?

Kirk Degiorgio

Yeah, it was mainly American soul and disco and boogie, what we call boogie in the UK. I don’t know if you’ve heard of the DJs: Robbie Vincent, there's Chris Hills, and Froggy...he was a great, great underground DJ, still going today. They had the shows. Greg Edwards, he was an American but he’d come to England, and he had a show on Capital Radio and they used to just play things like this…

(music: Skyy – “First Time Around”)

Kirk Degiorgio

...you know, joining all the dots with all the different productions and the names that people went under. Maybe a year later, I used to save my dinner money and buy some 7”s. But I couldn’t afford 12”s of these things. They’re American imports, so you couldn’t really find them that well in Ipswich. We had one import store.

Benji B

And what else in that period was there, because I think it’s the range of music that’s the key to your musical DNA, isn’t it?

Kirk Degiorgio

Actually, it was all about what was popular in the clubs at that time because those radio stations were mainstream. They were on Capital, at the prime time on Saturday night. So they did reflect what was really popular in the clubs. You’d hear the main labels like West End and Salsoul and you'd hear things like this...

(music: D-Train – “Keep Giving Me Love”)

Kirk Degiorgio

...disco tune, but [The Fatback Band’s “King Tim III (Personality Jock)”] was probably the first ever rap record. And a couple weeks later Sugarhill Gang brought out “Rappers Delight.” So immediately I was aware that within the even the narrow disco and soul, there were other genres as well. Even at that very early stage I thought, “Right, OK, you can sub-divide it up.” I mean, people sub-divide it up like crazy now, but in those days I was aware of that. So there were different strands, and I was open-minded then. I didn’t hear rap and think that sounds terrible, I thought that sounds different, I don’t really understand it but it’s interesting and I like it. Whereas a lot of the soul DJs hated that music at the time. They were so purist, you know? They said it wasn’t singing, that it was just someone shouting.

But then Grandmaster Flash and all that came along, and the eclecticism really started then. Especially in ‘82, when I heard “Planet Rock.” And that was the biggest head trip for me—since my auntie gave me records—was hearing something that I knew was funk, but it was like something I’d never heard of. It was all electronic, it was really repetetive. It had a rip of another record that I knew was a European band. It was just insane. And again, for some reason, I don’t really know why, I wasn’t totally open-minded to everthing at that time, but I really wanted to get into that. Whereas a lot of the soul DJs, they formed this thing called LADS, League Against Disco Shit, which was basically the old soul DJs would refuse to play electro records.

Benji B

Really?

Kirk Degiorgio

Some of those DJs are now huge dance music producers. I’m not going to name them.

Benji B

But that’s an interesting period because lots of people in this room probably started getting into music, or going out, after the dance music period had really begun. So, it’s always been a part of our lives. We’ve always known about clubs and BPMs and mixable records and quantized music and electronic culture. But there was a point, wasn't there, where people who are now...certainly, first-generation house and techno DJs before that, they were playing soul and jazz and rare groove and whatever else you call it. What was the point where electronic music and electronic parties, be it house, techno or whatever, started to really take over?

Kirk Degiorgio

They started taking over in ‘88 in the Summer of Love, after ecstasy became popular in the UK from the Balearic islands, from Ibiza or whatever. But I think there’s still a continuous strand back from an early period. The first time I was aware of electronic manipulation and other ways to make records out of the conventions of soul and jazz was hearing Adventures Of Grandmaster Flash On The Wheels Of Steel and Double Dee and Steinski’s Lesson One, you know? That was clearly made with electronics, turntables and editing material. And for me, that gave me my grounding in unconventional ways and electronic ways of hearing soul/funk music. And so, when that whole rave and house music period took over, for me it wasn’t as big a revolution and revelation as it was to other people, I think. Because for me it was just a continuation. But you’re right, there was a time when you had the conventional soul/jazz/funk DJs suddenly started to be more open-minded. I don’t know whether it was because they had a drug experience or whatever…

Benji B

We had Theo Parrish here the other day talking about the significance of the Midwest and the impact that’s had on other people’s lives musically, whether that be Chicago or Detroit. That’s definitely true for you, isn’t it? What was the significant point for you in terms of when you decided you wanted to get into making electronic music?

Kirk Degiorgio

Well, when I left university I went to work in a record shop because I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do. So I worked in a secondhand record shop in London and they used to send staff to America to buy rare soul and jazz and then ship it back and sell it. And so they sent a couple of us out in 1990, and I was just a Detroit techno head by then. The records weren’t that popular at the time—it was a very small scene—but I was just totally into it. And also the house thing: A few of the rare house, early Trax and DJ International were selling well in the shops. And so they sent us to Chicago, and I had a couple of friends with me, we hired a car and we used to drive around Chicago and we went to see Derrick Carter at Gramaphone Records at the time and he told us to go to a few distribution places.

So we went down to Barney’s warehouse on the South Side and we went to Trax, we went to DJ International and saw Tyree...we went to Gherkin, I don’t know if you remember the Gherkin label? We saw all those guys and we bought a lot of records, we bought a lot of soul at the little out-of-the way stores and stuff. I’d just met Derrick May about two weeks previously in London. I had a Transmat t-shirt on and I felt this big strong hand come down on my shoulder and say, “Where the fuck did you get that t-shirt?” And I was like, “Oh God.” He said, “I’m only kidding, I know it’s a bootleg,” and we said, “Hi” and whatever. I said, “I’m your biggest fan,” and all the usual sort of crap. I told him I was going to be in Chicago. And he said, “Make the drive to Detroit, it’s only four or five hours’ drive to Detroit. If you can make it, I’ll be there and I’ll take you around a few record stores in Detroit that no one’s ever been to.” And I was like "OK," got his address.

So when I was in Chicago, everyone I met, I were saying, “We’re going to Detroit,” and they were like, “Don’t go to Detroit.” And we’re like, “Why?” And they’re like, “Don't go to Detroit, it’s dangerous.” ”What?” And they’re going, “Seriously, do not go to Detroit. Not in a hire car, not with three of your friends, just don’t go.” We didn’t give a shit.

So we drove to Detroit and the first stop I made was a place called Buy-Rite. We bought loads of great records and we said, “We’re looking for Gratiot Avenue, Derrick May’s place.” They said, “Yep, go down the end of the street take a right and head towards downtown.” They call it “Techno Boulevard,” a little corner. We’re all excited and stuff and we went down and it was a bit scary, for a white kid from the suburbs of England. It looks pretty scary. Just run down and kind of burnt out and stuff. I thought, “Shit, where are am I going?” Anyway, we parkedup, and there’s this big metal door with Metroplex written on it and we’re like, “Oh, God.” So we hammer on the door and this big guy comes up and is like, “Yeah? What do you want?” And that was “Shake,” Anthony Shakir and we're like [weedy English accent], “We’re from England. We've come to see Derrick May,” and all this and he just rolled his eyes, and was like, “Juan! There’s some crazy English people who’ve come all the way to see us.” We heard Juan go, “Bring ‘em in!” And they treated us so nicely, it was incredible. And that was the first time I’d been exposed to that media perception of some of the areas in America, where they think you’re going to get killed just because it’s a black area. If someone turned up at my house and had come all the way from England, I’d like to think that I’d be that friendly, but you know, I doubt it. They were incredible. They welcomed us in, we stayed there for like two days, they took us to the market opposite to get some food, they let us look through their record collections, and we bought a few records off Juan, he had some rare West End disco things.

Benji B

This is Juan Atkins, right?

Kirk Degiorgio

Yeah. There was Shake, Juan, and Kevin Saunderson was next door, I think Chez Damier was there by then. There was Marty Bonds, he was working with Juan on some tracks. And then they called this English guy down. They said, “Oh, there’s this English guy already here, he’s been here a few months, called Matt Cogger.” Now, I don’t know if you heard of Matt Cogger, Neuropolitique, but he was the first European to go over there to Detroit and check those guys out. And he was running Transmat for Derrick while Derrick was touring in England. And I still know Matt to this day, he’s not doing music now, but…

Benji B

Have you got a record from that period from that scene?

Kirk Degiorgio

I have, it’s in Ableton.

Benji B

Oh, are we gonna play that later?

Kirk Degiorgio

Yeah, if you want to do it later.

Benji B

But that’s an important time because it kind of brings us on to your production career. Because I believe that some of the first equipment you were using had something to do with that trip, right?

Kirk Degiorgio

Yeah, well, Matt ran Transmat for Derrick and eventually Derrick came back and Matt had to go back to England. And he had some of Derrick’s keyboards. And he didn’t have any studio space. So the revelation to me was going to Detroit and seeing the equipment that Juan used to make those Model 500 records.

Benji B

As far as influences go Model 500 and “Rhythim Is Rhythim” and those things, are seminal records for you, right?

Kirk Degiorgio

Yeah, they were like the classics for us. Obviously “Strings of Life” was massive, “It Is What It Is” was quite massive. “Feel Surreal,” but Model 500 was still quite underground and not that many people were into it. Seeing the equipment set-ups that they had, seeing what Derrick made “It Is What It Is” with… Because I’d grown up with all that disco and stuff I thought that a recording studio would have to be a 48-channel mixing desk and I thought you had to have a mixing engineer and you had to have a producer. And I'd see all the names listed, and all the equipment. And I thought that was for rich people or for record labels to give to musicians, and I was neither. I wasn't a rich kid and I wasn't a musician. So it never came into my head that I’d be doing music until I saw what these guys were using.

Benji B

And what were they using?

Kirk Degiorgio

Juan had a Pro One.

Benji B

What’s a Pro One?

Kirk Degiorgio

A Pro One is like a... In the early ‘80s Sequential Circuit made this quite small monophonic keyboard. It’s got a sequencer on it and it makes those classic arpeggios in the Model 500 tracks. Obviously, the 808, and reel-to-reel. I learnt from Matt and Derrick how to do those edits with the razor blade [makes slicing motion with hands]. I didn’t know anything about it, I didn't know how Derrick did those backwards bits, I just didn’t know how he did it. And Matt showed me. He said, “Yeah, Derrick does this, and you have to cut it across rather than down here, and the phase shifts, because you’re turning it upside down and everything.” It was all learning, all this stuff and it made sense because of what I had heard Double Dee and Steinski and all those guys do.

Previously, when I was a kid and I used to tape those radio shows, and I’d started buying my first records, I used to do pause-button mixes. I had a double tape deck that had an overdub facility and I had a deck. So you’d play one record on the tape, record that, and then play the deck over the top and I’d vary the speed by speeding up with my finger [on the tape], or putting pressure on the deck, ‘cause it was just my mum’s. And then when you get the mix right, you’d lift [finger off] the pause button and you’d record it. And then you’d find a point at which you’d want to stop the mix and let the main record play and you’d put the pause button on again and put another mix in and release the pause button. I used to make like 30-minute mixes that would take me weeks to build up. So I had already kind of dabbled in it, but as for making music—because I wasn’t a musician I never thought I’d do it—I saw when you had a sequencer, you didn’t need to play anything.

Benji B

So when did you start making music?

Kirk Degiorgio

When I got back. I sold all my records, my whole record collection.

Benji B

Why?

Kirk Degiorgio

Because I didn’t have any money to buy the studio equipment. The only thing I had worth anything was my records.

Benji B

And what were you able to buy with that?

Kirk Degiorgio

It was quite a lot actually. It was about three grand that I got. I bought an Atari with Notator, I think at the time. I can't remember, it might have been Opcode Vision, I’m not sure, I can’t remember. I bought an R8, the Roland drum machine, which was kind of the latest drum machine, that was expensive at that time. I bought an S950 Akai sampler, which had quite a lot of memory.

Benji B

So you weren’t playing, you did alright. You got kitted out?

Kirk Degiorgio

I did, yeah.

Benji B

And what was the first record you made?

Kirk Degiorgio

The first record I made was a record called “Dance Intellect,” and I put it under my Future/Past name. Already I had the name worked out. This was going to be my early influences, but I’m going to bring that to techno. I had a broken 303...I can’t remember what was broken about it, I think the envelope didn’t work properly. And I just looped a 303 riff that I made and then reversed it.

Benji B

Have you got it here?

Kirk Degiorgio

No, I haven’t got it.

Benji B

Have you got anything from that period that you can play us to give us an idea of where your head was at?

Kirk Degiorgio

Sure. The second record I ever did was this:

(music: Future/Past – “Clinically Inclined”)

Kirk Degiorgio

...really make a difference? And if I keep on messing around, I’m never going to get it done.” And I have no answer. I know a lot of people have come up to me before and said, “I can never finish anything, and I’m never satisfied with it. I always think I can change this sound or that sound.” And I kind of think I could be dragged into that, so in my recording process I make decisions really early and I do things that I can’t change. Like, I print audio really quickly, instead of having it as a MIDI file that I can change the sound to a million different things, and say, “I wonder if this one sounds better, I wonder if that...” I don’t like to get trapped into that, so I just choose a sound, lay it down, and have to deal with that.

Benji B

So you started out on this basic equipment...let’s fast forward to 2006 and beyond. What is your weapon of choice these days?

Kirk Degiorgio

I had more equipment then than I do now. All I’ve got now is a real big modular synthesizer made by Bruce Duncan of Modcan up in Canada. And that’s the only piece of outboard snythesizer gear that I’ve got. Well, I use Pro Tools and I use Native Instruments, and that’s the only equipment I’ve got.

Benji B

To people who aren’t familiar with the techno history that you’re talking about, and certainly people who aren’t familiar with the music, they might find it strange that in the same breath you’re talking about jazz, soul and funk and soulful music, to what some people might seem like quite cold music, how do you bring warmth and emotion and that same soul to that electronic world?

Kirk Degiorgio

Well, that statement is kind of true, but to me, it’s bizarre. Because when I hear “It Is What It Is” or “Our Time” or “Night Drive (Thru-Babylon),” or “Journey of the Dragons”...they’re emotional records and they’ve got a hell of a lot of soul and warmth. To me, that's what techno is. Unfortunately, techno isn’t defined by what I think it is, it’s what it’s become. Like what you say, cold is the thing that’s associated with techno. The original blueprint for techno for me, was kind of cold, but it was emotional alienation and the city that it grew out of. It was all aobut that soulful history of a city that’s gone into chaos and decline and there is a huge emotion in that.

Unfortunately, techno is often now associated with just noises. And those noises organized into a club sound, or an atonal kind of structure. That’s not what techno meant to me, or what I got into techno for. Techno is still that emotional kind of soulfulness and the beats had a hard funk edge to it.

Benji B

Over the years you’ve been associated with various musical styles, from drum & bass, broken beat, techno, house, whatever and musical peers, you’ve done work with the likes of Dego from 4Hero and Carl Craig. Can you tell me a bit about your musical peers and the different styles that you're involved with?

Kirk Degiorgio

Well, there was a period after I’d made a couple of techno albums where techno really got into that European rave thing. Where everything was pitched up to 140 BPM and everything became really rigid. And it had very little to do with what I was originally into to techno for. And I was just a bit jaded and frustrated at going into the record shop and never finding the records I liked. Techno was bigger than ever. People say the peak of techno was ‘94-’95 and I just could not find the inspirational records to go out and DJ with or go and listen to. And I listen to all kinds of music at home, and I’ve always been open-minded, and when I first heard drum & bass, it was too ravey and a bit gimmicky. Speeded-up chipmunk voices it was kind of for kids and I was kind of aloof to it.

Benji B

Is this sort of jungle era, or more breakbeat hardcore era?

Kirk Degiorgio

I don’t really know what names you’d call it at that stage, but this would be ‘94, and some of my friends were making those records to make money. I was around there when a great techno producer would make these records. We‘d be rolling around on the floor laughing. It was purely for making money to fund his techno label. So I had a really kind of patronising view about that whole thing. But then, I had to move back to Ipswich in 1995 for a period. Drum & bass was huge in Ipswich, and they had a record store. I used to go and see my old friend, just to say hi. And I started hearing, just these amazing drum & bass tunes, that weren’t like any of the kind of rave and jungle that I’d heard before. I bought a few of them and I had about five, six or seven and they were all by two people: They were either by Peshay or Photek. And so I went back to the record shop and was like, “Who the hell are these guys? This music is amazing.” The chords are like the techno kind of influence and the breaks are kind of different to everything else you hear. And they told me that Photek lives up the road, and I’m like, “What?” “Yeah he’s from Ipswich, here’s his number.” So I called him and it was that usual thing, like, “I’ve just heard some of your stuff I’m a big fan,” and he just knew everything about me. He knew everything about my label, knew all about the early Detroit stuff and said, “C’mon, let’s do some records together.” And I went to his studio—he just had a sampler and an Atari. And I actually fell asleep, because he would spend five hours doing the snare pattern. It was like “ZZZzzz” and he’s just meticulous about doing his EQing and everything.

Benji B

You can definitely hear that in his records, and I’ve heard him in interviews as well, always when they ask about his influences, he's like Kirk, A.R.T....

Kirk Degiorgio

Well, there’s the famous track “KJZ.” “Kirk’s jazz,” that’s what it means. It's because I gave him...I love giving tapes out.

Benji B

Have you got that with you?

Kirk Degiorgio

I haven't, no. I was just giving him stuff with drums on ‘cause I said, “You know, your drums sound like Elvin Jones.” And he kind of knew a bit about that but not really heavy. You know, I love doing tapes for people, and I'd give him some tapes and stuff, and he found a few drum breaks and that’s why he named that track after me after giving him some jazz things.

(music: unknown)

Benji B

Alright, thanks very much, Kirk

Kirk Degiorgio

OK, thanks, Benji.