Serge

Lauren Martin

Welcome. Welcome to this Red Bull Music Academy lecture as part of Lisboa Electronica. As a nice fact to warm up for this afternoon, today marks the 20th anniversary of the first ever RBMA lecture – yeah! I like the enthusiasm, thank you – which was with Jeff Mills in 1998 in Berlin. And it’s very appropriate that on the 20th anniversary we’re doing more lectures, and our guest with us this afternoon is kind of one of those people in dance music that’s been at the coalface of what’s important. A lot of people who get celebrated in underground electronic music are, true, the artist and DJs who are important, but the people who turn up to work every day and put in the effort to get these records out and into your hands and really completely change the culture, are the people that we want to talk to today. So please help me welcome Serge from Clone.

Serge

Thank you. Thank you.

Lauren Martin

So have you always been just Serge?

Serge

Well, no. I used to play in the local club, that was in 1988. When you guys were starting with the lectures, I was playing in the local club. And I had a V of my family name behind, Serge V, but I skipped the “V” at some point and was just my first name. I was never creative enough to find some cool name.

Lauren Martin

So you’re like the electric Cher or Britney as one name.

Serge

Something like that. Yeah.

Lauren Martin

And what were you doing under the name Serge in these clubs? Paint us a picture of where you were and what kind of music you were playing at the time.

Serge

Well, there was kind of all over the place because I started in the local club and it was just a commercial club in ’88, ’89 and it was like on holiday. I’m coming from the coast, coastal island in Holland on the southwest. And in the winter there are living like 15 thousand, 20 thousand people. In the summer it was like 500 thousand, and you have like six clubs in the little town and all open for like four months, six, seven days a week. And I started as a live jockey and one of them bought my records a Friday night and asked them if I could play them and the local DJ always played a couple of cool tunes and I knew he had them. So I was asking him if he could play them, and on some Friday I brought some records out: “Could you play this?” “Ah, put them on yourself. I’ll go drink a beer.” So that’s how I started down there.

But they also played like all kind of stuff. So it went from commercial Top 40 tunes to very unknown, underground US import stuff. And that went on. I’ve been playing there for like I think until like ’94, ’95, something like that. Probably ’94. So we played gabber. We played Snap!, “Rhythm Is A Dancer.” We played all the cool old Chicago releases. So those are like quite various, what we played. Quite versatile. Even the early trance stuff from Frankfurt and that kind of stuff.

Lauren Martin

So when you say it was a commercial club, it wasn’t just like commercial like Top 40 stuff like you were saying. You were also balancing with quite hard and cutting edge kind of thing.

Serge

Yeah, we could play almost anything there as long as the dancefloor was full. And we were three DJs, and I had my personal taste, so I always tried to play my own records that I brought. I think a lot of people these days don’t know how it was back then. But very often the club used to buy the records. So you went to the record shop with the club owner, and he paid for all the records. But he never wanted to buy the records that I liked, so I bought them myself and sneaked them in and played them in the club anyway. So I took them myself. And that was back then, it was always the more Detroit stuff that he didn’t want to pay for. “No, we can’t play that.” And he bought a bit more commercial things, so I bought the Transmat stuff and KMS and the old warehouse records from Armando and Ron Trent. So that kind of a mixture kind of thing. That slowly became more commercial because he had to make some money.

And my taste went another way, because the whole music scene was kind of splitting up. You could get a lot of subgenres. So you get the Chicago house, Detroit acid or Detroit techno and more acid stuff, electro things. I started to play more of my own stuff, but I couldn’t play everything there myself. So at some point I hooked up with guys in the Hague, from Acid Planet, Guy [Tavares] from Bunker, and I started playing there as well. So I was like doing two different gigs. I was playing this commercial club, and I was playing in the most obscure, underground parties in Holland as well.

Lauren Martin

That’s so interesting that you’re almost at the mercy of the club owner for what records that were getting brought in. If you weren’t getting them through him, because he didn’t like what you wanted to play, where were you getting your records from? Was it mostly through other places in the Netherlands, or were you looking to abroad? Because this is like late ’80s, so how does that work for you?

Serge

Yeah it was like late ’80s, early ’90s. Well, you had a couple of import shops and because we were on the south side of Holland, southwest side, we did go to Antwerp, Belgium. We did go to Rotterdam. So we’re kind of in the middle between Antwerp and Rotterdam, so we did visit both cities. Every other week, we went to Antwerp and the other week we went to Rotterdam and bought stuff down there. And the most import shops did have all of it, so they had the really obscure stuff but also the more commercial stuff. And that’s also what we played. And mostly if you did go to a regular club – like the most famous house club in Holland was Roxy – even down there you heard the Trax releases, obscure house music. But also like the hip-house stuff, which was a little bit more commercial. So everything was played in one night. You even could play like if the DJ fancied it, he’d played it like a regular record or whatever, just as long as it matched in with the vibe of the night.

Lauren Martin

If you were traveling to Antwerp and other cities in the Netherlands to get this music, it kind of makes it sound like it’s like your band of merry men. Like, “We’re the only ones that like this stuff.” Was there an appetite for it in the Netherlands at the time?

Serge

Yeah, definitely. There was a large scene in Holland and Belgium for the very new, modern records coming from the US, but also a lot of producers in our area. So it was very lively. A lot of new and exciting things were happening. Very obscure records made it to the charts as well, like ’88, probably like the momentum for the new beats stuff. And obscure Chicago house records made it to the charts as well, and major companies started to sign obscure techno records. So it become more, it was kind of mingling over with the major label stuff.

Lauren Martin

When you said that there’s a like a splintering at that time between genres and what people were into, could you give us maybe examples of what people in the Hague might have been producing and listening to and maybe what people in Rotterdam might have been doing that was different.

Serge

I think the Hague, Rotterdam was more or less the same. The two cities are really close by, like 20 kilometers. Those two cities are more working class, so on the weekends people want to celebrate. So that gives different atmosphere. People are working hard during the week, and during the weekend they go out and forget about the work stress and whatever was going on, so they want to party. And that was the music being made in Rotterdam and the Hague a lot. But on the same time, you also had guys doing like really obscure stuff and very intimate music. So, it’s either... people always, you know, want to pinpoint... OK, this is coming from there. But all sorts of music were made everywhere. But I think the dominant thing in Holland or in Rotterdam and the Hague was like the harder techno at some point, and the really easy house stuff that was going down in the clubs.

Lauren Martin

Is there a track maybe from this pile of records you brought that you would like to play to illustrate that?

Serge

You know of course, I got some records that I want to play. But maybe, because most stuff that I brought and when things started splitting up, splintering as you said, is around, probably around ’91, ’92. So in ’91, ’92 you were getting the commercial trance stuff, also in the Britain, in the UK. In Holland, we did get the hard techno sounds, the gabber stuff, and the other side from the harder styles we did get the more mellow house stuff. And that sound was popularized quite fast, so around ’92, ’93, you had like two main streams in Holland. So it was like the harder, commercial gabber with the trance-y stuff and the dominant club house theme. At that point, I really felt like I was falling in between something, because I did like both of them. It was a lot of good music coming out, but it was hard to find in Holland around that time.

And also in that period, ’91, ’92, a lot of really good releases were coming out from all kind of corners of the world. Underground Resistance started. Carl Craig started playing, Retroactive. A lot of people, a lot of guys produced and started their own label. And also the guys from Bunker started around ‘92, and that was also the period I started my label. And then a lot of producers from, I think it was like the second or maybe even the third generation, started producing music and put it out on vinyl and started playing that and organizing their own parties. So that’s also what was happening in Holland. And I think it’s good to start with the first record I did put out. And there was more and there was also the sound that we were into. It was like harder, acid stuff and alternative things that were like kind of counter-culture of the more commercial streams. More commercial club things going on.

Lauren Martin

[pulls out record] You do the honors.

Serge

Yes. I’ll put my mic down.

Lauren Martin

OK. So what exactly is this record, then?

Serge

This is the first Clone release. I saved up some money and had a couple of tracks that I made with and also with a friend, two friends actually. We shared a little studio, and I did release a 12" on the label from I-f, the Guy from Bunker releasing music, so we had a small group of people putting out music. And I thought, “Well, OK.” I saved some money. I did a couple of jobs, and I thought, well, I see the other guys doing it, let’s just send the DAT to the manufacturing and I’ll pay the bill and we’ll see where it goes from there. And we can play the tracks at the party. Because back then you needed to have vinyl to be able to play them on a party. So it was kind of essential to have a record out back then.

Lauren Martin

So what’s the title of this track that we’re going listen to?

Serge

No titles.

Lauren Martin

Extra underground. Sorry.

Serge

Yeah. I think I made some kind of... It was “Coördinated Sounds & Sequences,” that’s the B title. Because I, well, didn’t have any names and I think I marked them C.11 for the first record, 1.2 for the second one and up to four, and then second release had like 2.1, 2...

Lauren Martin

Why all the sequencing, rather than giving it track titles?

Serge

Because we were making a lot of tracks and it was just tracks, and while we didn’t put up names we just gave them a number like the classical works, Opus 1, Opus 2. And I just gave them a number 1.1 for the first release and the second release. But the titles are not even on the record. I don’t think they were on the second and the third and forth records. It was all no titles, just EP name and that’s it. Well OK.

Lauren Martin

Let’s listen to that.

Serge

I’ll put the sound a bit down.

(music: Orx – “Coördinated Sounds & Sequences”)

Lauren Martin

OK, yeah, great. When you say “obviously” this is not the kind of stuff that I could play in the club, it’s not so obvious to me maybe. Why?

Serge

Well, maybe not these days, but back then like asking what devils go in the club was like well, it’s not really... Like, Snap!, “Rhythm Is a Dancer” or like the things that made it to the chart, like Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, “Love Can’t Turn Around.” You had some acid stuff, but it was all more like gimmicky. This was more like dark. This is the stuff you listen to in a dark basement, with a strobe light and a lot of smoke and just forget about everything.

In a regular club it’s, you know, cozy, people drinking beer, you know, chatting up with girls or whatever. That’s a little bit the vibe in most clubs. Sometimes you can rave, but this was a completely different atmosphere.

Lauren Martin

What year did release this in?

Serge

I think, well, this was the first release and I think it came out the end of ‘92, so early ‘92 we got everything ready. We sent it out, the whole manufacturing process. This was being produced in Czech Republic. I didn’t even know it was Republic back then, and it was Czechoslovakia back then, close to Prague, so it was Eastern Germany, right? Probably before the wall. I don’t even know. Doesn’t matter.

So it was like really thick vinyl, and the quality is not actually that good, but we really liked the thickness of the vinyl. And it was like a really obscure manufacturing, and I don’t think we had to pay the mechanical royalties. So that’s why we pressed up there, so we could save couple hundred Euros, Guilders, back then, yeah.

Lauren Martin

So you started the label in ‘92, was that originally with the intent of releasing your own music first? Was that the idea?

Serge

Actually yes, yeah. Because I was sending demos to some other labels and I already thought, “Well, OK, that’s kind of a hassle.” Because you have to wait, you know, and get approval from them and you know what they like, what they think of it. So I just thought, let’s just do it myself. I had a couple of good examples because most of the labels that I did like, Underground Resistance was one of them, and a lot of good producers from Chicago in the late ’80s, they all had their own small labels. You know, just saved up some money and press the record, without the idea of starting a popular record label company behind it.

You know, of course there were labels making a lot of money and doing it the more commercial way. But like Underground Resistance, just press a record with no information, blank label and just UR0004. That’s it, that’s all the info you had. And that was the stuff I was really attracted to, because the techno music that we liked had a certain aesthetic that I liked, that were a part of the techno sound in that time. So I thought, well I’ll just press up some records and then no plan behind it.

Lauren Martin

It’s interesting that you say that there wasn’t a lot of information about these records when they were coming out at the time, like Underground Resistance. But there was information, but it was just highly aestheticized, like precise information. Like, calling records Acid Rain, and having like messages carved in the runout. The information that you could get was solely on the record itself. There was no press or PR, there was just inlays and insert labels. Was that inspiring for you?

Serge

Yeah that was the kind of thing that was going on, because it was just about the music. And there was a little message that you could give the record, but it was kind of counterculture of the whole commercial scene and what was going on with the major labels. That was kind of the part that, part of the techno culture I think, and also the tradition that we got now that’s going on in techno. We were kind of following that aesthetics world, we were a part of that whole thing. We didn’t feel any urge to put information on there, why should we put down a phone number? Or why... we didn’t have email back then, so why put on any information?

Later, I think later we put a fax number or something like that. There was like a whole scene with people making fanzines, like you know small magazines, and stuff like that. So you could connect and you knew where the parties were and people were meeting up in record stores. So it was kind of, people had to listen to the music and it was not important who was behind it. Or who made it. And you could make a little, sort of Acid Rain and you’d probably get something like pretty raw or something. So you could get a little vibe from the music with label art or, you know, the information that was not there. That’s what we did as well.

Lauren Martin

When did you give the Clone label a physical home? You mentioned that you linked up with a skate shop? Originally in ’94... ’93, ’94?

Serge

I think it was a bit later. In ’93 or ’94 I think I-f opened his shop, Hotmix in the Hague, which was kind of our club shop, our clubhouse, if you can all call it like that. Guy from Bunker was living in the Hague, I-f was living close to the Hague, so we hang out in his shop. We all had our label and our small things we were playing at parties and during the weekends. He closed down, I think, end of ’93. He was only open for like one half year, very short. There was no replacement at some point, so I just opened my small shop. We still had some stock left from the release we did on our own labels. And I just rented small space and opened the record shop.

Lauren Martin

I remember you saying there was something to do, there was like a connection to skateboarding in the early days. Like skaters would come in the shop, or it was linked to like a local kind of skate crew. Was that part of the culture integral to like early days of Clone at all?

Serge

Not really. It was just a coincidence that I could join that location. I was a surfer, I could skate a little bit. I used to be almost full-time surfer because I was living and I didn’t do much else in my teenage years until music grabbed me. But you know, yeah, well, skateboarding is an urban thing as well, so it fits kind of to the techno thing as well. A lot of people like Jeff Mills used to skateboard as well. He was the old guy back in Detroit, he was skating instead of being a gang member. And skateboarding is a thing that is pretty good for a lot of kids in cities.

Lauren Martin

I just got a really good image of Jeff Mills skateboarding. It’s great, thanks for that. That’s great. Tell me about the early days of the record shop thing. Because if you started the label to release your own music, when did you make kind of that editorial decision to open a shop and cultivate this entity?

Serge

Well, it all went kind of natural. Because I was trekking to Germany quite a lot in that period, because of a girl who was living in Frankfurt. [laughs] And well you know, that’s the reason why I was visiting Frankfurt quite a lot, and you had a couple good distributors down there.

Those distributors sold my records, so I went there, sold them my records and I could buy them, I could buy some import stuff there as well. And in that time you had a lot of imports that local shops in Holland didn’t buy anymore, because it was too obscure. Because we had lost two big commercial streams, streamings that were like dominating, and that was falling in between. And that was mainly all the old Detroit techno that I liked so much that I couldn’t get and I bought it down there.

Also a lot of good house music was being made in that period. I bought those copies down there, and I bought some copies for friends, so, well, OK I take two and then I just sell it to my buddy. At some point I thought, well, OK, I know these guys with the skate shop, and I’ll just start something there and we’ll see. I’ll just open three days in the week. You know, it went kind of naturally.

Lauren Martin

I know that because you were a DJ when you started out, I wonder how much the DJing came full-circle in the early days of the shop. Were you in the shop, being like the DJ salesman, putting records on and going, “Come on, this sounds really good”?

Serge

People didn’t know much about DJs then. I mean, a DJ was kind of a shitty job for a lot of people, you know? A bartender made more money than a DJ. And I think I was making like 40 Guilders, so there’s like 20 Euros for a night DJing. And at the end of the night I, the DJ’s task was to clean all the ashtrays. So I had to pick all the ashtrays in the venue and clean them and put them back. That was my job, after, you know, after the club was closed. And you know the bartender cleaned the bar and the doorman was sweeping the floor. So everyone had a task in the club, and my task was doing the ashtrays.

Lauren Martin

Nice.

Serge

For 40 Guilders a night.

Lauren Martin

So obviously DJing wasn’t particularly lucrative or well-regarded. So the shop and the label then was a way to anchor yourself in Rotterdam as this place where you could get imported records, or like you say, the records that people didn’t really want from like the chilled out house, and then the harder gabber stuff. Do you think that when you started the shop people were coming in and going, “What’s this?”

Serge

Yeah, totally. A lot of people came in. I was located around the corner from the main shopping street, the main record shopping street in Rotterdam back then. I think we had about five or six import shops or stores that were selling dance music. One of the main ones was Hotsound, who were having their own labels. Mid-Town selling the gabber stuff, Mid-Town was like the main gabber shop, and they also sell the commercial house stuff. Then, well, there was a drum & bass shop, and everyone had their own thing.

So I was kid of the odd one in-between them. Selling the strange stuff, like electro stuff and records they, the guys, thought, “Who’s buying this kind of stuff?” But I knew, because I was playing at those underground parties and I was having friends. And it was also like a small scene of people collecting records. So there was like a pretty lively scene of record collectors. That’s how I knew, people like Gerd, he was a record collector. Speedy J, Jochem Paap, was a collector. A couple of guys working for me, I knew from back then, when I was looking in the local magazines, and they were selling records. I went to their houses, they were all still living with their parents and they met up. And we swapped records because they were looking for this and I was looking for that so we made a deal. Or changed synthesizers of stuff like that.

So that’s how we then meet people. So there was some kind of scene you did meet each other. When Underground Resistance or Larry Heard was playing, you saw all the familiar faces. So you were making friends as well but you know in like, in-person.

Lauren Martin

So you started to make friends, people like Gerd Janson, through the pages of like, a nerdy magazine?

Serge

Not Gerd Janson, it’s Gerd [Dutch house music producer]. Gerd was like the local producer, he was doing a lot of music. He’s still doing a lot of music. Yeah, they’re getting confused a lot. Gerd Janson said that he owed a lot of gigs to Gerd, because a lot of people knew Gerd’s record but a lot of people knew Gerd Janson as a DJ. So they thought that he also produced those records, but...

Lauren Martin

How long was it before he started to tell people, “I’m not actually that guy”?

Serge

I’m not sure if he ever told them.

Lauren Martin

You’re swindled, Gerd. Is there something that we can listen to then from that time that you’ve got that could just get us all in the mood? Because you talk about a lot of genres, a lot of splintering off.

Serge

Yeah

Lauren Martin

Even the shops seem a little bit tribal, so maybe there’s something we could play that really reminds you of that time.

Serge

Yeah, let me think, because we’re talking about like ’94, I think the first Drexciya releases came out around that time. Drexciya, Ectomorph, Underground Resistance, those kinds of things. Also a lot of good house records came out, like Ron Trent, Prescription, with his label. A lot of guys in New Jersey put out a lot of really good house records. So it was an era with a lot of good stuff. So maybe Drexciya I think, or let me see what we got here.

Lauren Martin

Because we are definitely going to talk about Drexciya later on, for sure.

Serge

OK, well maybe let’s do a very odd one. We haven’t discussed that one before, but it’s a nice, really strange record coming out in that time that was like, really odd. Especially if you figure out the timer, people... You could make a lot of money selling records. So a lot of producers are making records and made a lot of money back then, and are easily attracted to the techno scene, or the more commercial techno scene, or the house. But then all of a sudden you had some guys doing stuff that was really, completely crazy. Let me see. Put this on.

Lauren Martin

And what’s this called?

Serge

This is Glass Domain, “Interlock.”

(music: Glass Domain – “Interlock”)

I like that part.

Lauren Martin

There’s always another good part.

Serge

Yeah, yeah.

Lauren Martin

There’s always another good part.

Serge

Well, not always, but with good records, it is, yeah.

Lauren Martin

So, what was that record there? Tell us about who was making that.

Serge

This is Glass Domain. Now it’s no secret anymore. It’s Gerald from Dopplereffekt, Gerald Donald who made this. He’s also talking about Lego blocks, being creative, looking for new stuff, making music that he likes or that’s a creative expression. When you hear this, when everyone is looking for club tunes and the big records and the next chart hit. That was the golden thing for DJs, was having the next big club hit before anyone else had it.

So if you were able to buy an obscure US imports release, which probably came out four or five, six months later on the European label, you could already play it for like four or five months in your club before anyone else could play it. So everyone was looking for that kind of records. And then, all of a sudden you hear this record in a record shop. Most buyers didn’t even care for it. But when I heard the stuff... And I must be honest, I didn’t hear this at that time, because it was too obscure. We couldn’t find it in Holland. I don’t think this even made it outside of Detroit back then.

But this is one of the guys from Drexciya, and we knew Drexciya. We heard records from Drexciya and Ectomorph and those guys. So we were completely excited when we heard crazy stuff like this, like guys doing other things. Not looking for the next club hit, but just being creative and expressing themselves and doing stuff that they liked. Well, that was when some kind of click was being made that we thought, “Well, OK, there are more people doing this.” And there was people in Detroit making electro music.

Well, around the same time, we were making electro stuff as well. And nowadays, when you listen to a lot of music on YouTube, you can find the most crazy, obscure stuff. But back then, it was kind of hard finding different music. Finding something that was strange and obscure that fell into your niche. So finding these records, well, it was very exciting back then. And you couldn’t find these in most regular record stores, not even Drexciya. That’s the stuff that I love to sell, just because I liked it.

Lauren Martin

So maybe moving from Clone as a label and then a record shop, was this kind of like the editorial impetus to start being a distributor? Because if you’re finding it hard to get a conversation going so much between electro in the States and electro that’s happening in the Netherlands, was becoming a distributor part of the way for you to go, “Right, this is how we’re going to facilitate this relationship”?

Serge

No, that was only later, I think. Yeah, because at first we started just because we were enthusiastic about this stuff. When I opened the shop, the label work slowed down. But at some point, I was meeting more people in the shop and I got more demos. So at some point, I think it was like really seven, I started releasing music from other people. Actually, all of the first six, seven, or maybe even eight release were all by myself. And from there, I started releasing other people’s music. And then I had to make agreements and deals with people, so it became more official.

Now I had this shop, as well. And my aim at the shop was selling records that I liked. And I liked this stuff, and I liked Axis, Minimal Nation, that kind of stuff. And they simply didn’t sell it in the other shops, because those were not things that were running in most regular clubs except for a couple of small, underground places. And so this is kind of how the whole thing started. We were rolling, and I was trying to get these records in my shop. And the distribution parts only... I think it happened like ’89 or something.

Lauren Martin

When you had your first run of releases in the label that were all by yourself, when you started to release music from other people, were the local producers coming into the shop with their demos and saying, “Oh, please listen to this”?

Serge

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was like a kind of network with friends. Like Facebook without a computer. So you knew each other and they showed it, but in person. So they said, “Oh, listen to this,” just because they liked to play it for you. And then, after a while, I thought, “This is good stuff. People should hear it. I really liked that, and I should put it up because now I can play it at parties as well.” And so that’s a bit how it started. And then, I started to do releases by I-f and a couple of friends... I think it was number seven or number eight, the Brothers Fuck & Friend. And then, I had a Pamétex release. Then things slowly started to become an official record label.

Lauren Martin

Things escalated.

Serge

It escalated.

Lauren Martin

Very quickly.

Serge

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lauren Martin

It’s good that you mentioned other labels trying to search for hits, because there’s an interesting turning point in the early 2000s for Clone that I wanted to play a track of, and perhaps we could discuss it. Because I feel a big part of the enduring appeal of Clone is its ability to shape-shift and maybe move through trains and around them, also absorb them in their own way. So I have a track that I’m going to play. And I didn’t tell you that I was bringing this, in case you decide you didn’t want to hear it. Could you put the laptop on? That would be great.

(music: ADULT. – “Hand to Phone”)

You were just saying that you haven’t heard that song in a long time.

Serge

No.

Lauren Martin

What was that song?

Serge

Sorry?

Lauren Martin

What was that song?

Serge

This is ADULT., “Hand to Phone.” It was on that first 12" we released by them.

Lauren Martin

I played this because it’s a really interesting turning point, I think, in the history of Clone. This was released in 2001, and then again as remixes in 2002. And that same year, it was on the 2 Many DJ’s As Heard record. It was like the quintessential mashup album of the time, and that was featured on it. And when we’re talking a lot about electro and the different styles from the US, from the Netherlands. And then, creeping in at the start of the millennium, there is this early electroclash sound, which is quite different and which I-f had an early hand in. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact that this record had on Clone, as an entity? Like, did you get a lot of interest from record buyers about this label? I’d be really interested to know more about it.

Serge

Yeah, I actually have to think about how it was back then, because things already slowly started to grow. The shop became bigger. We attracted a lot of customers from outside of Holland, so a lot of people from Belgium, Germany came buying records. We were putting out a bit more records. I think it was release number 14. We were doing more parties, so the whole network became a bit bigger. We were releasing electro records, but also techno records. I got another here that we’re going to play later that was like a completely different direction, but all very valuable to me and very dear.

But all of a sudden, this and other records in that era are being picked out by the club scene and popular DJs and by the fresh ink press, as well. So all of a sudden, it became... the whole electro thing became some kind of revival thing, and it became some kind of fashion. Which was kind of odd, because fashion is the last thing we wanted to be and that we were attracted to with the techno music that we liked. So we were kind of pulled into a whole scene that we never used to be part of.

This was one of the big hits in that time. This one, “Hand to Phone,” I-f with “Space Invaders [Are Smoking Grass]” had a big hit. Dexter, “I Don’t Care”; Alden Tyrell, “Love Explosion”; and a couple of other things. All records from our crew, our scene, became kind of gold hits. And Miss Kittin & the Hacker from Munich, they had their big hit. It was kind of that era.

Lauren Martin

Did you find that record shops who perhaps hadn’t really picked up on what you were doing with electro had started because of big records like this, coming to you and going, “Do you have more of this stuff?” Like, did it change the conversations that you were having with other record shops in Europe or further abroad?

Serge

Yeah, well, not... Yeah, kind of. But also the record label. I saw a lot of record labels start putting out music that sounded like this. Because you could make money with selling records, so they thought was, “If this is selling, we can make another good record that sounds like this and just sell equal numbers.” And it did get a commercial kind of twist, a commercial flavor around it. We were talking with major record companies who were interested in doing a full-length album by Dexter, or I-f, or Alden Tyrell, or ADULT. So yeah, things became slightly different than they were.

Lauren Martin

You said you were approached by major labels to put out albums from these other artists. What was your reaction, because it seems like Clone has very much always been its own creature. How did you navigate that thing?

Serge

Well, I always tried to stay true to the thing that I liked and to what felt good. Also, most of the artists I’m working with had the same kind of thing, and we stayed true to our own aesthetics and ethics as well. And kept doing what we enjoyed doing, and that was making music and releasing and playing music that we liked. And this whole electroclash kind of thing did put us in a lot of spotlights. And all of a sudden, I was playing fashion parties with models and coke and whatever was going on in those parties that before we only knew from movies.

All of a sudden, we were in between those parties, but it felt kind of odd. And so I always kept a distance from that whole electroclash scene. And there were a lot of record companies that became very popular, like Gigolo Records. They’ve completely jumped on that whole movement and started putting out more records that sounded like things that were a hit. And so I always kepy my distance from that and just kept doing what I liked.

Lauren Martin

Around that time, then, what were you doing that was a slight counter to that narrative? What else were you doing? Because this was a time when Clone started to really diverge from putting out kind of smoother, almost like disco style things. Italo disco going on at roughly the same time.

Serge

That was more or less the same time that the Italo disco thing also came back. Guys like Legowelt, we got his record here, was making tracks that had some electro, Italo disco influences. But we played everything that we liked, so we played Afrika Bambaataa at an acid squat party and we played obscure electronic disco at those parties as well. So a lot of things were going all together on the same night. It was still kind of versatile.

And, of course, there were parties were you only played banging acid stuff. But even there you played some electro in between or some crazy stuff in between, some Drexciya. So it was always kind of versatile. It was never the whole night, just straight-on Berghain kind of techno. Like, we wonder what you got now in Berghain, the whole night, same sound. You don’t even know if it’s one o’clock or six or 10 in the morning.

Lauren Martin

I think that’s part of the fun, though, right?

Serge

It was always boring to me. During the night, you always... The energy goes up and down. So if you come in, you are in a different mood and different energy than at 6 AM, and at 10 AM it’s again a different mood. So if the music goes on in a straight line, and... So we perfectly could play all those different styles and things on a certain night. And those electroclash parties, it was the whole night only hits and chart stuff and popular music. And at that time, we released house records that were completely different than, people didn’t truly understand. “Oh, but yeah, you are the guys from the obscure electro stuff,” or, “Why do you put out house music?” Well, just because we like it.

Lauren Martin

Speaking of things you like, let’s go back to Detroit and talk about... Maybe a defining feature of Clone is not only the music that you’ve released yourselves, but the music that you’ve sought out and reissued. And that’s been a huge part of what you’ve done. Can we listen to Detroit in Effect?

Serge

Yeah, yeah. Of course, yeah. Yeah, that’s also quite early. That was like ’86, ’87, or ’96, ’97.

Lauren Martin

This Detroit in Effect record originally came out in ’97 on Detroit label, is it MAP or MEP?

Serge

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

And then you re-released it on Clone in 2003. So this is the year after the Soulwax album that put out ADULT. in the mix.

Serge

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

So this is like a year apart, this has all happening.

Serge

Yeah. OK. You know your facts.

Lauren Martin

Yes, that’s my job.

Serge

Well done. Good. I don’t know which side it is, because it’s the test pressing. So I’ll have to gamble if it’s this side or the other one.

(music: Detroit in Effect – unknown track)

Lauren Martin

So what were we just listening to there?

Serge

That’s Detroit in Effect, The Men You’ll Never See. And this record came in... I recently did a small post about this, actually about this record on my Facebook. It came out via import. We never heard it before. So we just order records from the list from the US distributors. And once a week, once every two weeks, we got a US import delivery. And these here records on there, MAP Records, Detroit in Effect, The Men You’ll Never See. So we had no idea, but it sounds kind of cool, so I ordered probably five copies because we had to be careful, otherwise it did cost me money. At that time, we didn’t have much, and five copies in my small shop was still quite a lot.

I did receive a box with these records in it. I always was excited opening the US imports. So I opened it and then I heard this for the first time. I was like, “Whoa.” That’s stuff I don’t hear here. No one is making this kind of stuff in Europe. And this was like classic stuff, but still different than a lot of things being made. It has some reference to “Cosmic Cars” by Cybotron. So these guys knew the classics, but it sounded different.

It was fast. It was more like techno. I also liked the vocals. The Men You’ll Never See, which was making techno tracks by guys who were not in the limelight, so not in the spotlights. So these guys made a tune that kind of fit into the whole vibe that we liked. And not the electroclash thing going on in that time at popular fashion parties, but completely the opposite. These guys made music that they liked. And we became friends.

ADULT. made a remix, Electronome, I-f, so I think that was the first license I did for the label. Signing music that was out before and remix it, that was like the first project I did. Well, I still like it a lot.

Lauren Martin

The reissues that Clone has done, like this one and many, many, many others... How much of a conscious decision do you make with finding these older electro records and bringing them into the fore and putting them out for popular – well, popular-ish – consumption again? Is this in a kind of sense a way to, not only just let people hear music, but to create a narrative of electro that you can control and you think is of a quality that deserves to be heard?

Serge

There’s records that we couldn’t find and that were important. So I thought I should make them available again, because it’s records that I used to play a lot, and that I thought were important records and very good records that people should know about and that are part of the whole culture and about the whole history of house and techno music. For me, it’s always the same. House and techno, electro, it’s just one thing. I never divided it much.

So we started making contacts with people. This was like one of the first things. But then I thought, “OK, maybe we should do more official and make like a label focusing on reissues of tracks that are classics that are important.” So we started with Mike Dunn, MDIII – “Face the Nation.” A couple of, they call it, disco releases. And slowly we had a reissue where we were repressing, remastering, and re-releasing old house and techno records. And electro, as well.

Lauren Martin

Staying in Detroit, as we mentioned a couple of times before – we won’t keep people holding on any longer – the relationship that you’ve built up with Drexciya over the years has been of paramount importance to the history of Clone. You released the Grava 4 album in 2004, and it was the first time it had been released... No, it wasn’t 2004.

Serge

I don’t know the date.

Lauren Martin

OK, hang on.

Serge

Probably like 2002. I actually don’t know.

Lauren Martin

It would’ve been 2002, because that was the same year that James Stinson passed away.

Serge

Yeah, must be. Yeah.

Lauren Martin

When you decided to have a relationship with Drexciya and build that up and release those records, how did you start that conversation? Did you approach the duo and say that you wanted to do this? Where did this interest come from?

Serge

I have to think. It was a small network, so we knew people in Detroit. We were friends with others who were making records, so it was a small network. Also people in Glasgow, people in Italy, in Rome mainly, Germany, Detroit, Miami. And it was just a small network. The Internet got a role in that, as well, because it was also around the era that the Internet became more accessible and more mainstream. So a lot of artists and people had their own website. I don’t know what the first contact was, or how that did go. I remember the first time I spoke to him, but I think it probably was an email after he noticed our website or something.

I don’t know how the first contact was made, and then he offered new music. I was already working with ADULT. and a couple of other people, so they already knew about Clone Records. We invited some people coming over, so they knew about us. Drexciya guys knew that we were doing a label. And he wanted to release some music, and he approached me. And that’s how we made our first deals.

Lauren Martin

What kind of conversations did you have with Drexciya about maintaining the integrity of their narrative, and their ideas, and their aesthetic?

Serge

Not.

Lauren Martin

None?

Serge

Not.

Lauren Martin

Was it just kind of like an unspoken rule that you would completely honor everything that they gave you, or did you discuss –

Serge

Well, it was just part of the whole thing. It was anonymous. Nobody knew who was behind it. And it was like that record, The Men You’ll Never See. And in those years, there was almost no fame. You could become famous if you were like Derrick May, Kevin Saunderson. But most people only knew the music. Nowadays, it’s the other way around. You know the people, but you don’t know what kind of music they make. So you know, for example, Peggy Gou. I knew Peggy Gou from the Internet, Facebook, because she showed up in my timeline.

I saw, before I knew who she was, and I had no idea what kind of music she was playing and what kind of records she made. But I saw her in my timeline a couple of times, passing, coming by. And I knew about Peggy Gou, but I had no idea what she was doing. Back then, it was completely the other way around. Everyone knew “Cosmic Cars” by Cybotron. Everyone knew all the Model 500, but no one knew Juan Atkins. Nobody knew who was behind Detroit in Effect. Nobody knew who was behind Drexciya. Underground Resistance was a bit more known.

But you all knew the records. So it was the other way around. And there was no discussion about talking who made those records. It was kind of obscure. And I think only we kind of followed what he was doing. So if he spoke about a new project, or I think he came out in public with his Seven Storms that he was going to release, seven full-length albums. So there was information that he gave to the outside world. So that was the information we had that we also shared. But we never shared who he was or what he was doing, what kind of job he had or whatever. It wasn’t all important.

Lauren Martin

When you released the Grava 4 album, that was you being given music and you released it on good faith. But the later years with classic cuts between 2011 and 2014, when you reissued Drexciya records, but you did have a much more hands-on time with those records because a lot of them were remastered, correct?

Serge

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

Yeah.

Serge

Yeah, but you also had to do a lot of work with the graphic art. The business was not like friends coming in the record shop and giving you a tape. It was like a proper label already. There was money involved. I mean, we had to pay a large advance for that, as well. And we had to make promotion. We had to sell a certain amount of copies to make it worth doing. So it was like more professional already in those years. We were talking with major record companies with those ADULT. things and making deals and getting a lot of licenses, so the business was already mature. So the question was? Oh yeah, yeah. No, the Grava 4 only came in the years after that. Grava 4 was first, then we did another one, Lab Rat XL. We were talking to other guys about reissuing stuff, but also releasing new music from other people from Detroit and Miami and all over the world. And it was like a regular, kind of regular label business thing.

Lauren Martin

There’s someone that’s not here with us whose also really important to the integral story of Clone, that’s Alden Tyrell.

Serge

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

And I think we should speak about him.

Serge

Yes, of course.

Lauren Martin

Who is Alden Tyrell? For those who may not be so familiar.

Serge

Alden Tyrell is a friend of mine, we became friends through the record shop. He came in with a friend of his, well just a regular customer. We did meet at parties and stuff like that. And then I think he gave me a tape, or a friend of his gave me a tape with music he was making. He had all of this good stuff, so like a lot of those stories, we started talking with him and we came to our first record that he did put out. There was, I think the EP was called Obsession or the track on there was “Obsession.” But he was doing a lot of electro stuff; he was a very talented producer. He was doing very good electro stuff, he was doing some disco stuff. But he actually was like a hip-hop guy. He was like very much into hip-hop and he looked like a hip-hop guy, he was behaving like a hip-hop guy.

Lauren Martin

What do you look like when you met him, how did he look like a hip-hop guy?

Serge

You know, Air Jordans and baggy trousers and you know, bit of...

Lauren Martin

So not electroclash at all?

Serge

Not electroclash at all, no. No. But nobody was like... what’s electroclash? Nobody was like, Danny Legowelt was complete different. I was like more a surfer kind of guy. I-f was I-f and the other guys... That was also an important part of our scene, the guys in the north part of Holland, on the coastal part there, with Cosmic Force. So we were like all completely different characters.

But we got along because of the music. We had the same taste and the same aesthetics there. So Alden Tyrell, we became friends. We put out a couple of records and he’s really like a producer kind of guy, doing really good stuff. At some point we got a couple of records that also was in that timeframe with the electroclash, and he was doing a lot of different things. We also shared a love for the modern electronics, like Autechre, Aphex Twin, that kind of stuff.

That’s something we are not talking about here, but there was also this proper techno stuff, and we were always looking forward to what was coming next. And that was for us, the last level in techno music, Autechre, Aphex Twin. The latest electronical developments, the latest software mix came along. So that was like the last frontier for us for electronic music. And Alden Tyrell was very skilled and very talented. A lot of really good records, very high-tech but on the other side he was the most kind of retro kind of things. But because he was so skilled in the production side, he started doing mastering for us. And that’s the thing that you told me before that you wanted to talk about in correlation to the Drexciya thing.

Lauren Martin

So, Alden Tyrell was kind of brought into the Clone way of doing things and was mastering and engineering records including the Sea Dweller CDs from Drexciya that you did on Clone Classic Cuts from 2011-2014.

Serge

Yep.

Lauren Martin

And I kind of want to give people a sense of, when people may have potentially heard Drexciya on vinyl for the first time in their own hands, there’s a very particular sound that Clone worked on though Alden Tyrell to make Drexciya sound the way they did for these reissues.

But what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna play the same track from the original, from The Quest and then play the Clone remaster of it, so you can get a sense of the role that Clone plays in, not just putting the music out there in our hands, but actually affecting the very, like, fabric of the tracks. So what’s the track we’re gonna to compare and contrast?

Serge

I think you have “Red Hills of Lardossa.”

Lauren Martin

I do have the “Red Hills of Lardossa.” Let me just check if I have the right one, yeah. So what we are going to do is play both. Shall we play the older version first?

Serge

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

Yeah, so this is from The Quest.

(music: Drexciya – “Red Hills of Lardossa” (original vinyl release and Clone reissue versions))

So I hope you got a sense of that. Those two different sounds, those tracks. Tell us a little more what Alden Tyrell was doing with these remasters and getting his hands on these tracks. How did the process work, and what was the thinking behind Clone going in and touching this music?

Serge

Well, I think I have to add, that’s played from the computer. I think it’s an MP3, so there is some difference. The difference is very big now. I think it’s less of a big difference if you played both vinyls, but that was a huge difference. It’s a little exaggerated with these two, but yeah, you can hear more space and more balance in the sound here. There are a couple of reasons. That has been mastered in Detroit, I think Ron Murphy did cut those, and he had a special way of mastering. We had the master tapes from all these tracks, so we just mastered it in a way we should do it now, we will do it nowadays. We heard a lot of things in the music that we didn’t hear before from the old records, so we thought, OK, if we are gonna reissue them, we should not present them the way they use to come out, like the original UR releases.

Those UR releases are like magical records to us. The whole concept, the whole artwork thing, the whole story around the music. Also how they’d been mastered by Ron Murphy, because he got like certain aesthetics, he got a certain vision in the mastering as well. So we thought, well we cannot compete it or compare it with that. We should bring it in another context. So we just made a whole new playlist. We made four different releases out of the whole collection. The music got remastered, and we also want the people to hear the parts they couldn’t hear on the original releases. Or at least master them in a different way, so you could listen to them in probably the way they had been heard in the studio while being made. Because this is what you could hear in the studio when it was being made and not with Ron Murphy’s vision on it. So that’s a little bit what we wanted to do with new mastering and how we want to present it.

Lauren Martin

When you say there are certain things on these Drexciya tracks that were not being heard, what specifically do you mean? Could you give us an example of how Ron Murphy’s work may have been changed, or I’m not sure. I think it would be great if you could give us examples, because to go in and change someone’s record is quite a fundamental thing. To bring certain things to the form and tone certain things down.

Serge

It is. Yeah, it is. But that’s also the thing with the mastering in Detroit from Ron Murphy. He was mastering things so you could play it very loud, and things had a certain wow edge to it. That’s also, I mean that’s part of the charm of it as well. But since we were doing reissues, we thought OK, we shouldn’t make it sound like those. We should make them sound as they sound in the studio, and just try to make them sound properly and including the low end and some mid freq, mid things that you normally got, like, pressed together so you could hear a couple of parts, you know small frequencies or things that were hidden in those Ron Murphy mastered versions.

That’s what Alden Tyrell did; he did a good job I think. We did put a lot of time in it, especially Alden Tyrell put a lot of time in the mastering. It was a lot of work because it was all from the original tapes and multi tracks and well, at the end we had the full catalog reissued in a new sounding quality.

Lauren Martin

Do you feel a sense of responsibility when you’re doing these remastered works? Do you feel that, even if you’re able to get your hands on those tapes, is it something you fundamentally should do? If that makes sense.

Serge

Well, we had to make some couple of choices and we tried to do it, what felt best to us. We also discuss with a couple of people who were involved and we thought we shouldn’t reissue them as original UR releases or as the original version or the original track listing. So we tried, we tried to create a different way of listening to Drexciya. To keep the original ones, original ones intact, because those records, we can’t touch them. We don’t want to touch them, that’s like all the props are going, all the kudos is going to Mike Banks for that and also the guys making the music. So we tried to create a new context and, well...

Lauren Martin

And who is that new context for, do you think? Is this for people buy Clone records that don’t physically don’t want these old records?

Serge

Also for our self. Because we always look what we like and what we would like see, would like to do. And if you want to listen to Drexciya in a different way, I mean otherwise we would play the original records. So we want to have different way we also could listen and play them. That’s what we had in mind. And also, what would be a good reason for people to buy these records, even if you have a couple of the originals? So, it’s a very good reason having the original ones and the reissues if you’re really into Drexciya. We tried to figure out what best thing was to do and we came to this, to present the music in a clean, clear way without the whole story around it. Because that’s the whole legacy with Drexciya. We tried to keep that intact and just give her kind of, like maybe a little bit like, like I did with the first release, just give numbers to the tracks and let music do the talking and not give the whole image around it, because that was already done before by others.

Lauren Martin

So speaking of Alden Tyrell’s work, why don’t we listen to one of his own tracks?

Serge

Yes.

Lauren Martin

Let’s do that.

Serge

Yeah.

Lauren Martin

What have we brought? We’re just gonna have a listen.

Serge

Well, I don’t know how much time we’ve got left, we could do a disco one. We got plenty of time left?

Lauren Martin

It will be fine.

Serge

Yeah?

Lauren Martin

This is fun.

Serge

’Cause there is one record I really want to play, because I know you like the disco thing.

Lauren Martin

I’ll make a concession. I’d be good, so people can hear Alden Tyrell’s work as a producer. That’s part of the Clone family, not just as his mastering work on other people’s records. So, what is this one?

Serge

Yeah, I mean. If I play this, you will hear his music, he’s always sounding massive. He’s doing a lot of techno stuff now, because he’s always moving forward and doesn’t want to repeat too much the same kind of thing. And so he has been doing a lot of disco, kind of really powerful disco stuff before and that’s a lot of people know him of. This is probably one of my favorite tracks of that “Disco Lunar Module.”

(music: Alden Tyrell – “Disco Lunar Module”)

This one was really heavy and dark. But in same time, he was also doing almost kitschy, campy kind of stuff, even those it wasn’t meant to be camp. I don’t think that’s the right word I picked. But especially knowing, knowing he was kind of hip-hop guy, going to all the early hip-hop shows in Holland and producing really, really heavy beats and really cool stuff, he was also doing this kind of stuff.

(music: Alden Tyrell – unknown track)

So it’s a little schizophrenic almost, being a hip-hop guy, wearing the latest, coolest Air Jordans and on the same side, making Italo disco kind of stuff. But that’s a little bit the thing that we all have. We are playing like really obscure electro stuff, but also really warm house records by Larry Heard. It’s not like, a scene or a genre or a style of thing that we belong to. It’s not like that you are belonging to a group. It was just about music. If it sounded good, it sounded good. Well, this sounded good. He was just having fun in the studio making disco tracks and he came to us with a tape, “Hey, I made some disco tracks.” “Wow, that’s cool. What’s that?” “Yeah, track’s I made.” “Wow, did you make that? I mean you made those really heavy hip-hop tracks and electro tunes.”

Well, that’s a little bit, the whole vibe we had in that time and actually still we try to maintain and stay true.

Lauren Martin

Speaking of staying true, in 2009 you – maybe you weren’t fed up, I don’t know what you are thinking might have been – but you actually stopped doing Clone for a short period of time. You basically put out the announcement that Clone’s done for now and we were quite shocked. And then you didn’t stay done for very long, what happened when you came back with Clone in 2009, 2010?

Serge

Yeah it was, I don’t know. It was probably like a record label mid-life crisis kind of thing or something. It was a moment where you had, OK well, we’re doing so many different things. It’s kind of, almost – well, I use the term schizophrenic. It didn’t make sense to a lot of people. How can you put out this Italo disco tune, very, you know, playful and catchy, and Drexciya at the same time? What’s the link in that?

A lot of people didn’t see the link. And we became older, but it was like a whole new generation coming into the music scene and interested in music. I felt that there was some disconnection, I couldn’t make the connection with them. I was thinking, what am I doing, I put out really good Scott Grooves record but people are, “Oh, are you putting out house stuff”?

A lot of customers came in because of Drexciya or because of Alden Tyrell or because of Duplex or some Detroit techno records we were putting out. So it’s not like... you know there were a lot of expectations from people from outside and you feel that you don’t match the expectations they have.

On one side, you don’t really care but on the other side, you always hear that in the shop. “Oh, new Clone, but why is that a house record? Because I thought you guys are an electro label.” So we got like a stamp on it that we were an electro label and we were never. We never tried to be an electro label, and the guys I was working with were just doing whatever they liked and we played whatever we liked. And still now, I’m not an electro DJ, I’m not a house DJ, I’m not a techno DJ. I just play whatever I like.

Also from a DJ perspective, at my agent’s office, “Yeah, but you have to make a choice, become a house DJ or just play techno.” I can’t, because I like everything. And I think during the whole night, you can start with house stuff and end up with 140 BPM techno stuff or whatever. So, I can split it up myself as a DJ. I can... Well, I could make different artists’ names and play house on that part or play techno with that, alias, or how do you say it? Live with that name.

But I felt that I had to change something with the label because I thought, at least I felt, that I couldn’t get deep enough into certain sounds. I couldn’t release music from really unknown artists who were doing like really cool stuff, but didn’t match the standard that we set for ourselves, because the label did become a professional label, whatever professional is. But a proper record label and things had to sound like proper as well. And then I got this really cool demo, and I thought, “Wow, but if I put that out, then I don’t know what people will think of it.” So I was starting to think in that way and I didn’t like it. I wanted the label to be pure and just release music that I like, even if it’s like really soft, melodic house or very introvert or whatever. So I thought, “OK, just stop and think of ways how to do it again, or maybe another way or maybe not at all. Maybe stop it all.”

We kind of quit the whole operation, the label, how we were doing it. And in that time, we thought – well, I thought – of ways, how I could release those records of young artists again, and new producers, and young talented people who were doing different things and give them a platform where I could release their music. Even though they were not sounding like Alden Tyrell and didn’t have the production skills, so maybe find a way to get those records out. I thought the best way was sub-labels. Like make this small label more house-orientated, label more electro-orientated, a label for all the guys from the local scene and a techno label.

They gave me a lot of freedom again to put out different stuff that was even more diverse. I thought it made it a little bit more understandable for the younger generations, who were just listening to techno stuff and they maybe didn’t listen to Larry Heard. Maybe they didn’t discover Larry Heard yet. But if you listen to techno music, or let’s say you buy the Clone Basement Series because you like the straight-on techno stuff little more, at some point you will discover Larry Heard, I’m sure. At some point. But it doesn’t match up on one label, at least not on the way we were doing it.

Lauren Martin

So how many of these sub-labels do you think you have by now? Do you even know?

Serge

Oh, I never counted. Probably 15 or something like that? Yeah. Some only have like two, three records, and others are like up to 30 or something now. Before now, probably the Clone Royal Oak series got like 42 records now. Yeah.

Lauren Martin

It’s actually really appropriate perhaps then that, as a DJ, you felt so pulled in so many directions that you don’t want to use different aliases for different kinds of sets. So instead of changing yourself as a DJ, you just mimicked your DJ interest back into the label, which is exactly how you started it, which is a DJ just wanting to play music that you liked and couldn’t get your hands on.

Serge

Yeah, totally, yeah. But it’s confusing for a lot of people. Like I said my booking agent said, “Wow, you should just stick to this or just stick to that.” And a lot of DJs have that, once you get to a certain level. You get booked for main stages, they expect you to play a certain thing. I always try to fight it and just, you know, play whatever I like to play.

Lauren Martin

Well, Clone has been fighting the good fight all this time. So, Serge, I want to thank you for your time today.

Serge

Thanks. [applause]