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Posted: 05/02/2005
Photography: Low Tek and Leeanne Eberhard
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It’s a hot, sunny Thursday afternoon in March during Miami's Winter Music Conference 2005 and Dutch music producer, Tom Holkenborg or JunkieXL, is lounging in front of the swank Victor Hotel sipping his cappuccino from a teeny white china cup on the patio. He’s leaning back in a plushy white couch while he has a friendly chat with yet another reporter for the week. To look at him, the word “artist” comes to mind instantly. What his art may be, the droves of people walking down the sandy sidewalk may not know, but there’s an aura of creativity and spontaneity all around him. You sense that this is a person full of ideas and perhaps, surprises. For the moment, he’s dressed in a pink t-shirt with a pair of stenciled grey lips on the chest, just as if some beach giantess had kissed him there. He’s wearing fresh summery white slacks and he’s almost as much Art Deco as the buildings around him. Tall, fair and freckled, he’s smiling at anyone who comes up to him and he seems happy and content and ready for anything. He was certainly ready for me as he greeted me with a warm hug and said, “Let’s chat…”
At 4:30 pm of the same day JunkieXL found himself sitting on a panel of what the conference has called "The Brains behind the Beats! Meet the wizards of groove manipulation as they discuss the alchemy of turning beats into gold.” Gold indeed! Along with JunkieXL, this panel consisted of master producers like Dave Dresden and Josh Gabriel, Christopher Lawrence and Jesse Saunders, George Acosta and Noel Sanger, plus more. In a standing room only, fully attended conference, young and enthusiastic up and comers came to hear what the masters had to tell them. They came to learn.
Later on Saturday, March 26th, at Ultra Festival 2005, JunkieXL performed for more than 50,000 fans on the Main Stage #1, the Amphitheatre, as one of the main attractions. His performance was brilliant, energetic and just as crafty as his personality. You could only come away from his performance thinking, “now THAT WAS MUSIC for the masses!”
Where did the concept of internet Radio JunkieXL come from?
Since I was really young I was obsessed by radio. I loved the idea of conceptual albums. Albums like Dark Side of the Moon, Tommy, The Wall, old albums, even Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and the great Stones album, Slave to the Rhythm. I came up with the idea of making three albums: 3pm, 3am, 7am. The idea of the 3pm album was my personal view of what daytime radio could be - cool underground tracks with good vocals. The 3am album would be an album that is very club orientated. My vision of what nighttime music would be. The 7am had two parts: one was called “Still in a Club” and the other was called “Finally Home.” It ended up being a lot of work. All together it’s 270 minutes of music and it’s a bulk of work that took me 2 ½ to 3 years to do. For the 3pm album I had to approach so many different vocalists. I wanted to work with my old heroes so I got Gary Numan, Chuck D, Robert Smith, Dave Gahan, I got them all and I was so proud.
How did you do that?
Well, you just ask them and then they say, “send me your tracks.” They listen to the track and either they do it or they don’t. I had two people that didn’t want to do it, not because they didn’t like it, but because they didn’t know what to do. That happens. The 3am part was easy. The 7am was a lot of chilled out music and heavier music for when you’re banging it out seven in the morning.
How did your interactive website (www.radiojxl.com) come together to compliment the album?
I liked the idea of the multimedia experience of music and I think that’s also where we were heading. When I buy a product, a DVD or a game or anything else, the experience becomes a combination of the movie or game and what kind of music you’re listening to, it’s completely interactive. A movie can turn into a game; a game can turn into a movie. You can see that’s already happening with a lot of games out there. Starting the website is trying to make something interactive. With all the music on there, we started doing the broadcasts and we give quite a bit of information, tips and tricks for young producers and, of course, a message board.
It is a very exciting website to go to.
We try to keep it as alive as possible. It’s very difficult and it’s also costing a lot of money. That’s why we introduced the deal where you could download the entire 7am album, which is a one hundred and thirty minute album for a very low price. People who use the internet understand the value. You have to know what their position is and you have to approach them the right way. I think it’s not right to approach people like Madonna did, which is basically pointing out the finger and saying you’re a thief - you’re stealing my music - you’re taking money from me and all that kind of stuff. That doesn’t work because people think, come on, you’ve got a great house in LA and in France and in England, so what are you talking about? It’s not going to fly. I think it works better if you approach the average internet user from the standpoint that says that I understand where you’re coming from - you’re sixteen to twenty-four years old, go to college and study. You need a car, you need a cell phone, but life is expensive. If you have to choose between putting $20 to $40 down for music or you can go out and buy some new sneakers, the choice is easily made if you can find music on the net for free. If you approach people this way and tell them, “hey, I have this website and I’ll give you so much music for free. I’ll give you the artwork. I’ll give you a lot of other tools, but you have to understand I can’t continue doing this without any support because I’m not Madonna. I don’t have $70 mil to do this.” We started with $2.99 when we started the website. We ask them to become a lifetime member for $2.99 and you get everything for free. Later we bumped it up to $6.99 because of costs and the people are supporting it.
So the response has really been well?
Really good. That’s basically what we have done to support this site. Not that I have a million selling record but people responded really well to that. You get a different reaction than pointing your finger at people.
You have a unique philosophy on the marketing technology available to the music industry, more than quite a few of the producers we speak with.
I think it’s important in the times that we live in. You have to be creative. I understand this but you don’t have to expect it from any artist out there, that they know where to handle their music or that they know where to have technology. I do think, however, that it’s important that if you don’t have a vision yourself, you should surround yourself with people that do have it, the know-how; that’s just the way it is in the times we live in. You find a manager, or advisor, or agent that helps you out with the plan and the thinking. Will we do this or will we do that.
Are you very “techy” and what other mediums like the internet do you try to work in?
All my work is made on computers. The internet is a very important source for all my knowledge and all my ideas…a big inspiration as well from the internet radio sites. That’s also why I’ve focused on music for film and video games. If radio doesn’t want to play the music, those media will. The Matrix is a perfect example. There is a lot of underground electronic music on the soundtrack or in the music from The Chronicles of Riddick. There are millions of people in the world who watched them that would never buy an electronic record, normally. So movies have almost become the new radio for electronic music. The first video game that came out with massive electronic music was WipEout. When WipEout came out, many people finally got to hear the Chemical Brothers and Underworld for the first time. They had never heard of those bands before. They started buying their albums and that’s because of a game.
Tell us about your work on Forza Motorsport and other games you’ve worked on.
I did a whole score for that. I have a good relationship with Microsoft. I also did Quantum Redshift which was five years ago. Those are the two games that I actively did the whole score. Then there’s a long list of games that have Junkie XL in music in it. I always make a difference between licensed music and what we call scoring a video game.
Licensed is when they pay you a fee when they want to use your track.
And they pay a fee to my record company so it’s a set deal. You can’t really say I made music for that video game but they use a track from your album. This is different. The company comes to you and says we like your sound and we want you to make two half hours of music for this video game.
How does that work? Do they show you the game?
You get the storyboards, you get the scripts. Those companies don’t screw around. It’s not like a record company. For Microsoft, you have to deliver. The first day of the month you’ve got to deliver this, two weeks later you’ve got to deliver that.
Is it pretty rewarding for a music producer to work on a game?
For me it’s good. But then again, for the amount of work that goes into it, keep in mind that you’re tied down for three to six months to do that project.
But you’re getting to another market...
That’s why I did it. You tap into something completely different. I think it’s important and it’s where the future is for music.
Your music often defies genrefication. What do you think about being categorized?
First of all, you have to believe in what you stand for musically. Even when the scene goes down, you shouldn’t care any less about that. The problem is with the categorization of music and the names they put to it, well, it’s just amazing when it starts. We have in the last ten years, the best names in dance music we have ever had and they should just leave it alone. “Chemical Beats”, “Seventies Beats” and “Funky Beats” but in a hyped up, pumped up chemical world [laughing]. And what a f**king name for a genre - Trance! What a beautiful name. Shame that now if you use the word Trance, everybody thinks commercial.
My stuff has always been characterized as “progressive” but Progressive House is actually what I make, but not what the category stands for today. It’s Progressive House because it’s pushing the boundaries of dance music. In my opinion, it’s all Progressive House music in the original sense of the word. Now this has become a genre with all its Bedrock fundamentalists on the internet saying something is or is not progressive because it sounds like this or like that. Today, when a type of music gets labeled, it gets a fundamentalist following. The next thing you know they’re determining whether you as artists are still allowed to be in the category. That’s the real problem. They end up dragging the music down. So sometimes I just say to people that I just make MUSIC. It is music that I love and music that gets accepted by other people, I hope. My albums get reviewed under many different categories which I actually think is great.
What to you have in store for future work?
I’m basically going to continue what I’m doing now which is being an artist and on the other hand producing albums with artists. The third thing is working on scores for movies, video games, and commercials.
What kind of movies would you really like to work with?
I’ve been doing a lot of different stuff. It’s been a bit of learning curve be part of a big team and it’s not you on your own when you work on a movie. I did 40% of the music in Catwoman. With a movie like that, there’s a whole production group that has something to say about it and you need to be so flexible and at the same time also very creative. At the same time you still try to maintain you own sound. It’s very challenging.
How hard is that when you find out you’re not on the right track and they want you to change it?
I always have to go back ten to twenty times. Sometimes it doesn’t even have to do with the musical direction of it, it’s just little details. The movie gets changed around the day before it goes to print, they take out scenes, and they add scenes…And they keep coming back to the music production during those changes? They’ll come and say, “We’ve changed the ending; you’ve got to write something else.”
It must be very frustrating.
Actually, I find it challenging. Some people might find it frustrating but it’s just another challenge for me. It is an experience you don’t have with the record company. The record company comes back, even the first time I deliver a record and I think, "Don’t even go there - it’s my art!" But with the movie industry it’s quite different. You know that before you get yourself into it. That’s why a lot of electronic artists do not succeed in that world. You have to be very flexible and you have to have a team spirit. It’s not even about an ego thing but more about having enough creativity to actually do it. There are people out there that would take years and years to make one artist album and they put all their energy to do it. I do albums on the side or focus on one for two months and that’s it. I think it has to do with how many ideas you can generate in a day. I have thousands of them and I don’t have time to finish all my ideas. In the movie world, if one idea doesn’t work, you try something else and it’s still not working. Finally, the fourth or so time you try something, you think, “Damn, that’s awesome!”
Do you see the electronic music industry coming up with its own commercial image to be able to push itself further on its own merit?
In every music culture that lives underneath the big surface, that’s just the way things are. That’s the same thing for Hip-Hop, it’s the same for Punk music, and it’s the same for Metal. It’s like that for almost for every musical style out there. There will always be a big commercial artist or industry that picks up something from the underground to make it their own. They do something with it and then it gets exposed to other audiences. It’s the development that goes on in all music.
Do you see electronic music ever becoming the pop music of the future?
I don’t think electronic music will go as far as it would for Hip-Hop, for instance. Hip-Hop really took off commercially. The difference is that electronic dance music in the clubs isn’t for everybody out there. To be honest, most of the dance tracks are not appealing to enough listeners in the world. That’s why, for example, in South America, it took forever for dance music to come along. Those guys know their rhythms. They had already had dance music of their own and thought, “Just give me some cool samba beats.” Now, dance music has progressed into a completely different phase and is taking stuff from other underground genres. It is becoming more eclectic and more interesting. Electronic music is not made for masses even though Trance IS big in Europe, though never as big as U2 [laughs]. Unless somebody does something with it outside the culture, to get people to accept it more, it just won’t be for mass consumption.
THE JIVE INK BLOT- JunkieXL
Dogs or Cats? Cats
Wine or Beer? Wine
Salad or Steak? Salad
Surf or Ski? Ski
Star Wars or Hitchhiker’s Guide? Star Wars! |
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