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IDC is the London-based DJ / Producer whose imaginative, dance-friendly bootlegs include Hey Mug – the unlikely yet sublime mix-
up of Outkast's "Hey Ya" and the Streets’ "Don't Mug Yourself". His DJ sets and original material, meanwhile, fill floors from
Budapest to Barcelona, which is precisely where we catch up with him (albeit over the internet!). Fans of “dancefloor rock’n’roll”
will get to see IDC in the flesh on Easter Sunday, when he’ll be working Shoreditch’s Bar Music Hall – surely the coolest way to
dance off your Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.
How did you get started as a DJ?
Just for fun, I started a club on Monday nights on London’s Oxford street with a friend, basically to see if anyone else would like the
stuff I wanted to hear in a club myself. At the time I was going to dance clubs with one lot of friends and rock/indie clubs with others
and wanted to have it all in one place and see what would happen.
You’re in Barcelona at the moment - what are you doing there?
I’m lucky enough to be a regular at the best club in Europe, the three-thousand plus capacity Razzmatazz. It has five rooms all inter-
connected and a fantastic mix of styles. Its the nexus of Barcelonas music scene and there’s some very interesting things
happening here. The crowds are just brilliant - no hassles. Everyone’s there to enjoy themselves and it’s super-friendly.
Where’s your favourite place to play?
Definitely Razzmatazz, its fantastic to get to visit Barcelona so often. In the UK The Ghetto in London for Nagnagnag and The Cock,
Stealth in Nottingham and Ocean Rooms in Brighton is a great place too.
Tell us about your best and worst DJing experiences.
Best is every time you’re excited about a new track youve made and it gets a crowd dancing. Playing on New Year’s Eve is always
good because it solves the problem of what youre going to do with yourself! I haven’t really had a worst because the dates I play
are quite targeted at crowds and clubs who will most likely be open to what I do, so there haven’t been riots of discontent or
anything (yet).
Tell us how your bootlegs evolve do both tracks have to be in the same key, for example, or do you save a track up until you
find its perfect partner?
It’s just that thing where you get a tune in your head and think it sounds like something else and then you have a listen and more
often than not they’re are in the same key anyway. A really obvious one is The Glimmers Cassette and Papa’s Got A Brand New
Pigbag. You can get away with pitch shifting a semitone or two to match thing up depending on how much vocal is involved. Other
times you might mix a couple of tunes in a DJ set and they just work so well together that its a few easy steps to
actually merge them into a new thing. Thats the idea of IDC DJ sets - three hours of music squeezed into 90 minutes!
Theres a real sense of irreverence and fun in your bootlegs. Do you have to respect an artist’s work in order to use it?
I guess I only use tracks I like already to muck about with, otherwise I wouldnt have them in the first place. I guess if you really
respected something you wouldnt want to alter it in anyway, but as you say, it’s kind of meant to be a fun thing.
I know Andre 3000 and others have been supportive about you using their stuff - Have you encountered any legal problems
along the way?
The only thing I’ve had was an email from BMG about a Kasabian track hooked up with Happy Mondays, asking me to take it
offline. I think that was mainly because they had some semi-official mash-up of another track coming out a few weeks later. I think
if people are selling them, on vinyl or CDRs or whatever, you should expect to raise some heckles, but if you’re just making them
available for download for free I don’t think many artists have a problem with it.
What about your own productions – you’ve had a few releases out in the last couple of years. Do you have plans for any more?
I’ve had two singles of original material out over the past eighteen months or so - Scratch and Payola. It’s cool because there’s
been a really good range of support for them across the board from indie radio DJs like Steve Lamaqc on Radio One and John
Kennedy on XFM, through to the dance side of things with Rob Da Bank, Mark Moore and top reviews in the dance press. The third
single is just being recorded for an early summer release with an album to follow at the end of the year. Remix-wise I've just been
asked to work on Radio 4's new single which is great as they're a band i really love.
Who else’s work are you playing at the moment?
About 90 per cent of IDC sets are own-made remixes or bootleg things, but obviously there’s always some tracks that you want to
play on their own. at the moment Adam Freelands Doors track, Simians Go Team remix, usually any new DFA remix, Tiga stuff,
Benni Benassi mixes.
How do you chill out after a gig?
The opposite! Normally make up for lost drinking time...
SomaSomaScene is very much about all aspects of art in life. What artists in other fields do you admire?
Living - Charlie Kaufman, Larry David, Robert Anton Wilson, David Bailey, Terence Conran, Michael Horsham.
Dead - Orson Wells, Mrs Mills, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Interview by Mark Smith
Just for fun, I started a club on Monday nights on London’s Oxford street with a friend, basically to see if anyone else would like the
stuff I wanted to hear in a club myself. At the time I was going to dance clubs with one lot of friends and rock/indie clubs with others
and wanted to have it all in one place and see what would happen.
You’re in Barcelona at the moment - what are you doing there?
I’m lucky enough to be a regular at the best club in Europe, the three-thousand plus capacity Razzmatazz. It has five rooms all inter-
connected and a fantastic mix of styles. Its the nexus of Barcelonas music scene and there’s some very interesting things
happening here. The crowds are just brilliant - no hassles. Everyone’s there to enjoy themselves and it’s super-friendly.
Where’s your favourite place to play?
Definitely Razzmatazz, its fantastic to get to visit Barcelona so often. In the UK The Ghetto in London for Nagnagnag and The Cock,
Stealth in Nottingham and Ocean Rooms in Brighton is a great place too.
Tell us about your best and worst DJing experiences.
Best is every time you’re excited about a new track youve made and it gets a crowd dancing. Playing on New Year’s Eve is always
good because it solves the problem of what youre going to do with yourself! I haven’t really had a worst because the dates I play
are quite targeted at crowds and clubs who will most likely be open to what I do, so there haven’t been riots of discontent or
anything (yet).
Tell us how your bootlegs evolve do both tracks have to be in the same key, for example, or do you save a track up until you
find its perfect partner?
It’s just that thing where you get a tune in your head and think it sounds like something else and then you have a listen and more
often than not they’re are in the same key anyway. A really obvious one is The Glimmers Cassette and Papa’s Got A Brand New
Pigbag. You can get away with pitch shifting a semitone or two to match thing up depending on how much vocal is involved. Other
times you might mix a couple of tunes in a DJ set and they just work so well together that its a few easy steps to
actually merge them into a new thing. Thats the idea of IDC DJ sets - three hours of music squeezed into 90 minutes!
Theres a real sense of irreverence and fun in your bootlegs. Do you have to respect an artist’s work in order to use it?
I guess I only use tracks I like already to muck about with, otherwise I wouldnt have them in the first place. I guess if you really
respected something you wouldnt want to alter it in anyway, but as you say, it’s kind of meant to be a fun thing.
I know Andre 3000 and others have been supportive about you using their stuff - Have you encountered any legal problems
along the way?
The only thing I’ve had was an email from BMG about a Kasabian track hooked up with Happy Mondays, asking me to take it
offline. I think that was mainly because they had some semi-official mash-up of another track coming out a few weeks later. I think
if people are selling them, on vinyl or CDRs or whatever, you should expect to raise some heckles, but if you’re just making them
available for download for free I don’t think many artists have a problem with it.
What about your own productions – you’ve had a few releases out in the last couple of years. Do you have plans for any more?
I’ve had two singles of original material out over the past eighteen months or so - Scratch and Payola. It’s cool because there’s
been a really good range of support for them across the board from indie radio DJs like Steve Lamaqc on Radio One and John
Kennedy on XFM, through to the dance side of things with Rob Da Bank, Mark Moore and top reviews in the dance press. The third
single is just being recorded for an early summer release with an album to follow at the end of the year. Remix-wise I've just been
asked to work on Radio 4's new single which is great as they're a band i really love.
Who else’s work are you playing at the moment?
About 90 per cent of IDC sets are own-made remixes or bootleg things, but obviously there’s always some tracks that you want to
play on their own. at the moment Adam Freelands Doors track, Simians Go Team remix, usually any new DFA remix, Tiga stuff,
Benni Benassi mixes.
How do you chill out after a gig?
The opposite! Normally make up for lost drinking time...
SomaSomaScene is very much about all aspects of art in life. What artists in other fields do you admire?
Living - Charlie Kaufman, Larry David, Robert Anton Wilson, David Bailey, Terence Conran, Michael Horsham.
Dead - Orson Wells, Mrs Mills, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Interview by Mark Smith
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