Jay Daniel and FunkinEven: A Conversation

Although 4,000-odd miles removed by birth, Jay Daniel and FunkinEven find common ground in a dusty, off-kilter form of percussive house music. With Daniel’s visiting the continent for some gigs, we sat them down for a talk that touched on their contrasting creative process in the studio, demystifying Detroit and their favorite Madonna song. (They high-fived after agreeing on “Into the Groove.”)

Jay, one of my friends mentioned listening to your RBMA x Dimensions set was like walking on flippers over a cattle grid, but that was part of the thrill. You both employ rough and ready mixing styles, so I figured we should start there.

Jay Daniel

I’m trying to get better. I’m always trying to buy better records. My collection isn’t that big, but I like to know what all my records are doing.

Steve, you use quite quick cuts on your Apron radio show on NTS.

FunkinEven

That’s a radio show. At gigs I hold down mixes a lot longer than I do on radio. Radio’s not about mixing, it’s about playing tracks out. In terms of beatmatching, completely different things.

Jay Daniel

I think also, with radio shows, the selection is very important. It’s a good position for new music, you get the chance to actually say what the track is. It’s different. You’re more of a presenter when you’re on the radio. When you’re in the club, it’s more of a performance. When I play in a club, I like to challenge myself. I don’t like to play the same two records twice. Even if I play one record at the next show, I’m not going to mix it with the same record as the night before.

FunkinEven

A lot of records that Jay’s playing are actually very difficult to beatmatch together. You have to be constantly on the pitch. A lot of the records I play are fucked up in the same way.

When you guys make tracks, do you ever purposefully wonk it? Would you leave that kind of imperfection in for someone else to have to struggle with?

Jay Daniel

Sometimes.

FunkinEven

Yeah, because it’s about the feeling of the track. And when you try to perfect the track, and quantize it straight, you lose the whole feeling of the song. Especially if you’re going to use drum machines. Some drum machines have got a new feel to it anyway, but some things are just a bit straight, and it gets a bit boring if you have that pattern, you know?

The ones you did with Delroy Edwards seemed to be a pretty good example.

Jay Daniel

That record is hard to mix.

Funkineven

I can see it would be hard to mix, but I obviously know the track... When Delroy was here we’d meet up, go for chicken, chill, and it wasn’t like we purposefully wanted to make music together. Because it’s hard for two people to make music together and for it to work. To have chemistry, like the way me and Kyle [Hall] do. But anyway, Delroy was like, “Damn! You got 808s, 303s. Let’s use them!” He’d never really used that stuff.

Had he not?

FunkinEven

Nah. He doesn’t really have a lot of analogue.

You almost have too much.

FunkinEven

Yeah, yeah. It gets to that point where I just have to use two [pieces of hardware], and that’s it. But when he was around, he went “Let’s hook this up, let’s hook that up and let’s just jam and see what happens.” It was like a live mix, but recorded. It was a feeling, and you can hear that in the record.

You collaborate with quite a lot of people.

FuninEven

Really?

Jay Daniel

Kyle and Delroy, right?

FunkinEven

Who else?

Jay Daniel

Fatima.

Plus all the production jobs.

FunkinEven

Yeah, true. Me and Fatima obviously do have a strong connection because we kind of started at the same time. We were working for two years beforehand, so we built that chemistry and we just released a record – and it worked. And Roísín Murphy from Moloko, I did a production for her; or, Seiji did a production for her, but it was mostly my production and they polished it in a commercial way. That was a tune called “Orally Fixated” and it was alright, it did what it did. She got pregnant, and her baby’s more important I think! [laughs] Whatever it is, it’s not going to be forced. Like I said, the situation with Delroy just happened after we clicked. And Kyle…me and Kyle are actually kind of family in that we just get each other. I know what he’s thinking, he knows what I’m thinking. It’s not forced.

Jay, what about you? You want to open yourself up to that in the future?

Jay Daniel

Yeah, I guess so. I play drums too, so I’d be open to working on that.

FunkinEven

The live aspect.

Jay Daniel

Yeah, yeah. Jamming on the MPC, somebody on the keyboard. With my music, especially a real drummy track, I sit down and it can take weeks sometimes to figure out what chords I wanna play. I don’t know how to play keyboards or anything. Percussion is my focal point, so that’s easy for me. Sometimes I’ll just lay down a drum beat, and then – if I’m messing around on a bassline and it’s not working – I’ll leave the track alone and come back to it.

FunkinEven

Have you done production by chopping up recordings of yourself?

Jay Daniel

I have a track where I sampled myself playing coming out on Wild Oats. That’s the first time I’ve done that and it was pretty cool; it was like me talking to myself. It’s way easier like that!

FunkinEven

Have you got a drum kit at home?

Jay Daniel

Nah, I went to a studio in Detroit. That’s really what I like to do, actually play stuff. An MPC is cool and everything but…

FunkinEven

It gets repetitive?

Jay Daniel

Exactly. That was my whole thing with production up until maybe January of this year. It got boring, because I felt so limited. I was used to having all these instruments around. Even when at home, I practice DJing waaay more than sitting down and trying to do something on the MPC.

FunkinEven

Two turntables and a mixer?

Jay Daniel

Yeah.

FunkinEven

My setup, I don’t have two turntables. I mean, I have the turntables, but on one the pitch is fucked and it’s in the bedroom; the other is in the studio with one mixer. So I can’t practice at home. All my practicing came from years before, and now me gigging out.

Jay Daniel

Yeah, but you’ve been DJing way longer than I have. I’ve been playing three-and-a-half years.

How long have you played out?

FunkinEven

Professionally? Four or five years.

Jay Daniel

Okay, that’s not too much longer.

FunkinEven

But that’s out. I’ve been mixing in my friend’s living rooms for dog’s years. I’m talking ‘90s. It wasn’t even Technics, which we couldn’t afford. It was a record set called Soundlab…raw shit, belt drive! [laughs]

How long have you been drumming for, Jay?

Jay Daniel

I had a little drum set when I was about 10 at my dad’s house, but I didn’t live with him. It was in the basement, and one day I came over and the basement was flooded, so I didn’t play for a good six years or so. I didn’t take lessons, so I taught myself when I must have been 13? 2004? But I don’t have a drum set now, so whenever I do play, it’s once every four or five months.

Where were you practicing?

Jay Daniel

I went to an art camp in Detroit one summer, and that’s where I learned to play. The first song was Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely.” The more I’m playing these soul or funk records, I’m thinking I might want to start a band. Implement that, and make that the focal point of my career. DJing and everything is cool, but I like playing drums a lot. When you’re playing the drums – or probably any instrument – you create your own signature with how you play. I think that matters a lot. I mean the whole first EP I did, I made in my bedroom and I recorded it to tape. I have a Zoom recorder, but I don’t use it as much. I just like the way tape sounds.

I don’t have a producer’s ear, but I’m interested to get your thoughts on the focus on analogue, raw sounds and cassettes. Do you think that’s going to sustain or is it a passing thing?

FunkinEven

I just think it’s a rebellious way that new producers are making their music. I think people are bored, no doubt, of things sounding so polished, and they want to change the sonics a bit. I honestly think me and Kyle were…well, not to say one of the first, but we definitely emphasized that in our early style. That you don’t have to be clean, and it doesn’t have to be a certain way. And those producers that produce to cassette tape... I don’t think it’s purposefully done that way. Like Greg Beato, who released on my label. It’s just what they have, and what they can afford; and it sounds like it anyway.

Jay Daniel

You know, that’s the thing man. It’s like people are always saying certain things regarding socioeconomic circumstances and I’m like, man… to me, it’s more my life experiences that shape how I make music and the type of records I play. It’s not necessarily “made in Detroit.” When you’re in Detroit, you don’t walk around objectifying in the city in the sense that what goes on in the city has a direct effect on how you think and how you live your life. You know: you live there. That’s the thing about Detroit and its “rawness” or whatnot – you just do it. There’s nothing clouding the music, you know, just raw energy. That’s what’s important, and it can come from wherever you are mentally.

FunkinEven

It’s a mental thing. It’s about getting the music down and recording it as it sounds there and then. And if it sounds like that, it sounds like that. Don’t take the soul out of it, as that’s what’s important.

Jay Daniel

Right. The more people intellectualize the music and whatnot, the more it loses that integral quality when the person sits down and makes something they want to create.

FunkinEven

That’s the soul. George Clinton said “soul is the ring around your bathtub.” That’s what it is. If that dirt ain’t there, it hasn’t got the soul.

Jay Daniel

Personally, I don’t romanticize about the music – how it sounds rhythmically, this or that.

FunkinEven

When I mix it down to what I feel is polished, I’ll listen to it against other productions out there, and I’m like hold on: it’s actually still raw. That’s just how I’m tuned.

Jay Daniel

Like him and Delroy’s record, when he sent me the file, I was like, “Yo, this is raw.” Not because it had a certain sound, but because of what it was doing. It’s kind of hypnotic in the sense that it takes you somewhere. It’s the same rhythm but it fluctuates and it dips and dives. That’s how I look at it as a DJ, from that perspective. I can only play that record at a certain point in the night!

FunkinEven

You know, every time I’ve played it, it’s almost at the end of the night, when people are out of their minds. That reaction never comes straight away. It takes time. I put it in, and they’re like, “Okay, yeah, yeah” and then they got into it and were suddenly like, “Oh, actually, ‘Aahhhh! Oh shit!’” It really goes off. I’ve got videos!

Jay Daniel

Yeah, last two hours. It’s like playing Beato’s “Who’s The Licho In Charge Ovaa Here.”

FunkinEven

At that point, when you play that tune...

Jay Daniel

They go crazy.

FunkinEven

I saw your video!

Jay Daniel

Yeah, they were bugging, bro. I mixed that with the Phuture’s “Acid Tracks.” [mimics explosion with hands; laughter] The acid stuff, you can mix it with the soulful stuff, but it has a different effect when you’re playing it out. I know the track, so I don’t perceive it the same way that they do, but the first time…

FunkinEven

You just made me some money on that record. Thank you. [laughter]

Jay Daniel

That’s what it’s about though. Different records have different functions. As DJs, I think it’s our job to be able to translate these tools. To create the sort of experience that you don’t get with people playing music from a laptop, the same monotonous loops, whatever. It’s not there. I think that’s what separates what Steve is doing, what Kyle is doing, the older cats like Theo [Parrish] and Rick [Wilhite] and all of them. That kind of stuff is important.

It’s funny you mentioned the Greg Beato record and the Delroy one, because [FunkinEvil’s] “Igno” has a similar kind of weird lifting effect.

FunkinEven

Yeah, it’s a similar machine set-up: 808 and Juno. And that wasn’t a fluke, but that was an energy that happened without even knowing it. Before we made that, Kyle was in my studio, and he was upset with me. I was just sitting on the laptop, looking at bullshit on the internet. He was like, “Yo man! Come in the studio man!” And I was just like, “Nah.” Again, “Yo! Man! Come in the studio! Come on!” And then I ended up going, “Okay, one sec.” Put my laptop down, went in, set everything up, and hit go. And while we were making it, I looked at him, and he turned and went, “Oh shit!” And that’s how we did “Igno.” Track made. [laughs]

Jay Daniel

It’s pretty easy collaborating with Kyle. He has such an exuberance about him, he’s like a kid, know what I mean? He doesn’t need to concentrate that much to make something.

FunkinEven

If he had to concentrate, it wouldn’t work.

Maybe that’s the magic for future releases, just ignore him to the point he gets annoyed and then suddenly it’s all there.

FunkinEven

[laughs] Yeah, it just pops up, like ah! And while we were making it, we were looking at each other, just like, “You see?” That same feeling: “Ah!”

Was it literally just one take?

Jay Daniel

Sounds like it was one take.

FunkinEven

One take. Most of all our stuff is one take. The very first record, “Night”: that was made as a demonstration on the MPC. We were showing Alex [Nut] how to use an MPC: “Okay, put this in, do that… wait, shit. Let’s record!” Done. [laughs]

Given what you’re saying about harnessing energy, and not losing the soul, do you consciously try to not overthink when making tracks?

FunkinEven

Yeah, man, never overthink. I never do it. When I’m constantly working on something and concentrating on it, it’s not as good.

But that’s different with you, Jay? It can take weeks, months?

Jay Daniel

Yeah.

FunkinEven

Nah, but that’s different. I’m sure the idea and the structure happen quite quick.

Jay Daniel

The drums for me are always the focal point. Like I said: the foundation of the track. But with my release it was more that I didn’t have the equipment that I wanted. So I borrowed Kyle’s Waldorf synthesizer when he was out of town. So, for a week-and-a-half or two weeks, I just recorded it to the MPC. Two of the tracks on the EP weren’t even mixed; I didn’t have a mixer. The drum tracks were spur of the moment, I came from a party and just sat down and did it. That stuff’s easy. Nowadays I have more gear, so it doesn’t take me as long; a few days at most. I don’t like to overthink it that much. What needs to be said? What ideas are you trying to convey? And what suits? Whatever is leftover that doesn’t work, you can use it on something else.

FunkinEven

Don’t get me wrong. The foundation on a track is made completely naturally, but sometimes it takes a couple of weeks just to finalize it as a whole. But the idea –

Jay Daniel

– and what you wanna do with it –

FunkinEven

– happens like that. [clicks fingers]