Your EP Play This Too has recently been released, and is an inviting preface for your first full-length record, how is that coming along?
We are just waiting on the final production parts, CD cases and stuff like that, as we had to get it specially made, but it’s done. It’s a confusing process, it is a two CD set and one CD is my album, the second CD is a mystery bonus disc and I made two mystery discs, so there is a special CD artwork case to go with it, probably in another two or three months it will be out, January sometime.
Did you find yourself approaching this record in a different way to your other production work?
No-one really listens properly to music these days, so many people just scan albums. By the third or fourth play they might let it play out fully, but people search real quick and go through it in that way. I was trying to make this record for people with a short attention span, where it’s super busy, but at the same time I have made sure that there are a few mellow parts, it was a difficult thing to do, and to not have any rappers on the album. Although I have rappers on the bonus CD but on the actual album itself it’s just straight instrumentals.
You signed to Stones Throw in 2005, has this record been years in the making?
Yes. I was supposed to put out an album around the time J Dilla was around still, it just took forever to make. Then I made one album and didn’t like it, so I revamped it and turned something in to Stones Throw.
I think of your approach in more of a jazz vein, and I know one of your heroes is John Coltrane, so it makes sense.
For sure, he is a huge influence, but I suppose I never really broke it down and thought of my approach to the way I make music, but people like him and Madlib I would think of as influences. Madlib is a real jazz cat because of how he lives and what he does, I think I have been mainly influenced by his work ethic really.
You are regarded as one of the world’s best DJ’s, and no two J.Rocc sets are the same, there always seems to be a strange kind of narrative going on. Do you always work out sets before you play?
I have maybe a little set in my mind that I want to do, but sometimes I get to the club and you get a different vibe. Sometimes I could be listening to house music and broken beat and electronic stuff beforehand, but then go to the club and you just know they don’t want to hear House, it can totally backfire. I make something I can get away with and then figure it out and wing it. When I mix, I try and stay two steps ahead, always.
Do you find that you still get as inspired DJ’ing; that some production ideas spring from that whole process?
Oh yeah, maybe not when I am playing Ol’ Dirty Bastard, I don’t get too inspired by that, though it’s fun, but it’s when I can branch out and play Afrobeat, Latin and Brazilian music, I will remember parts of songs, or think about production ideas through that.
I recently saw Bryan Younce and Mark McNeill’s documentary Secondhand Sureshots, where you, Daedelus, Ras G and Nobody get sent into thrift shops to make new music out of five records that you find – basically creative sound recycling, it is wonderful.
That was real fun to do! They started filming it a real long time ago, I kind of forgot about it and then they finished it. They only gave us five dollars to go and buy a certain amount of records, it was challenging, but to be involved in a project with Ras G, Nobody and Daedelus, who are buddies of mine, and just be associated with them in that way, was great.
The whole idea behind that project forms a huge part of your life as well.
Yes, it was a day in the life, a really good day. That is basically what a day is for me – go to a record store, then go home find something on that record, and then make something out of nothing.
Because crate-digging is also such a part of your life, have you found it a hard balance to strike, now that digital music is everywhere, and the choice is ever-growing?
I download newer music or an album I can’t find, but it is still all about holding the record in my hand for me, it is a different experience to pushing a spacebar. It sucks in a way because I have a houseful of records and they take over after a while, it gets to be a lot, but I wouldn’t trade it for the world, as I love buying records. My problem is that I don’t remember what I have bought, I take so long to listen to records, I have three crates of records I haven’t listened to yet, and I end up buying multiples of certain records. It’s a bad habit. I am all for downloading stuff. I will have a progressive rock book and look up stuff and then see that a blog has a whole album that I was just reading about, and in a specialist record shop could cost me 200 dollars, so in that case I will download it for free and test it out, if it’s memorable, I will buy it. With new music I am the same way. So it does create a sell for me and hopefully it creates sells with other people, that people want to support that music they find, if they don’t, then some of those musicians can’t make a record again.
If you had to save one record if the world was ending, what would it be?
I think I would just let them all go. I can’t choose one, maybe I might just run in and grab a James Brown record, a record that I can work with. I wouldn’t run in and grab my John Coltrane collection, I’d have to say ‘damn John I’m sorry, but you’re on my IPod, I got you’. Actually, I probably would try to save my hard drives, where my music is backed up.
