The sound of electroclash – ‘When The 2000s Clashed: Machine Music For A New Millenium’

0:13Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I'm Fernando Gusto Pacheco, and this interview is close to my heart. Electroclash was the first music movement I got into. It had fabulous sense and a can-do attitude. A new compilation has been released when the 2000s clashed. Machine music for a new millennium, with the best of the best of the Electroclash tracks and the music that has been influenced by it. It was a pleasure to speak with Johnny Slott, founder of London's influential Electroclash Night Out, Nag Nag Nag, and Mark Wood, DJ and member of Reader's Wives. Let's hear the conversation.

1:05What a pleasure to talk to Jonas Lutt and Mark Wood here for Monaco Radio. We're going to talk about a new compilation, When the 2000s Clashed, Machine Music for a New Millennium. And this project's very special to me. Electroclash was my first music movement when I was young. I love it. I absolutely love it. So I want to hear from both of you what Electroclash means for you. Perhaps, Joni, starting with you, the founder of Nag Nag Nag, the iconic night out in London, which I had the pleasure to go when I came to study English here in 2006. I was obsessed. It was on my list. I was like, oh, my God, I have to go to Nag Nag Nag.

1:44It was it was a thing. I think I think we made it into the British Airways in online magazine as a as a destination that everyone must go to by 2006. It was a destination, right? Yeah, yeah, indeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it went pretty, it went pretty, it went from extremely underground to extremely overground pretty quickly. I mean, you know, within a year we were in bloody Vogue and Tatler and stuff like that, which is kind of weird. And Mark, what does Electroclash mean to you? Were you like a big fan of the movement? Were you dancing around back at the time? So tell us a bit more about that.

2:23Yeah, I mean, we, Johnny and I, from a similar sort of generation, we both met on the club scene in the 90s. And very similar tastes, I think, as well. Very similar, exactly, yes. Which is why I love you. And I was DJing at a club called Ducky, and Johnny was DJing at a club called Marvellous. You know, in many people's eyes, they were kind of like sister clubs. One was on a Saturday, one was on a Sunday. They were both South London. And, you know, Johnny was just one of the few people I met in the 90s that liked exactly the same things as me. He liked T-Rex, and he liked the KLF, and he liked the suite, and he liked electronic music and he liked Bauhaus.

3:08And, you know, it was literally, you know, I always thought, God, if I'd met Johnny when we were teenagers, it would have been fucking amazing. Oh, it would have been my dream to have been your next door neighbour. Exactly, exactly. So we were sort of like minds and Johnny started, we were always in touch. Johnny started Nag and I'll let Johnny talk about his club. But as far as I was concerned, it was Johnny And there's a bar in the West End still there called the Retro Bar. One of Johnny's fellow DJs at Marvelous, Leslie DJ Lush, was also the publican at the Retro Bar. And between them, those two started feeding me CDRs of this new stuff coming out of New York and Berlin.

3:55So Johnny was the first person to get Lover Tits by Peaches to me and Crossover and Adult. And, you know, I'd get these lovely little, you know, completely unbranded compilations that we could play at Ducky just based on singles that were coming out that Johnny was getting his hands on somewhere. And then Nag Nag Nag started. And the rest is history. Johnny sort of will tell you that, you know, He decided there was now enough of this stuff to get really excited about. And, you know, it got its own dedicated club. Marvellous and Ducky, where we both worked at the time, were a bit of this and a bit of that.

4:37So we were sort of, you know, you'd get peaches alongside, you know, an old funk record or an old T-Rex record or whatever. Electroclash was the first sort of purely electronic club in London. I think the very same spirit, you know, the spirit of, well, clashing yes exactly and a sense of hedonism as well right johnny i think yeah they were having quite fun about it yeah i was thinking about this the other day maybe maybe a bit of a not not bloody mindedness but i think maybe people like me and mark and leslie well we'd maybe been sort of like plow on our own furrow a bit for years not really wanting to do mainstream club dance stuff do you know what i mean we were more interested in in the avant-garde and the alternative kind of thing and i think when the seeds of the sounds and the seeds of electroclash came along it's it almost kind of like vindicated us in a way i mean i remember thinking at one point when i when i first heard fisher spooner and adult on pete tong the rain you know the big radio one dance show on a friday night i heard those two tracks and i just thought i've been right all along looks good sounds good looks good feels good too yeah yeah because and also you see there was there'd been like you know house music was fantastic a decade before that you know it'd been very exciting acid house and the klf like i've said you still had chemical brothers and underworld and the sort of skin big beat lot doing exciting rough and tumble stuff.

6:17But mainstream dance music had literally become very much like dancing around your handbag. It had become really... It would be like AI music now. Yeah, it was. Generic, do you know what I mean? It was really getting like that. And so our clubs, Marvellous, Ducky, and what eventually became Nag, were a reaction against that. It was like, well, we've done that, and it's just boring now. And as Electroclash, I think, was a reaction against the prevailing dance music culture, you know. Is there an artist or song that you think, I mean, it's hard because, of course, you guys are releasing a five-CD compilation.

6:55There's many music from the origins of Electroclash to songs that have been influenced as well by the movement. But I think one gateway that I've started actually becoming a fan was Miss Kitting because she went to Brazil, remember? There was a story on TV news. It was a bit crazy, actually. and I was like oh my god I love and I bought that album Ripping Keating of course which is in the compilation for me it was like wow that that was a start for my love to Electroclash and the movement

7:36Yeah, that album she did with The Hacker was definitely... Oh, yeah, Frank Sinatra and Nurse. Yeah, absolutely. And Brazil, I came to Brazil, and I had one of the best times of my life. It was fantastic. You guys really seemed to resonate with what was happening. That happened in a lot of Latino countries. That happened a lot in Italy and Spain too. And I think as well, NAG was popular in Argentina. It's something about you got it. We got it. Because you guys know how to party. Look at Bondi do Rolê, CSS, which are also in the compilation. CSS, yes, yes. It clearly connected. I definitely very much agreed.

8:18And what about, you know, I want to hear from both of you, the influence of Electroclash. Because even if you listen to the charts now, I can see the influence immediately, you know, although, you know, it wasn't perhaps a mainstream movement, but artists like Kylie and many others as well, even you may say Charlie XCX a little bit and many, many others. Do you see that influence very strong in today's chart? Yeah, Electroclash was a little bit too early in a way, although the mainstream started copying the sounds quite quickly. If you listen to Girls Aloud hits or Sugar Babes hits, you know, they knew that they should be working with cutting edge producers who very often had to come from that electronic world.

9:05And, you know, there are some really good examples on the box set of people like Kylie. You know, her Chemical Brothers mix of slow is one example. Obviously, Goldfrap had been a very kind of ambient, sort of beautiful. And, you know, they reinvented themselves. Yeah, I actually hadn't been aware of Goldfrap until, you know. Yeah. I mean, the first album is more like a David Sylvian album or something like that. A David Sylvian solo album. And all of a sudden, along comes Train and Strict Machine. And, you know, they are a different thing. So it did filter. I mean, producers like Richard X as well and, you know, Zenomania were very much sort of tuned into the electroclash club sounds.

9:54And that Charlie record that came out last year, you know, the Brat thing, it's just an electroclash record. Like, electroclash was too early. I agree. I agree. I definitely agree with that. Isn't Johnny a little bit about some sort of attitude as well, in a way? it is about the music but it is about the way you dress it is about look at avenue d for example i love to look like a slut it's a fantastic song but there is a bit of a punk attitude to it as well right absolutely yeah for sure there's definitely a huge punk element to it and a big queer element to electro clash as well and and of course there were a lot of women artists that were involved already talked about miss kitten but you know there was peaches you know there was chicks on speed there was a there was a lot of and that was very like punk too wasn't it It was kind of queer and female and egalitarian.

10:46And, you know, whereas... And that's what's... I've always loved shouty girl bands. I was a riot girl, you know. And I really... I love kind of post-punk girl bands like Delta 5, Kleenex. I used to play them down at NAC. They fitted in perfectly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, perfect. You know, polystyrene, you know, used to play a lot of X-Ray Specs as well. And because Electroclash was quite DIY, why, you know, you didn't have to have an expensive record contract, you didn't have to work in a posh studio. And because a lot of the kids and DJs were sort of making their own clothes and running their own, you know, making their own flyers, a lot of it just felt very much punk again.

11:30And also the sense of humour, the piss-taking, you know, the sort of, it wasn't, it didn't take itself too seriously. No, I mean, a lot of the lyrics, as Mark has pointed out before, a lot of the lyrics are just hilarious. Yeah. You've already mentioned Avenue D. I love it. Yeah. And I mean, there's just so many, like the Larry T song on there that cracks me up every time I hear it. And even, you know, Lady Tron, you know, their lyrics are really, really sort of arch. Who came up with the term again? Was it Larry T, Supermodel, or was DJ Howe? I'm a bit confused, actually, who started, who said, this is Electroclash.

12:08Controversial one, perhaps. Well, yeah, it's Larry T, potentially. I mean, he was doing an Electroclash festival, wasn't he? Yes, yes. I think Casey Spooner has said that he used the word first because he said it's not electronic music, it's Electroclash music.

12:32I can't even remember when we started calling it Electroclash. It wasn't quite hard, you know. It was quite early that, you know, there were these singles and then all of a sudden it did have a name. So it must have been one of those early dudes or girls like Casey or Larry. And the press always want a label for something as well. They need it to hang their stuff on. So, you know. One thing that I love about the project as well, because, you know, of course there was this, you know, the early years of Electro Clash, it was quite, you know, popular in some sense, But then some people were a bit sniffy about it.

13:09And, you know, it was never forgotten in a way. But I think a project like this, it's kind of giving credit to this incredible movement that, you know, it feels very close to my heart. But sometimes when you read electronic music press, you know, I don't know, there was not much in there about it. So what do you think? Is this a way of like saying, you know what, guys, this was incredibly influential. We need to release a compilation on this. A little bit like, yeah, look at what you missed. because, you know, virtually everything I've ever liked, critics, there's been a consignment of critics who haven't, who've sniffed it.

13:44So from Glad Rock onwards, really, disco, you know, all these things that people dismiss tend to be the things that I like most. They disliked electropop in the 80s, you know. I don't know if people felt threatened by Electro Clash, you know, because it was... Yeah, it wasn't mainstream rock press industry, you know. No, although certain papers, to their credit, the NME were pretty much behind most of these artists, got on board really quickly. But it's difficult to remember really just how tired a lot of indie and house music had got by there. So something needed to happen for people looking for something different.

14:27And now I want you guys to give, I know it's a bit of a difficult question, doesn't need to be your favourite, But I wonder if you can pick each two songs that perhaps not define the genre, but something that people should actually go and listen to. Perhaps something a bit more underground that maybe people don't know yet. Well, my favourite track on the album is possibly Pony by Vitalik. That whole EP, there was four tracks on it. There was You Prefer Cocaine. I can't remember the other tracks. But that was just quintessential to me. just a perfect, perfect record.

15:15I mean, well, I mean, there are so many, but to avoid the, you know, Fisher Spooners, I think it would probably be one of the very first ones I got on a CDR, recorded onto CDR from vinyl, from either Lush or Johnny. And I think it would have to be Larry T's supermodel because it was so funny. Oh, we're just hearing that Pony EP was Enemy Single of the Week that one week. Single of the Year. Was it Single of the Year? I think so, yeah. That's fantastic. So I was right. I do remember, right, my memory is serving me well. Enemy were behind it. I would go for Larry T's supermodel because I think it is so DIY.

15:57There's screaming in it. which is always welcome in a pop-up. Yeah, a nice bit of a coda. And it is super cheeky because it kind of nicks RuPaul's Supermodel of the World, which had been out a decade before that. And also it sort of, to me, sums up the sort of cleverness. It's all about, you know, supermodels and Fashion Week and not eating and doing fur or not wearing fur. It just, I don't know, it just has a kind of throwaway, vibe to it that means it just seemed to tell so much truth in this kind of seemingly throwaway track you better walk walk walk your ass down the runway and get paid walk walk modeling is an ugly business you better walk sorry i i want to add another question because is still talking about nag, nag, nag.

16:57You know, it felt very special, remember, going there. But how do you feel about nightlife in London? Maybe not necessarily related only to Electroclash today. Is it still exciting? I'm curious about that. Yeah, I've still got a little toe in nightlife in London. That's good. I mean, I don't live in London anymore. I live in the West Country, which is, you know, three hours away. but there's an underground dark scene it kind of tends to be called it's a little bit, it's slightly goth it's slightly techno yeah and these are the clubs I'm still playing at and it's definitely lively you know it's cool, a lot of people fabulously dressed up so there's hope I love when there's hope and I love when there's electric lash as well thank you thank you Johnny and thank you Mark as well for the lovely chat thank you so much guys

18:22They only want you when you're 17 When you're 21, you're no fun Thank you very much, Johnny and Mark there. When the 2000s clashed, Machine Music for a New Millennium is out now by Demon Records. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco. The show was edited by Elliot Greenfield. Thank you for listening.

18:52Thank you.