Tim, you were working with David Holmes, yet when his album was finished you stayed. What changed your mind?
Tim Goldsworthy: There were a lot of factors. First of all, I kind of fell out with David a little bit, just slightly. [I] also kind of got out of the rut I had [been in] in England, like the huge albatross of trip-hop hanging around my neck and being the programmer for hire. It wasn't very satisfying. I tried always to do what I wanted to do with the music because it's very important, because music is what I love and it had gotten to where I was just a programmer/producer for hire and doing lots of things for the money, which I'll wait another ten to 20 years for. [laughs]
James Murphy: It's a hard thing not to do.
TG: Until I've lost it and then do that kind of stuff. New York is like the mythical Mecca of all the music I was into, like from the hip-hop and the funk stuff. The idea of what New York is, musically, is basically the reason I do music. And also coming here to this fantastic studio and meeting James, who is from a totally different world, musically, background-wise, and connecting. When you do music and you connect with somebody on that kind of level — well we should do stuff. So yeah, I stayed. And the food is good and it doesn't rain that much.
How long in New York for you?
TG: Three years.
Tell me more of how you met James.
TG: Well, we came here with the David Holmes experience with James as head of the studio and another guy...
JM: Who we'll call TB.
TG: What's that?
JM: TB, I think that's what he wants to be known as.
TG: Okay. It was just one of those small world kind of things where David knew Marcus, who had first come here DJ'ing and building the cabinets [in the recording studio].
JM: Marcus [Lambkin] had made a big record release party for David because nobody had really known about him and I guess that's how it all came about.
Remixing is a very unique field. Who are your inspirations?
TG: Oh, blimey!
JM: Blimey is good.
D.J. Blimey wasn't it? [laughter]
TG: Basically, how I got into doing the music stuff was by being a young kid with James Lavelle hanging around at the record companies and going, "Give us a remix, give us a remix," because we really couldn't write our own stuff. We didn't have a clue, and we really didn't really know how to use any equipment or anything like that. The whole remix thing is my starting point of how I make music. Old hip-hop mixes are where I come from — trying to get the hypnotic thing going on in remixes.
At the same time, is that how did you got into drum programming?
TG: Yeah, because I'm not a musician. I can't play a thing. I'm tone deaf. [I] really don't have the patience to learn how to play anything. I get very frustrated when I try to work something out on the keyboards. If I can't get it done within, like...
JM: Thirty seconds.
TG: Thirty seconds. [laughs] So drum programming is where I started and what I love doing because it's such a random thing for me. And I really don't know what I'm doing. You do something quite stupid and people go, like, "Wow... yeah, okay." [laughter]
I actually heard about you getting your first proper laptop computer. It was something like 4,000 quid at the time?
TG: Yeah. It's about working in the technology side of things, keeping up with the latest trends you always get really burned. When I operated from the old kind of 808 and 202 and 950, again the S3000, and a Macintosh 540C — kind of state-of-the-art at the time. That was probably, like, five grand or something.
I heard you paraded down the street with it.
TG: That was my little signature thing: being able to turn up to sessions with two briefcases — one with the sampler in it and the other with the laptop in it. It was very suave. [laughs] Suave drum programmer.
What is it that you like to bring into a remix?
TG: Whoa. It really depends from remix to remix. It's normally kind of listening to stuff and thinking, like, whether they didn't really do it hard enough on this, or they weren't smooth enough or just weren't funky enough. You know what it's like when you're recording the track itself. Sometimes you get so sentimental with all the other pieces that you can't think, "Oh, I'm going to lose the song if I get too funky with it. No, oh, I'm gonna lose this guitar part if I want to get a bit harder," or something like that. And being in a remix is fantastic because you can wade in without having any emotional attachment to any of the parts and just be like, "That, get rid of that, and turn the drums up there." Which is basically what we do. [laughter]
Are you attracted to particular songs, or is it a case of someone usually ringing you up when you begin a new project?
TG: What we like to do is to actually meet the people, but first of all you kind of hear the music and see if the people are on the same wavelength.
JM: Or if they aren't, that there is a way to get there.
TG: Generally, to meet the people and hang out with them. Just have a laugh and see where their heads are, musically.
JM: And play them records.
TG: I never really enjoyed the blind kind of phone call from the manager and the offer of money.
JM: We did that once... with terrible results. It took us weeks, because they didn't like it, and we knew that they wouldn't like it. Every time we did something that we liked, we knew that they wouldn't like it. It was just the circular path thing.
TG: We do the same thing with the remixes on our own label. Get to know the people.
So now, instead of the scenario of someone ringing you up, do you hear a song on the radio and are drawn to that?
TG: The trouble with that way is that usually the song has already been released, so you've already missed the boat with remixing that song. The way the record companies work is that it would be released at least three months later. It's a good way to kind of alert yourself to people that you like and it's such a small world in the music business [that] you usually end up crossing paths at some point.
More a matter of crossing paths.
TG: Yeah, I think so. It's nice just meeting like-minded people, as well. We're very drawn to the people who try to make electronic music live, and live music sound electronic.
How would you describe yourself in relation to someone like Howie B. [remixer of U2 and Björk]?
