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?
