12am.com.au : Mixing Music Media


	.: D.E.A - Catching Up

Date of Interview: 10 August, 2003
Contributed by: Marius Jones

We caught up with the DEA (Richard and John) in the back room of The Vineyard, in St Kilda on a breezy spring Melbourne day (September 2003) to discuss what DEA has been up to and what they had install for the up and coming War of the Worlds event, later this month.

So what have you guys been up to since we last spoke in 2001?

John : Lots of new music for the techno fans, lots of production work with Melbourne party crews and lots of R&R!

Richard : We took a break after Two Tribes last year to chill out as we did a lot of gigs in a short amount of time. We love our production work but we needed a break to regroup and work on our direction. DEA has always been our hobby and passion is what drives it so when we get back into it, it's always full of energy.

Have you been writing a lot of new stuff this year?

Yes, we have a range of gigs leading up to summer and have been preparing a lot of new sounds for WOTW. We play live and literally sync and control everything via a midi clock. We go into shows with blank screens and start from there thus every show is different and we don't really know where we're going to end as it's how we're feeling at the time and how the crowd is responding to us. People ask us what the name of our third track was and we sort of know what they are talking about but at the end of the day we are very live and all the tracks we play mould into just one track. We have a very unique style of producing as everything is raw, not just fresh and we are constantly counting beats and choosing new directions. From here, each track just flows into the next one.

Reading the crowd and knowing each other and knowing what the other is going to do next is all very important to us too. We improvise a lot and our close relationship helps us control that performance flare into dance music. It's like we visualise the environment we're playing in and react to it and hope the crowd responds to us. We start with a couple of layers and end up with layers twisted around layers twisted around layers.

Over the past few weeks we have prepared a lot of new sounds and ideas but come show time it will probably will sound completely different to what we started with. Again, we improvise a lot.

In the studio, do you spend your time creating and saving sounds?

No, we don't take sounds to gigs. We don¹t use computers. It's really live!

How long does it take to set up and sound check?

A couple of hours but we love it. Sounds checks rock! We'd rather do a sound check on a Saturday afternoon than watch the footy! We live for shows in big old warehouses. We take a lot of gear, 23 pieces in total. All packed up into the back of our van. We love our effects and faders etc so we have a lot of gear both digital and analogue which does one particular function that we may use once or 20 times.

Now what do you have in store for War of the Worlds this Saturday?

We are playing in the main room not sure what time yet but we've been told we are the last local group up before the internationals take the stage. It's great to see there are a few really good live performers at WOTW this year including Speedy J and Miss Kitten with The Hacker!

Has your sound changed?

It's got a lot darker, we call it DOOM TECHNO. We love live techno and the darker the music, the happier we are!!

You're normally positioned in front of the main dj console. Do you like getting down and close to the crowd?

Sure we feed of the crowd and they follow the music as much as we follow the crowd. We'll be in front of the main dj console this weekend for WOTW which will be cool but it's not always the case. Some of our past gigs we have been 10 feet away from the crowd. It's not better or worse it's just different.

Has the equipment ever failed you at a gig?

No but we have had a power failure before in the middle of a show. It was shattering and I won't mention the party but you can imagine playing live and the power cuts, then the atmosphere is lost and so are all the presets that have got us to the stage of the set that we are at. The loss of atmosphere is the worse as you cannot bring it back. Atmosphere isn't a light switch unfortunately. Also the stress of trying to repatch everything is almost impossible so we basically had to start again. Very annoying but that's show biz!

What's Up for the summer 03/04?

We have lined up gigs including summer dayze which we always love playing. We'll both be working on the production and promoting side of things as always.

12am would like to thank Richard and John for their time.

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