Daniel Berman is a young Scottish producer who is making quite a name for himself with his eclectic DJ sets, curveball edits and unique productions. He is one of a new breed of producers who creates music for clubs and dancing, and leaves any notion of conforming to the usual genres at the door. The young producer -- and his clutch of humorous aliases: Hot Coins, Red Rack 'Em, Marlinspike -- has had songs picked up by DJs Gilles Peterson and dubstep pioneer Kode9 and currently releases on the disco label Tirk and the electro imprint Deep Freeze.
Hey Daniel, thanks for taking the time to answer these questions. Let’s go right back to the beginning - What is your earliest musical memory? My earliest musical memory is more based around album covers rather than the music. When I was about two or three years old, I was absolutely petrified by the cover of “In A Silent Way” by Miles Davis. It had a very dark picture of Miles wearing wraparound shades on it, in a tight ‘70s black woolen sweater, and I used to think he was a big spider. My parents had to hide the cover as I was so afraid.
My first proper musical memory is probably from when I was about 3 or 4. I can remember my Dad putting his massive speakers (still in their living room today) outside the windows of our country cottage and my parents having a small party. This must have been about 1979. I can also vividly remember using one of my Dad’s records as a plate for my jam sandwiches one morning before my parents got up. I was popular that day!
What inspired you to begin DJ’ing and producing music? Well I began making music in bands when I was about 13. Growing up in a remote fishing village in Scotland really pushed me to be creative as the choices were pretty slim. I hung around in a group of friends and we all shared the same interests - music, skateboarding and partying. We used to record every lunch at school with a ghetto blaster and we constantly swapped instruments and improvised on a daily basis. I think this culture of spontaneity has definitely influenced my mixing style. My main interests were always the drums and bass guitar though, and this came from my love of hip hop and funk. Hip hop also really got me into making music that wasn't all derived from musical instruments. I was in a strange funk/rock/hip hop band called The Wizards with my friends from 92-94 and we all had quite diverse influences. I had been into hip-hop for years and I loved a wide range of groups but it was hearing people like Mace from De La Soul scratching and cutting on tracks that made me realise that DJ’ing could also be an important part of the music. I bought a set of decks in 1994 and began adding scratches and samples to the tracks. Somewhere along the way I learned how to mix and bought a few thousand records too.
What has been your biggest success so far? Well it depends how you measure success really. My Hot Coins remix of “Stand On The Word” by Joubert Singers is my most well known track as it was hammered on Radio 1 by Gilles Peterson. He even played it on Zane Lowe’s peak time show, which was pretty cool. I ended up being asked to play at the Worldwide Awards in London and Gilles asked me to play straight after Jazzanova, who were playing live. That was the stuff of dreams as I have been a massive Jazzanova fan for years. They recorded my DJ set on the night and it was broadcasted on Radio 1 the following week!
Having said that though, I personally think a track like “Picnic” on Deep Freeze was also a real success as it was my first ever 'proper' house release and it got props from people like Garnier, Jus Ed and Ashley Beedle who certainly know their house. There are also tracks that have never even been released, which I feel are pretty successful, like my Marlinspike dusbtep/two step track “Bongo Rocka”. It was played by DJs as diverse as Domu, Rob Da Bank, Geiom and Surgeon and was even cut on dubplate by Kode9 and N-Type. As someone who is mainly known for making disco, hip hop and house, I feel it's a real success when you get supported in scenes that you are not really part of.
Do you think there’s a secret to success? Well I think that there's certainly a lot to be said for doing something that you really believe in. If you aren't making music to win then you can never really lose can you? If you are doing it for the music’s sake rather than trying to be a big successful DJ type, then you are probably going to make the music that you actually want to make, rather than something soulless that will help you get a nice car and a big fancy studio. Most of the producers that I respect live in the music and I think that you have to really put the hours in to get somewhere. I personally don't have much time to do anything else. Find records, buy records, make tracks, source music for the radio show, record the radio show, travel, do gigs, update the website etc. It shouldn't feel like work. If it does then you're probably not doing it right.
Having said all that though, there's nothing that a big fat dose of marketing can't fix so if you are making bland, cliché-ridden dance music for the kids, just make sure you have the right haircut!
You work with a number of different aliases, and also have an eclectic DJ style. Is that by design, or just how things turned out? Well I have always had a broad appreciation for music. When I lived in Edinburgh in 1995 (the halcyon days) me and my friends would listen to things like Black Dog, Lee Perry, Luke Vibert, Wu-Tang, Juan Atkins, Full Cycle, Vince Montana and Dr Rockit within the same hour. This was when I was learning how to DJ so I guess that ethos has prevailed throughout my years on the decks. There's a common thread running through a lot of the music I play and I enjoy the freedom of putting it all into one set and seeing how it turns out. I am just as comfortable playing a house set or a techno set as I am playing it eclectic though and sometimes it's nice to focus on a certain sound for an couple of hours.
As a producer it's kind of the same. I mainly use the different names as a filing system for the tracks. The records I buy and gigs I play really influence what I end up making. I guess I must have been feeling a lot of house for the last year!
Is Red Rack'em from Tintin? Or do you aliases have a deeper meaning?Red Rack'em is from Tintin. I used to make bootlegs. Piccadilly Records christened the music by Yam Who, Red Astaire and Blackbeard “Pirate Soul” and I was making illicit edits of well known tracks at that time, so I had to come up with a pirate themed name. I loved Tintin books as a child and so it was my way of representing my childhood.
Hot Coins is a bit too dirty to fully explain on here. It came about when my mate left his money on the banks of the Danube when we were at the Sziget Festival in Budapest in 2005. It was 38 degrees so the coins burnt his hands when we returned from paddling.
Marlinspike is the stately home that Captain Haddock lives in Tintin books. I wanted to have something English and aristocratic as the music is pretty UK sounding on the Marlinspike tracks.
What or who inspires you? Musicwise its people like Pepe Bradock, Kaidi Tatham, Madlib, and many many more. I only play music that inspires me! I am also massively inspired by my friends and people I meet along the way; I am not some ultra confident “I am the best” type of guy so people showing interest in what I am doing and giving me the odd bit of encouragement goes a long way. My family has been an ever-present source of inspiration due to their appreciation of music.
What else is coming up for you in the next few months? Well there's going to be another house EP for Deep Freeze which will have “Kalimba” and “Back Home” on it. There should be a pretty tasty remix from someone good on that too. “Kalimba” is very Afro and tribal and “Back Home” is pretty wonky and off kilter. Then there's going to be another Beatdown EP for the Untracked label. They are all deep as hell. I have recently completed a remix of a track by The Revenge called “Forever In Their Debt” which should be out on Deep Freeze in September. I have also done a kind of Red Rack'em Vs Hot Coins EP for Autodiscoteque with two quite different tracks on it – “Place For Me” and “Chinese Electro”. That should be out in September too. I have done a pretty clubby EP for Shift Records, which is Ctrl-Alt-Delete's new label. The tracks on that are called “Exhalt” and “Zoned”. I have also had some house signed by the US label Undertones - the tracks on that EP are called “Night Shift” and “Late One”. Should be a nice remix on that too. Apart from that I will be continuing to work on the Marlinspike and Hot Coins albums.
DJ-wise I am playing at The Big Chill, Notting Hill Carnival and Bestival as well as various other bits in the UK and abroad.
Wow, You are very busy then! When you are DJ’ing, which three records never leave your box?
1 - Clyde feat Capital A - Serve It Up (Original Mix) (Mantis)
2 - Dead Seal - Bored Of The Future (Brennan Green Remix) (Smash Hit Music)
3 - Pepe Bradock - Ghost (Atavisme)
You just played at Glastonbury - how was that? Glasto was absolutely amazing! Wow. I was playing in this big dance tent called The Igloo and the whole interior of the tent is wall-to-wall projections and the guy who runs the tent is an amazing VJ, so it was a really special environment. I played at peak time on the Saturday night and I couldn't have hoped for a better response from the crowd. They were amazing. There was some serious energy in that room. I had forgotten that you could rave like that these days. Loads of people said that the atmosphere was the same as 10 years ago!
Futureboogie programmed the tent and I have to give massive props to them - all the other DJs on the night were amazing. So after I finished my set I got on the floor and spent the rest of the night going crazy. I also played in the Guardian Lounge on the following day, which was a bit strange as I played after Heartbreak and before Tony Christie [legendary Sheffield crooner] but that's what Glastonbury is all about. I met SO many amazing people that weekend and you could really feel the collective relief that we were finally getting to escape the recession and horrible news that we have been bombarded with over the last year.
You are slated to release an album for Tirk; when can we expect it? I am still working on the Hot Coins album and I am not sure what label it's going to be on now. I have got 18 tracks in various states of completion and there's enough for a decent album there. I have got the concept all sorted and I have a strong direction for the music. But I have also been enjoying putting a lot of singles out, as I really feel that's the medium that dance music translates best in. I want to keep playing DJ sets in clubs and making singles for the dance floor as I have been locked away for years making many “albums” to get to this stage. Albums do require a lot of tinkering and I am enjoying the immediacy of making loads of singles right now as you get regular opportunities to re-invent yourself. I reckon the Hot Coins album may surface in the first half of next year. But for now I am really enjoying working on loads of stuff at once. Nothing new there, then!
You can delve a little deeper in to Daniel’s musical world, by checking out his brilliant Smugglers Inn podcasts here or listen to the exclusive mix he recorded for Electronic Beats Radio:
(click here if you want to open the mix in a new window / in our pop-up-player)
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