Press Play #76 - Frank Booker

You can trust a Frank Booker record, it will make people dance. It's a fact. Being a digger by nature, his edits and productions always source something lesser known... a find, and he has that magic wherewithal to spin a deeply dance inducing track with it. I've seen the results, people getting down to something they've not heard before, going with it, feeling the groove and ultimately finding themselves giving over, flipping out, going to that place we all love to go on a good night out. 

So i had a little chat with the man about some things and he handed over a decidedly house mix for our Press Play series. A little bit of that raw, rough cut, Detroit deep for late night listening/ dancing/ whatever called 'House of Booker'. I love it! And i'm massively grateful for Frank dropping by. You'll find the interview below and below that, a link to Frank's House of fire.

What releases have u got coming up?
 
Releases coming up? I'm finishing an edit 12" for Disco Deviance (should be out in June), and doing another EP for Kolour LTD. And I'm quietly working away on a full length album, which is homeless (at the moment). Oh, I forgot to mention, Recloose is starting a new label (Rancho Deluxe) and I'm doing some work for them, including a remix for young upstarts Manuel Darquart, who are making some really good house. At some stage I'll hopefully be doing a collaboration with Recloose, my old Hit It & Quit It pal... And the guy I share an office with on my day job!

Can u tell us a bit more about the album? Will it be edits? Also what inspires u to create a new track and how do u go about the process?

Well there will be "sampling" (naturally!) as that's the key part of my process. but it won't be edits as such.... I'd prefer to make something that's a bit like a snapshot of how I dj.... so, some things there are quite mellow, as well as the more disco & house stuff.... but somehow put together in a way that is cohesive and makes sense as a whole package.... that's part of the challenge I think, as I've only ever done EPs or singles to this point.

In terms of inspiration and creating stuff, all sorts of things inspire me, new productions that I hear, to good DJ sets, to just being simply inspired to sit down with maschine, ableton or logic and see what happens from mucking around. As I've said, sampling is a big part of what I do naturally... so often the beginning of the process will be listening or digging, then sampling through the Urei and chopping it up within an inch of it's life... Ultimately - and strangely - I find the tracks I've done that seem to work best are the things that I've done quite quickly. In terms of finding the idea, executing it, and keeping it "raw"... whenever I spend too long on things, I tend to forget why I started it in the first place!

Ok one more thing. I recently played two tracks of yours off the Kat release, to a packed dance floor. To say they rocked the floor would be an understatement. So two things... Do you spend a lot of time digging? And what thoughts come up knowing that your releases have that kind of effect on people from really different cultures such as your own?

Thanks man! It's very inspiring for me to hear things like that. Obviously it's very isolated down here in the South Pacific, and while we have a good music culture, I often feel as though the music that I love (disco, boogie and so on) falls on deaf ears here... So in a way I think I try and imagine far off exotic places when I'm constructing these things. Which in it's own way is probably funny to people who think New Zealand is some kind of Island paradise!! It's very cool for me to think that something like the release on KAT - which was my attempt to do something "afro flavoured" (whatever that might be!) could work somewhere like in South Africa. 

In terms of digging, I'm definitely a vinyl junkie... I buy a lot from Really Groovy records, which is a bit of an institution here in Auckland (opened in the early 80s). I'm a bit of a newcomer to discogs, but making up for lost time! And I tend to grab new stuff from the obvious online places (Juno etc)... The shipping costs to NZ are appalling, but when you've gotta do, you gotta do it. Spoken like a true addict!
 
press play #76 - frank booker - house of booker