Beedle’s About: X Press 2’s Ashley On Dark Places & Destiny
27/04/2006
‘I think we all lost our way a little when we were doing the second X Press 2 album, during that period working on it was though now it’s almost finished it
felt like this weight was suddenly lifted off us. We really wanted to make the record something special and it’s quite hard to do that within a house music framework; particularly when you’re out hearing other people doing really basic and simple records that are brilliant, thinking to yourself ‘why the f**k can’t we do that?’
Sitting in an open plan café in a Hammersmith office complex, original acid house legend/ X Press 2 star producer laughs as he admits his seemingly charmed life has not been without hiccups. Making his name at London’s now legendary acid house raves of the 80s, he went on to form X Press 2 with fellow acid pioneers Rocky and Diesel in 1993, becoming one of the biggest house bands of the entire era, via club hits including London X-Press, ‘Say What’ and ‘Rock 2 House’.
8 years later, the UK house trio put out their debut album, featuring collaborators includingYello’s Dieter Mayer and Ex Talking Head David Byrne, in the process becoming bona fide pop stars, particularly with worldwide smash Lazy. Today, though Ashley’s entirely unrecognised by the hordes of office worker streaming past, befitting his personal leanings.
‘One of the healthiest things that’s happened in the last few years is that dance music has gone back underground,’ he declares, ‘And then you’ve got things like Myspace which is absolutely amazing- the hook-ups you can do on that are mad. You’re completely bypassing the main labels and media systems. DJ Premier got in touch a few weeks ago asking to be friends which was fantastic- in a million years we’d probably never have met that person whereas now we have.’
His enthusiasm for all things online and digital is matched by his own solo activities via his personal website ashleybeedle.co.uk, which includes free digital mixes, details of his latest parallel musical projects and most of all himself.
‘In the past, I used to use a million different monickers now it’s just London Heavy Disco, my reggae thing and Ashley Beedle and my main emphasis generally is on Ashley Beedle, even with the London Heavy Disco thing,’ he explains.
‘In the past I diluted myself quite a lot and even today I still meet people who say ‘I didn’t know you did that track’ because I didn’t use my name and they didn’t bother looking at the small print, though one of the reasons I never used to do it before was because I was quite shy,’ he continues.
‘I’ve always had the attitude that music speaks for itself. But over the years from doing more remixes and productions you grow with yourself and become more comfortable in your own skin. So now I’m not afraid to go ‘hello, it’s me’. People are also more accepting of that, to go ‘it’s Ashley, he’s come out now’, excuse the double meaning (laughing).’
Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): There’s a new X Press 2 album close-ish on the horizon, you’re also releasing records and working as Ashley Beedle, why have you decided to create this new extra project the London Heavy Disco?
Ashley Beedle: ‘It all started from us doing a couple of small parties for friends, called Heavy Disco, which was all about playing just disco records, not necessarily ones that people know. I’ve got a big collection of those records as have a couple of my friends, we decided to get together and have a go at doing some parties and when we did the parties were brilliant. I used the Black Science Orchestra project in the past and for certain reasons I don’t use the name anymore, and I thought using London Heavy Disco could be a good way for me to start using that disco sound again.’
Skrufff: Last time we chatted in 2002 you said ‘Eventually, I want to be in a position where we’re stuck in our own studio, just making music to please ourselves’ how much closer are you to achieving that?
Ashley Beedle: ‘A little closer, though it’s a slog. You forget about the byproducts of life, such as family. Obviously on one level making music is my job, I’ve got to make money to support my family and sometimes it can be tough. And you always aim to get to the point where you’re earning enough money from making the music where you can actually kick back and say ‘I’m in my own space now, I’m doing this now for fun.’
Skrufff: With X Press 2 you have a worldwide hit a few years ago with Lazy, didn’t that turn you into millionaires?
Ashley Beedle: ‘Not at all. Firstly you’ve got things like paying tax, that’s 40% of your earnings gone straightaway. Then with X Press 2 we’re immediately splitting everything between three guys so immediately it’s not really a lot of money. And we also didn’t go out and do the live thing at the time, not as early as we should have anyway. If we had done it earlier probably our record sales would have been bigger but we weren’t ready for it then, either individually or as a group. But I think we are now. Not through necessity, more that we’re thinking ‘you know what? We can do this, we’re big boys now’.’
Skrufff: Soul music of the 70s and reggae used to be highly socially-conscious, what do you make of today’s soul music, such as R&B?
Ashley Beedle: ‘I like some of it musically, there are still great singers out there, for example there’s a guy called Anthony Hamilton, who is unbelievable. But the really interesting singers don’t seem to be massive priorities for the majors. A lot of R&B that you hear in the charts is tripe, I love what they do with the beats but lyrically it’s for kids.’Skrufff: Why do you think so many kids aren’t interested in social issues anymore?
Ashley Beedle: ‘It’s partly the celebrity culture but also the digital aspect that offers so many more distractions whether it’s games, TV or the net. There’s great apathy in the world these days and that’s a real shame. With my kids I can sit down and talk to them about recycling and environmental issues and they get it because where they go to school, god bless ‘em, they get a good education. But you’re average kid in the area I live in, Tottenham, all they want to know about is going out and having the craic (party).’
Skrufff: How old are your kids?
Ashley Beedle: ‘They’re 12, ten and I have an elder daughter as well.’
Skrufff: Do you find yourself being over-protective?
Ashley Beedle: ‘Of course, as a parent it’s in your genes.’
Skruffff: How do you view the prospect of them going out raving?
Ashley Beedle: ‘At the end of the day I like to think they can start coming out raving with me and at least see it from that perspective. Of course, they’re gonna’ want to go out by themselves and will probably get in a few scrapes like I did but hopefully I can show them the right way to go, and how to get out of the scrapes.’
Skrufff: You grew up in Harrow, West London, what kind of environment was that?
Ashley Beedle: ‘F**king horrible. It’s one of the few places in the world I won’t go back to, it’s a s**t town. There was racism and I encountered some really horrible situations there, I couldn’t wait to get out of there when I was a kid. Even now, my Harrow mates who still live there tell me it’s horrible. They don’t have anything culturally in those places and I think it’s like that in a lot of these towns in the UK, places like Woking or Paisley in Scotland. Don’t get me wrong I also had some great times growing up there, I had a group of friends, the music was fantastic. The first time I went up town (to London) to a soul club called Crackers it was an eye-opener. I remember thinking ‘wow, this is really cosmopolitan, I met loads of people and realised it’s a bigger world out there.’
Skrufff: Did you move to Central London?
Ashley Beedle: ‘I kind of moved in gradually, I went from Harrow to Wembley then Old Street. Then gradually I moved back out again. London is still a great place, from a creative standpoint it’s brilliant the only thing that’s killing us is the taxes and the increasing restrictions, it’s becoming more Big Brother every day. When I’m a bit older and the kids are, I’m definitely thinking about getting out altogether, I don’t know where, but somewhere that has a musical culture.’
Skrufff: When you were coming up through the original acid house scene, there were thousands of ravers and lots of DJs around, were you unusually motivated to do something more with it?
Ashley Beedle: ‘I just fell into it like everyone else. We came out of the sound system culture and with my sound system of the time, we used to put the rig into the parties at Clink Street, that’s where we started. They gave us a room and said ‘do you’re thing’, we started playing the early house records and I ‘saw the light’; that’s how it started. Any youth culture has always been about the music and the drugs so with the advent of ecstasy and house music put together it took off. There was Evil Eddie Richards, Kid Batchelor, Mr C, Colin Faver, those were the people Djing then.’
Skrufff: How easy has it been for you to avoid slipping into excessive drug use over the years?
Ashley Beedle: ‘Being really honest, I think everyone involved in that scene went to dark places somewhere down the line. If you come out of it, great, if not, it’s a problem. You do over-indulge and get caught up in it all, with sleepless nights and all the rest but you need to have an ability to put a lid on it. Most of us dipped our toes in those dark places but for me the music is what’s saved me and pulled me out of those things. This is what I do and this is what I want to do, and that beats everything else.’
Skrufff: Does it become easier making tracks with experience?
Ashley Beedle: ‘I don’t know. I’m a lucky guy because pretty much what I imagine in my head comes out in the studio but I’m not a taught musician. I always use an engineer and programmer; though I do a little programmer myself, but not that much. I’m happy about that; if I have a quick programmer and quick engineer it’s like ‘bang, it happens’. I much prefer that to the process becoming very laborious.’
Skrufff: Joey Negro recently recommended new producers should hire in help paying £200 a day to someone to help them make their record, would you agree with that advice?
Ashley Beedle: ‘Yeah, I’d go along with that but it’s an individual choice. I must say I’ve seen some people in the studio who haven’t got a f**king clue and how they get away with calling themselves producers, who are out there now fronting it, I haven’t got a clue. I don’t agree with it either. A lot of people will give their engineer carte blanche to make their tracks then say afterwards ‘I’ve done that and that’s wrong. Whoever I work with always gets credited.’
Skrufff: In the early 80s you worked in a hospital morgue, were you clubbing then?
Ashley Beedle: ‘I was going out to soul clubs in the night then working in the morgue in the day. The reason I got out of doing that job was because I became desensitized, going into the morgue and cleaning up a body, throwing amputated limbs into the furnace. You’d be talking about the football results as you did I, I felt like a f**king zombie sometimes. I was a porter, assigned to accident and emergency and that involved going into the morgue at the weekend sometimes because for some reason that’s when a lot of accidents happen, such as drink driving related crashes. I’d be throwing limbs in the furnace from people who’d had amputations. You’d be given a limb in this bag and you’d have to take this leg down to the f**king incinerator. We’d always be joking ‘maybe we should have a peep’.’
Skrufff: Do you feel a sense of destiny with your career and life?
Ashley Beedle: ‘I think so, yes, based on things that have happened to me. Whether that destiny comes from some form of higher intelligence or whether it’s just inherent in humans, I don’t know.’
Ashley Beedle Presents Soul Machine: 2005 Mastermix is available as a free download from his site below:
http://www.ashleybeedle.co.uk
http://www.trustthedj.com/SKRUFFF/news_art...hp?news_id=5308
