Interview: Stanton Warriors

Interview: Stanton Warriors

25 October, 2007 | 10.46AM

• Written by: Caleb Rakes
• Filed under: Music News: beats music, claude von stroke, punks music

The Stanton Warriors have been dominating the breakbeat world since their debut album, ‘The Stanton Sessions Vol.1’, came out in 2001.

They are residents at London’s infamous Fabric club, they tour the globe and were the only breaks DJs to break into the DJMag ‘Top100’ list last year.

In between recording their new album and releasing their new remix collection, the Stanton Warriors have managed to set up their own labels, Punks and Beats - and Beatport’s got the exclusive.

Beatportal managed to grab a few questions with Mark Yardley from the Stantons.

Beatport gladly welcomes your label imprint, Punks. What was the ideology behind it and what is its sister label, Beats, all about?

Punks came about as a way to get Stanton Warriors remixes and productions out under a different name.

At the time, we were signed to Warner who wouldn’t let us release anything unless we wore skinny jeans.

Beats is for non-Stanton stuff that our friends make.

Your style of music has been described as ‘electro-booty-breaks’. How has this come about, and how do you think your sound is evolving?

It’s so hard to pigeonhole our sound, yet at the same time you can always tell a Stanton warriors production.

If our music is bouncing butts, then that’s our main criteria.

We just want to keep on doing that, using the freshest and most vibrant ingredients around.

That’s our “sound” basically.

What are the Stantons up to at the moment and what are your plans for the future?

We have just released an album of remixes on Skint Records and are currently working on our next album.

This is all in between a relentless tour schedule that takes us to all four corners of the globe on a weekly basis.

Who are your favourite musical peers at the moment, and what tunes are getting you excited?

Not much in the breaks world, to be honest, apart from Deekline, Bassbin Twins, Basskleph and a few others. 

The Stantons’ remix of Claude Von Stroke’s ‘Who’s Afraid of Detroit’ has been dominating the Beatport chart since its release. How did that come about?

With a lack of good breaks tunes out there, we went looking for good music from any source.

The original of this is an amazing tune so we asked to do our own version as a DJ tool.

I think the melodies work really well with our beats.

I hear that your bootleg of ‘Feelgood Inc.’ fell into [Gorillaz’s] Damon Albarn’s hands. Did you ever find out what his thoughts were about your break booty version?

I did when I bumped into him in the street, and he liked it and allowed us to officially release it on our remix album.

How have downloads changed your musical ethos?

I can shop in bed!

Beatport is great, but it’s all the blog sites that give your shit away for free that fuck up a lot of people.

I still like having a piece of vinyl or a CD, though.

And finally – is there one tune out there you wish you had written yourself?

‘Happy Birthday’ — just to collect the royalties.

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