A Tale of Two Freaks

A Tale of Two Freaks

3 March, 2010 | 9.29AM

• Written by: Philip Sherburne
• Filed under: Music News: freaks, luke solomon, music for freaks

It was the best of times, it was the freakiest of times. Since 1996, Freaks—the London duo of Luke Solomon and Justin Harris—have been turning dancefloors upside down with their unique sense of boompty. It’s hard to imagine the house music of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s without Freaks tunes like ‘Turning Orange’ or ‘Washing Machine’, which managed to combine elements of jacking Chicago house, minimal German techno and an unhinged, quintessentially British sense of humor.

Freaks spent a decade kicking merrily around the underground, releasing dozens of singles and three albums, most of it for their own Music For Freaks imprint. Then, in 2007, a funny thing happened on their way to the disco: ‘The Creeps’, a record that they had originally released in 2003, finally wormed its way into the U.K. pop charts, going all the way to #9. Pretty cool—unless you happen to be Freaks, for whom the idea of pop stardom is about as appealing as an extended bout of stomach flu.

Reeling from the exposure, Freaks went dark; Solomon focused his efforts on solo material, including a string of singles and an album for Radio Slave’s REKIDS label, and a cracking collaboration with Jonny Rock, ‘It’s In The Rhythm’, for Playhouse.

Now, at long last, the duo has emerged from its underground burrow with an irreverent new single for Crosstown Rebels, ‘UMakeNoSense’, and another new record, ‘Right Now’, for Rebirth, featuring vocals from the legendary Chicago house musician Robert Owens. To top it all off, they’ve pulled together a selection of hits, obscurities and exclusives, ‘Best of Times’, for their own Music for Freaks label. We caught up with Solomon by phone to ask what brought them back, and to find out if the world is finally ready for Freaks.

Until last year, you guys had been lying low for a couple of years. Why?

Predominantly it was just recovering from the aftershock of having a top 10 record. It was a really strange thing for me. I don’t know about Justin, but for me it was a really bizarre part of my life. It threw me into all kinds of mental turmoil.

We’ve always followed our own path, you know, never set out to be pop stars of any kind. I personally have no intention of that, it doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’m inspired by pop music, I listen to pop music, but I don’t have the necessity to want to be famous. I don’t like that side of the world at all.

Then, to suddenly be thrown into the spotlight, and to have the pressures of record labels and even friends saying, “You should do it again, look at the money you’re gonna make!” The money was nice, but at the same time, it was just soul destroying. It’s a different world. And because of the nature of the beast, and what the song became, it was a different world to what we’re used to.

We’d been making loads of music as a band, and writing and writing and writing, and all any label wanted to hear was a followup to ‘The Creeps’. So there was this whole kind of branding issue going on.

It felt like it was the right thing to do, to let it all die down, let people forget, you know. People’s attentions spans these days last a week, and that’s about it, really. That whole world is beyond me now. The days of growing up and buying a record and sitting and listening to it every day for a month, and it’s changing your life—those are few and far between now.

So yeah, we kind of let the dust settle and then felt like we had to go back and experiment again. Not that we hadn’t been doing that, but experimenting more in a dancefloor way, and making a record that felt like an old Freaks record.

Freaks, ‘The Creeps (Steve Bug Remix)’

What exactly happened with ‘The Creeps’? How did it find its way to the pop charts?

It was a weird one. Basically, it was on The Man Who Lived Underground, and it got picked up by Gigolo first, because Hell heard it and he wanted to release it. And with that came the Steve Bug mix, and that became really popular. Then Azuli licensed it, and they got a few different mixes done. We always had oversight over what mixes were commissioned—they were always our doing. But for one reason or another Dave Piccioni [at Azuli] had gone and commissioned this remix from Vandalism, Andy Van, in Australia. We never heard it, he never played it to us. He just put it up on DJDownload, and it turned into being the biggest DJDownload record in history, I think it still is! I don’t even know if DJDownload exists any more, but whatever. [We wouldn’t know. –Ed.]

And from that, it got loads of attention in the U.K. from three or four labels, Ministry of Sound being one of them. Ministry took it on, and they decided they wanted someone to write a top line for it, a vocal, so they could put it into radio. We were like, if anyone’s going to write a top line, at least let us have a go at it first, Stella [Attar] should sing it, let’s see where we go with that, because at least we’ll get all the writing credits, blah blah blah.

So we ended up doing that and pulling that off, and from there it just snowballed, it went to number nine. The royalty checks started coming in, which was nice, and then they dried up. And then you’re back with no record label, no money, and having all your creativity sapped. It’s a weird one. I wouldn’t recommend it. [laughs]

When was that, like 2004?

The record was from 2003 or 2004, and the snowballing happened one or two years later. Damian Lazarus was the first person to pick up on that record, because he put it on one of his mixes. But I think it came out late 2007, the actual commercial pop release.

It’s very funny, you know, you get into this whole world where your kids are going into school and people know about it, and friends have got kids who want you to sign your autograph… It’s really very strange. Then they listen to the rest of your music and they go, “Right, ok then… It doesn’t sound anything like ‘The Creeps’, does it”? And we’re like, sorry, no, it doesn’t… [laughs] You think, that was a nice little experiment in life and music, you know, restoring my faith in my hatred for the music industry.

Freaks, ‘UMakeNoSense’

How did the Crosstown hookup come about for ‘UMakeNoSense’?

I released a couple of singles with Damian, and I produced his album, we just had that connection. He was one of the first that heard it, and I think, being so leftfield and out-there, that’s where Damian’s head’s at anyway, it just went from there. We thought, should we do it ourselves? But we liked the idea of not having the pressure, it not being our own label and our own money, all of those things again. We were like, F**k it, let’s just do this, let’s not be as precious as we’ve always been when it comes to releasing our own music. It was kind of an experiment in that, and Matt [Edwards, aka Radio Slave, who did the remix] seemed like a good person to put it into his own context.

And now you guys are back with a new compilation of material, some classic, some new. What brought you back?

I think it was almost kind of therapeutic, to go back and look at the history and realize that it’s been quite a long time now and we actually have got a bit of a musical history. You go back and listen to the records, and we’re thinking that so much of it seems so relevant now. It feels like everything’s gone full circle. Records we were making then, that people were possibly scratching their heads at—you know, we always got pats on the back, but you rarely heard DJs playing the records, apart from things like ‘Turning Orange’ or ‘Where Were You When the Lights Went Out’, stuff like that, but never the more leftfield, obscure stuff. And it feels like all of that stuff we were making makes more sense now. We just thought it would be a good starting point for us for a kind of revival. At the same time it can be very cathartic as well. You feel like you need that little bit of a nudge with your confidence and your creativity.

Do you feel vindicated by the renewed popularity of house music?

I don’t know how I feel at the moment. It’s a weird one for me. I feel like I’ve always followed a parallel universe to what becomes fashion and what doesn’t. I never try to be involved in that world; I get annoyed by it, more than anything. Good music is good music. I spent the last three or four years playing vocals, playing house music, playing techno, playing the odd minimal record, and I think there were situations where people were scratching their heads, going, ‘This has got words in it, I don’t know if I can dance. It’s a bit too housey, I don’t know if I’m supposed to dance to that.’ [laughs]

For me, “house” and all these genres and words that get bandied about—good music is just good music, and that’s how it is. I’m old school. If you come from the old-school world of DJs where you want to take people on a journey, you want to play disco, you want to play acid records, you want to go and play midtempo records or house or techno or whatever, it should be all part and parcel of going out and having a party.

In the same breath, I’m kind of glad because it means I’ve got work again. [laughs] It means it’s not quite so difficult to get gigs. It’s still hard. I’m totally of two minds over the whole thing, really. On one side I feel chuffed that records like our Prescription record are getting re-released, and there’s a whole new generation of kids that are hearing it, and it’s #2 in the Groove chart, things like that. It’s quite nice to know that you made that record 18 years ago, and it’s relevant again. That’s really rewarding. But then at the same time I’m hearing loads of music which is like a half-assed attempt to make those old, retro records on digital computers, and that really frustrates me. They sound fake. Sometimes it’s just people trying to copy something, rather than being inspired by a form of music and using that to move forward.

We did the same thing with disco, but at least back then we were using analogue equipment, and there were accidents that were happening, and things weren’t quite right. Things were a little off-kilter because of the nature of the beast and the equipment that was being used. Now everything is just so f**king perfect, and that’s the bit that frustrates me. That’s what’s forced me into taking the modern world, but going back and using old-school mentalities or ideas in making music. I think people need to embrace that a lot more. For me the stand-out kids right now are the ones that are thinking outside the box, and not just hitting all the preset buttons, just making manufactured music that seems correct for this day and age.

Freaks, ‘Instrument’

Music for Freaks always seemed to me a bit like the missing link between Chicago and Germany—on the one hand you guys had early releases from Turner and Markus Nikolai, and on the other there was not only the obvious Chicago influence on your sound, but also your eventual collaboration with Derrick Carter, running the Classic label.

I hope so. Even Classic always bridged those things. We released Isolée records and Sneak records, and that was always, I guess, my European upbringing and background, and Derrick’s American upbringing and background, and fusing those tastes and finding a middle ground with the music that we both absolutely loved. That’s what made it special. And I guess the same thing happened with me and Justin with Freaks. We had Bar Rumba every Wednesday, we were hearing loads of different DJs playing, we were being introduced to music we didn’t know about. I was going to Chicago a lot and being inspired by that—DJing next to some ridiculously old-school and amazing DJs, hearing Farley Jackmaster Funk and things like that—and then coming back and still being very close friends with Heiko and Ata [from Playhouse] and Rajko [Müller, aka Isolée] and Markus [Nikolai] and getting that influence and playing Robert Johnson, and playing WMF in Berlin way back in the day, and hearing Dixon and people like that and being inspired by that. And I think that’s just what music should be. You take your inspiration from everything that’s around you, regardless of whether it’s cool or fashionable, just following what’s true to your heart. And I guess that’s always shown in our music or our taste in music, more than anything else.

It’s difficult when you feel like the audience isn’t listening along with you. It’s one thing to do what you’re doing, but you need listeners.

It’s funny, isn’t it. I think we’ve done that with ‘U Make No Sense’. I feel deep down that we’ve made the kind of record that you haven’t got now. I don’t think it fits in this place. Not to say that it’s a great record, or whether it’s a bad record, I just don’t think the time is right for the record. Maybe in a few years it might get bought. We’ve learned to realize that with our music. We’ve got maybe 50 or 60 songs that we’ve made that have gone over people’s heads. But deep down, me and Justin know that we’ve got something really special. Like the Robert Owens record that just got released, we made that record three years ago, and it sat in our hard drives, and I’ve played it for people and it’s like, “Eh, whatever.” And then all of a sudden it gets released, and the reaction to it is ridiculous, because it’s so relevant now, because it’s Robert Owens, because it sounds like an old house record, and you just sit there going, “Oh, for f**k’s sake!” [laughs] Here we go again, do you know what I mean? I’m hoping that we’ve sat on a goldmine of things that might one day be relevant again.

Freaks, ‘U Ain’t House’

When did you start going to Chicago?

I went in late ‘93 or early ‘94. I was working for Freetown records, which was a label owned by Sankey Yeo. His was the first international label to sign, like, Felix da Housecat, Jamie Principle, Masters at Work, the Basement Boys, the masters of Chicago house. I had a connection with Chez Damier, we were becoming good friends—I can’t even remember how we communicated with each other, as I don’t think there was email yet. That’s so weird to think, isn’t it? How did we talk to each other? It must have been phone calls. I remember looking on the labels of records, looking at the phone numbers, I’d be like, “212, that’s New York, 312, that’s Chicago, I’ll phone this number and see what happens, who picks up the phone.” That was so exciting.

I got to meet Chez through Prescription, and we ended up doing a Ron Trent record on Freetown. Chez invited me over when we signed the Prescription record. Chez and Derrick are really good friends, and I played a party with Sneak—totally out of my depth, just this young kid who turns up from England. Met Cajmere and all the guys—Glenn Underground, Boo Williams—and got piles and piles of records, it was like Christmas. I got t-shirts, I just remember it being the most exciting time of my life, just to go there and be in this amazing city, and go out and hear DJs and be floored. For me, the first time I ever heard Gemini, it was just the maddest thing I had ever heard in my life—this mental, seven-foot-tall, crazy dude, partying and playing the most berserk records, and it was like, this is it, that’s my life, I’ve changed. Derrick was part of that group of friends, Spencer’s [Kincey, aka Gemini] friends and Chez’s friends. I’d done a party with Ron Carroll and Maurice Joshua, and it was in a really weird place. Derrick had come to rescue me, because he knew that this place was going to be a bad party. We ended up going somewhere else and hanging out, and getting drunk, and the rest is history, really.

I still remember it vividly. I remember it being cold. One of the reasons I remember it so well is that I went over with one of my really close friends, who actually passed away about three years afterwards, in a car accident. So in my memory that makes it all the more magical, because I’ve got photos of him having his hair cut by Chez Damier and things like that. It was really quite special.

You started on out Phono. What can you tell me about the label? I remember discovering them through Herbert’s early records.

The guy that we got to know was a guy called Chris, and he ran the label. I don’t know how we ended up sending our demos to him. I think it must have been because of Matthew [Herbert]. I got the first two or three Herbert records, and I remember being absolutely floored by them, it was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I remember it was the early days of Classic, and me and Derrick were doing a tour together, and we used to play these parties in the basement at Cambridge University. That was where we met Anu, Freeform Five. I remember Derrick playing Herbert, and I remember being so blown away by these Herbert records. Me and Justin had made a record, and we thought, we’ll send it to Phono, that’ll be our first choice of all the labels we want to be on. And then we got talking to Chris, and I guess that was it. Swag were on Phono, and so was Morgan Geist, so it was really an interesting label to be a part of, definitely.

Your first records always reminded me of Herbert’s early singles, just in terms of the sound of it. You guys had those amazingly fat, chunky snares. How did you hit upon your sound, was it just samplers and drum machines?

Matthew’s a whole different story. Matthew was a massive inspiration for us, and he still is, for me. He’s a real musician. We’ve always kind of winged it. We were using an old Atari, we had a Novation Drum Station and an old Jomox—I’ve still got everything, I think. The great thing about the innocence of making records when you don’t really know how to make records, and making things on analogue equipment, is just suddenly hitting upon something that sounds really good. Don’t know anything about compression, don’t know anything about how I should EQ it, just trying to make it sound good and make a record that people will want to dance to on a big soundsystem. That’s how it happened. There was no thinking about side-chaining, or how this bass should be squashed to work with this, and what’s missing in the high frequencies, all the things that go through my head now that almost take away the naivety and innocence of making records—sometimes I wish I could rewind that, you know. We just did it. I don’t know how we did it. We just winged it, really.

It’s easier when you don’t know anything, and you don’t even know what you don’t know.

It is! There’s no pressure. You don’t have any history, you don’t have anything conditioning you in any way at all. You don’t have any technical knowledge, you just want to go out and do something because it’s fun, and that’s exactly what we did with the Crosstown record. We completely stripped things down. You pretend you don’t know anything. You think, it sounds sh*t, we’ll make it sound good later. We had our iPhones out, just making sounds with the f*cking iPhones, just throwing things in, no conditions as to who’s going to like this, which DJs are going to play it, you know what I mean? It’s like, forget all that, just go and do something that, at the end of the day, you’ve drunk a few beers and it was just really good fun. That’s ultimately what it should be about.

What were you doing with iPhones?

We’ve got a load of synths for it—I spent a fortune on drum machines and synths and stuff like that. There’s some really cool stuff on the iPhone, some great synthesizers, I’ve just been blown away by it. When the iPad comes out, the things that’s going to do for music are phenomenal. That’s going to be a real revolution in music. What people are developing for that software, and to use it as a pad and as a controller for freestyle music and adding sound effects and things like that, it’s really just a great piece of kit.

It seems a bit like a more accessible Lemur.

Brought down to the level of affordability, definitely. Two thousand pounds! I love it, it looks amazing, but no, I’m not Daft Punk, so it’s not going to happen.

Freaks feat. Robert Owens, ‘Right Now’

What’s next for Freaks, do you have more records coming out?

We do actually. Now everyone’s interested again, which is funny. It’s like, ok, we made that record 87 years ago, you really want to put it out? Ok, fine!

It’s quite a nice thing. We had the whole period of being a band, and we were going out and making records to play as the band; we had a real disco phase that was almost pre-nu-disco. I remember being on my honeymoon and sitting on the beach with my wife, and being really inspired musically. I’d been away from the studio, and it was that hunger to get back in the studio after having been away for three or four weeks. I was thinking, when we get back, we should turn Freaks into a band, it would be great, no one’s doing that. This was in 2000, at a point when house music was getting a bit stale, and dance music was getting a bit stale, the kids were turning to indie, and I was getting really bored with what was going on. Classic had finished, and things were getting a bit like… something new has got to happen.

So that’s what led to doing the band, and we went out and did a whole load of gigs and wrote loads of songs, and we’ve still got all of that stuff. One of those songs was called ‘Last Days of Disco’, a song about that particular era—about the end of house music, almost the end of club music. We’d done this song and we’d been playing it loads live, and nothing ever happened with it, no one had any interest in putting it out, but it got a great response when we played it live. It had been up on our MySpace page forever, and all of a sudden a label in Switzerland has picked up on it. They want to get Kalabrese to do a mix. He’s wonderful, a really interesting guy. So that’s coming out, that will be the next release after the Robert Owens, and then we’ve got a followup for Crosstown Rebels that isn’t quite finished, and we’ve got a hard drive with about a million songs that need to be finished in one form or another. I think we’re kind of inspired again to go back to them. We did a cover of Adonis’ ‘No Way Back’ which has got a full vocal, and there are a few exclusives on the Best of Times compilation. A lot of stuff that’s really out there, but more lyrical content. Since vocals are kind of back in vogue again, I think we might be onto a winner again. [Laughs]

Luke Solomon’s January 2010 Top 10

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