An interview with Lee Burridge

An interview with Lee Burridge

19 October, 2007 | 6.06AM

• Section: Music News
• Written by: kim smith

Lee Burridge is from Dorset.

Dorset doesn’t produce many purveyors of fine electronica, but he never let that bother him. 

From a young age, Lee decided to reject his inevitable fate as a postman and departed for Hong Kong to become a full time DJ in a club called Joe Banana’s.

Lee has spent 23(ish) years collecting his carbon foot print points as if they were Esso tokens, traveling the length and breadth of the world djing from Tijuana to Thailand and even some places that don’t begin with a ‘T’.

This makes Lee happy.

He gets in the studio when he has time, thus Lee is happier still.

About a million gigs and a few pretty crazy hair cuts later, and it’s time for him to form the seminal Tyrant alliance with Craig Richards — and now, they hold a residency in that little club called Fabric.

He releases some killer compilations and holds legendary parties at Miami’s annual WMC.

By now, Lee is almost spilling over with happiness.

Then EQ, the superbly splendid Australian label, asks him to complete a Balance mix.

Hold onto your hats, disco kids, Lee is about to burst.

Did you really used to be a postman? If so, was there a particular moment when you decided it just wasn’t for you?

I worked as a postman for over two years while going out every weekend playing at parties or just raving (yes, I am that old that it was called ‘raving’!).

This became a problem when I was rolling in at 4am and having to be at work at 4.30am.

Saturday mornings and Monday mornings were the hardest and eventually made me ill with mono (hmm...good illness for a DJ to get!).

I went to work in the early stages of being sick and was pretty out of my mind.

The boss asked me to drive this old transit van full of the next town’s mail about thirteen miles, and I said I didn’t want to do it, but was told I had to.

I passed out at the wheel and hit a wall, smashing in the whole side of the van.

Three months off work with mono followed.

During the first week back it was gas bill time; I was out in the pouring rain shoving them through the doors and decided at that point that this wasn’t the career for me.

Your first full time DJing job was in Hong Kong at a place called Joe Banana’s. If you do an online search, it says JB’s is “still the place to be” (!). What was it like when you were there? Did you learn much in your time there?

One thing it did for me was forced me to mix records together for seven hours a night, every night.

I was playing fairly run of the mill pop music as well as 60s and 70s, and also got my microphone skills down!

It was fun but it wasn’t where my heart was at musically, so after my two year contract expired, I moved on.

I did learn that INXS ‘Need You Tonight’ mixes really well with Fine Young Cannibals though.

You’ve made your new Balance release span 3 CDs, moving from the mellow and spooky, culminating in full on club sounds. How did you make the selection process?

I had an overall plan with what I wanted to say.

I’ve been keeping a mental list of certain tracks I’d like to use for the mix since the last CD I released, and then spent a few months with a massive pile of tracks working out which ones sounded interesting when they overlapped and also flowed together in a direction as a whole mix.

It’s easy, these days, to join stuff neatly together, but it took a long time until I was happy with a result that kept the energy going and where the tracks made sense with each other.

We heard you had a moment of anxiety when recording the mix. What happened?

CD two really wasn’t working out.

I went through many emotions — from tears (which I’ve not seen the like of since first watching the movie ‘Beaches’) to anger (I took it out on my teddy bear) to frustration.

I was actually giving up and was on the phone to Balance asking their thoughts on this being a two CD package.

I’m glad I stuck with it, though, as all the CDs work really well together, and I think CD two is the most twisted and would make one and three a little disconnected.

What are the differences between the three CDs?

I thought long and hard about this package; it took me over two months to compile and mix the three discs.

CD1: I wanted to put together a collection of music that I find beauty within. Music made with passion, warmth and with a slight melancholic feel to each track.

CD2: This was the disc I was struggling with right up until the last week. I went in with the intention of making this a collection of druggy house music and minimal techno, and it actually ended up being quite a ride with more ups and downs than I’d set out to make.

CD3: Ahh, the consummate rocking CD. One always feels under pressure to put a more ‘rocking’ CD on a mix. This is it. Again, I wanted to try and do something a little different, so I set out this mix as a continuation of the previous 2 discs. It starts out in a much bolder way than anything I’ve done previously.

These are the best mix CDs I’ve made since Craig Richards and I made Tyrant.

And I’m really happy with all three.

What should a DJ never do?

Play a trumpet at their gig or form their hands into the praying position when taking a photo or do the nailed on a crucifix position when in the DJ box.

What should a DJ always do?

Wash their hands after fondling groupies.

You had a gun pointed at you for an hour by a Dominican Republic police officer a few years back as they raided the club. The officer didn’t speak any English, and you were drunk, so you started to make cheeky comments to him. That’s a risky little game, isn’t it? You’re still here, so what was the outcome?

The police officer was looking suspiciously at me while everyone else in the booth was laughing at the fact that I was asking whether or not his gun was a replacement for a small penis.

He didn’t shoot, fortunately.

You recently made a call for people to get “glamed up again”. Does this include the boys or is it just for girls? How far would you go to get suitably glamorised? And has any of this been influenced by your recent trips to the trippy Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert?

I was actually joking.

I guess the idea is down to me being out in the desert at Burning Man and also being in the USA for Halloween.

I’ve not been around so much dressing up since dating that dominatrix.

I didn’t ever enjoy the shiny shirt era of clubbing (for boys) but do like it when everyone is dressed up looking good — move over jeans and t-shirts!

What have been your top moments this year so far?

Burning Man Festival, because it is easily the best and most original event ever.

Also, the parties in Romania which are always amazing, and going out into the desert with Bedouins in Jordan.

What does 2008 hold?

Rehab.

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‘Balance Issue 12’ is out now on EQ Recordings.

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