Prok & Fitch’s 2009 house invasion

Prok & Fitch’s 2009 house invasion

9 January, 2009 | 2.51PM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: prok & fitch, stealth records

Last year Brighton house duo Prok & Fitch narrowly missed out being crowned Beatportal’s house artists of 2008, but with the speed they’re gaining, this year could be huge for them.

The newly formed duo kicked off 2008 with ‘Outro Lugar’, which quickly burgeoned into an anthem of WMC 2008 later to be picked up by Stealth Records chief Roger Sanchez.

Since that release, they’ve built up a reputation for remixing the ‘who’s who’ of classic house, from Golden Girls (’Kinetic’) to Cevin Fisher (’You Got Me Burning Up’), wrapping up the year by mixing a ‘Best of Stealth 2008’ compilation.

It certainly was an impressive 12 months for Prok & Fitch, so Beatportal caught up with the boys to discuss how they plan to capitalize on their 2008 successes this year.

You two are relatively new to the scene as a duo, but share 18+ years of experience between you.  What were your first introductions to the electronic music world?

James: I was living in Spain at the time of the acid house explosion. I was 12 at the time and my brother used to go to all these clubs in Madrid, bringing tapes back the DJ had given him. I used to nick them off him when he wasn’t around and record them, then spend hours in my room with my headphones on wondering what it would be like to hear the music in a club. I became obsessed with the music and have craved it ever since. I fortunately had my bike stolen when I was 16… the insurance money paid for my first set of decks. That said, I’d been wiring up my dad’s CD decks to a cheap mixer since I was 14.

Ben: I was into dance music from a very young age, apparently raving it up to the sounds of Madness in my highchair. Getting into house music through the legendary Sterns, I then started putting on a few parties in and around where I grew up, renting village halls and blagging marquees. It was all a little time consuming, so the next step was getting behind the decks.

How did your alliance come about?
Ben: We had both been DJing separately and James was producing, long before we met five years ago. James had spent the majority of his time living and playing around Valencia and mainland Spain, whereas I spent two summers playing In Ibiza, then had a four year residency at The Honey Club. Although we were playing to completely different crowds, we both knew how to get the dancefloor going, James playing more peak-time house and myself playing slightly deeper.

I used to work in the record shop BPM in Brighton, and James used to be in there a lot buying tracks. I knew he was producing music as his track ‘Pass The Funk’ was doing the business in the shop. I’d always wanted to get into production, so had a chat with him to see if he fancied redoing ‘Outro Lugar’ - he was also a big fan of the track, so the next step was the studio. Our DJing has a strong influence on our productions; whenever we’re in the studio our main concern is how it will sound on the dancefloor.

You say your style is “100% pure and undiluted house”.  Can you please explain what exactly that means to you?

To us, house is what it’s always been: good grooves, some vocals here and there and more organic sounds with no offensive noises. We think people have become a bit obsessive about genres, unfortunately it pigeonholes you in something for a certain public, when really a lot of the time it’s very accessible to lots of different people! We call what we play house, yet if you had ro put the tracks we play into genres they’d cover everything from tech, progressive, techno, minimal, electro… so really it’s down to individual interpretation.

Dance music has definitely become easier to produce with all the new tools available. It has meant that there is silly amounts of music out there and the quality has definitely dropped as the digital age has made it easier to get your music out there. To find good tracks you have to search for hours! On the other hand it does give everybody the chance to put out their music.

House in 1998 was much different from today’s sounds – can you speak on those cyclical changes and tell us where your sound fits in?

Music is a lot more experimental now than it used to be, a big track can just be some clever beats and some interesting new sounds these days, whereas back in the day it had to be a proper song, with a catchy vocal or some very musical parts (obviously there are some exceptions). Our sound fits in the middle, we try to keep the elements from the good old days but make it acceptable to as many of those genres as possible and stay true to what we think works on a dancefloor.

Who are your influences?

On the production side we’re mutually big fans of the productions of Full Intention; their tracks consistently worked very well on the dancefloor and were an inspiration to both of us. Currently we’re very keen on the sounds of the Dutch guys, Funkerman, Bingo Players, Fedde Le Grande, Gabriel, Castellon and Hardwell who are all making wicked peak-time house music.

James: DJ wise, Jeremy Healy I respect, as I always loved his energy and technical ability behind the decks.

Ben: Yeah, it has to be Carl Cox for me as I have never seen him not smash it, and he has always musically done his own thing and not sold out.

What was your overall approach to constructing the ‘Best of Stealth 2008’ compilation?

We approached the mix in the same way that we approach our sets, as though we were playing to a dancefloor, preferably a busy one!  We wanted to make sure it built up and finished rocking. We also wanted to make sure it had our stamp on it, so we kept it interesting with a few tools thrown in here and there.

How did you go about selecting the tracks?

We were given the tracks by the label but had the freedom to choose which mixes went on, so we went through the tracks first and picked the mixes that were closest to our sound, then put the tracks in order for the mix...although that changed as we did the mix.

The result is a mix of solid house tunes that grooves from start to finish, with a few moments for you to put your hands in the air, wind down your car windows, beep your horn or turn up the treadmill.

Obviously any partnership is bound to have some bumps in the road. How do you deal with creative differences during the mix?

We’re really fortunate to get on so well both in DJing and in the studio. We’ve been working non-stop together for the last three years, so we know each others styles and understand each others’ thoughts inside out. Hard to believe, but we rarely have creative differences, on the rare occasion that we do we’ll try both angles and we’re always agree on what’s good for the track.

What do you consider your strengths and weaknesses as producers/DJs?

We both bring different strengths to the table. James is extremely technical and has a really good ear for detail, whilst Ben is great at pushing the boundaries and being experimental but consistent—his risk taking always pay off!

We are both extremely keen to gain a greater practical knowledge of the more musical side of production.

You’re known to put out some tight remixes, including Golden Girls and Cevin Fisher among several others. Anyone you’ve currently got your eye on for the re-rub treatment?

We always like working with new artists as it’s a chance for us to show how we interpret a track and give a fresh approach to it. We’d love to remix Sebastien Leger, Chris Lake, Eric Prydz and the other Swedes like the Swedish House Mafia - we could definitely give their tracks a different edge to complement their releases.

How is your Floorplay night at Coalition in Brighton going?

We’ve both been totally blown away by how well the night has gone. What started out as us wanting to showcase some of the artists from the label has turned into queues around the block and one in, one out after 30 minutes of opening!

After all our years of experience playing out and going to clubs, I think we’ve got the balance of what constitutes a good club night spot on, plus we’ve worked our arses off to get it right (hence the state of us by the end of the night)!

So how do you plan to capitalise on your 2008 successes?

For the time being we want to keep working our arses off in the studio, we’ve got so many ideas to put into music and we want to stay as creative as possible. Our music is taking us to lots of new places and that’s very exciting. 

We’ve got lots of great tracks and remixes finished and in the hands of the labels due for release and lots of hot tracks to release on our Floorplay label.

Thinking about the future we really want to keep building the label and the party. There’s no reason if we keep working as hard as we are that we can’t rival the big labels like Toolroom Records, CR2 and Defected and that’s what we’re setting our sights on. 

Over the last year we’ve really seen the hard work we’ve put in start to pay off, and although we’ve made lots of sacrifices along the way hopefully it’ll all be worth it very soon.

‘Best Of Stealth 2008’ mixed by Prok & Fitch is out now on Stealth Records

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