Sonar 2008: Claude VonStroke interview

Sonar 2008: Claude VonStroke interview

21 June, 2008 | 5.19AM

• Written by: Zack Rico
• Filed under: Music News: claude vonstroke, sonar 2008

San Francisco-based DJ, producer and record label owner Claude VonStroke showed off his producer prowess at the Beatport/Mobilee/Mothership rooftop party yesterday, impressing British DJ Jesse Rose.

“Last night at about 4 AM we were at this club in Barcelona where they were playing pop and hip hop, and the DJ dropped Damian Marley’s ‘Welcome to Jamrock’ - the reggae track with the vocal that goes ‘Up in the streets they call it muuuuuurrrdderr!’,” Claude VonStroke told Beatportal.

“I turned to Jesse and said, ‘I’m going to remix that track into a house version and it’ll be the biggest track at the rooftop party tomorrow’,” he said.

He was right, check out the video after the jump!

“So I went back to the hotel and remixed it right there.

“And when I played it in my set today, everyone went crazy.”

Video: Claude VonStroke drops his bootleg of Damian Marley’s ‘Welcome To Jamrock’

Jesse Rose chipped into the middle of the interview, “Bloody show off!” before walking off.

“That’s the amazing thing about technology now,” commented Claude.

“We walked into a club, stole the idea and I made the remix at 4 AM in my hotel room and played it out the next day.”

That shows what Claude VonStroke is all about—he’s a super producer and he is responsible for one of the most successful labels in electronic music currently, Dirtybird Records.

For years Claude VonStroke was a one-man-band producing, DJing and running Dirtybird all by himself but “now we’re a two-man-band with Chris Martin on board,” said Claude.

“We finally got a designer, too, who is really amazing.”

Claude VonStroke is something of a transatlantic success story and he’s one of only a handful of new American techno and house DJs to have been successful in Europe.

“When we started Dirtybird we never did any press in America, only in Europe,” explained CVS.

“We realised that Europe’s electronic music scene was much more progressive than America’s so if we could make it in Europe we could come back to the US and use that success.”

Dirtybird is now flying all on its own, so it’s no surprise that Claude VonStroke has decided to set up another record label - Mothership.

“Mothership is another outlet for us to release deeper music,” commented Claude.

“My next release ‘Scarlet Macaw’ will be out soon on Mothership and it’s deep jungle techno, kind of coconut-ty techno,” he said, grinning.

Claude VonStroke is responsible for some major dancefloor destroyers including ‘Deep Throat’, ‘Who’s Afraid of Detroit’ and recently his remix of Poxymusic’s ’War Paint‘.

It’s very surprising then that Claude VonStroke only uses Reason to produce.

“Yep, I love Reason, it’s so fast,” said Claude VonStroke.

“I can jot down 20 ideas quickly in Reason before I could do one idea in Logic.

“All the other programs have too many features, but Reason is so simple.”

Perhaps that explains why Claude VonStroke was able to remix Damian Marley so enviably quickly .

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• Check out Claude VonStroke on Beatport