In SOUND CHECK, we check in with some of our favorite musicians
While most of my semester in London was spent trying (unsuccessfully) to get Chilli Heatwave Dorito dust out of every item of clothing I brought, I devoted a fair amount of time to exploring as many of East London's electronic music haunts as possible. Well renowned for surprising, progressive facets of its homegrown club scene, the UK’s DJs have discovered and developed global house and dance music influences as well, digging across genres to evolve sounds all their own. One of the East London scene's most exciting names is Alex Deamonds––founder of vinyl-only label East London Club Trax and Night Slugs aficionado––whose club-ready releases have become part of an even greater discourse on UK soundsystem culture. I caught up with Alex about his vinyl pressing process, dope women's sneakers, and playing Spice Girls QuizUp with his 92-year-old grandfather.
Emily Manning: What is East London Club Trax? How would you describe its sound at the moment, and is there a sound you’re working towards developing and exploring?
Alex Deamonds: I started it as a platform for my own productions. It’s literally stuff that’s just made for the club; I think "club" as a term is a good one to use because it’s very broad, it encompasses a wide range of music, which allows both myself and the other artists that release on the label to release whatever type of genre or music they want; it doesn’t necessarily need to fall into say “grime” or “Jersey” or “house” or this or that. At the moment, I'm releasing material only on vinyl, but I've decided I’m going to do an MP3 bundle on the fifth release, which I’m working towards now. I’m planning on cherry picking the tracks that people have been most fiending for and putting them out on MP3.
What was your motivation for going vinyl only, at least to start off with?
How I perceive digital at the moment is that it’s so saturated and you just get flooded with stuff, and while there's a few gems, a lot of it isn’t any good. I prefer to go out and seek new music myself; I can’t say I care for people shoving their music down my throat digitally, so I think that’s one part of why I work with vinyl, it's more personal in that way. Another part is money, really. With digital, what are you paying for? A bunch of zeroes and ones; there’s no physical product. I don’t use the general channels that everyone else uses at the moment, they just sort of go straight to the distributor whereas I actually go and see the pressing get done and I ship that myself to the distributor—they don’t have anything to do with the production.
I don’t use the general channels that everyone else uses at the moment. The music house I use started off with reggae and dub artists, then when the drum and bass scene popped off, they worked with those guys, then grime came and there were a lot of grime guys—a lot of the best grime tracks were cut there so they’ve got a certain sound. They’ve seen a lot of the UK underground come and go. And I’m not trying to be this like throwback guy and only do throwback sorts of stuff, I’m trying to be progressive with these types of releases.
In additio
While most of my semester in London was spent trying (unsuccessfully) to get Chilli Heatwave Dorito dust out of every item of clothing I brought, I devoted a fair amount of time to exploring as many of East London's electronic music haunts as possible. Well renowned for surprising, progressive facets of its homegrown club scene, the UK’s DJs have discovered and developed global house and dance music influences as well, digging across genres to evolve sounds all their own. One of the East London scene's most exciting names is Alex Deamonds––founder of vinyl-only label East London Club Trax and Night Slugs aficionado––whose club-ready releases have become part of an even greater discourse on UK soundsystem culture. I caught up with Alex about his vinyl pressing process, dope women's sneakers, and playing Spice Girls QuizUp with his 92-year-old grandfather.
Emily Manning: What is East London Club Trax? How would you describe its sound at the moment, and is there a sound you’re working towards developing and exploring?
Alex Deamonds: I started it as a platform for my own productions. It’s literally stuff that’s just made for the club; I think "club" as a term is a good one to use because it’s very broad, it encompasses a wide range of music, which allows both myself and the other artists that release on the label to release whatever type of genre or music they want; it doesn’t necessarily need to fall into say “grime” or “Jersey” or “house” or this or that. At the moment, I'm releasing material only on vinyl, but I've decided I’m going to do an MP3 bundle on the fifth release, which I’m working towards now. I’m planning on cherry picking the tracks that people have been most fiending for and putting them out on MP3.
What was your motivation for going vinyl only, at least to start off with?
How I perceive digital at the moment is that it’s so saturated and you just get flooded with stuff, and while there's a few gems, a lot of it isn’t any good. I prefer to go out and seek new music myself; I can’t say I care for people shoving their music down my throat digitally, so I think that’s one part of why I work with vinyl, it's more personal in that way. Another part is money, really. With digital, what are you paying for? A bunch of zeroes and ones; there’s no physical product. I don’t use the general channels that everyone else uses at the moment, they just sort of go straight to the distributor whereas I actually go and see the pressing get done and I ship that myself to the distributor—they don’t have anything to do with the production.
I don’t use the general channels that everyone else uses at the moment. The music house I use started off with reggae and dub artists, then when the drum and bass scene popped off, they worked with those guys, then grime came and there were a lot of grime guys—a lot of the best grime tracks were cut there so they’ve got a certain sound. They’ve seen a lot of the UK underground come and go. And I’m not trying to be this like throwback guy and only do throwback sorts of stuff, I’m trying to be progressive with these types of releases.
In additio