They’re everything most men wish they could be: dapper, sophisticated, modern, and really, REALLY good at making a new genre of house music that has the world enthralled, ecstatic and confused, all at the same time. They’re also secretly a new breed of super-human warriors who can survive being submerged in lava and can go weeks without sleep. Okay, so the last part wasn’t true, but geeez, Renaissance Man have one of the most impressive work ethics I’ve heard of in years.
They describe themselves as “a platform for contemporary dance music” and 2009 saw a rush of new users embrace the platform. With an onslaught of remixes for Turbo, Kitsune, several classy bootcuts, and EPs on Dubsided and Sound Pellegrino, Renaissance Man arrived in style.
Scandinavian upstarts Martti (Jaxxon) and Ville (Downtown) took some time while they were in the studio to talk about the resurgance of open minded dance music. [Note: this interview took place several months back, apologies for our delay in posting.]
Brendan: What are some of your first memories and experiences of house music?
Jaxxon: The city where I used to live in Finland when I was younger called Turku had a very vibrant house scene in the 90’s. The whole late 90’s deep house thing hit me hard.
Downtown: Yeah, same here. I started feeling it in the late 90s.
Jaxxon: Actually we are now working in the studio one of the O.G Finnish house guys, Sasse, aka Freestyle Man in Berlin.
Is there an intention to bring back some of the originators from the time that you originally got started?
Downtown: Well, of course we have deep respect on those guys, like Sasse and Jori Hulkkonen… but no collaborations or anything. More like a funny coincidence that we’re here. We’re probably doing some dates with Jori though, which we are super excited about.
Ah, cool. You describe yourselves as “house music without boundaries”, and having been involved with dance music for what sounds like over a decade, are there things you feel have kept the genre stuck in place?
Jaxxon: Well, I personally think that house music, or dance music in general is in a good place now.
Downtown: There’s an audience for very varied sounds and progressively thinking producers.
Jaxxon: Yes, there’s no one truth at the moment, as long as you don’t pay too much attention the whatever microtrend seems to be happening every three months or so.
Downtown: And i feel that somehow music is coming back to clubs. Like, real respect for quality production and composition and innovation.
Jaxxon: Yes. House / techno needs to stay future oriented in order to keep it’s vitality.
Speaking of clubs, your touring schedule over the next few months is pretty intense. What’s the day in, day out routine like? I imagine playing shows would be pretty wonderful, but is it difficult to maintain personal life or privacy? I mean, aside from the hassle of having to do geeky interviews over aim for Mixpak.
Jaxxon: hah, we’ll let’s see what type of balance we manage to find.
Downtown: hehe yeah it’s quite intense, but i’m looking forward to it. In the end that’s why we do this.
Jaxxon: It doesn’t really help that i especially have been living all around this year… but yeah we are really looking forward to this fall. To me at least, the most annoying thing with touring is the amount of time you waste in those inbetween moments of waiting and general hassle.
Downtown: But it’s a great counterbalance to sitting inside in the studio all week, lots of good venues and interesting people to meet. And being a DJ it’s still nothing even close to being a popstar or celebrity. The privacy is still there. And touring for us means max 4 shows a week not 60 shows in a row like some indie band.
Well, I was wondering about loss of privacy because I noticed you only have one press photo with your faces on it. Was that on purpose? Trying to maintain some Renaissance Man mystique?
Jaxxon: hah that’s not intentional, we’ve just been a bit lazy with getting a new one done.
It’s just that bloggers have been getting creepily inventive with that photo when they’re writing about you. I’ve noticed some different blogs have taken that photo and added some weird photoshop effects overtop of it to make it look all new. Seems ridiculous but charming.
Jaxxon: Yes, I think I saw one of those.
Downtown: There’s gonna be a new one still within 2009 i promise!
Just now you mentioned sitting inside a studio all week, can you explain a bit what the process of making a song is like? For the Mixpak Sissy Nobby remix for example, how do you approach production?
Jaxxon: Well, we approach remixes and our “original” productions slightly differently. With the latter it’s much more concept driven, while remixes ideally build up on the potential of the original.
Downtown: With Sissy we wanted to do a chopped and screwed feel. Dunno how chopped and screwed the end result is though
Jaxxon: With Sissy, the lyrics were obviously a thing to consider
Downtown: Yeah, hehe. We pussied out.
haha yeah, i haven’t heard the original yet, but I believe it’s something to the effect of “fuck the piss out of me” – not the most radio friendly track..
Jaxxon: “Can we include the n-word?” was a question
Downtown: and the 100 D-words hehe
Yeah, I’d imagine that those lyrics would end up sounding a lot different coming from Sissy Nobby then Renaissance Man. Onto something else though: It seems like every DJ has a few semi-secret guilty pleasures that after drinking a certain amount they may blare out to a packed club. For example, I’ve heard that Zombie Nation is a closeted Beyonce lover. What would Renaissance Man play at 4am, after a night of heavy drinking when you feel like “anything goes”?
Jaxxon: we don’t fall that easily into the guilty pleasure trap actually.
Downtown: yeah it’s almost the other way around.
Jaxxon: Hah exactly.
Downtown: I mean that it would be fun to play like a nokia ringtone or a car alram to a packed club, and if they would still continue dancing. It would be fantastic.
Jaxxon: Yeah, I think on those moments you just feel overconfident to push things further.
Downtown: Like, a few times we’ve dropped some real klezmer music or stuff like that and it’s nice to see the effect of old “dancemusic”.
Jaxxon: Which can backfire. The beauty of it is it most of the times it works!
Downtown: Yeah.
That’s funny, I remember reading a review in the Fader that said something like “Not convinced Renaissance Man isn’t a noise group” – I guess this proves you’re willing to push it more into ‘experimental territory?’
Downtown: I love their interviews
Jaxxon: Or articles
Downtown: Such a weird angle in them. Like our music is coming from a different planet almost.
Jaxxon I wish it did!
They called your music “a xerox machine breaking at steady intervals”, how do you feel about that?
Downtown: Yeah, but I guess we take it as compliment, since it still works in the club.
There’s a lot of hip hop/ baile/ canto samples in the type of music that you folks and some contemporaries like Zombie Disco Squad are making, to the point where you’ve transcended into sampling Vaishnavism Hinduist chants. It reminds me a bit of what Diplo was doing a few years ago (not hindu chants in particular), but a lot of people gave him flak for things like popularizing baile funk to north american audiences because of some hangups on how one culture can represent another. Has there been any criticism of bringing something like “What is Guru” (which samples the Hare Krishna chant) into clubs, and if so, what’s your response?
Jaxxon: Hmm, well…
Downtown: I haven’t experienced any hate about “What is Guru”
Jaxxon: With the guru track the krishna chant was used more as a reference to it’s abundance in pop music over the decades since the 60’s. Other than that, our approach to “world” music sampling is more based on their atmosphere / sonic qualities than the cultural references. Although that might sound a bit colonial..
Is there any sample that you would say is “off limits”?
Jaxxon: I guess off-limits would be dependent on the context
Downtown: Like, I think especially on vocal samples it’s better to strip off meanings and messages that are too heavy when you do house music.
Jaxxon: yeah… Or I think you can push it somewhere interesting with rather random meanings
Downtown: Yes
Okay, cool. Vincent Gallo is listed as one of your role models on your myspace page. What advice would you give to someone about to watch the Brown Bunny for the first time?
Jaxxon: Don’t do it on the train, as I did. And secondly, don’t waste your time, hah.
Oh snap! Who’re some artists you feel are going to be doing big things in 2010?
Downtown: So looking forward to the new Claude VonStroke album. Not that he hasn’t done big things before, but the album previews sounded insane.
Jaxxon: There are so many rather unknown producers who would deserve more attention
But none of them have made tech house with Bootsy Collins…
Jaxxon: The world of house hides it talents
Downtown: Yeah, I hope all the biggest things would come as surprises. But as promos safely before theyre out… to our mailbox. Heh There’s so much great stuff popping out all the time, but it’s quite hard to find.
Haha, awesome. One final questionm, the Sound Pellegrino August chart listed “Renaissance man feat. Zombie Disco Squad – Drums of Versailles (Solo & Mowgli remix – Riva Starr edit – Jesse Rose re-edit)” as an upcoming track. We’re all pretttttttty sure it’s a lie, but there’s still a glimmer of hope that it might be real. Can you give the final word?
Jaxxon: That’s a big one
Downtown: *smiley face*
Even if it is fake you wouldn’t mind locking yourself in a room with all those folks until it BECAME real though, would you?
Jaxxon: Sounds a bit sweaty, to be honest.
Downtown: I think it would be a mess, hehe.
Thanks to Renaissance Man for the interview.
Follow Renaissance Man on twitter, listen to their music on myspace, and cop the Renaissance Man remix of Sissy Nobby’s track “Lay Me Down.”
