Show All Interviews

Interview with Jacob London by Ryan Nance

Jacob London are a US-based production/DJ duo consisting of Dave Pezzner and Bob Hansen. They’re all about having fun and not taking themselves too seriously, and this attitude is transferred into the distinguished cut-up, funk-laden music that they produce. Dave kindly took a time out from writing love-letters to answer some aquestions.

First off, although there may not be any sense to be made of your off-kilter track names (some examples being ‘monkeys love ice cream’, and ‘this train is for cockfosters’), is there a story behind your production name 'Jacob London'?

Yes. But unfortunately there is not much of a story behind our name. When we got our first record deal in 1998, the label wanted to ‘own’ our name. Basically anything we put out under that name, they wanted a cut, but we were eager to get that first record out. So we decided to come up with a fresh new and expendable name. After flipping through our local paper ‘The Stranger’, we found an ad for a local music attorney – “Jacob London Attorney At Law” and decided that was going to be the one. Luckily the label went out of business before we ever signed any contracts so we decided to stick with the name.

A quick look at your somewhat self-defacing website, as well as the aforementioned zany naming of your tracks, indicates that you guys don’t take things too seriously. Are you able to apply this happy-go-lucky attitude into all aspects of the electronic music business, or are there times when you need to ditch the ‘fuck the system’ motto to develop working relationships with record labels and/or touring agents?

Hmm…well yeah. We’re definitely all about doing things differently. Getting noticed in this corner of the music business is very tricky business. Everyone is so serious all the time and 50% of everyone looks like they are trying too hard to be cool. I’d like to say that it’s effective to be crazy and do things like submitting music to record labels stuffed in pizza boxes; or sending greeting cards, love letters and flowers to agents in hopes that they’ll add you to their roster. God knows we’ve actually tried these things. But in the end, all they care about is if your music, or your show, is going to work for them, and ultimately, if you are going to make them money.

You’re sound is quite unique when compared to other artists bunched into the underground deep house genre. However, you’re sound seems like it was influenced by artists such as Akufen, Mossa and even Aphex Twin. Unlike these artists though, you seem to keep your sound much more accessible – there’s always a prominent feeling of straight-up funk in your records. Is there a conscious decision on your part to keep your productions fairly accessible?

We like to think our sound is more of a hybrid of the things that interest us rather than what’s more “accessible”. Question is - are we pulling influences from IDM (intelligent dance music) and minimal techno into house music or are we bringing funk and house to IDM and experimental electronica? Who knows?

I remember when I first got into electronic music one of the records that really grabbed my attention was your track 'Regular Absorbency'. It has a fairly basic arrangement, but is still a very vibrant track. How do you approach making electronic music and, perhaps contrary to your free-spirited natures, do you have any formulas or structure for the way you got about producing?

Yeah we do and we don’t. I can go on about how we like to chop up our samples, and all our technical whatsits and how-to’s of Jacob London’s music machine. But it might be a lengthy answer that would leave you and many of your readers scratching their heads. In short, there are some things that we always do for every song without fail.

How does your approach to production vary, if at all, in regards to working with different labels? For example, do you simply sit down in the studio and ‘produce’, then sift through what you’ve come up with and see which stuff would suit which label. Or do you discuss specific ideas prior to getting in the studio?

At first it was like, “hey we have a whole bunch of house songs, let’s send them all out to different labels and see who bites!” Although, the more we started to learn the styles of all the labels, the more we started to hone in on which labels would work best for us. I’d say the perfect match for us was the U-Freqs imprint. They seem to have the same crazy vision that we have with music. I mean, what other label would let us make a Halloween themed record? Now we are finding ourselves trying to butter up labels like Si Begg’s Noodles label, Front Room, Dot.Bleep, Grand Petrol, and Gomma. Will you see our songs/remixes on these labels? We can’t really say, but we love them, and this the direction we are pushing towards.

You guys were fairly prominent artists on the Classic Records label, a fairly forward-thinking and boundary-pushing house label run by Derrick Carter and Luke Solomon. I can imagine if there was one label all house producers would like to align themselves with, it would have been Classic. How did you develop this relationship?

Our buddy Rick Preston bet us $20 that we’d get these songs out on Classic if we submitted them. We sent Classic a CD with 6 songs, and 3 of them got picked for the Casual Bingo record. I wish there was more of an interesting story about this, but at the time we were pretty unheard of, and we submitted our music to the label the same way everyone else does.

Is the House scene in the USA a tight-knitted and welcoming community? Is it a scene rife with ill-politics or is it all about the love?

We’re not really sure what’s going on in the US house scene to be honest with you. There are only a few labels or promoters that we have worked with in the US recently. It seems like most of the people we are working with are either in Europe or Canada. I can say for Seattle that we do have a very tight knit community. Everyone knows everyone and we all work together really well.

I noticed that you were on the lineup for the 2006 Decibel Festival, alongside a whole swag of electronic artists, including Brett Johnson and Green Velvet. You were billed to be playing a live set. Explain what playing live means for you guys.

Yes! This was our great achievement for this year. We spent 3 months and many dollars in the preparation for this show (and hopefully many more to follow). “Live” might mean something a little different to us than the average techno band, I’m not sure. Of course our show involves the famed “laptop and midi controllers” that have become so standard with live electronica. We also have some other gadgets including an Akai MPC 2000 Sampler, a handheld optical synthesizer, and an evil looking sock monkey that transforms your voice so that you sound like a midget robot. Everything can run into an audio/midi looper and at any point in time be looped on the fly. You can see pictures from the Decibel Festival show here: www.jacoblondon.com/decibel. In the next year or so you might expect to see a live album, featuring on-the-fly remixes of all your favorite Jacob London songs.

Speaking of touring, you certainly have been playing some out-of-the-square gigs recently. You headlined a festival with The Glimmers late last year, and you just played a back-to-back set with SunTzu Sound. Now, I don’t know much about these guys, but a quick glance at their myspace site (www.myspace.com/suntzusound) suggests they are a funk/jazz/hip hop band. I noticed on your website, that you Dave, handle all the bookings for Jacob London. Do you try to get yourselves playing at such gigs which aren’t exactly the norm for DJ’s within your genre? Has this been beneficial to getting your name recognized in different sections of the broader artistic community?

Right now most of our fans don’t know that Jacob London covers a broad spectrum. We are not just a quirky, glitchy, funky house band. As of late our productions have become more and more experimental and crossing genres. Right now we are more inspired with break beats, dub step, and techno, and we currently working on projects with artists like Mossa, Princess Superstar, and Ben Mono/Capitol A. It seems to only make sense to broaden our fan base this way.

Finally, if we want to see you perform in Sydney, Australia, would the promoters need to cover the costs of some obscure funk band to travel with you, or would you be happy to come as a duo, get drunk, and breathe some fresh air into our small, yet passionate, deep house community?

We’ve been waiting patiently. Is it time yet?

for more info and stuff check www.JacobLondon.com

Share On Facebook This interview has had 18 views