You’ve toured Australia a few times now. Do you have any favourite memories from down here?

I really enjoyed the first Stereosonic - it was a completely sort of alien environment for me. It was before the EDM boom took off in 2008 or 2009. It was before any of that happened. It was a weird lineup. It was Crookers and people who were big at that point. It was a nice experience to just sort of blend with a lot of people from different musical styles before EDM separated into sub genres.

This time round you’re doing New Year's. What’s that like? Do you just have to treat it like any other day?

Pretty much… Well, I usually try and do it in Australia because it’s so miserable to do it in the UK. Any kind of music gig in the UK around New Years Eve is just awful. It’s raining and everybody is just sad, it’s like ‘Oh god, here we go again’. In Australia, everyone’s like ‘Yeah!’ So yeah, I try and spend it in Australia.

You have such a broad array of music, do have you thought about what sort of vibe your sets will be for the upcoming tour?

I think it’s going to be different for each show because some of them are day time slots and some are evening. I have a couple of different playlists that I’m working on at the moment to try and work around for particular moments of the day. I don’t want to go in at 4pm and play absolute bangers.

You’re the producer for Noisey’s project The Rap Monument which is bringing west coast, east coast and southern hip hop together. How did you become involved in this?

They approached us; myself and Nick Hook from New York. The concept was for us to suggest all the rappers we would like to have on the project. It’s been a huge project basically. It’s been ongoing for a long time, probably since the start of the year. It’s just sort of coming out bits and blobs. Some people are complaining that only the clean versions are getting released and so I think that in light of that we’ve released the dirty version, which I think is the best look. I don’t think we can really do a 30-minute rap song and make it all clean (laughs).  

Which sort of hip hop were you drawn to first?

The first sort of hip hop I really liked was all east coast. Sort of dark, DJ Premier, Pete Rock. Very sort of heavy and distorted. It wasn’t gangsta rap, because all of that was out west coast, but it was rough. You knew that the people making it were actually going through it. It wasn’t any pretend type of thing that happened. That was just what was actually going on in that period, and it sort of peaked at the '90s. That was the first sort of hip hop that I liked. 

Sick, me too I would say. But the scene has expanded so much. How did your TNGHT collaboration spark from your Party Animal remix?

The Party Animal one was one that I did myself for a little compilation that Sinden put together. He did a European version of a load of Gucci a capellas and we did whatever we wanted with them. At that point, I think he had a show in London. We’d spoken a few times before that, I think even during the days of Myspace we were talking about doing a collaborative project and just because of the distance, because him being in Montreal and I was in Glasgow at that point. We just never connected because we would only see each other in a club setting. We would speak about doing something and then you know, the next day one of us leaves. So at one point, he was in London for a couple of days, so we decided to meet. We had no intention of making a record or anything like that. It was more of a ‘why don’t we just play around’ and that’s how the project came about.

What’s the relationship like with you and the rest of the artists on LuckyMe?

Well the two guys, Dom and Martyn, who sort of founded the collective and I was the sort of the silent member. They would consult me on whether we should sign certain artists or on which directions we should head. I’m still working with Warp as well. I’m still a part of it in terms of my contribution to ideas for the brand. It started just as a small club night with an EP. It was basically just at a pub and I would play instrumentals and people would get up and freestyle. That was around 2002 or something like that. Since then, it’s started to cover a number of platforms. There’s a graphic design arm of it, the label arm, it’s more of a brand rather than just a little project.

AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES (TICKETS HERE)

DEC 31 - PERTH - ORIGIN NYE

JAN 1 - MELBOURNE - LET THEM EAT CAKE

JAN 2 - SYDNEY - GOODGOD SMALL CLUB

JAN 3 - BRISBANE - THE FLYING COCK

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