Club Politics with Leftwing & Kody

Image: Leftwing & Kody

From being banged up in nine-to-fives and making tracks in their mate's bedrooms, it's been quite a journey for Leftwing & Kody. The Lost label owners began turning heads nearly two years ago with tracks like 'You Were' before going relatively quiet in the run up to this year for a duo that had been making a lot of noise

After taking the plunge and manning the studio full time this year, Jon and Chris, as they're known to their mothers, are back with a brand new soundscape, flexing their muscles with an output that ventures into the barren lands of techno with more propulsive basslines, vocal snippets and a stripped back aesthetic (check 'Thoughts' below for a flavour) that is designed to bring some serious damage to the dance floor.

With the I Wanna Fixation EP in waiting at the end of a monumental year for the duo, having worked with a plethora of industry vanguards whilst still commanding their Rinse residency, we interrupted Jon (Leftwing) in the studio from "combining powers" with Cera Alba; first settling an age old battle that started in a smoking area of a club in Sunderland involving a USB stick and a shifty character who goes by the name of 'Tunesy'.

We then got onto more important matters such as their EP in waiting, the shift towards techno and working with the aforementioned industry big boys. 

Is this (work with Cera Alba) the next thing to come on the label after the upcoming EP?

We just don't know what we're going to do with the tracks yet, we've got two done and we're finishing off the last one today. We're probably going to tout them around first and see if there's any labels interested in taking them on, and if we can't get anything then we'll probably bring them out on Lost. 

So what's your thinking behind that then, why not just bring them out on Lost?

I think it's probably because we've got the Leftwing & Kody EP coming on 1st December, and the Cera Alba remix was the last release, so we're looking for stuff to be coming out in the New Year.

So for it to come out on Lost again, it might be too much over exposure, so it's probably best to try and get it round too other labels first, so we don't over saturate the label with the same artists all the time. 

And aside from your work in the studio, you've got a few gigs coming up, are you looking forward to that side of things as well? 

Were looking forward to playing Leeds again, we've done loads before at The Warehouse, it's always cool, it's going to be our first time in the city this year. We've played the Faversham before and we really love it there, it's a pretty strong line up this time as well, they've got Patrick Topping and SecondCity, so that should be pretty cool. 

And then Sankeys, I think this is the third time we're doing Sankeys now, we love Manchester as well. It always seems that those two cities seem to have really good crowd reactions and things like that , so we're always looking forward to getting back to those two cities to play.

So are you travelling a lot more now or spending more time in the studio?

The last couple of months have been quiet gig wise so it meant that we could get a lot of stuff done, we probably got about seven or eight tracks done that are ready to go, and we're going to be doing another thing on Lost in March next year and maybe some of the tracks we're working on now might show up on the March EP as well.

We've just been concentrating on pushing this EP that comes out in December because Lost is obviously our own label but this is the first time that we've actually released on there. We thought it was about time that we released on our own label and to work with Robert Owens was a big boost for us. 

How did working with Robert come about?

We're kind of managed by the same people so we were talking to our management about options and things like that for people to actually work with us and make kind of more vocal music with vocals on it that aren't just sampled acapellas because we we're kind of getting a bit sick of that.  

They came back in about two days and said, "Robert would be really interested in working with you guys, lets hook something up" then Robert was literally in our studio for about two hours, and he came and laid down some wicked stuff that we were able to use and we managed to get three tracks out of it.

It's made kind of the whole creation process really cool and simple, so hopefully it does some damage to the dance floor when it comes out.

Speaking of new material, the stuff you've been bringing out recently is orientated more towards the realm of techno in comparison to your older stuff, was that your intention? 

Yes certainly. It was definitely a conscious decision for us to try and broaden our sound scape, it's something we were thinking about at the beginning of this year because you can sit and make tracks like 'You Were' (hear that below) and 'I know' all the time, but as an artist you want to try and and broaden your horizons a little bit and flex your artistic muscles and just have a different approach to things and a different approach to music otherwise things can become quite stale.

There was a lot of people coming up and we were getting requests for remixes and all things like that and when we where turning them in they were like we kind of wanted 'You Were' and its like that's not what were doing, we don't want to sit and make 'You Were' 100 times - it's pointless.

So now when you're playing in a club do you feel like you can really let rip with the new stuff or are people still expecting your older sound?

There's definitely the expectation I think, and what we have done is taken those kind of tracks like 'You Were' and we've kind of updated them. We're the only ones that have the versions that have been remade just to tailor them so that they're more orientated to our sets these days rather than what the originals would do because we've moved away from playing that kind of vibe in our sets.

We still use vocals that people recognise and they have been getting great reactions too because we understand that people were coming to see us this year for certain things, so maybe re-rubs and remixes of those tracks will fit into our DJ sets and it is a way of appeasing the crowd because they're getting to hear those vocal cuts that they know and it also appeases us as well because we get to head in the direction that we want to musically.

Playing on Rinse must help to move along your sound?

For sure, the Rinse show as well gives us an opportunity not to necessarily play like we would do in the club as well, so we get the opportunity to play music that doesn't necessarily have to be for the dance floor.

It is a radio show so there is some stuff that we can throw in there that's not necessarily club orientated. That's another way of us kind of being able to express who we are as artists as well and Rinse have been great to us.

But when you're throwing down something experimental on the radio you're not getting to see how the crowd reacts to it, how do you deal with that?

That's right but in a way its kind of cool because there's no pressure either, because when you're doing a radio show there's not that crowd reaction. On the flip side to that, when you're in a club and you're playing something new for the first time and you're not getting the reaction you're expecting half way through your set it can kind of throw you off a little bit.

There's that added pressure with new tracks as you're putting a piece of yourself out there to be judged, and if you play that track and it isn't what you expect it to be then it can be disheartening sometimes.

And on the radio because there isn't that instant audience it kind of takes pressure off a little bit and then we can check back on Soundcloud and see the comments and you can gauge from there whether or not things were working. But you know its a different avenue, its a different format. 

I guess as an artist it's good because you're doing something for you, rather than for other people?

Yeah, there is definitely an element of that, there is always a case of you have to be happy with what you're creating. You can't make music for anybody else really, you've got to have some sort of idea that you're going to be making a track for the dance floor, so there's going to be certain elements in it that makes it work.

But as far as being a creative is concerned, you are always putting yourself into that and it can be tough sometimes because you are putting yourself out there to be judged and criticised and sometimes you don't get the right feedback and it can be disheartening.

But that's just part and parcel of being an artist and something you have to get on with?

Exactly, and you know what, you're never going to please everybody. So yeah it's about making music, and once you're happier it's about getting it out there to be judged by the masses. 

In terms of the material you've brought out recently, there has been a lot of remixes you know with Todd Terry, Roger Sanchez, Romanthony; and perhaps two years ago working with the likes of Terry would never have have happened. So what's drawn you towards the remixes and how has working with the likes of these people come about?

No definitely, just the last kind of year really snowballed, and we came into 2014 thinking we weren't going to do any remixes and we wanted to concentrate on original stuff. But when these opportunities come up they're so difficult to turn down.

You're talking about originators and legends of the scene such as Todd Terry and Romanthony (the remix of his 'Floorpiece' is below)), and then you're working with the likes of Owens and doing remixes for Roger Sanchez, they're once in a lifetime opportunities that you can't really turn down. 

I mean there has been a lot of stuff we've passed on this year but those remixes that we've done are kind of things you can tick off a bucket list , they're once in a lifetime opportunities, so if you get them you should take them and that's what what we did. 

So with these remixes, we're guessing that it was their people approaching you rather than the other way around? 

Yeah that's what happened, same with Romanthony as well. His label Glasgow Underground basically gave us the acapellas and they approached us about doing it because obviously he passed away and as a vocalist he's a legend in the scene, so it was something that we definitely wanted to be involved in.

Sanchez got in contact with us at Miami Music Conference, he'd been playing our stuff and he said "Look guys I really want to work with you", which is again an honour for someone like that to approach you personally and just say I'm really feeling what you're doing - that was like a big boost.

So it's great to get these opportunities and as you said years ago we would never have expected to go from making tracks in our friends bedroom to two years down the line being offered to work with these legends.

And it wasn't long ago that you both had day jobs, so how has that been? 

Yeah. So I left my job in January this year and John left his in November last year so we where kind of juggling music production, DJing and day jobs all at once, and it can be quite stressful you know especially if you've been out at the weekend and you have to go to a nine-to-five on a Monday morning.

We weren't at the time in a financially stable place as far as the DJing and producing was going so once we had the opportunity to leave our day jobs, because we were earning enough through DJing to survive, we left our jobs and as I said before these things only come along once in a lifetime and it could of been a case of do we jump into it and do this thing full time? Or do we play it safe and stick to the day jobs and things like that.

And we're both people who really believe that if it's meant to happen then it's meant to happen, and again if the situation showed itself we would jump at it and we were able to pack in our day jobs.

We did it and it's worked out alright so far, it's only been a year and we haven't had to go back to our day jobs yet, so we're going to keep the tunes coming out and keep the work rate up.

You mentioned 'work rate' - there will be a tendency for people to think 'oh yeah you've quit your day job, you're living the dream' but in reality you're probably spending a lot more time in the studio than you would working a 9-5.

Honest to God mate, both of us will tell you that self employed people work the hardest, we've worked in all kinds of day jobs and office jobs and all that and done some ridiculous things.

John used to work on the tube lines as an engineer, and as self-employed people you work a lot harder than you ever did doing day jobs because you're relying on yourself to make money. You can't skip and take two days off annual leave and get paid for it.

You only get paid for what you put in, we're in here ten till six everyday and just making sure we're putting our bit in you know, because it's not easy and there's a lot of people doing this and if you don't put the work in and get the tunes out there, there's a lot of other people out there who could work harder than you can and you'll be out the door then. 

And where is the studio... in fact you sound really busy, we better let you get back to it! 

Haha! We're up in North London , so yeah its cool. We've been living there for about three years now its a nice space and stuff, there's nice shops around here you know so we get some decent grub when we finish!

Catch Leftwing & Kody in action this month at Birmingham's Rainbow Venues and Sankeys, Manchester for Covert Events before they head to Middlesbrough on Boxing day, Egg London on NYE and onto Birmingham again for Day One Festival on NYD.