Dave Seaman interview: Brother's Gonna Work It Out

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Originally from Leeds, Dave Seaman is best known as a DJ responsible for countless mix CDs in series like Renaissance and Global Underground and as one half of production duo Brothers In Rhythm.

He started his career as a mobile DJ and won a competition in the then subscription only Mixmag to visit a music convention in New York with the magazine's owners DMC. Within a year he was working for them as Mixmag's editor where he helmed its transformation into a publicly available magazine for clubbers and DJs.

In the early 90s he took a DJ residency at Shelly's in Stoke-on-Trent, alongside Sasha and Laurent Garnier and entered the studio with musical partner Steve Anderson to form production duo Brothers In Rhythm.

Early hits like 'Peace and Harmony' and in particular 'Such A Good Feeling' helped define the rave era and led to a longstanding collaboration with Anderson that saw Brothers In Rhythm remix the likes of U2, New Order, David Bowie and Michael Jackson as well as write and produce original material for Take That, Pet Shop Boys and, to remarkable effect, Kylie Minogue (listen below)

Dave has helped found and run three successful record labels, Stress, Therapy and his latest Selador and has over 25 mix CDs to his credit. He regularly travels the globe as a DJ and has played in over 70 countries. We caught up with him for a chat about the state of the rave.

Hi Dave! Where are you and what are you up to?

I'm at home. We live just outside Grantham, in a little village. I'm just doing the usual, catching up with stuff, e mailing, getting stuff ready for the label, some remixes for upcoming stuff. I'm just starting to do a podcast for Tronic, a chart for Resident Advisor and I'm listening through some new music. A normal day in the life of a DJ, producer, record label owner, whatever.

What have you got forthcoming on your label Selador?

The next thing is from a duo called Framework, who are from the UK. There are remixes from Quivver and Sasha Carassi on that one. After that there's a Christoph remix EP, which I've done a remix on, Kiko and Kevin Over have got mixes on and Pete Oak. I could go on for quite a while, we've got about six months lined up, how long have you got?

There's an EP from Habischman, an EP from Tom Peters, who's another Berlin guy. Steve Parry, who I run the label with, he's just making an EP as well. There's a girl called Alice Rose from Berlin who's also doing an EP for us. So, loads of stuff. We're trying to get ahead of ourselves for once.

You famously won a trip to New York with DMC in 1987. But how exactly did you go from making that trip to becoming editor of Mixmag for them in less than a year?

It all came from that trip to New York. It was amazing. I was only 19, first time in New York and to get to go in the late eighties, as a guest of DMC and hang out with all the record industry, it was fantastic. It was 1987, so New York club culture was thriving at that time. 

It was the last night there that got me the job with DMC. I'd gone out in the day, running round trying to get some presents for a few people. We were staying at The Marriott on Times Square and on the way back I went to McDonalds to grab some food at about 5:30.

While I was in there I met this bouncer from Nell's which, I didn't realise at the time, was one of the most exclusive and hardest clubs to get into downtown. I had a pass round my neck and he said, oh, you're here for the convention, I work at a club. We got chatting and he said, if you want to come down to the club, gave me his card, I put it in my back pocket and thought nothing more of it.

I went back to the hotel with no plans of going, it was the last night. Then I saw everyone in the foyer, gathering to go out for dinner and they asked me to join them. I'd just had McDonalds. I was kinda gutted I missed out on going out for another dinner, so I asked what they were doing later. They said, we're going to a club called Nell's, do you want to come? I was like, yeah, fine, see you there and waltzed off thinking, well, that's a result.

I wasn't even old enough to be able to go. I went down there, had a few drinks, waited until 1:30 and thought, they're not coming. So, I went out to leave and they were all stood out on the pavement, these bigwigs from DMC, struggling to get in. I'd had a few drinks by then, so I was like, no problem! "These are all my mates from England", I said to my newly acquired bouncer friend and promptly got them all in.

Christine, who owned DMC with Tony said afterwards, who is this kid who's getting us into nightclubs when he's not even old enough to be in there? We need him working for us.

Once I'd started working there I was pretty much tea boy when I first started off. I was running round doing all sorts of bits and pieces, because DMC had studios, merchandise. It was a great place to learn about working in the record industry because they had so many different arms.

I just started doing reviews for Mixmag, to start off with. One thing lead to another and I ended up interviewing somebody for them. I'd been there for about 6 months when the editor left and while they were desperately racing round trying to find somebody to replace him.

I cobbled a magazine together for them for the first month. Then the second month. And then eventually they said, we haven't really found anyone suitable and you seem to be doing a decent job, so carry on. It was the beginning of 1988. I was really lucky, because at that point it was around the beginning of house music in the UK, really, the beginning of the summer of love. I'd fallen on my feet.

The magazine was still very mobile DJ driven, it had all sorts of stuff in there, Miss Wet T Shirt competitions, the sort of stuff that was a real hangover from what Djing was in the early 80s. I got in there right at the beginning of what DJing was about to become. I was lucky to be able to turn that magazine into something that reflected that, what was going on.

I guess the moral of the story is always talk to people in the queue at McDonalds.

Where did the vision come from that this DJ subscription magazine had the potential to become something much bigger?

I think I was the driving force behind that. I was the young kid that had just joined and was going out to all these acid house places. Mixmag was stuck a bit in the old school back then. DMC had always championed the DJ and championed the remix, they were very much at the forefront of that culture. And the mixing and scratching championships, which were a completely different thing, they did all that as well.

So, they were progressive, but the magazine itself, as it was subscription only, was sent out to a lot of mobile DJs as well as club DJs, so it was geared towards them. In the times of Marrs, Bomb The Bass, Coldcut, S Express, DJs suddenly acquired the samplers to be able to make records like that and it became a very different thing.

It wasn't about talking between the tracks anymore, it became more about mixing, making tracks and being an artist. It was the beginning of a revolution, a revolution that we're still in 25 years later. DJs had become something completely different to what they'd been before and I saw an opportunity to talk a lot more about that in the magazine.

In just over a year, by July 1989 it was no longer a DJ only subscription service, it was available to the public and it was a dance music magazine for clubbers as well as DJs.

DMC used to do those promo only vinyl releases for DJs that had exclusive mixes on them. Did you have any hand in those while you were there?

Yeah, I used to pack them into the envelopes! That was a job we looked forward to every month. The magazine used to be part of that same subscription service. Up until 1987 or 1988 DMC was only place you could get different versions of a particular track, they really were one of the first to do remixes as such.

The record companies caught on very quickly and soon after you had double packs of every rubbish track going. A bit later on, after Mixmag, I helped A+R those albums. I started working as Brothers In Rhythm with Steve in 1989 and the first thing we ever did was a mix on one of those albums. It was Style Council's version of Promised Land, which we nicked the idea from to do our debut single 'Peace and Harmony'.

Your biggest early release by Brothers In Rhythm, the one that really bothered the pop charts, was 'Such A Good Feeling' (above). Were there any particular tracks or what was the inspiration behind that?

Well there were loads of Italian piano records. That particular track was made specifically to play at Shelley's. It was started by a photographer that used to work with me at Mixmag, my main photographer actually, Gary McClarnan. When I was editor and doing a lot of assignments I used to take him everywhere with me.

He started Shelley's and he was living in the same apartment block as Sasha in Manchester. We'd been to see Sasha a couple of times in Shaboo in Blackpool and he'd asked Sasha to do Shelley's. Sasha agreed to do three weeks out of every four and initially he asked me to do the fourth, although I went on to do more, some with Sasha.

At that particular time that club was very piano based house, very Italian music. The acapella from Charvoni's 'Always There' was something that we'd play over a lot of tracks at the time. It was crying out to be made into a track itself.

Aside from that, there wasn't any one track that we took inspiration from, it was the whole idea of all those big, uplifting piano tracks of the time that was the inspiration for it. That and Shelley's itself, it really was made specifically for there.

You were already immersed in club culture at the time you got the residency at Shelley's. Was there anything noticeably different about that place compared to the clubs you were going to at the time in London?

Well the northern clubs were particularly crazy in terms of their atmospheres. London was still a little bit cooler. With the arrival of ecstasy people were going crazy in London, at clubs like Shoom. Everywhere was pretty loved up, but I think the northern clubs were even more so. They were more intense in those regards than many of the London ones. 

Shelly's was a normal, 1980s chrome nightclub. There was nothing underground or flash about it at all. And the soundsystem wasn't amazing. But it really didn't matter where you were or how amazing the venue was at the time, it was carried away on the enthusiasm, the spirit of the time.

As things developed into the nineties we actually got some great venues and gave clubbing the kinds of standards we needed and that we adhere to today, but at that time it was all pretty adhoc, DIY. Nobody gave a monkeys. They were amazing times.

Renaissance - The Masters Series - Mixed by Dave Seaman Part1 by Lanparty on Mixcloud

You followed Sasha onto the Renaissance mix series (above). After that first one he'd done, was that a tough act to follow?

[Laughs] Is that a rhetorical question? Just a bit! That first Renaissance album is an absolute classic. Journeys By DJs had been doing some mixes and we at Stress had done some, in fact we had Sasha and Digweed do some for us. I'd done a Mixmag live one with Carl Cox as well, but that first Renaissance album was the one.

In typical Geoff Oakes fashion they really went to town on the artwork and it was for something that was really, really special. It's a brilliant mix that still sounds fantastic today. So, yeah, of course it was tough, but I'm proud of the first Renaissance album I did and there've been a load more since that have been a pleasure to do.

It's always been a brilliant series, there's some amazing stuff there, as with Global Underground. It was an honour to be part of both.

A couple of years back you put out your first, in fact the first, crowdfunded mix CD. Why did you decide to do that instead of wait for another invitation to contribute to an established mix series like Renaissance or Global Underground?

Well, they'd both fallen by the wayside at the time. Global Underground is back now, obviously and I think Geoff's considering bringing Renaissance back as well. But at that time there was only really Balance, who I had been in contact with, but they had their next year and a half sorted at the time.

So the avenues for doing mix CDs were pretty limited. My agent at the time, Sara, had been on Kickstarter and supported a couple of things and she suggested the idea. I'm so glad I did it, it was such a rewarding thing to do. It was a lot of hard work, particularly following up with all the pledges afterwards, I didn't realise quite how much I'd let myself in for.

But it was really good to be able to connect with my audience and do a bit more than just sell a CD, to be able to offer stuff like private parties. The private parties I did were all fantastic! DJ lessons too, it was something really different and to be the first person to do that as a DJ is something I'm really pleased and proud that I did.

Dave Seaman - Live @ Watergate (Berlin) - 20.05.2015 by Livesets.At on Mixcloud

So many younger DJs put their mixes up for free on Soundcloud, although a lot are being moved to Mixcloud now (check out one above). Do you think there's a market for mix CDs in the future?

Yeah, mixes are ten a penny now on these platforms you mention, hundreds go up every day. But I think the fact that Global Underground is back and Renaissance might come back too, Armada have set up a series, Balance is still going, Fabric still do theirs, I personally think there will be a swing back to physical formats a bit now.

We've gone down this road, the digital revolution now, seeing just how much we can get, how fast we can get it. I think we're almost at a point now where you can have anything at your fingertips within seconds, think of it and it's there. We had to go down that road to see how far it went, but it's kind of a cul de sac. Once you can have anything, where do you go? We're at that point.

Obviously the resurgence in vinyl is perhaps an indicator. There's no emotional attachment to a file on a computer and there is to something physical. I can go through my vinyl collection and every one I can remember where I first heard it, where I bought it or whatever. It holds a memory. You don't get that from a group of MP3s. There's very little attachment and music's become very disposal accordingly.

So I believe it will swing back a bit. I'm hoping so. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part? Maybe it's just something that I want to see? But there are definitely signs it could happen.

I can see it more with vinyl. I'm not sure a CD holds as much emotional attachment as a piece of vinyl.

Yeah, I agree, but it is still a physical thing. We haven't really gone to town with the Berlin CD in terms of packaging and stuff, we've been able to make it a cheaper CD accordingly. But I think when it comes to special packaging, that's where the emotional attachment comes, there's a booklet and a story to be read, the artwork, photographs.

I also believe that when you do a mix CD, if you're doing it right, you put a heck of a lot more into it than these 10 a penny mixes that are thrown up online. They are recorded live or just thrown together in an afternoon at home.

I work for weeks on a mix CD, it becomes a piece of art rather than something that's just thrown together. It's a collage that you'll spend ages re-jigging, editing and overdubs, remixing almost every track so it becomes one coherent piece. I think you put a lot more time and effort into something that becomes something physical at the end of it. 

Of course the other main difference between a mix CD and a mix that gets put on Soundcloud is that the tracks get licensed, so the person who originally made the track the DJ uses actually gets paid.

Yeah, there is that. Mixcloud does actually pay royalties, which is one of the reasons everyone's going to that now. I got a couple of strikes for having mixes up on Soundcloud, ironically it comes from a major label that's been happy for me to promote their music for 25 years.

But I understand their side of things as well. Soundcloud are taking money from people, they're not paying any money to the artists. They've been trying to sort a deal out with the PRS for a long time and they haven't managed to do it, so I think they're gonna try to bring them down. 

Mixcloud is run more like a radio station, where they do pay royalties to the artists, so PRS do collect from Mixloud. But yeah, licensing tracks for a CD is even more royalties for artists. We do have to be careful about giving everything away for free, otherwise we're going to lose people being able to do this for a living, they might be forced to do it as a hobby.

You might lose some of their best work if they can't make music full time. We're already loosing a lot of talented people to full time 9-5 jobs now. 

As what's happened with rock bands, when the music itself is considered free, you become limited in what your revenue streams can be, so things like performance and merchandising become much more significant. Within dance music I think this pushes more people who are producers into also DJing, just as DJs are often pushed into becoming producers, despite these being two completely separate disciplines.

Yeah, you pretty much have to make music to be a DJ now. There's very few people out there now who just DJ and don't make music, James Zabiela, Craig Richards, Carl Cox, there are probably a few others. But they are people who have been established for a long time. To be a new person coming through I think it's almost impossible. It's your advertising. 

The marketplace is so saturated now, there's so many more people who are wanting to do this, fighting for it and there are only so many gigs to go round. Certainly with the good promoters. It's boom time for them, they have a million more choices than they did 15 years ago.

The ones that are gonna be at the forefront of their minds are the ones that are constantly doing stuff, making the most noise. DJs have become artists now and it's as much about branding, strategic marketing as it is playing the music.

Where can people catch you playing music in the foreseeable future?

Next few weeks I'm in London, so Brixton next week, just a little pop up party there, then on to Brixton Jam for an afterparty. The week after that I'm off to Mauritius which is a place I've done before, then I'm doing Cairo, Egypt. Not been there for ages and it's meant to be a really cool little thing there.

I've just moved agent to Blueprint and a lot of their guys like James Zabiela, Betoko and Wehbba have all played there recently and said it was great. I'm doing Villa Nova in Hamburg which is HOSH's club, another really cool thing to do, then I'm in Mexico for New Year's Eve.

I'm doing a lot in South America in January, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, which is the middle of their summer. Gigs grind to a halt here at that time, after New Year, but down there it's in the thick of it, so that should be good as well.

Like this? Check out Skiddle Live 005 - Dave Seaman @ Cream Grand Finale

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