How House Became Cool Again with Kowton

Photo: Kowton

As one of the trio of founding members of Bristol’s Livity Sound imprint and production crew, Kowton has been behind some of the most blisteringly experimental and utterly heavy records that still manage to propel a packed dancefloor over the past five years.

Since then, he’s also branched out with his solo work and remixes, most recently and notably for Young Turks’ spin off, Whities. Taken from the record, the masterfully produced rolling drum sound of 'Glock and Roll', linked below, looks set to continue nudging the roof off festival tents all summer.

Featuring on this month’s sold out Freeze Bank Holiday bill in Liverpool’s bombed out church, alongside John Talabot, Jamie XX and more, as well as at Detonate Festival (where we ranked him in our five must see acts) we caught up with the now London based DJ to discuss stretching out his sound without selling his ideals, gaining an insider's view of how house became cool again, and what collaborator Julio Bashmore’s really got going on in the studio.

I feel like your own material has a distinct feel that differs from Livity Sound. It might even be suggested that it’s somewhat groovier and more straight up. Do you have a particular aesthetic or set of ideas that you wanted to establish away from the day job, as it were?

With the Livity Sound records I think we've established a pretty cohesive sound - one that’s very stripped back and dubby, it’s maybe not techno as in the way that you'd expect Ben Klock or Marcel Dettmann to play it but it’s music that’s very much technoid in its essence. 

With my work away from the label I wouldn't say I try to deliberately break from that aesthetic, it's more just a case that Pev is probably never going to let me put a straight house track out on Livity.

We share a lot of common ground musically but my taste is probably a bit more populist than his! It's nice though that if I have something with a housier edge, there's plenty of other labels I've worked with that do a great job. Putting out my last 12" on Whities worked really well i think. 

You’ve worked with Julio Bashmore, who is perhaps the Bristol scene’s break out star, although your work with him seems to have as many of your hallmarks as his, and isn’t necessarily shooting for play from Nick Grimshaw.

He seems to walk a difficult tightrope between the underground and crossover success, but presumably as a fan, what sensibility does he have in the studio do you feel has translated to him becoming so wildly successful?

That's a tough one, but I guess the thing Bashmore has going for him most is this uncanny ability to write hooks in a matter of seconds that stay with you for days. Its a powerful thing to witness.

If you look at his big tunes like 'Au Seve' or 'Battle For Middle You', they're not complex productions but they've got this eminently pop sensibility that carries them and really makes them stand out. 

With the work we've done together it’s been a real pleasure trying to too take Matt's hook writing and fit it too a more underground style. I'm not sure our first collaboration went all that well but the Ekranoplan 12" we did on All Caps last year is one of the records I'm most proud to have been involved in - it's minimalist and abstract but catchy as hell and really works on the dancefloor (listen to 'Star Frog' above).

Having moved to London from Bristol, where you were closely associated with Idle Hands, have you missed the day-to-day of working in a record shop? On a wider scale, coming from such a tight scene as Bristol itself, has it affected your work flow or ideas?

Yeah I do miss it to an extent. I mean, when it got to the point where I was so busy with gigs that I was working four hours a week and at the point where even that felt like a chore it was time to leave. Living in Bristol was formative - meeting Chris Farrell and Peverelist at Rooted Records (before Idle Hands opened) had a massive bearing on the way I viewed music and what I was playing. 

Bristol's a small scene too fundamentally, everyone knows everyone. I think it does teach you about working with others and about community, that said though I'm happy to be in London now and enjoying the anonymity. 

In the distant past, you've declared that you are ‘terrible with melody’. And yet, here you are, on a line up supporting Jamie XX and John Talabot, perhaps the two current kings of touching moments in dance music.

Your recent tunes remain relatively raw (Glock and Roll has some lovely keys, mind!), so what's happened in the scene that your appeal seems to have broadened without seeming to particularly alter your aesthetic?

Haha fuck knows! Nah I guess that 'Glock and Roll' getting played a lot has had an effect and shown people that I'm not such a miserable bastard after all.

I think too though we're at a point now where scene boundaries are as non existent as they've ever been, and hopefully crowds are receptive to music from across the board. People like the Hessle Audio crew and Four Tet have done a lot for breaking down those boundaries. 

This year I've found myself playing peaktime techno slots at Berghain, then an all night house set at Robert Johnson then at student union in Belfast where the best reaction was for Dizzee Rascal's 'I Luv U'. I think its good to be versatile and its brilliant that promoters are willing to book DJs beyond those you might imagine on first glance would best suit a certain situation.

Having been closely associated with dubstep when the scene was quite puritanical, and now essentially resembling more of an experimental leaning house DJ than somebody hovering around 140, have you encountered any resistance to that gradual change in pace?

I think at the point I started moving away from dubstep there were a lot of people making similar moves - it was a bit of a massive emigration from an increasingly stagnant sound toward house and techno. I've never really felt much opposition aside the odd few comments, it's hard to believe though now that it was only seven to eight years ago that house was a dirty word.

Actually one time I was playing a four hour set with Bake in Zurich and opened with Theo Parrish's 'Dance of the Drunken Drums', a guy with a dubstep t-shirt came up and shouted at me "you can't play this! Look at the crowd, they hate you". Two hours later he was breakdancing in the middle of the floor knocking people over. Fucking prick.

In Liverpool, you’ll be playing in the middle of a large, war damaged cathedral, hopefully in the sunshine. How does this rate on the general scale of unusual gigs for you?

Yeah it sounds pretty unusual! I'd say 8/10. I'm really looking forward to it.

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