Luke Solomon Interview: A classic freak

Image: Luke Solomon

Luke Solomon's route into music was the same as many DJ's, through a record store. He worked in one before getting a job in promotions at the UK based music label Freetown Records, which specialised in releasing American house music.

Inspired by the sounds he was hearing, he entered the studio with friends, including UK underground house veteran Rob Mello and recorded his first work as Heaven and Earth in the mid nineties.

Luke had been DJing since university and he pursued this throughout the 1990s. He held a residency on pirate radio station Girls FM where one of the station's founders was Kenny Hawkes. Frustrated that there was nowhere at the time in London they could go to and hear deep house music, in 1995 they founded the night Space, held at Bar Rumba on Shaftesbury Ave in the West End.

The night ran for seven years and during that time escalated from being a thinly populated party, attended by a few fans and industry insiders, to becoming a full on hedonistic riot, despite being held on a Wednesday night.

Along with clubs like Back To Basics in Leeds, Bugged Out in Manchester and Sub Club in Glasgow it was the place that many Americans such as Derrick Carter, DJ Sneak and Ron Trent got some of their first British gigs and where they earned their reputations as DJs in Europe.

Luke helped establish one of the UK's most important underground house labels when he teamed up with Derrick Carter to launch the Classic Music Company in 1995. Simultaneously he started working in the studio with old university friend Justin Harris as Freaks and founded another label, Music For Freaks, to release their material. 

Sometime after the millennium the wheels started to come off and Solomon was dealt a series of terrible blows. His Space residency at Bar Rumba came to an end in 2002. Ideal, the company that distributed both Classic and Music For Freaks went under, a victim of the surge in downloading.

It left small independent labels such as Luke's severely out of pocket and ultimately led to the dissolution of Classic. After scoring a hit with the track 'The Creeps', recorded at the time of their third album, Freaks stopped recording. Then in 2011 Solomon's close friend Kenny Hawkes died aged just 42 from liver failure.

Thankfully Luke was thrown a lifeline by Defected Record's Simon Dunmore, who put Solomon's expertise and good ear to use at the UK's largest independent dance music label. Having been there for less than four years, Solomon now holds a significant position within the company.

He has now revitalised Classic Music Company and runs it through Defected, he has maintained a solo recording and DJ career and has just issued some previously unreleased music made by Freaks. We caught up with the pivotal figure for a chat about his long history in house music and the current state of the rave.

Where are you?

I'm in the studio, which is in the garden.

Do you still live in that same house in Barnet and do you still watch the football team?

We still live in Barnet but we moved ten minutes up the road from where you visited. We did that about 15 years ago. Same area though. We were closer to the football club, then they moved and it's now a 20 minute drive, but yeah, I take the kids all the time.

What are you working on in the studio at the moment?

A new album actually. It's kind of a collective, so it's under a new guise. The band are called Powerdance and it's myself and Nick Maurer from Greenskeepers, Al Doyle from Hot Chip on bass, James Duncan who plays horns with Metro Area and LCD Soundsystem, Danny Moodymanc on drums and percussion, Shaun J Wright from Hercules And Love Affair, Alinka and various other people.

Basically it's a disco album, late seventies New York disco, ESG but then also a more contemporary take on it. That's the idea.

So is it actually disco songs, with lyrics?

The album is called The Lost Art Of Getting Down and the idea, the concept, it's basically a reaction to everything that's going on in dance music at the moment. Which is this whole anti-EDM movement, which is basically really boring, monotonous tech house and everyone wearing black.

It's just rubbish. So this is just taking things back to their roots and making a proper album that's just about dancing and losing yourself in a nightclub and nothing else. So there's seven tracks and they're all about dancing, very Will Powers inspired, lots of things telling you to dance and how to dance. Just taking things back to the way they used to be, that's the idea.

So you prefer EDM to black clad, boring tech house?

[laughs] You know what? This conversation came up a lot at ADE. I'm kinda on the fence, because I know it's a reaction to EDM, to go in the opposite direction. EDM, love it or hate it, there was something going on in regards to making this as brash, offensive, noisy and mental as you possibly can and in some way it's created this hatred that was pretty intense.

I mean, I paid no attention really, because it's just pop music to me. It was just a bubblegum moment. But the opposite, which was the underground response to it, I don't know if it's just a sign of the times, but we seem to be going back into that minimal world again where I think everything's just getting watered down, it's lost its soul, its funk.

It's just this conveyor belt of monotonous nonsense and everyone trying to react by wearing black. I mean it was just a sea of black at ADE. It was mental. Everyone. It was like, what the fuck is going on? It's lost its character, everything.

I think it's just a statement, a sign of the times, because it's across the board, with DJs, with producers, with music, with people. I'm kind of at my wit's end. It's just not inspiring. It's not inspiring me at all.

Of course we can have a different slant on this, being a bit older and being British, because we can associate that EDM thing with the rave scene that we witnessed here in the late 80s early 90s, which was a brash, beautiful and brilliant thing. Although the music was better!

It was just full of colour! It was so full of colour, smiley faces, day glo and glo sticks. Everything about it was bright and enticing and happy. That's what acid house was all about.

I think techno is in a similar place at the moment, people seem to be dissatisfied with how diluted and watered down things have become. From the people who genuinely care about this stuff, it seems to be a general consensus that people are starting to look back again to move forward. That is the cycle, it's ever moving, isn't it?

It is cyclical and I can remember the last time it happened, thinking about that time after you'd finished doing Bar Rumba. Everything previously had been focussed on the different styles of house music that were coming out of New York, Chicago, Detroit or their derivatives, then everything switched to the European sound, Germany, that whole minimal house thing. What was that time like for you and how did you ride it out?

I wasn't actually quite so prepared for that. Classic had started to wind down, Bar Rumba had come to an end, you had the whole build up to the millenium and I will still very much in the frame of mind that this was all gonna last forever. And then all of a sudden things started to change, the bookings dried up, I was feeling very uninspired musically.

We'd had The Creeps, which had kinda crossed over when that whole electro house thing happened, but afterwards I just felt very detached from everything. Because it was the first time professionally that it had happened to me I didn't know where to turn. This time round I'm more prepared because history works in your favour.

The older you get, the longer you've been around, the more you ride things out, the more you've got to fall back on when stuff goes a bit pear shaped. You've got a legacy intact that enables you to ride it out. This time round I've got a different head. That time round I was just lost. I was still buying music, I was still hearing good stuff.

The Innervisions stuff started to appear, the more soulful side of the stuff coming from Germany, that felt like something inspiring was happening again, so it'll be interesting to hear what happens this time round.

Am I right in saying that the Classic label wound down because, like a lot of small independent labels, you got hit pretty hard when your distributor Ideal went down?

I think there were a number of factors. Ideal was one of the first to suffer the blow of the digital revolution, so there was that and physical sales were starting to deplete, lots of companies being left with vast amounts of stock and huge overheads. We moved to PIAS when Ideal went, Music For Freaks moved to Amato.

All good things come to an end. It was one of those. You could just see it. The landscape was changing. Classic had been around a while, the old heads weren't perhaps buying as much music or going out so much. You just go through that natural lifespan which I see a lot now with labels, having been there once before.

We were fighting, trying to survive the blow of losing a couple of hundred thousand pounds, trying to tread water and it lost the fun. We were just hoping that people would get paid. There were people left, right and centre, friends, that we had to let down financially. So there were lots of factors.

You must have thought it was dead and buried until Defected came along and made you an offer. What is the position of Classic there now? I thought originally they would just be releasing the back catalogue digitally.

No, no. We're very much alive, I'm still manning the ship, which is great because it's still our baby and I still have a watchful eye over it. We're releasing music. It took a while to regenerate and reach a new audience.

I was waiting to be inspired by a stream of new producers who had been inspired, growing up with our records, the ones Derrick and I had put out. And now that's started to happen and in its new birth it's very much firing on all cylinders again, which is great.

So aside from looking after Classic what does your day to day job for Defected entail?

A+R across all the labels, Defected, Strictly Rhythm, Classic, DFTD and Soul Heaven. Glitterbox is the new thing, which is more events at the moment, but there are plans afoot for that for some compilations.

Across all of that I'm probably more involved with heritage stuff, things that are a lot more catalogue related, like currently Simon Dunmore and myself are putting together a Mood II Swing album, which is effectively like a greatest hits thing.

I'm involved in things like the House Masters compilations and then I'm the third party, alongside Simon Dunmore and Andy Daniel, when it comes to making decisions on new A+R material, what we think suits which label, what we think is good, what gets written off.

I have a really good relationship with Simon Dunmore where we turn to each other for advice. He really saved me when things were bad and gave me this whole new chapter of my life. So I'm there looking over all different bits of stuff on a creative aspect.

Has being around some of that classic old stuff on Strictly Rhythm or the Mood II Swing stuff had any refreshing influence over you, say, as a producer?

It has. But more as a DJ than as a producer. I was sat there with Simon putting this Mood II Swing album together and thinking back to my younger self, 20 years ago and how much I worshipped them and everything they did. I just sat there with a big grin on my face thinking this is pretty mental.

Because I'm going back and digging through these records and because of the current state of affairs, it's definitely making me go back. I feel like I have a knowledge of those records that a lot of the new generation don't have. You can play those records and they translate again, people will go, what the fuck is that?

It's like what I was saying before, that's something that works in my favour now. It's almost like having a jump up on people, so from a Djing perspective yes. More so than as a producer, although perhaps. I do think New York is going to have a time where its music is rediscovered.

Old Chicago has had that time, it's been discovered by a new generation, but I think New York is about to have that moment again. Listening to the new Louie Vega album and watching Masters At Work DJ last week at ADE, seeing how these younger kids were reacting was pretty mind blowing. It was amazing.

Being involved with that whole Masters at Work back catalogue and seeing them play those records again, it's made me even more of a fan boy again. It's inspired me massively.

Is there any unreleased Mood II Swing stuff coming on this compilation?

No, I don't think so, because we haven't really broached that with them. Lem and John I don't think have been making music together for a long time. What I didn't realise before, but that I do now, was that they would make records individually as Mood II Swing as well.

John's been more receptive with communicating, getting in touch and seeing what's going on, so I think some stuff might appear. They had a lot of records that people didn't really discover.

We've got a balance of a lot of things that people knew and some things that only a handful of people knew about, which have really stood up, things like Modjo and Sarah Washington dubs that much of the new generation won't know, although I'm guessing you would.

So, aside from the amazing Masters At Work and everyone wearing black, how was ADE?

[laughs] It's funny because you're hearing lots of people being pessimistic and complaining, saying, ooh, we're not selling many records, events are driving sales, allowing record labels to stay alive, things like that. People are burying their heads in the sand when it comes to streaming, but that's an unknown quantity at the moment, no-one knows where it's going to lead us and what's going to happen.

People don't seem that inspired and record sales aren't great. And there seems to be a real drought in terms of crossover music, say the Defected level of things, records that we put out that reach a wider audience, so there's lots of damning factors. But at the same time I came away from it having seen people like Midland, Bicep, Tiger and Woods, Prosumer and that part of the underground is really quite exciting, quite healthy.

I also think that the gay scene overall is generally starting to have a moment again and that's quite exciting, Dan Beaumont (Dalston Superstore) and what he's driving in London, looking at what's happening in Berlin, people like Midland, Severino, Hannah Holland, Shaun J Wright and Alinka, Black Madonna.

There's something going on that I'm really excited about. That's where people are going to hear the music again, lose themselves and escape the bullshit that's become the mainstream underground. So there's stuff around that I'm very much inspired by.

Where are you up to with Freaks? (Listen to Luke and Justin's track above) I didn't think that was a going concern but I read you're about to issue some unreleased material.

We're starting to realise that because we've been around quite a long time, again the legacy is starting to reach the new generation of producers that are coming through. It felt like the right time to... er... cash in on that, if I'm being brutally honest.

I think allowing our catalogue to be more available, reach a new audience and celebrate, because Justin and I are really proud of what we achieved. And there's a lot of music there that, again the time feels right for it. Music For Freaks feels like it has its place again because it's a reaction against everything that's going on. It feels appropriate.

We approached several people, one of them Ricardo Villalobos, who has always championed our records and been very vocal about the fact we've inspired him. We sent him The Man Who Lived Underground album to do a remix and he sent 5 remixes back, so that was like a catalyst in itself.

What's Justin up to these days?

He lives in Ibiza now, so he's doing a lot of mixing and mastering and engineering at Sonica Studios. He has a show on Sonica. We are working on some lost material. We just made a record for Circus Company, Stuff We Forgot, which was found on lost DATs and we're doing lots of editing and things like that. So potentially there's more new old material to be released.

Are you still tight with Rob Mello? What's he up to?

Obviously Rob's a dear friend, but he's having a little bit of a retirement at the moment. He's moved from London to Kent and he's spending some time out. I think when me and Rob play together at Glastonbury every year, we go there as residents and do our thing and that's always fantastic.

I think he's just being very selective about what he does and doesn't do, but at this point in time he's just having a little time out. Rob's got such a huge catalogue of music that there will come a point where the legendary status will start to kick in quite heavily. Listening back to all those Disco Elements records and Luxury Service, compared to a lot of the stuff that's being done now they still sound head and shoulders.

One of the first records I got of yours didn't come from the UK, it was you, Rob Mello and Zaki D recording as Heaven and Earth and it came out on the Chicago label Prescription. How did you initially get involved with all those people from Chicago?

I was working at Freetown at the time which was Sankey Yeo's New York and Chicago-centric label. He had a fascination with Studio 54 and Chaka Khan and early New York house. He came from a very moneyed background and he basically just bought his way into being a label.

He basically just threw money at all these artists like Faylene Brown, Jamie Principal, Masters At Work, Ron Trent, Marshall Jefferson, Felix da Housecat and I was doing promotions. Ron Trent came over to see Sankey and me and Ron hit it off. He made a record for Subwoofer, which was this Freetown sublabel at the time, Marshall Jefferson made one too.

Through Ron and also through the people who were working at Cajual and Relief, who were doing the distribution for Ron Trent's Prescription label, I got to meet Chez (Damier), Ron's partner. I can't remember how we contacted each other to be honest, I think I would just pick up numbers off of records and we'd speak on the phone.

With Derrick (Carter) it was a similar thing. I was working in the studio with Rob and Zaki D and they were already speaking to Derrick because they had phoned him off the back of a record he had put out, so there was this triangle, all the stars aligning. We had gone in the studio, Zaki, Rob and me, because we were so inspired by Prescription and I took it out to Chicago with me and gave it to Chez when I went out there to DJ for the first time.

I stayed with the guys from Cajual and me and Chez really hit it off, then Derrick and it kind of grew out of that.

Good connections to make!

At that time I really had no idea just how important they would be. Looking through my collection and that was a real moment, Prescription, Relief, then Derrick's music. That, for me, was a moment when a switch just flipped in my head and I thought this is exactly where I want to be.

What do you think made Space at Bar Rumba so special (listen to Luke's Space mini mix above)?

I think about it a lot, because of Kenny. And I think about Kenny a lot. I've been going through sorting records again, lots of things that I had forgotten about, records that still stand up now and I think music is the answer. The music 100%. I know Kenny liked things that were a little bit different to me, but there was a connection, we were so on the same point.

Kenny hated everyone and everything and we acted against that. I'm pretty similar really and we had this amazing bond because of that. We had the same sense of humour. I think coming off the back of Girls FM and knowing there was nothing around at the time where we wanted to go out.

You had techno, Jim Masters doing his thing which was fantastic, but from a deep house perspective there was nothing. Especially not midweek. So, we were given this chance and we just looked at the records we loved and got these people to come and play. When it started off it was really quiet, but we fought and fought and then all of a sudden something happened. It was a combination of hedonism and music and good jokes. It was just a magical time, it really was. Incredible.

I'd never seen anything like it before or since on a midweek night.

I don't think there had been anything like it before, certainly not with all those elements. When Derrick would play on the birthday or when Weatherall played or John Acquaviva or Harvey, there were certain people, certain combinations. A Man Called Adam live, Tom Middleton live.

There were certain things we did when you knew it was going to be absolutely off the chain. And it would carry on afterwards and on into the next day. Great friendships made, marriages, divorces, children, all kinds of things came out of that club, they really did.