DJ Evil Eddie Richards - Interview

"Clink St. was a religious experience and I think when I DJ, I try to get back to that level. You don't get to it 9 times out of 10, but then there are those rare times when it is magical, and I DJ for that reason, to get that magic back."

Several years after the death of disco as a mainstream musical phenomenon and a number of years before the explosion of electronic music as the supposed next big thing, a group of poor young musicians in Chicago started tweaking the Roland TB-303, an instrument originally intended to clone guitar sounds. Unfortunately for guitarists, the instrument failed. This failure, however, soon led to one of the greatest cultural movements of the latter part of the 20th century, the advent of rave/acid house culture.

Guitarists, believing that the instrument offered no real musical benefit, looked back to their guitars, greatly devaluing the instrument, creating the perfect opportunity for talented yet broke musicians to experiment with cheap gear. These musicians, most notably Marshall Jefferson, A Guy Called Gerald, Fast Eddie, Adonis, Phuture, and Robert Owens, resided in urban Chicago. They created a sound called acid, and some twelve plus years later their influence is still felt on a global level.

At the centre of the acid house explosion was a small club in London called Clink St., run by Mr C (who was profiled in the Parking issue) and Evil Eddie Richards. Clink St. was ground zero for acid house. Richards and Mr. C began championing the burgeoning sound, and did so months before Danny Rampling's Balearic-influenced Shoom had even opened its doors. While Richards definitely spun acid house, he also played various other styles of music, reflecting an eclectic taste that ranged from gay house to electro. The acid house explosion was just around the corner. On the music's development, Richards elaborated, "It wasn't something that came out of the blue. It was a slow transition. No one knew it was something new. One day I bought a Trax record and quite a few people asked, 'Why are you playing that stuff?' At the first Clink St. parties, there weren't many acid house records at first, so musically, we had quite a mixture. After that, quite a flood came out as people in Chicago found out you could make money knocking out tracks on an 808, so everyone jumped on the bandwagon. Soon, we were playing 99% American house, and the Detroit stuff broke through as well."

As a result of his five years spent as the resident at Camden Palace, Richards had already established himself as one of England's best DJs even before the acid house explosion. Around the height of the acid house sound, Richards was asked to become a music coordinator for paid parties, or raves. "One of the guys who threw all the parties lived up the road from me. He asked if I'd become a musical coordinator. I still have the paperwork. I was the first person to pick DJs for those nights, so I know for a fact we didn't have that many Balearic DJs at that time. In fact, I was fully responsible for getting Carl Cox started, because Carl was playing down in Brighton at a small club, and I told the guy that he should check him out. They liked him and offered him a job, so that's where his career took off as well."

Richards would soon find himself being booked all over the world, or as he puts it, "I'm still just following the wave as it travels." His experiences inspired him to form Dynamix, which would become the world's first DJ agency. "During that time, I got to know a lot of the DJs who are now big name DJs like Carl Cox and Paul Oakenfold, but at the time, they were just friends. I formed a DJ agency called Dynamix in 1990 because a lot of them were getting ripped off at these pay parties. So, we started the first ever specialist DJ agency, and that got bigger and bigger, and in the end, we were representing, like, 60 DJs. We were mainly representing American DJs and were bringing them over here, people like Jeff Mills, Derrick May and Todd Terry; pretty much everybody who was big at that time, we represented. I closed the agency because I wanted to do more recording and that's where I'm at now."

Before he closed the agency, his efforts led him to found offices in various locations throughout the world, including Berlin, New York, San Francisco, Japan, South Africa, Finland, Belgium and in the UK. He stopped the agency because of the incredible amount of work it took to run an agency properly. "It took quite a while to train people because it is hard to find someone who is really good at organizational work and is knowledgeable about the music as well as being very dedicated because it's not a 9-5 job. People have to be at work during the day and then go out and party and still get up and go to work the next day. People get disillusioned; a lot of people that worked for us were really into the music and when they found out what some of these DJs and promoters were actually like, their dream was shattered. They thought it was going to be different. We had people leave for different reasons and it took time to find new staff, which always held us back. But we did do well in our time. Currently, we represent Pure Science, Terry Francis, Mark Ambrose, Aubrey, Charles Webster and a couple of other people not exclusive to us who live in London. We are keeping it to British DJs now. It's still running but on a part time basis."

As mentioned above, Richards cut back his agency efforts to concentrate more on working in his studio as well as running his label Lunar Tunes. "I've had a studio for a long time, but never had time to do my music. I could have sat down and done some stuff myself but it would have been stop and start and I decided to just learn about studio techniques. I was asked by my friends, like Mr. C, to do some remixes, which I did and did the same with Orbital. We used to represent them exclusively, and when they started, they were just playing a lot for little parties that I used to do. They became successful and I did stuff for them. I knew Louis Vega as I was the first person to bring him over to the UK and he did some stuff in my studio as well. I've been doing remixes for quite some time. Richie (Hawtin) just asked me to do a remix for Definitive. I did that, so that's how its been going for the last couple of years until we closed the agency and now I felt ready to do stuff myself."

He continued, commenting on Lunar Tunes, "The first thing we put out was licensed from KOT in New York because I really always liked the way he makes his music. I licensed some of his early stuff, which had a really limited release of 500 and only came out in New York. The second release was of Phil (Pure Science), but it was called Sci-Fi. He was already putting out stuff under his name Pure Science, so I put it out under Sci-Fi. After that, I put out my own EP called Code Trax about a year ago, which was the first thing I put out under my own name on one record. Then I did one with Phil, which was the latest release on Lunar Tunes. I'm now working on a track with Terry (Francis). I've also got Mark Ambrose doing some stuff with me. I'm not really a record producer at this stage, as I think there are so many things to learn. I'm getting better and better at it, but I've only been doing it for two years now."

Finally, on why he chose the name Lunar Tunes: "Lunar is a good name because I've been interested in the effects of the moon on people. Lunar has got an effect on the way we are. It's a nice name; it rolls off the tongue."     by Craig Kapilow, courtesy Boston's Weekly Dig