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Back to 2002 for Evolution’s 3rd Birthday with the prodigious James Lawson
Reported by benz
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Submitted 04-08-06 13:02
One of the most technically gifted producers in the history of hard dance and creator of some of the genre’s most inspiring, exciting, and downright wonderful tunes. One half of the world beating Edison Factor, who recently dropped their massively successful ‘World Series Vol. 1’ album. A superb dj to boot. It is of course, the superbly talented James Lawson. He has been consistently knocking out anthem after anthem of hard dance power since he really broke through around four years back, and has racked up more classic productions and remixes than you can shake a stick up.
Lawson’s knack for combining chunky, groovy basslines with supremely euphoric, uber-melodic riffs that really get stuck in your head have made him a firm favorite with djs and producers alike, and now with The Edison Factor live show well in its stride, he has cemented his reputation as one of the more forward-thinking artists in hard dance. August 26th will see him step back in time to revisit the year of his breakthrough — 2002 — for Evolution’s 3rd Birthday at The Fridge, which is sure to bring some amazing memories flooding back. He'll be ripping apart these classics tunes using the revolutionary Ableton Live software - enabling him to deconstruct, reconstruct, re-edit and remix them right before your very eyes (and ears)! Just for the record, his own productions from that year include:
James Lawson — ‘Energise’
Carl Nicholson & James Lawson — ‘Times Like These’
James Lawson & Phil Reynolds — ‘No Escape’
James Lawson & Spencer Freeland — ‘Future Is Now’
BK — ‘Badass’ (James Lawson Remix)
Alphazone — ‘Stay’ (James Lawson Remix)
Paul Glazby — ‘Beautiful’ (Edison Factor Remix)
Vinylgroover & The Red Hed — ‘Everlasting’ (Edison Factor Remix)
Exit EEE — ‘Epidemic’ (Edison Factor Remix)
The good old days eh! We sat James down to give his first solo interview for HarderFaster in almost 2 years.
Your Edison Factor ‘World Series CD’ became one of a handful of full-length artist albums in the history of hard dance, joining the likes of Lab4, Nick Sentience, BK, K90 and Ilogik. It wasn’t all Edison Factor material though was it? How does that work?
The CD/album was more of a collection of tracks from our label, edisonfactor.net records, than an artist album by The Edison Factor.
Matt and I had written some tracks ourselves and, had completed various engineering jobs such as Justin Fry’s ‘True House Music’, and we wanted to put all these tracks out as we thought they were all killers. At that point we had 8 tracks for the CD so we drafted in the services of Nick Sentience to bring up the track number to 10 (these 2 tracks are the only tracks on the CD that are not engineered by either Matt or myself).
Were you pleased with the whole project in retrospect?
Absolutely. The response to the CD has been amazing with the industry magazines such as M8, IDJ, DJ and Mixmag all giving us amazing reviews with phrases such as “Quite simply, unmissable” and “intense unbridled euphoria.”
Sales both on and off line have been going well and every time I go to a hard dance club I hear at least 2 or 3 of the tracks from the CD being played.
I am particularly pleased that we did a double CD. The first CD contains all the tracks unmixed for djs. The second CD is all the same tracks mixed together by The Edison Factor (James Lawson and Matthew Williams). This has meant that the CD has been bought both by djs and for those just wanting a dance mix for home or their iPod.
By the way the CD, vinyl and MP3 versions of all the tracks are available from our on line store at www.edisonfactor.net
What’s the deal with the DVD promo? What’s on it and how can we get it?
The DVD promo was recorded at Twisted @ The Fridge and has been put together by someone who films for the BBC. The point of the DVD is to promote The Edison Factor Live show. We wanted to show that our live show is more than just us standing in front of a pair of laptops and to show us playing all the instruments as well (trombone, guitar, drums and keyboards).
We are pleased with the result as it does show the atmosphere and energy that is created at one of our shows. There are a few shots of people in the crowd, so maybe one of you reading this is staring in our film! At present you can see the DVD online at: http://www.edisonfactor.net/html/dvd.html and soon you will be able to download the film to your computers for free.
What have you been cooking up in the studio recently? Any exciting ground-breaking tracks we should know about?
I am working hard on my James Lawson hard dance artist album at the moment. I am working on my own and so far I have collaborated with Andy Farley, Matt Williams and Nick Sentience. I expect the CD to be ready in October. It will of course be available on download too.
I have also been working on other styles such as psy trance, which has been a massive challenge as the production quality is so high within this scene. This together with the interesting arrangements that artists in this scene use is having a very positive effect on the hard dance tracks I am making by upping my production skills and encouraging me to be a bit more creative with arrangements and sounds. A recent psy track I have done is coming out on John ‘OO’ Flemming’s label, JOOF. It is a remix of Anne Savage — ‘The Do’.
How has your live show been progressing since you started?
Massively. First thing is we have reduced the amount of kit we have on stage. We had to do this as we realised the need to set up and breakdown our kit quickly at events. We have also got much better at playing our instruments at such high speeds (playing at 145 – 150 BPM is a very real challenge for any musician!) and have started experimenting with some crazy effects on the guitar, trombone and drums.
We have also become very proficient in the use of Ableton Live and we are now truly getting the most out of this software to chew up our tracks and spit them out in a different way. To us each show has to be a bit different and we are achieving that now.
The response from the crowd appears to be getting better and better so I think we are going in the right direction.
I am ashamed to say I still haven’t seen it! When’s our next chance to catch the Edison Factor Live experience?
There are a few shows coming up:
27th Aug: Mashtonbury @ Air, Birmingham
8th Sept: Slinky @ The Opera House, Bournemouth
7th Oct: Tidy Weekender 10, Pontins, Prestatyn
14th Oct: Polysexual @ Air, Birmingham
We are also working on a tour of Australia and New Zealand.
What gear do you use in your live set up?
2 x laptops using Ableton Live and Logic
1 x trombone
1 x Fender Strat electric guitar
1 x Marshall amplifier
1 x Roland Elec drum kit
1 x MIDI keyboard
1 x Mackie mixing desk
1 x Headphone monitoring system
1 x Digitech multi effects unit
1 x Virus TI hardware synthesiser
Plus various midi controllers, microphones and many software synths and effects units.
And what about in the studio? For the geeks out there — what hardware and software do you use?
Pretty much what we use on stage for the live show except that I use Logic 7 on a Mac as my main sequencer in conjunction with Ableton Live.
How do you go about making those phat, chunky, groovy basslines that you are so well known for?
By selecting/making a bass sound with a synthesiser that has the right about of mid, bass and sub frequencies to get that phwooer factor, then sitting there and tweaking the EQ, distortion, filter settings, notes and note length till the bass line grooves in such a way that I can listen to it looping round and around in such a way that it just flows. That’s probably not that helpful, but I guess I just feel when the sound is right, So I can’t be too scientific about it.
Would you recommend different combinations of hardware and software for making different styles of music? Or should you be able to produce any style effectively with a good set up?
You can produce any style of dance music with a good set up. It is a question of practise practise practise. Listen hard to your favourite producers and emulate their style, then create your own. Learn the rules before breaking them!
The most important thing when producing other styles of music is the percussion. Try and produce house, electro or trance with hard house/dance percussion and kick drums and you will fail miserably.
Other things to take note of is the type of effects used. House and electro tend to use quite close sounds (small reverbs etc.) whereas trance and hard dance tends to use bigger reverbs and delays. Get this wrong and it won’t sound right either.
It is also important to use sounds that suit the genre! A tearing bassline in hard dance sits in a very different frequency range and volume level to a tearing bassling in psy trance or house.
Listen and learn. It’s what I am doing on a daily basis.
You are playing for Heat at Evolution’s 3rd Birthday on August 26th at The Fridge, covering the year of 2002. What are your strongest memories from that period in time? It’s when you were really blowing up no?
2002 was the year that hard dance started to take over from hard house as the dominant force in the scene so that really suited my musical style. It was an amazing time for me.
One of my strongest memories of that time was walking into Camden Palace to play the main room at Frantic and hearing 8 of my tracks played in a row . . . the crowd went nuts. I was inwardly very proud at that moment. I was also very thankful that I had a few brand new tracks of my own in my CD case, so that when I played a couple of hours later, I had something different to play alongside the other records in my box.
What tracks from that year hold particularly fond memories? And what about your own personal production highlights from that year?
My favourite tracks at the time were tracks like Prime Mover — ‘Feel what I Feel’, Nick Sentience — ‘Neuronex’, P.Clarke & M.Ramone — ‘Get In Funky’2, Paul Glazby’s remix of ‘Dreams’ and, of course, the genre defining BK — ‘Revolution’!
My own personal production highlights from that year include James Lawson ‘Energise’, Alphazone — ‘Stay’ (James Lawson Remix) and Project Mayhem — ‘Take Hold’ (James Lawson and Justin Bourne Remix).
How do you feel the hard dance scene in general has changed since then?
Yes it has. I think that the energy is the same but everybody is looking around for something a bit fresher. This fresh outlook on harder music is starting to happen now and I think the scene will become very strong as a result of it.
Investigating other styles of music is vital as it can then inject something fresh into the hard dance sound. This is something that Nukleuz was particularly hot on in its heyday. They realised the need to have influence from other styles (see techno and trance influencing hard house music and clubs such as Twisted, Frantic and Fevah at the time).
I would love to see an injection of electro, psy trance, tech trance and techno into hard dance. Look at how the electro sound has influenced all genres of dance music in a very positive way and you’ll see what I mean. I don’t want hard dance/house to disappear, I would like it to morph into hard dance for 2007 by taking the elements of other genres that work and incorporating them into a tough hedonistic sound. It’s what the scene has always been about.
One thing that definitely seems to have changed is that everything is a little more serious now. So what if someone is playing fast paced, hard edged electro with a twist of hoover led techno — let’s just party!
And what about the London hard dance club scene in particular? Do you think it has got smaller at all?
The London scene has got smaller in some ways, but much of this is due to the more successful clubs getting bigger. The London scene used to be full of small clubs doing their thing, with a couple of larger clubs filling the big venues. Now the scene is dominated by large events and the smaller events have dwindled. I’d love to see the balance even out. It’s why I think that the electro scene is doing well. There are many smaller events playing fresh sounds, rather than one huge event a month trying to please everyone.
That being said, there are fantastic clubs out there and the scene is very much alive!
What really grinds your gears about the dance music industry?
It would help greatly if people didn’t copy tunes and give them to their friends for nothing. The price of a tune has now dropped from 6–7 pounds for a record to between £1 and £2 for the same track on MP3. I see this as a very positive thing and a very real reason to make the decision to buy music rather than copy it. In effect you can get 4 or 5 tunes for the price of one record.
However, because now the majority of people are copying music for each other the record labels are suffering and closing. This can only be bad for the scene as producers become less likely to make the music for nothing. It is their job after all. Imagine going to work and then at the end of the week your boss tells you that they’re not going to pay you but would you mind coming in next week anyway. What would you say?! If left unchecked the end result of this will be that there is less fresh music coming out and therefore the clubs are less exciting.
Producers do make music for the love, but if we want our dance scene to be as strong as it has been in the past we all need to be buying the music.
And finally James — what is the Edison Factor?
It’s a hard dance production team that produces music that lets you forget about the stresses of the working week. Come and see one of our live shows and be entertained. We’re all about having fun!
All photos courtesy of James Lawson. Not to be reproduced without permission.
HeatUK pres. Evolution: The 3rd Birthday
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On:
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Saturday 26th August 2006
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At:
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The Fridge [map]
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From:
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10:00 - 06:00
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Cost:
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£14 Early Bird Tickets
£16 Saver Tickets
More On The Door
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Website:
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www.heatuk.com
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Ticket Info:
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Ticketweb - www.ticketweb.co.uk - 08700 600 100
Cyberdog - 0207 482 2842
Mad Records (Soho) - 0207 439 0707
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Buy Online:
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Click here to buy tickets
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More:
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The classics night that dares to be different is back for its 3rd Birthday celebration! The last party at Koko was an asbolute roadblock, and this time with everyone coming on from South West Four it's going to be massive.
Expect classics all the way as we start our birthday celebration in 2003, then take a journey back through time, finishing the night in the evocative year of 1998.
Evolution III is the ultimate night for nostalgia and for those who like their music a bit harder the perfect place to go after South West Four.
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Other Features By benz:
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Coburn bring their live show to UP^^
The return of The Colosseum
Modernism, Politburo and Sedition: Matthew Duffield’s manifesto
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Comments:
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From: carl nicholson on 4th Aug 2006 13:13.38
Top stuff james! A legend in his own right!
From: Stevi D on 4th Aug 2006 13:39.13
I cant wait for this, Heats 3rd B-Day straight after SW4, GET IN THERE!!!! Regarding James, quality producer, dj and all round top guy!! His work is always on top form, good effort James
From: Martin Begley on 4th Aug 2006 15:11.59
Go on the Lawsonator!
From: Lee Osborne on 4th Aug 2006 15:50.12
"Take hold" What a tune!!! Excellent producer and legend of the scene. Nice one james!
From: dani d on 4th Aug 2006 16:04.31
Nice interview James,top stuff
From: VinDiesel on 4th Aug 2006 16:32.40
A very very accomplished producer and fine musician. Great interview.Interesting to read about the production side and use of the incredible Ableton.
Bring on Evolution 3! It will be a wicked follow on from SW4!
From: karl davis on 5th Aug 2006 01:49.54
energize some tune, looks like a cool gig
From: Matt Church on 5th Aug 2006 08:43.51
Great stuff James, keep up the good work!!
From: Matt Smallwood on 5th Aug 2006 09:53.53
You beeeaaaaauutteeehhh!! :o)
From: danj on 5th Aug 2006 10:49.55
Nice interview Jim Jam, you are quite rightly, a leg-end
From: ~deleted1390 on 6th Aug 2006 17:51.28
Alphazone - Stay 
Looking forward to this party a lot and Mr Lawson will no doubt deliver in spades as usual.
From: Gordon Darley on 7th Aug 2006 01:43.54
Go on the Lawson!!!
From: K.A.R.L. on 7th Aug 2006 14:59.08
One of the best ever producers in the hard dance scene and a top bloke to boot. Good work James.
From: sexyminx on 7th Aug 2006 17:15.04
Wicked interview, nice one Looking forward to this. Especially my lovely BakLash room 
From: Lizzie.Wiggle on 7th Aug 2006 17:41.07
G.T.F.R.I !!!!
From: Meena on 7th Aug 2006 22:06.34
Blimmin 'eck what a line up!
From: Mike Harris on 7th Aug 2006 23:43.53
One of the nicest dj's/producers iver ever met, top dj, top producer, top bloke!
From: Mark. on 8th Aug 2006 09:08.27
Quality stuff.
Looking forward to Evolution.
From: Dave Austin on 8th Aug 2006 21:19.36
Nice one James. If it wasnt for you, Matt & Mr Sentience I wouldnt have much of a set to play!
keep it up mate.
From: Nickbackonit on 9th Aug 2006 12:56.19
James you bloody legend mate! Keep it up! Hope to see you soon in Cape Town. Nick
From: Nishhh.....! on 10th Aug 2006 11:23.21
Wicked interview James....Edison Factor Rocks!!
From: raving.looney on 11th Aug 2006 17:23.31
Quality lad.........keep ya pecker up james ;0) x
From: Not Marcus on 15th Aug 2006 12:42.10
A real innovator and driver of the scene. God 2002 was a good year 
Nice one James
From: Red5 on 25th Aug 2006 19:27.23
Top bloke with an amazing amount of talent and a midas touch when it comes to productions. His tracks are a testament to his attention to detail in the studio.
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