Inland Knights Interview

When I hear the term Funky House, it usually puts me off. It conjures up images of the type of commercial rubbish that seems to be produced with keep fit classes in mind. However, when trying to explain the Inland Knights’ production style, it is difficult to do so without using these two words. The Knights incorporate everything from disco samples to techy synths, yet the result is always the same – it makes you want to dance. There’s a fine line between damn funky and downright cheesy, and Nottingham’s Laurence Ritchie and Andy Riley are always on the right side of it. Before their recent gig at Fluid Groove in Brighton, We caught up with Inland Knight and Drop Music chief Laurence Ritchie to talk about House music, misspent youth and…BBC Radio 2.

DHN: A lot of the House nights here in Brighton attract people that seem purely interested in spilling Stella down their shirts and going home early with the most willing female. Coming from a free party background, do you ever get frustrated at this, or do you just think it’s great to see young people enjoying themselves?

Laurence: I think it’s a bit sad really. When I was about 17, before I found any acid house raves, my mates would do that sort of thing, but you see it now and its, big, it’s in your face, it’s Gatecrasher. It’s a bit of an English thing. From all the places we travel, you don’t really see that townie, ‘hitman and her’ thing anywhere else.

DHN: Where’s your favourite place to DJ then?

Laurence: For good gigs and being happy to be there, I’d say New Zealand’s pretty nice. They like us; the label, to my surprise, was already quite cemented over there. We played this club, and everyone went absolutely ‘nanas before we’d even played a record, the first time we’d been there – I’d never seen that before! They really seem to love Deep House music, and the stuff we do especially. If we were to hit a little nerve in one place around the world, that would be it.

DHN: Do you ever feel restricted to play a certain style of music by the fact that you’re mainly renowned for producing a particular type of House?

Laurence: We just play what we we’ve always played. I guess Inland Knights’ name has got bigger, but it doesn’t mean we’ve gone to play the bigger room music, which is something a lot of other people have done. Some nights we might be a little bit tougher, but sometimes we’ll be a bit more mellow. Sometimes we can be more mellow to a crowd that normally wants it tougher and it’ll work just as well. We won’t go out record shopping before the gig though and buy loads of really ‘tough’ records because it’s a supposedly ‘tough’ gig, and they’ll pay loads of money because it’s a huge gig. I think that’s where it begins – the slippery slope to losing your musical integrity for the sake of wonga!

DHN: Considering your profile as producers, you don’t seem to play out as much as some other DJs. Have you ever been tempted to cash in and run around doing three gigs a night?

There just aren’t the venues or the promoters. A couple of years ago we were quite busy, some weekends we’d even do three gigs, but they were just gigs like the one we’re doing in Brighton. They’re usually people who we know, or someone who’s been doing a night for a few years and really wants to get us down because he likes the label…You can only do so many gigs a night before it turns into a machine; you can’t feel three gigs a night. You can’t get in and out of cars and run up and down motorways and get fed all the things you get fed at each club after four years, its milking it a bit.

DHN: What sort of stuff do you listen to at home?

Laurence: Absolutely nothing, the ringing in my ears! I listen to Radio 2 in the car. I’ve been getting into the new Flaming Lips album…

DHN: You don’t listen to House at all?

Laurence: Not if I can help it! It’s overkill; if I’m not listening to it in the studio day in day out, or talking about it, I’m in clubs playing it…when I was a raver around ’89, all I’d listen to was House, but how can you get any influences when you just surround yourself with the same thing? A bit of hip hop maybe. Andy’s the same, we used to go round someone’s house, have a mix, get stoned, have a few cups of coffee. Now you go round someone’s house and have a curry and watch telly!

DHN: You mentioned influences, where do you find your samples then…Radio 2?

Laurence: Not so much now, but we used to go into the studio with 15 or 20 records, old House ones from 94/95, and just sample everything that was on its own; hats, noises. We’d fill the sampler full of sounds, span them and just hit notes on the keyboard and see what happened. We used to go to a second hand record store and just buy a handful of random looking stuff for 50p a go, we don’t care where we get it from. We don’t really do that so much now though, I think we’ve gone through our record collections twice over. We try and be a little bit more organic, make our own sounds and rhythms.

DHN: Is Garage a big influence for you? A lot of the stuff on Drop seems to use a lot of those skippy beats, and its obviously quite bass heavy music as well.

Laurence: What, you mean the boom-chicky, boom-chicky, thing? Yeah, that’s cool, we used to play a lot of U.S Garage-y stuff. You used to go into record shops years ago and there’d be a U.S garage section and that’s where you’d find the best stuff. You go into a record shop now and you just get U.S imports. It went off into that paddy, quite gay thing, and U.K Garage came along, which is just trashy white pop. 93/94 U.S Garage - yeah, that’s definitely influenced us.

DHN: Finally, are there any new artists/labels that we should watch out for?

Laurence: I really like The Lawn Chair Generals, Swirl People from Belgium and Chris Duckenfield’s always doing some really good stuff as well. There’s also a lot of new people that have all of a sudden come through in the last two years like Lance DeSardi and Demarkus Lewis. East Coast Boogiemen are coming up with some nice bits now too. We met them a few years ago, when they were playing around in their bedroom. It’s good to see their name getting around on vinyl now, rather than just local guys playing around at home.

Interview by Benji de Castella & Truong Mellor. The interview was first aired on 1431 am URF (Brighton, UK). You can catch Benji & Truong on The Boombox, every Thursday 5-7 pm GMT on 1431 am URF (Brighton, UK) and online at www.urfonline.com
e-mail: stationmanager@urfonline.com