Page 29 - Zone Magazine - Issue 033 - Jan Johnston

What was the
first equipment you bought back
then?
Turntables, Emu Emax sampler with 30 seconds of sample time and a midi sequencer. It grew from there but we made the first few Hardkiss releases with that. We did a deal with Columbia Records in the late '90s and spent a heap on multiple studios and analog 2" tape and a Ohram analog mixing board. Now I do everything on this laptop that I'm typing on. I love how I've benefited from the march of technology with a studio at my fingertips at all times.
How did things grow and
develop back in the 90's for you
guys?
In the early/mid '90s we were making tracks and releasing on Hardkiss Music and travelling around DJ'ing. Playing in different countries, cities, states every weekend. We didn't release too often but we'd service all the DJs with white labels and then there would be pent of demand when the record eventually hit the streets. We were good at scarcity. And unpredictability. And emotion and funk. Scott, Robbie and I had different styles. We'd hit multiple cities every weekend and kids didn't know what they were gonna get hit with. At that time, my style leaned more on organic breaks, bass driven grooves, a mash of different styles with global, funk and percussion elements. But I never stayed in the same sound for too long. I like to keep evolving.
San Francisco was on another level back then pre-Internet. We lit the fire for the tech revolution. The culture and music was diverse and futuristic and the techies fed into that. There was an amalgam of people from all over the planet congregating and creating in San Francisco. It was quite unique and inspiring and i'm fond of those times when high tech was a turntable. No one had a camera let alone a phone. It's like a lost civilization, the remnants of which are only records and DJ mixes that were made at the time.
Tell us about the releases during that tme ?
Hardkiss Music was releasing stuff that Robbie, Scott and I were making. Plus tracks from a few other artists like Rabbit In The Moon, T Tauri and Symbiosis. Then we started an imprint called Sunburn Recordings where we released a crazy wide net of different sounds from dub to texmex to drum 'n bass and house. We had a wide range of musical interests and didn't want to be pigeonholed. Quite the opposite of these days where everything must fit in a box.
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