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WINDIMOTO: DEEPER THAN DEEP…
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What’s the proper of a reputed medium if not to spread the word??? Alright, chances are quite little that a majority of you may have ever heard of Windimoto – such as ourselves here at IDMW.Com HQ before being sent this contribution from our Australian correspondant, Vahé K, but who cares at the end of the day as long as the said word is right, as brilliantly demonstrated by the album sampler of this Chicago based pair available on their myspace page!!! More explanations thereafter…
A brand new group is on the rise. Windimoto (comprised of Sean Haley and Scorpeze) has been unleashed onto the world, and there is no denying the luscious grooves and overall depth of the music. I have been privy to the group’s album-sampler, and…well, I’ll tell you later what I think. I interviewed the two because a) I’ve known them online for years and I knew they would say yes, & b) the music is good enough to warrant some sort of promotion. Because if I thought the music sucked, I wouldn’t even bother!!!
(note: this is actually my first real interview, so apologies if the questions seem a little mundane or amateurish)
Words: Vahé K
Please introduce yourselves to the folks at home.
Sean: Sean Haley. I’m a DJ from Chicago, USA.
Scorpeze: Scorpeze (pronounced Score Pee Zee).... from Detroit, MI, currently residing in Chicago, IL.
And please explain the group name, just in case dumbasses like me can’t figure out.
Sean: I'm from Chicago, known as The Windy City. Scorpeze is From Detroit, which is known as The Motor City. Do the math: Windy + Motor = Windimoto.
Scorp: The cities are very close to each other and both share an extreme wealth of musical innovation across the genres of music...and as far as Dance Music is concerned, both cities constantly feed off of each other...its only natural and about time that we represent these scenes coming together....more cats from Chicago and Detroit should connect.
How long have you guys been involved with music in some form or fashion?
Sean: Me personally, I've been a fan of recorded music since the day I was born, pretty much. But I've been buying records since I was about 9 years old, and I've been a professional DJ since 1988.
Scorp: Pretty much my whole life....staring at labels and reading liner notes at 4yrs old...playing records all day....forming bands and groups....learning to play...learning to produce. It sounds corny and cliché, but its true. Music was my first love.
How this partnership came to be? The inspiration behind forming Windimoto in the first place…
Sean: A mutual love for music, and way too many long conversations about music. Ultimately, we somehow got on the topic of us both being producers in various genres, and we decided to work together just to see what we could come up with. The results have been fantastic. Prior to Windimoto, I'd been a solo artist. I never worked with anybody before: singers, musicians, or anybody. But I can honestly say that working with Scorpeze has been a great experience. I think we've both learned a lot. We seem to get pretty creative when it's time to work. It's not a chore at all.
Scorp: I was a frequent visitor to Chicago. We met through a mutual friend during one of my visits. When I finally decided to make the move to Chicago, disco put me up on all the happenings. With him being a DJ and me being a musician, we naturally started talking about music. We’d go record digging, swapping CD's back and forth. I'd always wanted a collaborator, so I posed the suggestion and it has paid off big time.
Why dance/house music?
Sean: Why not? Seriously, as a DJ, I've cut my teeth in the dance arena. I've been a fan of dance music dating all the way back to disco. Growing up in Chicago, the most popular style of local music was house, so there's no escaping it musically. I'm a fan of just about all kinds of music, but nothing "hits" me like house music. It's simple, yet complex and that always attracted me as a fan and as a producer.
Scorp: Well, I'm kind of a musical nomad. I'm willing to try my hand at anything that strikes my ear. I feel like the dance music audience is a little more open minded than the average music listener, and I can get away with more musical tomfoolery... *laughs*
Do you consider yourselves “deep-house”? How would you classify the Windimoto sound? And will most future releases follow along the same path?
Sean: Oddly enough, no. We both bring so many influences to the table that we wouldn't dare pigeonhole ourselves into saying, "We gotta make a house track". We just get in the studio, and experiment with sounds until we come up with something we like. Granted, a lot of it comes out in the house category, but we don't approach it that way. We've also experimented with broken beat and a little drum & bass, too. I guess the only element that all of our output shares is that it's all dance music. But we don't try to nail down any one particular style. As a DJ, I've been getting into a lot of broken beat and International music in the last few years, so some of that stuff is seeping into my subconscious, too.
Scorp: You could say that if you want. You could say we're Electronica or whatever. You can categorize us anyway you like. What matters to me is that people dig the music. This group is definitely based in dance music. We just do whatever sounds good and feels good musically. As far as the future, I'm about pushing boundaries. I want to see what we can get away with before people revolt and get mad at us. I get frustrated dealing with people in this business because even the artists who say they want to be free are scared to think outside the box. The first records we did were kind of safe because we were testing the waters of our partnership, but now we're looking beyond the comfort zone.
Who does what? How does the production process work?
Scorp: It depends. Sometimes, we'll just get in the studio and tag team. Disco will lay a beat; I'll come in and lay a bassline. He'll come back and add a breakdown. I'll come back and put chords on it. We just keep doing that until we feel like we got something we can arrange into song form.
Alternately, if one of us comes in with idea for a song, we'll coach the other to realize the vision. If it's Disco's idea, he'll tell me "Gimme some eighth notes after the chorus...." or if it’s my idea I'll say, "Gimme some heavy snares...." After it's all laid, we sit down and plot out the arrangement. We do a final mix and we're done.
Disco is the guy that's deep in the Dance scene so he knows what sounds to use, what kind of beats get people active. Things like that...
Me, I'm thinking about chords and changes-things that make it musically interesting. He handles the lion's share of the programming, rhythmic, and percussion stuff. I handle most of the instrumentation. We do production, arrangement, and mixing together.
Sean: People wouldn't believe how easy we bounce ideas off each other. We'll scrap something if it isn't working. I guess it's because we're not afraid to be honest with each other. We'll say "I don't like that...let’s not use that part" to each other in a heartbeat. Ultimately, our music is more important than our egos.
Your thoughts on dance/house music today?
Sean: Musically, I think it's better than it's ever been. As a listener and a fan, I can't get enough of it. People are incorporating more elements of live musicianship and real songwriting into dance music. Unfortunately, it's a shame that dance music doesn't get the respect it deserves here in America. Commercial music is so stale, and I think that if more mainstream audiences heard some of the dance releases it might attract more fans and demand a bigger share of the airwaves. I think the next 3 to 5 years are important for the development of dance music. If dance music gets one big hit to break through, it might change everything.
Scorp: Dance music keeps it movin'. It's always growing and progressing musically. But the flip side is that dance music isolates itself. There was a small taste of the mainstream some years ago and cats got burned, so they choose to be comfortable with their residencies and DJ tours and remix money and have stopped trying to expose the music to more listeners. Dance music needs to step up and take its rightful place as legitimate soul music.
At the moment it seems it’s easier to get your work out there, but harder to independently sell enough of one’s music to make a substantial profit. Do you guys balk at the idea of file-sharing? Would you have a problem if your music started popping up on all the file-sharing p2p programs and torrent websites?
Sean: As a DJ, I'd definitely have a problem with that. I still like the feel of 'playing' a record, so I'm not even sold on the idea of music going completely digital myself. I think consumers would still buy records and CD's if they were actually given a chance to choose, not be bombarded with "CD's/Vinyl is Dead" every thirty seconds. As an artist, I suppose file sharing would be another way to get exposure, but from a financial standpoint, I could see how it would cause problems. I'm on the fence.
Scorp: I embrace it. Trying to stop file sharing is like trying to stop teenagers from bonin'--its not gonna happen. So we as artists need to get comfortable with it and use it to our advantage. No one wants to lose money, but you can't cry over spilled milk. If anything, look at it as promotion--a chance to make a new fan. Someone might not want to or cant afford to risk the money to check out all the new stuff, so file sharing helps expose people to stuff they wouldn't encounter otherwise. They might play it in their car and someone might hear it and like it. They might tell a friend. It can happen. The last thing an artist should do is bully or harass music lovers. Ask Metallica about how well that worked out for them.
I had a listen to the Windimoto sampler (featuring the single “Don’t Let Me Leave Alone” with Victor St. Claire on vocals), and the material is incredibly lush. My brother was just saying to me the other day, while I was randomly playing some old Naked Music material, how he’s disappointed there’s no one repping deep house anymore. Do you feel the deeper forms of house music have been dwindling over the years? I ask this because of the ever-increasing popularity of tech/house, which even Naked Music has been pumping out more of instead of its usual signature sound.
Sean: Well, I'm a big fan of classic Naked Music releases. But as dance labels catered to trends like electroclash, electro, and trance, it got tougher for NM to keep up in the marketplace. Lush, smooth, jazzy deep house isn't even on the radar at most big clubs. Also, when they switched to the big distributors to get the Naked Music stuff out there, they stopped pressing vinyl, and they
had to get something to compete with the trendy stuff. So they had to switch up their sound. By doing that, all the momentum they built in the 90's went to waste. All the DJ's who had been championing NM had nothing to play to prove that deep house was still around. The only thing NM was putting out was compilations aimed at consumers, and not jocks.
House music in particular is extremely singles-driven, even though we’re seeing more and more artist and DJ full-length albums coming out. Why is there a large reliance on singles in the genre?Sean: Well, dance music can seem pretty disposable by nature, but this isn't a bad thing. Artists have to constantly create new material, as opposed to putting out an album and then waiting 6 months to get back to work. Scorpeze and I work on new stuff at least twice a week, because we know the dance music world doesn't stop, and we need to stay fresh. And to answer your question: I think singles are what gets an artist known. And let's face it: it's easier to make a single than an album.
Scorp: If you look back, you'll see that all popular music was singles driven. Rock and roll, soul, hip-hop… All of them until a certain point... And that point was when the artists demanded to be taken seriously and they got the proper support from the industry. Dance music hasn’t taken that step yet, even after all this time. It seems like no one wants to challenge the majors and put in the work it takes to have breakthrough success.
Do full-length albums have any place in the realm of "dance/house" music?
Sean: Definitely. It gives a producer a chance to tell his/her story uninterrupted
without having to just crank out dance floor hits. Some house producers make some great non-house material.
Scorp: Of course. I have heard a number of great, cohesive dance albums.....The fans need to demand and support the album format in dance music. It helps the genre evolve on all fronts.
Sean, I know you DJ regularly. Any spots or nights you want to inform us of?
Sean: I’m involved with Inner Sound System. It’s held once a month at Sonotheque in Chicago. The sound system is one of the best in Chicago, and all the DJ's always play groundbreaking music.
Is any of the music out for purchase or listening? If so, where can we cop it?
Sean: For those outside of the US, you can get the hard copy from online mail order retailers such as Sandbox Automatic, The Giant Peach, Dusty Groove and others. The digital release will be available from all the major online merchants like iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster and Urge and a great deal of the smaller, specialized online merchants like Traxsource. For those who choose to cop digitally, we've included bonus remixes of both songs from the single on the digital release. We're doing our best to make sure anyone who wants it, can get it.
I know it’s rather clichéd, but could both of you list a few of your all-time favourite albums or artists? (from any genre)
Sean: John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Trevor Horn, Larry Heard, Fela, James Brown, and all the DJ's in Chicago who helped make house music an international phenomenon.
Scorp: Wow. I'm so all over the place, I'll try to make it short. Stevie Wonder is the God of music... James Brown... Public Enemy changed my life... Led Zeppelin... The Jacksons.... Prince... George Duke... Hall and Oates... Return To Forever... Mahavishnu Orchestra... The Police... Coltrane... Fishbone... P-Funk... Earth, Wind And Fire... Marvin Gaye... Minnie Riperton...
Innervisions is the greatest record ever recorded in my opinion… What's Going On… Off The Wall... Parade... A Love Supreme... George Duke's A Brazilian Love Affair... Public Enemy's Nation Of Millions. I loved Inner City's album. The Nuyorican Soul album by Masters At Work is extraordinary...and Lil' Louis' Journey With The Lonely was also a great dance album.
On the current dance tip, I can’t get enough of 4Hero and Kyoto Jazz Massive. Towa Tei is a beast... and Owusu and Hannibal's album is incredible.
As far as newcomers, people should check out J* Davey and Heavy. Both make great music; they deserve a shot at the big time.
Any shout-outs or thank-yous you wanna throw out there?
Sean: Thanks to you for the interview, and thanks to the extended Windimoto Family: Carlitta Durand, Nicolay, Victor St. Clair, Sevany2, DJ Tony Tone, and all the heads who've been checking for us since Day 1. We appreciate it.
Scorp: I just wanna say peace to all the folks who've been supportive of this project...and a shout to Dominic and iD at the label for putting in mad work for us....and of course, The Creator for all the blessings.
I think it’s quite safe to say that as an aspiring musician myself, listening to Windimoto’s sampler CD made me feel…well, insanely jealous. Lol. I’ve known both of these guys as their online personas for years (we all frequently haunt Okayplayer’s notorious message boards), and it’s heart-warming and inspiring to see people rising up from the relative obscurity of an online forum, to bigger and better things. At the same time, when the material is good (and it’s really good), it provides you with a kick in the ass and makes the voice inside your head scream, “now focus on your own shit and get on with it!”. The voices also tell me to set fire to things sometimes, but I tend to ignore that…mostly.
I guess it’s a completely different feeling experiencing the moving and shaking of groups or individuals who you’ve been musically communing with for years, then it is if you’re just reading this and discovering Windimoto for the first time. But either way, the creation of Windimoto, (an arguably deep- house outfit…for the moment anyway), within a time when there is barely any deep house to speak of, is to be admired. Most of all, don’t be afraid to listen and let the music do the talking. You won’t be disappointed.
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