Interview: Elektrons

It’s a time of transition for Luke Cowdrey and Justin Crawford (aka Manchester’s very own Elektrons), as we meet them after a rapturously-received homecoming gig at The Mint Lounge. They’ve recently announced that the Mancunian clubland institution they built with their own bare hands (figuratively of course), The Electric Chair, where the two DJ under the moniker The Unabombers, will be coming to an end in January, but as one door closes, another opens and with Elektrons’ album, Red Light Don’t Stop garnering glowing notices left, right and centre, it seems like it would be a good time for Luke and Justin to spend more time on this venture.

To the naked eye at least it seems that way, but the decision to end The Chair and the emergence of Elektrons aren’t really as interlinked as they at first seem.

“Every year, for at least the last ten years, we’d sort of check ourselves”, Justin ponders. “Is it time? Are we still enjoying it? It would be wrong to say that we aren’t getting distracted by Elektrons. We are. We’re putting a lot of time and energy into it. It’s just that before we couldn’t imagine a future without The Electric Chair, but now we can.”

It appears that the need in Justin and Luke not to rest on their laurels and a mutual distaste for rose-tinted nostalgia helped their decision. As Luke elaborates, “We think change is a very fundamental thing in music. We’ve always said bomb the past, don’t be complacent, don’t rest on some kind of horrible reputation that ends up being just a Spinal Tap kind of thing anyway… We’re just gonna change guise and shape and format. We’re still gonna do parties and one-offs like Electric Souls (parties that Luke and Justin have put on in the past in various off-the-beaten-track locales)”.

“We’ll get a Saturday night off once a month now, too”, laughs Justin.

One point where the guys are happy to have the night and the band intersect is in the music. “We did sometimes think when we were in the studio”, says Justin, “Would this work (at The Chair)?” Luke interjects, “We think (the album) is – and this might sound like a pompous thing to say – an honest reflection of where we’ve come from and Me and Justin have always talked about the lineage… of our music. Going back to Northern Soul, through to the Wild Bunch and Massive Attack… Soul II Soul. Great British sound systems that started off as parties, then taken into bands and collectives. It’s not like we’ve copied that but we’ve taken inspiration from that British vibe.”

“As DJs, we try to bring the vibe and the atmosphere of the club into our music, just like people like Soul II Soul and Basement Jaxx do”, Justin is eager to clarify. A view that’s mirrored by Luke, “The idea at the heart of The Chair was that some of our favourite records might, potentially, be records that everyone else liked as well. For us, Elektrons is a very natural continuity of what we’ve been doing… for the last thirteen years.”

Again, Luke is adamant that their music not be a backward-looking venture; “We wanted it to be very bold and dynamic… We didn’t just want to be derivative. We love house music, gospel, disco, soul and we wanted to take that and rekindle it and make something new. Whether that works or not I’m sure we’ll find out”

Elektrons aren’t just a duo, with singers like Pete Simpson (“Britain’s own Marvin Gaye”, according to Luke) and Mpho Skeef adding some much-needed flavour and inspiration both live and in the studio. Whereas others may rely on musical stunt casting to catch the eye, Luke and Justin wanted “quintessentially British” vocalists on Red Light Don’t Stop. “All those artists are coming through and they’ve got a real individuality” notes Luke, “There’s a lot of attitude there and a lot of bollocks, really”.

“We wanted to work with them though because, essentially, they’re really talented” says Justin, pragmatically. “When you work with people as talented as they are, it makes it easy”.

Something else that has come easy to Elektrons at this early stage is getting number one singles in far-off places. “We were number one in South Africa!”, beams Justin, referring to ‘Dirty Basement’’s out-of-leftfield success there. “We knocked off Rihanna!” exclaims Luke, “It’s just one of those mad things that happens”. Justin continues, “Somebody in the right place ‘gets’ the track and it just goes from there”.

“We could probably do with a few more South Africas though”, Luke smirks. “Maybe Chile or Australia, somewhere nice and sunny”. Justin and Luke may be dreaming about Elektrons affording them some beach time, but it seems that a change is as good as a rest for these two, so expect them to go from strength to strength as soon as they bomb that past.

Printed in the October/November issue of High Voltage magazine.