Nerd Network is bringing over another legend to Nolla this Saturday. Bill Brewster has been DJing for three decades and is known for his eclectic sets and incredible knowledge about music. He is also one of the founders of DJ History and has written and compiled several acclaimed books about dance music history. With his background it’s tempting to ask Bill teach you another history lesson when you get the chance to speak to him. In this interview, however, the focus was more on current projects and the state of dance music today.

Have you been to Finland before?

I’ve been there a few times but not for a while. This would be the fourth or fifth time I’m over. The first time was 1997 I think. I went over with Scott Bradford from Shindig and we played at a club called Nylon in Helsinki. I’ve also played in Tampere a couple of times. I really like Finland. It's a beautiful country.

What did you think of Helsinki?

It’s very nice. It actually reminds me more of Russia than the rest of Scandinavia. There is something about the slight grey of the buildings. The architecture seems a bit more austere.

You have been running the club Low Life for 15 years. How has it developed during the years?

It’s 16 actually. We are organising our 16th birthay party right now. We started it as a intermittent free party in New York originally. Frank (Broughton) and I were regulars at Sound Factory and when that closed we didn’t have anywhere to go so we started Low Life, which didn’t have a name then. It was just as an irregular thing for all of our friends to go to. And then when we moved back to the UK a couple of years later, we started doing it again. It was kind of developed over the years from being something we did irregularly to something we did a little more regularly, five times a year maybe.

Are people from the original crowd still coming?

There aren’t many people coming now who where coming in 1997 for example, but there are a few. Some of our friends are still around. A lot of our friends have kind of fallen by the wayside or started families, or don’t go out clubbing anymore. So we have kind of got a new crowd now from what we had ten years ago that’s younger. When you’re running your club constantly over a period you have to find ways to renew the crowd and get young people coming in. Ultimately they’re the lifeblood of any good club I think.

You obviously have a long time experience of the dance music scene in London. What do you think about its state now?

There’s a lot going on but often when I go out the nights are not quite as good as I think they’re going to be. I think that the recession really affected things quite adversely. People just don’t have the money that they did have five years ago and it has affected things. It’s strange because before when a recession happened it almost energised the club scene, but this time it doesn’t seem to have done that.

Such as the one in the late ‘80s?

Yeah, the recession in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. I don’t know if it was a coincidence but around the time that was happening was around the time when acid house was exploding. You could argue that it’s just a coincidence but equally in the ‘70s when there was a recession, there was a explosion in clubbing as well. So I think there is a pattern but this time there’s not really much sign of it. I think people has been beaten down by poverty.

As a DJ who plays a lot abroad, do you have any favourite cities when it comes to club culture?

I think it has to do with individual clubs rather than cities. It’s not that one city necessarily is better than another. I think the thing that makes the big difference is the DJs that live in that city. A guest DJ who you fly in from London can't really change the culture of a city. 

In the UK, the best places to play are the cities that have got a really strong culture with DJs. The obvious ones are London which is kind of my home city, even though I'm not from there originally, Manchester, Glasgow and Bristol as well. Then there's a place that I've played in in Portsmouth which is not well known for having good club nights but they've built up a really great little community there. You sometimes turn up at a place not expecting it to be very good and then it’s actually brilliant. Then you go to a big city the following week and it's actually terrible. Another obvious one that is really good is Berlin. I've only played there once but it was great. I hope to go back in a not too distant future.

In terms of individual clubs there's Melting Point in Glasgow and a place in Madrid called The Room which is always really good. So there are various places dotted around in Europe that are really good to play in.

I read that Danny Tenaglia inspired you a lot when you were living in New York in the early '90s. Are there any DJs that inspire you today?

Yeah, he did inspire me. Not just because he was a really good DJ, which he obviously is, but also the amount of effort he put into his sets and the searching that he would do through record boxes looking for interesting music and stuff that no one else had. That definitely had an effect on my me. Nowadays I wouldn't say that a lot of DJs inspire me but I certainly love listening to other DJs, picking up ideas, trends, or even just nicking tunes of them basically. It depends who it is. Weatherall is one I've admired greatly consistently over the years.

Anyone else that comes to mind?

Leo Elstob who works under the name Leo Zero now. I've known Leo and played with him for the last 14 years and he has always been really good. Mark Seven, he has always been real good when I've seen him and then the guys that I play with at Low Life, Michael Cook and Matthew Burgess. We are really lucky to have such good resident DJs.

What new sounds interest you? Can you mention any labels and artists?

I'm not as interested now in labels as I was. You do notice if a label releases two or three records in a row that are really good but I just tend to look for stuff that I like really. I have two styles of music that I look for; one that I use to play on my podcast, which is not necessarily dance music and can be more down tempo, and then there are other things that I look for that I play out. This morning I was listening to the Audiofly album on Get Physical which is really nice and the new album by Wildcookie on Tru Thoughts, that's really good new soul. I'm looking for varied things really. I've been listening to the Nicolas Jaar album a lot over the last couple of weeks. I thought it was boring when I first heard it but it has grown on me.

Are you producing any original material now?

Yes, I've been working in the studio with a guy called Alex Tepper who was originally in the group Futureshock. The name we use is Hotel Motel. Alex is someone I've known for a long time, since he was a teenager. When I lived in New York I signed one of his first productions to a label that I was running. We bumped into each other again a couple of years ago and he invited me to come over and do some stuff with him. Since then I've been working semi regularly in the studio. We're in the middle of writing some songs together at the moment. We did two releases in November, one on Hometaping Is Killing Music and a song with Kathy Diamond that came out on Under The Shade. We've got a follow up to that which is coming out in a not too distant future, with a remix by Name In Lights.

You and Frank Borought recently released a compilation with edits of old Trax tracks. Can you tell me about the idea behind it?

The idea was to just refresh the tracks a little bit, bring them up to date and hopefully reintroduce the label to a younger audience. Trax is obviously legendary in terms of the impact it had on world wide dance music but it hasn't existed as a functioning label since the early '90s. I know Ian Dewhirst who works at Demon Music. He approached me and said that they had acquired the rights for the UK so we worked together on the compilation quite closely.

Some of the edits are made by users from the DJ History message board. How did you pick them?

We ran a competition on DJ History. Originally what we were going to do was to choose the best edit from the competition but we had so many good entrances that a lot of stuff ended up on the compilation, probably at least half. There were also established producers that got in touch when they heard about the competition and submitted edits, like Mark Broom, John Daly and Justin Harris, so the response was incredible.

Do you plan to release more music with members from DJ History involved?

Yeah, we do. We're actually just about to do a competition for Inside Out by Odyssey. I'm going to upload the parts this afternoon. I really like doing it. We've got a big community and a lot of the members are very talented. It's a chance for them to have a crack. Some of them produce better results than others but it's great being able to open stuff out to people and let them have a go with it, even if we don't end up using it.

It seems that many DJs from the disco and eclectic scene are moving towards more classic sounding house. What is your relation to house music today?

Well, I have to say I feel a little bit more enthusiastic about house music now than I did two years ago. There's a lot of old school Chicago sounding records that I really like that have been coming out recently, like It's The Music for example. I also like the stuff by Audiofly which is less raw and more well produced. It reminds me actually of what Danny Tenaglia played 16 years ago, very deep but with nice textures and things going on. What I didn't like about a lot of minimal house was that it didn't seem to be any drama in the productions.

The music that I like playing has to have a certain amount of drama in it, something that captures your attention. What I found with the minimal stuff was that it didn't do anything that held my attention, so yeah, I feel a lot more enthused about house music at the moment than I've had for a while.

What do you plan to play at Nolla on Saturday?

That's a good question. I never really know until I turn up to be honest,. There's a few things that people have promised me that I'll hopefully get in time, unreleased stuff. It all depends on what goes down well really. I play mainly CDs now and the good thing about being able to bring a wallet of CDs with you is that if something is not working, you've always got lots of options to try something else. So I'm just going to play it by ear really, listen to what the warm up DJs are playing and take it from there.

Words by Mattias Lodding