Be Yourself, Be Positive: DJ Fresh On Believer, Club Culture And Remixes

DJ Fresh is a commercial dance institution and entirely owns his distinctive spot in electronic music. He intuitively crafts fast-moving breakbeats to spark outrageous reactions en masse, from optimistic good vibe chasers to cocktails of courage, defiance and determination.

Often collaborating with the best in new vocal talent, Daniel Stein focuses on deep feeling as opposed to reputation or social networking stats. Fresh entrusted the soul talent Yolanda with alliterating his and Adam F's groundbreaking garage track, Believer, with her life-affirming lyrics earlier this year. The key-led anthem that has ignited dancefloors the world over.

Referencing the music Fresh produced when he was part of drum and bass quartet Bad Company, the the ‘90s jungle-licked offering pays homage to a staple sound in British dance, relating that music to crowds who will now be part of the next generation. Stereoboard caught up with the man responsible for so many dance hits to find out what boxes he has left to tick.

Adam and yourself have been friends for a long time. When did the relationship become more professional and how did you both marry your individual production styles in the studio when you are collaborating?

We met professionally. I hadn't been around him before I was releasing music myself, but it was still a dream to be able to release a record. I had a lot of respect for Adam, I think we met when I was working at Bad Company. We were doing a live show for Radio 1, the first show for a band that we had put together. We all split up after that show. I met Adam after that and we got on like a house on fire. We had a lot of love for each other’s music and we decided to set up a record label together.

How do you both vibe together in the studio?

At the beginning I was more technical than Adam, but then I learnt a lot from him in terms of working with other artists and other stars in music. Before that I had just been purely making drum and bass. Gradually, I branched out. Adam had a lot of influence on me.

How did the vocals come to fruition on Believer? Did you write them and then trial different vocalists or was Yolanda involved in writing the lyrics?

On this song she wrote pretty much wrote all of the lyrics. I usually have a really big input into the writing of the songs but Yolanda’s one of the very few singer-songwriters that I've worked with who I haven't taken that responsibility for and that’s mainly because she's a really talented singer-songwriter. We have a mutual respect, we've worked together on a bunch of stuff over the years and she is one of the few people who I can trust to write a song without me. With Believer I didn't brief her, I just laid this track and sent it to her. She came up with this idea for it and we just started working together on it from then.

There are elements of survival and defiance on the track and I was wondering if that was reflective of any moments in your own careers?

Loads, it’s been a really crazy road. My career has just been completely insane, the story around it definitely is reflected on Believer. The qualities I like to portray are inner strength and positivity and that’s a current that runs through all of my songs. Yolanada knows that, she knows that’s part of the whole DJ Fresh thing, to encourage people to be themselves and be positive and I think Believer has that. That is something that we tried to emphasise with the video, that it should be uplifting and have that positive reinforcement message.

Are video treatments something that you are usually quite hands on with?

They didn't used to be but I have gotten a lot more hands on with them. I wrote most of the treatment for this and the Gravity video was similar. In the past I used to let directors get on with that side of things but we had a couple of videos that I wasn't totally happy with so I decided to get more involved going forwards and I think it’s quite cool having that opportunity to brand and create an identity for your work.

Adam F has been involved in soundtracks. Have you made any moves towards getting involved? Are soundtracks something that you would feel creatively drawn towards?

Yes, that’s very much what I would like to do more of. I’ve done some work with Matthew Vaughn on one of the tracks on Kick Ass 2, and we've started working together on some other stuff, so we are collaborating. When I grow up and stop making rave music, that will be something that I want to focus on more.

Is there anything that you are working on outside of the stuff you’re releasing that is different to the typical DJ Fresh sound?

When I produce for people, people identify with what I’m doing, the success of it. So people want to jump on that and if they are into my stuff they expect me to make something that is like what they already know, which is tricky for me because I’m so about trying to do something different. That is why I haven't done so much production for other people. So far that’s been the main thing that people have wanted from me, right in the realm of the music I am making.

For example, Throw it Down, the track I made for Dominique Young Unique, is in the vein more of Earthquake which I did with Diplo. Then MIA called us up and she wanted us to do a track for her because she liked that track. Gradually things are branching out to production stuff that I’m doing, but generally people hear tracks I did on the radio and say: ‘I want a track like that’. It doesn't really push me in a direction from what I’m doing, but when I get a bit older and start making plans to do different things, that will probably happen.

You’re quite closely associated with Ministry of Sound. Do you think the environment of clubs is as important as it ever was since the emergence of online streaming platforms?

Yeah, definitely. In a way it’s probably more important, but the club industry has been having a bit of a hard time over the past few years. I don't know if that has anything to do with the internet, but now I think it’s more important than ever that people get together face to face and spend time together, being human beings rather than being glued to science. I don't get that much time to attend shows, but I will usually hang around gigs that I’m at. If there are people I want to check out I will get there a bit early and make the time to see them.

Why did you decide to go with Zowie for the Believer remix?

I think his stuff’s really exciting, it’s good to give people the spotlight. A lot of people watch out for the artist that jumps on a big remix. It’s become quite a big thing. We've had some really cool new people get noticed through the remixes of my track, like Flux Pavilion, so it’s become one of those things that people want to do remixes of a track. Zowie is a really exciting new producer.

DJ Fresh will hit Reading and Leeds, Fusion Festival, Brownstock and more this summer. 

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