Submitted By: alex

Genre: House

Date of Set: Jun 26th, 2004

Filesize: 43.58 MB

Total Downloads: 17

BORN
Mikey Stirton: Edinburgh, 1976
Orin Walters: Wimbledon, 1970
Seiji: London, 1976
Kaidi Tatham: Bromsgrove, 1974
Daz-I-Kue: London, 1965
Cliff Scott: London, 1971
Alex Phountzi: London, 1977
Mark Force: London, 1974
Thy Lord: Oxford, 1974

FAMILY
Mikey: “Paul and Kaidi are both serious musicians. They went to school and had scholarships, that sort of path. The rest of us come mostly from DJing backgrounds.”
Daz: “In an indirect way I was encouraged with my music. Mum used to take me to parties when I was young and she’d sit me with the DJ, that’s really when my love of music started.”
Mikey: “Every single one of us has a love of soulful dance music from over the last three decades. Really, it’s a dance music thing. We’re all from different scenes in terms of what we were involved with before Bugz in the Attic.”
Mikey: “Mark and Seiji both come from drum n bass, Orin was in US garage and house, as were Cliff and I. Daz was into everything, all sorts of black music. Daz has been involved in R n B, hip hop, street soul and all these things.”

FIRST PROJECTS
Orin: “I used to do house stuff with Phil Asher on Slip N Slide, Mousetrap and Manifesto UK. Paul was doing stuff as G Force and Seiji on Reinforced. Kaidi was working with The Herbaliser on Ninja Tune and touring with them. Daz had done various stuff engineering for Fabio, Grooverider, Soul ll Soul and things like that. Cliff was working with CJ Mackintosh making house. We were all relatively well established on a small level. Mark was making drum n bass, as Invaders, something he still does now.”

LABELS AND PRODUCTION
Orin: “We met in ’96. I used to run a label called Mousetrap and Seiji was recording for it. He introduced me to Alex and the three of us started working together. We met Kaidi at Herbaliser’s studio in Richmond and the four of us began recording together at my house in Richmond – that’s the attic referred to in ‘Bugz in the Attic’. Along came Cliff, Daz and Mikey later on with the final two Bugz.”
Daz: “‘We all came together through the studio in Orin’s attic. That was the focus.”
Orin: “We started Bitasweet Records in ’99. We’ve got twenty-something releases and two compilations. Orin’s got a compilation series called ‘Futuristic Dancing’ and the other compilation we’ve released is the Seiji remixes album.’
Mikey: ‘On a production side, there’s a Bugz in the Attic sound now. It could be that Orin and Mark produce a Bugz track and the next day Daz and Seiji do one. Usually what happens is that there will be many more people involved in Bugz tracks. One of us will make the beat, then Kaidi will do some music, Daz might do some extra work and Seiji will add some other pieces - everyone gets their tuppence worth. Everyone’s involved at some level, even if it’s just an opinion.”

Orin: “'As with any music people try to label the bugz sound but it's really more of a mixture of all sorts of different music that we were into. Someone said our sound was like a cross between Acid Jazz and techno the other day.”
Mikey: “Jazz is a bit of a swear word really because most of us don’t know very much about it. I think it’s really bad because people call it that all the time and I think it’s an insult to genuine jazz heads and musicians. Except for Daz and Kaidi, we know very little about jazz. It also raises visions of extremely noodly music and I think the thing with Bugz is that it’s much more of a soul and a vibe thing.’
Mikey: “We’ve done a lot of remixes. The Victor Duplaix remix has gone on our FABRICLIVE compilation and it’s probably one of our favourite remixes. The Macy Gray one is quite different to other one’s that we’ve done with a slightly slower tempo, slightly broken, like a P-funk release. ‘Zombie’ is our current release on Bitasweet. That was for the ‘Fela’ [Kuti] tribute album but they edited it down to two minutes on the release without asking us so we managed to get it back off them for a full release.”

DJING
Mikey: “We guest regularly throughout the UK and Europe and there's been tours of the States, Japan and so on. In London we do a small midweek thing once a month at Cherry Jam called ‘Got The Bug’ but the main clubnight of our whole scene is Co-Op really. Orin’s a resident there and everyone else plays at it. We’ve played on Saturday’s at fabric too through Co-Op and Goya who have a regular night there. We’re doing loads of festivals this year: The Big Chill, Festimad in Spain, Zoukout in Singapore…From the Autumn we’ll be playing at FABRICLIVE.”

THE FUTURE
Mikey: “We want to get the Bugz in the Attic album done. There’s a few things that have been put aside for a Bugz in the Attic album though nothing’s finished yet. The plan’s to get it finished by early next year and we’ll probably do a Bugz in the Attic remixes album. We’re trying to build the catalogue on the label. There’s loads of things that people weren’t able to get on vinyl. The Victor Duplaix a lot of people weren’t able to get and the Macy Gray only came out on promo in the UK.”

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