Clubbing Magazine

Junkie XL - A Radio broadcast

Tom Holkenborg aka Junkie XL, the man behind the monster hit Elvis “A Little Less Conversation” talks about his new album "Radio JXL – a broadcast from the Computer Hell Cabin", his work with Sasha, his meeting with his heroes of the 80’ and what we can expect at the Roskilde Festival.

Musical influence

“Since I can remember, people played music, there was always music. It was pretty normal that everybody in my family played one or two instruments. So I was brought up with a very broad and different way of listening to music, it could be classical, could be The Beatles and Pink Floyd and all that stuff from the 70’, 80’ and 90’ – I still listen to so many styles of music”.

Some interesting ingredient

“People I feel really close to, like Fatboy Slim and Chemical Brothers, are also people of the same age as me, that also has a very colourful background like me, working in different bands, saw the development of hip hop and dance music. If you have that kind of development and you make an artist dance album, I think that you can come up with some more interesting ingredient than if you were making it purely computer based or one style of dance music, witch is fine as well, I love listening to pure techno, no bad things about that. When I make music myself I like to combine different things”.

Music for the clubs and for the home

“It’s very interesting to make tracks that works really well in the clubs and at the same time is really nice to listen to at home. The whole project took 2½ years, the idea was to release a double album with the “3 AM” disc that reflects my view of night time radio and a “3 PM“ disc that reflects what daylight radio could be. For the “3 PM” disc I would have short tracks on the edge of dance and pop music with strong vocals. So what I did, was I made 20 tracks with a specific vocalist in mind without knowing if that vocalist would be interested in working with me. I send it out hoping that one, two or three would comeback, but all came back. Form that point I started planning getting everybody to come to Amsterdam, planning recording sessions, mixing sessions and getting all the contracts signed”.

Meeting the heroes….

All the vocalist have a strong personality in common that was something I really was focusing on. There is no way that you will mistake Robert Schmidt (from The Cure) from anybody else. I wrote the song and they came back with the lyrics and the vocal melody. They where so easy to work with so professional; I love to work with people that know what they want. I have to say that the first time Gary Numan came to my studio, it was like; oh my god it’s Gary, he is here and he had to sign mine “Are Friends Electric” single. You have to create a relationship, where I have to step down from being a fan to being a producer and for them being in a safe environment for them to perform”.

The balance between dance music and pop music

“The common factor for my albums is that I’m trying to find this balance between dance music and pop music. The different factor is that on the two previous releases there were less emotions and less musical flavours and just one big energy flow from beginning to end. On this album I wanted to show some emotions and some more musical flavours. It really took a long time making the songs, and the productions of the vocal; to make a vibe where you can play Robert Schmidt, Dave Gahan, Gary Numan, etc. in one row – that makes sense”.

Beauty Never Fades

“Saffron (known from Republica) was the first vocalist I recorded in Amsterdam 1½-2 years ago. “Beauty Never Fades” was a track in two versions, which both appeared on the 12”. I though it would be great to have her sing in a different environment, almost chanting, still the track has a dark groove to it. But with her vocals on top it gets really scary sometimes. It was a DJ favourite and did very well”.

Working with Sasha

“When we did his “Airdrawndagger” album, he came to Amsterdam for 8 months, it was a good time. We clicked on so many different levels at the same time, not only musically; he is a fantastic guy to hang out with. He is very intelligent and it’s great to have talks with him of some many different things in life. The “Brezzer” track is actually the oldest track that we made together, it’s 3 years old and he will comeback every second month - hey Tom maybe we should change the break a little bit, and I made a new version, and he loved that, and later he will come back - Tom I have a new idea, if we move intro to the outro and the outro to the intro, and we have been working like this for 3 years on the same track. Sasha and I influence each other a lot I learnt from Sasha to make certain transitions that I used on the build up of the “3 AM” disc. On his album you can really hear how he was influenced by my production skills and how to get certain arrangement going”.

Junkie vs. Elvis

“The “A little less conversation” remix is a track that shows what I’m all about, trying to find the mix between dance and pop music. If you take the vocals out you are listening to an underground track. That track is larger than life, there is no point in thinking about that track longer than a week, I got really drunk with my best friends when it went number 1 in England, but after that it’s time to move on and that’s why it’s not on the album.

Radio broadcast on the internet

“From the beginning I wanted to start a radio station, which we are going to do online now with live broadcast. There is a third 125 minute album on the website called “7 AM” and a lot of interactive stuff for fans, they can do their own remixes, they can put DJ sets online, it’s going to be pretty big site”.

The Roskilde gig

“I have two different ways of playing live, and the one I’m going do at the Roskilde Festival is the one that is related to the “3 AM” disc because I’m playing at a dance scene. The other setup is a full on band, with most of the vocalist there, but that is so difficult to plan. The Roskilde gig is going to have a lot of the vocal tracks in different versions. I’m going to play tracks form the album but also tracks from the online album and tracks that is not out yet, like the 12” I did for the Matrix soundtrack which is coming out in two months time”.

Interview: Christian Almind

The interview was done in the spring 2003.

Audio part
Listen to an extra interview here done at Roskilde Festival 2003, where Tom talkes more about his album, live, the Internet and other stuff.
Length: 17.23 min, mono 32kbps
Size: 4077Kb
Format: MP3