Clubbing Magazine

Starecase - the way is up!

Ground Floor

Paul Crossman and Al Watson aka Starecase met each other at the Bristol’s infamous Lakota club in the summer of 1996 and quickly they moved into Paul’s bedroom to make music. “First Floor Deadlock” was the duos first release and it‘s now a classic. They have also released the massive club tracks “Not So Blue”, ”Lost 22”and “Hopeless” over the years. They have remixed the likes of Timo Maas, The Orb, Paul Van Dyk and BT, and have released their fantastic debut album ”First Floor”.

First Floor

We tried to do something different with the album; it’s always a risk of doing tracks that aren’t necessarily club tracks. We are trying to take it to a wider audience, but we were in danger of alienating everybody who had been into Starecase beforehand. It was something that we were conscious about, we know what we wanted to do, and it was more a question of how many people will get it. That was the danger, but we just do what we do and don’t worry about that. The key process is now to write what we want and then remix it for the club environment, if it’s a club track then its fine. We have the clubbing experience now of how a club track works on the dance floor, and the inspiration for us now is to take a sound that is designed for very large places and make it into something that people can listen to in their living rooms. We didn’t want to write an album of club tracks.

Second Floor

We got an advance on the album and with it we got some new equipment and didn’t have to depend on producing club tracks - to kind of keep it going. We sat in our studio with a wall of equipment for two months, going oooooooo - right what should we do? reading manuals. We can do whatever we want now. So what we did was going back and listening to what had inspired us, when you work with dance music, it takes you over completely, there’s nothing else. All you listen to is electronic music. With the album we had a chance to look above that, we can do this now, but how can we do this? That was what we ended up doing. The album took about a year to do.

Third Floor

What we were doing before the album was progressive house for party heads. Not your classical progressive house with a drum with a reverb going ccchhhhhhh, and then you have the same track for 12 hours. We have always been about the party, the key has always been how many women were dancing, it’s not about men, it’s about the women dancing, then the men will dance and you get a good vibe. Going back to the album it was about taking what we had learnt in production of dance music and applying it to different ideas, different genres, to put into a song of 4 minutes. You don’t have to put in a 7 minute intro for the DJ to get it right and 7 minutes to mix it out. We found it very difficult. When we came down to writing the album we had 75,000 ideas and we had to still get that down to 9 songs. That has been a real learning curve for us. Hopefully taking us on to another level, where we can write any tune and have the knowledge to remix it club friendly, but we don’t have to start out with it being club friendly. For us as songwriters and producers that is very important.

Fourth Floor

On an hourly basis we disagree on what to do in the studio. You can’t find two more different people than us - we are opposite ends. But this is what keeps the energy flowing. We met at the Lakota bar office and we just ended up working together; we did “First Floor Deadlock” and decided to keep on working together. We worked out of my bedroom for 18 months and we moved to our studio, which is a converted bank vault underneath an old bank in Bristol.

Fifth Floor

We are fortunate to do what we want to do and people like it. You have to remember who in the end of the day is giving you the ability to this. It’s people out there that get into your music and buy your records. The industry treats them as numbers – it’s wrong. We get the opportunity to travel around the world and entertain people. That is the best job in the world and you have to remember why you are doing it.

Six Floor

We are not tied into one genre. We met Jay, who is doing the MC in our live shows, in Bristol’s drum ‘n’ bass community. We are doing progressive house like Way out West, that sort of thing and we have this massive hip-hop community in Bristol. So we are always bombarded with outside influences. That’s what gives us the influences that we use in our music and that is a great thing. When we finished with the album and got to listen to it, I was surprised of the dub influences that were in it, the dubby bassline and dubby effects. It wasn’t conscious it was just the way it came out. It’s Bristol.

Seven Floor

Starecase live is Paul on decks, Al on laptop and Jay on MC. It’s a mixture of their own tracks and other progressive tunes.

Top Floor

The interview went on and we had a blast. In the evening they delivered a fantastic set on the White Stage at the Roskilde Festival and later in the night Paul was behind the decks at Okyo doing his stuff. These guys are heading for the majors – do yourself a favour and pick up “First Floor”.

Interview and live photos: Christian Almind

Click the above picture of the layout, to see the graphics that never made it into the magazine. Interview was done at the Roskilde Festival 2002.