At the forefront of Canada's growing dance scene is Luke Fair. He's performed at some of the most prestigious venues and events in the world, offering club goers a taste of his funky - techy eclectic house sound each and every weekend. His sets include everything from groovy house and techno to funky progressive and electro. Constantly re-editing tracks to customize his sets, Luke's ongoing desire to make every set stand out from the others is very evident.

Luke has pushed his sound the world over, headlining at world renowned clubs like Pacha (Buenos Aires), Bedrock (London), Red Light (Paris), Space (Miami), 'Zouk' club (Singapore) and The Womb (Tokyo). He headlined the 8000 person 'Moonpark' party in Argentina this past June and Luke's recent Eastern European tour with John Digweed ended at Godskitchen's massive Global Gathering festival.

Luke's skills have won the praise of some of the industry's biggest players. He was chosen by Danny Howells and Deep Dish as their 'future hero' in DJ Mag's Top 100 issue and, most recently, Luke was selected by none other than DJ Sasha to open up for him in every US city on the Involver CD release tour.

Over the past few years, Luke has garnered attention for his extremely diverse and genre-crossing studio efforts. From dubbed-out house to melodic progressive, his tracks have been played by djs from all across the dance music spectrum. Everyone from Sasha to David Morales to The Plump DJs have all included Luke's production in their sets. As well, Pete Tong has featured numerous Luke Fair productions on his world famous BBC Radio 1 'Essential Selection' show.

Despite his heavy touring schedule, Luke continues to work tirelessly in the studio. His recently completed remixes of Agent 001's 'Faakson' and Momu's 'The Dive' will be hitting the stores at the end of the summer and a diverse 4-track EP on Bedrock will be released soon after.


Interview

With the upcoming OS3 release on Bedrock the profile is set to raise up to another level. Are there plans for a tour to support the release?

There definitely is going to be North American and rest of the world tour. I’m doing a tour with Digweed now for his Fabric cd, and I have been opening up for him. Once that’s done we will focus on the OS tour with dates around June/July.

Can you shed some light as to what artists are showcased on the cd?

Well specifically there’s this guy from Germany who I just met, Manuel Turi aka Upfade. He is 19 and started producing dance music when he was 14. I don’t know how that works but it’s mind-blowing. He uses Fruity Loops. It’s tech-house that incorporates every element of house that I like, never to disco-ee or never too filtered. Everything he gives me I play everywhere. Sebastian Leger, who has been making a little bit harder stuff than he has done in the past.

Do you find yourself getting loads of material as you tour different cities of do you seek out specific artists when compiling tracks for a mix.

The two guys I mentioned, I have been buying their records before hand and I have heard their recent stuff. So when starting to compile for the cd I figured I’d contact them. I didn’t even do a mass email out for tracks because I thought it would be very time consuming. So I basically searched out guys myself that I know I would like. AOl and MSN Instant Messenger is the greatest invention for djs ever.

Do you have any of your own tracks or remixes appearing on the cd?

Yes I did a remix with Desyn that’s going to be on there. There’s a interesting story behind this track. Desyn friend got this track which was labeled Robert Miles vs Apex Twins…a rare duet. So we were like we have to remix this track. It’s a down-tempo piece and the melodies are mind-blowing. We contacted their manager and told them we remixed the track and wanted to release it somehow. So we called the track Jumboprawns. We eventually found the guy who made the track who is this guy from Vancouver who lost his hearing four years ago. It’s a crazy story but long story short we signed it to Desyn’s label Alternative Route. The track’s final name is Xristophan or something like that and the artist Torley Wong.

We heard you mixed the cd live. Is that true?

Yea, live and in one take. Granted it took me 4 or 5 tries. So many people are mixing in Abelton Live which I have no problem with at all but I wanted to try to go back to sort of what people were doing before…mixing Live.

You mentioned Live, have you ever played around with that, do you see yourself moving to that in the future?

I can’t see myself djing like with what Sasha is doing. I think it is amazing....but it’s not really for me…I like the tangible aspect of mixing cds and bringing in your music by hand, beat matching stuff like that. It has more of like a live feel to it. But what he is doing with it is amazing and I can never get to that level. Maybe if I could I would. I can see myself using it for edits and things like that but not really for djing. I think I will always be a live beat matching kind of guy.

Do you think that you will use the live mix as a selling point or promotional tool for the compilation since so many people are going into the computer realm to produce mixes?

Yea I won’t be broadcasting it to the world but I will definitely tell people. Most compilations now are mixed in the computer. I think it’s kind of refreshing to know that a dj actually set aside 80 minutes to sit down and mix cds rather than loading it into a computer and having an engineer mixing the tracks together and telling him to mix that at that point to that at that point and so on. Like I said I have no problem at all with that as most djs are doing that and have been for a while. And you know they can mix tracks. So, if you can bring something in which you can’t bring by mixing live then it’s worth it.

Many of the industry producers are starting labels of their own, are there plans for something like that in the future?

Definitely, there are a few tracks that I found which have already been released but nobody knows about. So I’m so tempted. What happened was I bought Mylo’s first EP and said “I need to license this“. Months later Mylo completely exploded. I’m not gonna say I’m the only one who thought that cause I’m sure there were 50,000 other people who thought the same exact thing. But it sort of gave me the drive to start doing this. There’s so much good music out there that nobody hears. There’s hundreds of records being released every month and ones that are not on big labels and should be. So it’s definitely in the cards but it will have to be after the cd.

With your productions begin signed to notable labels such as Bedrock, Inversus, and SAW, plus the previous mix on Yoshitoshi, do you feel signing to these labels is what it initially takes to make it in the industry in the beginning and then having the opportunity to be creative with your own label.

I think it definitely helped out a lot, just because it gives you instant credibility. That’s what I was thinking when I was sending out my first track was the only way I thought I could really get noticed by masses was to send out the music and hopefully get signed by someone like Digweed or Deep Dish. Because as soon as you do that people go “Oh Digweed likes this”. And he is respected. It’s all about association. Especially now for the new djs who are starting out, I think it’s very important to send them out to all the big labels. Most of them think “Ok I’m not ready for that”. But why aren’t you ready for that, right? Send it out. If they like it it’s definitely a boost.

How about digital music domains, do you find yourself hitting pay websites checking out the releases?

Yea, I’ve used Beatport a few times. That’s the only one I’ve used. I think I’ve placed three orders on that site. But, I think it’s a good sign especially for songs that are between 1-3 dollars a song. If people have some kind of conscience they will see their way to do the right thing and it’s really not a lot of money. I can understand seeing people getting pissed off or where music fans saying “Well I don’t have a turntable. I don’t’ want to spend 15 dollars on a record just to hear only one track”. And think digital downloading has allowed those people to listen to these tracks and still give credit and money to the artists. So I think it’s great.

You first big signing obviously was the U2 track that was what got you noticed by Digweed…correct? I have read in places that you didn’t really have a large body of work up until that point. But, you had to jump in and complete some items in a incredibly short period of time. Now that you have had time to develop what many think is a wide, varying catalog of remixes and releases. Do you find yourself pickier when it comes to actually producing track, do you find yourself holding onto them for while or do your try to get them done as quick as possible?

No I take a long time. Like my process is complete trial and error. I don’t have a musical background. It’s just me pounding away on the keyboards. Well I just have one keyboard and a midi controller. It’s trial and error. I’m not at the point where I can sit down and think ahead of a track and make it. Like it’s so….everytime I make a track and I finish it, I’m like that’s a fluke. Because I never set a to-do. I think that’s why there all so different. I keep on doing something until it’s something I like and then learning when to walk away from it, say “It’s done”. That’s my process. I just sit down…I have a bunch of soft synths setup, I don’t have any hardware. And then I write out a bunch of patterns, throw a vocal on top if it’s a remix, add some loops. Ha ha, It’s really ghetto.

Now in line with that, if your all virtual and soft synth, do find it harder, do you spend more time on post production getting it back to that organic feel or do you have favorite pieces that start out with that organic feel?

I guess the way I get that is….a lot of my stuff is sample based. Most of the sound I get from what I sample, weather it’s a little stab from a pop record or something else. So I think that’s where the organic comes in, through the loops. Like I try and get as many non dance music sounds as possible cause that’s where you get all the cool sounds….like from rock or reggae. So I think that’s where I get that from. As for getting it not digital I guess I try to find the really organic patches. I have some very digital sounding stuff too.

How is the scene in Canada?

Well we’ve had a scene for a long time in Canada, especially in Toronto and Montreal which in my opinion have two of the best clubbing scenes in North America. Like I have been to most of the US cities and in just in terms of clubs and clubbers, especially Montreal I think it’s great. So I think the dance music is really really driving in Canada. So I guess it was a bunch of clubbers who said “hey we can make this too”, even though we are from Canada.

1Is there anything else you would like to mention about the CD.

Uhh..not really. The only thing I can think of is that the UK release is date is May 9th. I have no idea when North America is.

Thank you to Luke Fair for taking the time to answer these questions. We would also like to thank Leslie and Catherine at Funky Dumpling for arranging the interview. This was a live interview during WMC '05.