As the parties roared on with Do Not Sleep boosting on with its warm-up on Wednesday, we continued to take dance music indoors with the International Music Summit (IMS).
With a schedule loaded with discussions and debates, we want to hear from the veterans of the industry. We want to be in a room with the innovators whose relationship with dance music goes right back to the beginning. We want an insight into the ingenuity that's given us the kind of dance floor moments that we simply can't shut up about.
Day three of IMS had us locked in with legendary house-garage remix team, Masters At Work, who were surprised with the Pioneer Award, and Bernard Sumner of iconic British band, New Order. It was Pete Tong interviewing on both occasions, and he got suitably stuck in with questions that fed our intrigue by touching base with their multidecade careers.
We're giving you the best moments straight from them with our top quotes of the day.
Bernard Sumner
“In the early ‘80s, there was a girl called Ruth Polsky who was queen of the clubs in New York. When New Order had written five songs, she booked us to play there. She introduced us to the New York club scene. Most importantly she gave us lots of free drinks tokens.”
On opening The Haçienda at a time when clubbing wasn't fashionable: “We'd earnt some money from sales from Joy Division records. Rob Gretton and Tony Wilson didn't like the idea of giving it to the band so they spent it on the nightclub. It opened and it was like spaceship arriving in Manchester. I made them move them move the DJ booth. It was like a letterbox - you could only see his eyes.”
“Amnesia was our weapon of choice. Acid house had just started in Manchester months before we left and we expected to hear it in Ibiza, which we didn't. The music we heard was Balearic beat which was a crazy style. We were disappointed because we wanted to hear acid house. It was like commercial records matched up, but there was some really good stuff.”
“We'd go out to a few clubs and when the last one closed we'd take a lot of people back to the hotel. Then you'd have a flight at 8.30AM and have a concert the next day. You wouldn't do it all again because you were a shit wreck of a man. We cut down on touring because we became completely burnt out. The party scene in Manchester was really taking off, so it was out of the frying pan and into the fire…I´ve had a terrible life.”
“I never ever read reviews. If you believe the bad then you believe the good too. I don't care what people say about us. If I like it, that's all that matters to me.”
“We don´t do encores because it's corny. We wanted people to be more open-minded and see a gig as a multimedia event. We played in Boston. We didn't do an encore, the place rioted and the police were called out.”
Catch New Order at Manchester International Festival as they take over the city's iconic Old Granada Studios for a series of intimate shows.
Masters At Work
“At the age of 16 I worked at a record store in Brooklyn which is where I met Todd Terry. As things went on, I watched him make records and stuff, and he needed a name for a record. He used Masters At Work.” – Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez on the birth of Masters At Work.
“My sisters went to The Loft and brought this music home which I never heard because it wasn't on the radio. My friend's older brother had breakbeats. You go see these guys and you get inspired. I had another neighbour who had a big disco collection. I´d just practice and listen to all the breaks. Jazzy Jay took me under his wing.” – Louie Vega on early influencers.
“It was just the drum machine. How to take nothing and make something out of it. At first, he had a Casio and each pad signalled one second. He also had a core sampler. ‘Black Riot' - all those huge records were made with these Those records had a sound. He figured out a way to make the best of it. Me being around to watch him work, I picked up on that stuff. You have to make do. That's the core thing and it always stood with me. Until now I use the same concept.” – Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez on Todd Terry.
“In one night you had Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Carl Cox and everyone there at the same time at a farm somewhere, with 10,000 people. From there it was Ministry Of Sound at 9am. Everyone was expecting Masters At Work. Every DJ from London was in that room waiting for us.” – Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez on gigs in the UK.
“We have been a main contributor to house music.” – Louie Vega.
“We got into the studio with Jospeh Capriati. I said come to New York and he came to work at my studio. I wondered how can we meet at the same place musically. He wants to play vinyl so I said why don't you play from your musical roots and that will be your set for the gig we had at night. The rest is history. Last year I got together with The Martinez Brothers, so we got some surprises coming up.”
Catch Masters At Work on Friday at IMS Dalt Vila, the grand finale.
WORDS l Aimee Lawrence
