Splore: Mr Scruff - Oddities and endless sets

DJ Mr Scruff will be performing at this year's Splore.

Mr Scruff's signature style is all cups of tea, potato animation and marathon mixes, finds Lydia Jenkin.

Andy Carthy is something of an odd man out in the world of DJs. He plays music of all genres and all BPMs ("For me, any music played in a club is club music"); he'll play for four, five, even six hours and he doesn't mind taking the odd request, or having a brief chat during his set.

The British icon, known for his love of a nice cup of tea on stage, his entertaining, hand-drawn potato animations, and for his Keep It Unreal residency which has been running for 15 years, is returning to New Zealand for the first time in nearly a decade, for a marathon DJ set at Splore.

"It seems to be a very well-curated festival, lovely location, with a bit of an environmental emphasis, and quite family-friendly, and it's next to the sea. I think that's all I really need to know," he laughs.

He's travelling "quite light" this trip, bringing only one box of records, but that's still plenty for him to create a five-hour set entirely on the fly.

"In five hours you might play 70 or 80 records, so it's not that many really. The thing I love about playing for four or five hours is you don't have to look at your watch, you can just kind of build the mood, settle down, shape it in a natural way. I'm a big fan of playing records in their entirety as well.

"I think if you spend a lot of time searching out records that people haven't heard much, then you need to play them the whole thing without messing around with it, so you don't lose the dynamic potential of it."

He finds tailoring each set to the mood of the place, and keeping people guessing are key to his success.

"I find if you don't plan anything, it keeps you on your toes a lot more, and then you learn something from every DJ set, which is important to avoid getting lazy and jaded."

He also believes that the people who come and dance to his music are likely to have their own musical expertise which he doesn't want to disregard.

"I've found for whatever reason that I attract a really open, kind of respectful, but also energetic and party-minded audience, and I've always found that if people come up to me in clubs and say, have you got any Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart, or how about some Sun-Ra, or have you got this particular Fela Kuti tune, then you very quickly realise that no matter how many years you've been DJing, if you've got a few hundred people in front of you on the dance floor, their combined musical knowledge is going to completely drown yours."

He's not saying he wants to spend his entire set taking requests, but he does find a DJ set to be a two-way street.

"You have to remember these suggestions are coming from people on the dance floor who are in the moment, and are potentially physically feeling the music more than I am, so occasionally you get a perfect request that's better than what you had lined up."

Fans can also expect to see some of his signature animations, possibly even custom-drawn for the festival.

"I really enjoy looking at the places I'm playing for a bit of inspiration.

"So you might go, 'Okay we're playing at the beach here, and we're in New Zealand', and then you just think of some simple comic elements that are locally relevant, keep it lighthearted, and it really doesn't have to be complicated."

For a guy who plays some of the longest DJ sets in the world and creates his own visual accompaniments, he certainly makes it sound easy.

Who: Mr Scruff aka Andy Carthy, renowned British electronic music producer and DJ
Where and when: Performing at Splore festival, Tapapakanga Regional Park, Friday February 20 to Sunday February 22

* See splore.net for more details.

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- TimeOut