Eclectic artist promises the best

By MIKE HOULAHAN

English dance music producer and DJ Luke Vibert is famed for his prodigious output across a variety of genres, which means people never quite know what's going to happen next.

This time, a large part of that uncertainty has been resolved: he will join forces in the Boiler Room with good friend Aphex Twin, aka Richard James. "He's just about the only person I would play with, because I never know what the next record would be, which is my criteria for DJing."

Vibert's eclecticism stems from his childhood, when his favourite artist was Prince. "What I loved most about Prince was I always got a vibe of him so strongly from the music. I thought Michael Jackson was a wicked performer but I just didn't get that feeling of one man coming through. "I got that with Prince and I get that with Aphex. It's what I hope you get with my record, the feeling of one person storming through."

Vibert wasn't anticipating a career as a musician. At just the right time he came across the first record by electronic pioneers Art Of Noise, and also fell head over heels for hip-hop. Discovering keyboards and samplers opened up a world of possibilities. While still at school in Cornwall, he started making electronic music and met fellow Cornishman James. The two then started making music in each other's bedrooms.

Vibert's tapes soon attracted attention from record labels, and in 1991 he was commissioned to create an album of ambient music. Vibert confesses to a great deal of ignorance about the genre before recording Phat Lab Nightmare, his first record under his most familiar artist alias, Wagon Christ.

"Lots of times I've sat there and tried to copy something but I can't - I'm no good at it," he says. "It always ends up coming through my filter. I've tried to copy Neptunes or Basement Jaxx and it hasn't worked. I've thought, 'Oh, I'll have a go at a disco track' or whatever, but it just never happens. It all just changes and ends up as my music."

Inspired by the success of Phat Lab Nightmare, Vibert headed for London in 1994. He rediscovered club music and saw the ways it was being twisted by innovative producers.

"At first I didn't like it when I started experimenting with my own jungle beats - I liked the rhythms but I didn't much like what they put on top. That's how I created my Plug records - I sort of appropriated the beats and put what I liked on top. Then I became a full-on junglist and haven't looked back."

Although drum'n'bass is a cornerstone of Vibert's vast catalogue, he has poked his musical nose into almost every genre and sub-genre. He continually wins praise for his creative and futuristic sounds but is also partial to a bit of nostalgia.

His latest record, Yospeh , released under his own name, harks back to the early days of acid house. Several tracks use the word "acid" in the title, and all rework some mid-80s concepts in a more up-to-date setting.

"The tracks are all quite old, so the compiling was done in that mood. I wanted to do a record which was a proper record rather than lots of the records I'd been hearing, which were more, for me, laptop made and not so interesting. I wanted an old-school album.

"I find with most laptop people I can instantly tell what programmes they were using and what plug-ins they were using, and I find that really frustrating. It's even more sad than the Puff Daddy thing, where he always uses the same sample - at least he's really brazen about it. The computer people think they're doing something new, but it sounds very old very quickly.

"With this album there are no computer programmes. It was a compilation of the older analogue stuff I'd collected before I got my computer."

Vibert has an extensive back catalogue of unreleased tracks "I've got so many tracks, I'm saying to record labels, 'Come on, come on'," Vibert says. "It's taking me ages to get my next Wagon Christ album out, for example. That's been ready to be released for a year now, and I think it's finally going to be put out in May.

"Maybe one day I'll just have to go on the web, post 500 tracks, and say, 'There you go'.

"I can't have the same idea twice, that's my problem," Vibert says. "If I make a drum'n'bass track I definitely don't want to make another one straight away - I want to do something different and keep myself challenged, happy and entertained."

- NZPA

BDO Performance

* Who: Luke Vibert and Aphex Twin

* Where & when: Boiler Room, 7-8.30pm, today

* nzherald.co.nz will feature updates throughout the day from the Big Day Out beginning at 12pm on Friday.