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Artist Interviews
Q&A: Jaymo & Andy George
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 16 June 2011
Hailing from Lincoln, enterprising DJs Jaymo & Andy George began spinning tunes and throwing hometown parties together under the Moda banner in 2006, soon recruiting ambassadors in the likes of Annie Mac, Crookers and Switch. Quickly earning a reputation as a notorious hotbed for emerging dance acts, the Moda club nights underwent several venue upgrades over the following years. The most significant of these coincided with the boys becoming the youngest DJs to record a live mix for Radio 1, and subsequently getting their own regular show on the station.
Moda now runs nights across the country, and this year will host a summer residency at Ibiza’s iconic Space club. The in-demand duo also find time to fulfil their responsibilities as co-bosses of the Moda Music record label, which has seen the likes of Fenech-Soler, Shake Aletti and Monarchy pass among its ranks. The label’s first in-house compilation showcases music by The Shoes, The Black Ghosts and Toy Tigers alongside the duo’s own tracks, with remixes coming courtesy of Bag Raiders, Alex Metric and Para One & Tacteel.
With the ‘Moda Music Volume One’ album and their own ‘Night Music’ EP out now, we caught up with a solo Jaymo to ask our Same Six Questions.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
I guess it’s part of our do-it-all mentality – whatever we’re doing we’re always thinking about what’s next. So when you’re really into listening to dance music, the next step is to DJ, then produce, then start your own club night, record label and so on… We started making music separately at first, our backgrounds are quite different, but as we started DJing together it made sense to do the same in the studio.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
There’s such a strong new phase of bands and producers out there that we just wanted to celebrate and showcase them. A lot of the songs on the compilation were written especially for it, so it’s really been a massive collaborative effort. Some of the artists are signed to our label, others are friends, others are people we just have a lot of passion about. It ranges from melancholy electronic indie, or old skool house, to disco, electro and so on. But when you listen if feels very coherent, too. A lot of compilations just go in with the big anthems from all the names you hear all the time, but Moda Volume’s are all about discovering new names and new sounds.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Most of the tracks evolve from a sample or loop – we spend a lot of time messing about with ideas, sampling various weird types of music, from old soul to world music – anything we think might have interesting sonic results. We can probably go through 50 ideas before something really strikes a chord. In the case of ‘Pocket Song’, the idea actually came whilst doing a remix for someone else – it wasn’t right for the remix but it made a lot of sense as an EP track. I wonder if anyone will ever figure out what we sampled!
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
So hard to say really – we try to get influences from old tracks more than new ones – but people like Erol Alkan, Popof, Noob and Boys Noize have always been a big influence for us. If you let yourself reference new music whilst you’re in the studio it can be a real mistake – that’s why we like finding samples that can inspire a mood or vibe for the track.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Moda owns you! (It’s kind of become a tagline)
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
We’ve called it ‘Moda Volume 1’ as we fully intend on there being many more. For us, there’s nothing more exciting than discovering new music, it’s what’s fuelled us from day one and the reason we do what we do. Hopefully there’s lots of other people who feel the same, and this album will introduce them to something new.
But although all the music on here is really fresh it’s not a pretentious album – a hardcore music lover will enjoy it as much as someone who just wants good music with good vibes. Someone told us the other day that it feels like Moda music has soul – and that’s exactly what we want. That’s why everyone loves Motown or 70s disco – you may not know the names of the tracks but everyone can enjoy it… and that’s how music should be.
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