EDM : TIMO GARCIA talks moving, DJing, dodgy London promoters and his sheer hate for musical piracy that is rife at the moment

ANYONE tapped into the pulse or keeping score of modern electronic music has probably heard of Timo Garcia.

Straddling the fine line between underground darling and big room, big tune dance floor arsonist, his numerous releases on the circuit's biggest and best labels has been well documented.
In a world when DJs and producers are ten-a-penny and the hype machines peddle mediocrity as if it were something special, it can be difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Whether you like your music to be played in the comfort of your own home, in grimy underground sweat-holes, or in extravagant and celebrious locales, the sublime and sensual sounds of Timo Garcia are guaranteed to deliver.
Clubz were lucky enough to catch up with him for his opnions on a number of subjects ...

TIMO GARCIA ON ...

Moving 

 

After living on Brick Lane for almost 4 years, DJing in pretty much every Shoreditch venue back in the glory days of vinyl, then relocating to the more leafy streets of North London for the next 3 or 4 years I felt I’d had enough of the Big Smoke and that it was time to head for the fresh sea air of Brighton & Hove.

So at the start of 2012 I set up my brand new studio ‘The Vault’ and moved my production and engineering operation down to the (what was supposed to be) sunny south coast!

DJ-ing 

 

Over the last 8 years the kind of gigs I play have changed massively from playing 3 nights a week doing 4 to 8 hour DJ sets spinning everything from downtempo lounge music through Deep, Tech & vocal House to end of the night banging anthems.

I spent a lot of time perfecting my mixing skills on vinyl tuntables, getting used to the new technology of CD decks and learning to read the crowd.

As my profile grew from releasing on high profile labels as well as working tirelessly on my own Berwick Street Records imprint I found that the kind of gigs I was getting booked to play changed.
I signed up to an agency who were able to command better DJ fees for guest or headline slots which meant I couldn’t really keep doing the free entry all night bar gigs (hence the move out of Shoreditch to North London).

London Promoters 

 

Unfortunately after a little bit of success releasing on some big labels a couple of (who I thought were) DJ mates turned a bit sour and started bad mouthing me in what is already a very clicky and insular London scene.

So as soon as my gigs changed from the bar scene, warm up or back room club slots to more headline gigs where my name started rising up the ranks on flyers above theirs they cut me down trying to make sure I didn’t get the gigs I should have been playing.

One even went so far as to call or email every promoter he saw me on a flyer for telling them I was an a**hole and to cancel me!!!

Aided and abetted by a couple of Mickey Mouse London promoters who I had spent over a year chasing for money owed from a string of gigs I had played for them.
You know the type?

The ones who say they have booked a headline act who falls mysteriously ill on the night or cancels last minute due to travel or something and all that’s left are 20 or more rent-a-crowd DJs (including me before I took on the agent) all on ticket sales or guestlist deals regardless of what style of music they play.

None of whom get paid despite bringing the only people to the venue and who all end up fighting to get on the decks because the club didn’t open the 2nd or 3rd rooms where everyone was supposed to play and so there’s only 6 hours of DJ air time yet 20 DJs to get through.

Where musical style and ability to mix are so far down the list of priorities to the promoter they fall off into his fizzy drink.

That’s shortly before the promoter himself does a runner from the venue with all the takings!
I’m not going to name and shame here but I think every DJ in London knows the tin pot promoters I’m talking about!

The bitter sweet irony is that due to the loss of local gigs (with the exception of my bi-monthly 2 year residency at the Ministry of Sound for The Gallery) I had to find a new form of income so I moved to a new studio and started to take on a lot of engineering jobs for DJ/producers which ultimately led to me really honing my production skills releasing on far bigger and better labels.
Which meant that over the last 5 years I have been able to play big international gigs where the promoters have so much more respect for the artists they book.
Upfront payments, contracts, airport pick ups, amazing hotels, they take you out for dinner before the gig and sometimes even show you round town.
Headline set times to a full appreciative crowd and a decent drinks rider ;) Basically the stuff dreams are made of!
So inadvertently they propelled my career forwards so now I understand the expression ‘Love Thy Haters’.

Timo Garcia Festival Footage

 

Engineering 

 

Having spent my adult DJ life making sure I have enough gigs every weekend to get by it felt very strange having quite a few weekends off.

So in order to fill in the gaps (& to help pay the studio rent) I took on all this engineering work helping other producers who didn’t have the full set up or the knowledge of how to use the computer software to realize their dreams and produce music to a professional standard.
It turns out I really enjoyed working as a studio engineer from the get-go and now have produced and engineered for over 60 people.

Many of whom now just jump on the 1-hour train from London for a day or weekend in Brighton to work in the studio together.

I feel I have learned a lot from working on so many different styles of dance music (some which I would never have entertained on my own!) and become a much more versatile producer myself because of it.

I also spend a lot of my time writing down-tempo and chillout music for a TV / Sync production company under myT_Mo guise and have been very proud to see my music appear on at least 7 episodes of Masterchef as well as the Michael Jackson murder trial tailor on Sky News!

Piracy 

 

It’s just heart breaking having spent many days sat working hard to write and perfect the sound of a piece of music or song in a studio (that costs thousands of pounds every year to rent and keep up to date), weeks of contacting record labels to get the music signed, hours of negotiating contracts and reading through legal documents, months of waiting for the release date and days of helping out with the promo run getting your music to big name DJs, reviewers and radio jocks to then find on the day of release that some lowlife scum has posted your music online as a free download.

Then to add insult to injury they send out dozens of free links to it across forums and are even now using facebook to advertise free downloads of our hard work.

What’s even more disgusting is that these reprobates also run their own ftp servers where people pay them a membership fee to then download as much music as they like without a penny of it ever making its way to the label or the artists who made the music.

I had to close down my Berwick Street Records label after 5 fun years mainly because we could not keep up with all this illegal downloading.

What makes me laugh (or cry!) is that they somehow try to justify their illegal and immoral activities to make themselves feel better by suggesting that they are in some way helping the artist/label out by promoting the music to a new audience.

If the artist or label wanted to give the music away for free in a desperate attempt to gain new fans then that is up to them and only them!

My theory is that people who set up these illegal download sites were the lonely kids that got picked on or ignored at school and that they are desperately trying to gain friends and so by giving away all this underground music they get a lot of traffic on their websites and ultimately feel like they are popular (all at the expense of the musicians, producers, engineers and record labels).

Its then that they realize they can also make a fast buck out of their site by hosting adverts and charging membership fees for faster and uninterrupted downloads of all the content they’ve ripped off.
It’s disgusting and I seriously cant believe the government have been so slow to react to this kind of theft and flagrant disregard of copyright law.

Touring & releases 

 

On a more positive note, as mentioned above I’ve been very lucky to have played some massive gigs in 2012 including some fantastic sell out tour events for DJ MAG in places like Korea, Malaysia, Croatia, Thailand, Hong Kong & Amsterdam.

The last year or so has also been very good to me with releases on Exploited, Skint, Compost, Nervous, Stealth, Neurotraxx, 303 Lovers, Hotfingers and even Hed Kandi Records.

With many recent collaborations including X-Press 2, DJ Pierre, Jerome Sydenham, S.K.A.M., Phunk Investigation, Christian Cambas, Sam Obernik & of course Amber Jolene who just put her deft vocal touch to The Hang Track.

I’ve just about finished another downtempo T_Mo album for the TV / Sync agency which should come out in the new year and I look forward to some more big releases coming out on Yoshitoshi, Exploited, Stealth and Compost as well as some more DJ Mag events around the world so fingers crossed to a positive (and hopefully sunny) 2013.

Timo Garcia & S.K.A.M. - Dosado [Exploited]



Timo Garcia & Manu Delago - The Hang Track ft. Amber Jolene (Hed Kandi)

 

Credit : Clubz The Underground