The rockers Hifi Dancing to a Differ Drummer

Rip It Up, Issue 222, 1 February 1996, Page 29

The rockers Hifi Dancing to a Differ Drummer

After the guitar fest that was the Big Day Out, it is with open arms Aotearoa’s dance massive await the arrival of the mighty Rockers HiFi soundsystem to play Orientation. The Rockers tread that irie, dread-wise, bass-driven territory between club grooves to move your body and dub moods to soothe your mind. Richard Whittingham is a changing bloke with an unlikely alter ego — DJ Dick. Indeed Richard, or Mr Dick, has been a vinyl man ip-" ulator for over 12 years, originally playing indie and new romantic songs at the j Birmingham Rum Runner club where Duran Duran started out. He soon moved on to jazz, Latin and baleric beats, which caught the attention of fellow music fan Glyn Bush. It was about this time that acid house hit England and things went a wee bit mental. Mr Dick immediately immersed himself in this new culture and one day visited Glyn with a. new 12” or two, (er, records that i 5...). Anyway, Glyn was hooked and soon bought some midi equipment, and he and DJ Dick began" their career as recording artists, the Rockers HiFi. Their first release, ‘Breathless’, was recorded under the name , Rockers to Rockers, and the pair are apparently a little embarrassed by it. Glyn is that true? "Well, its not so much that we’re embarrassed, its just that it’s so different from what we’re doing now. Since then we’ve found a direction which I guess is the dub influence. 'Breathless’ was basically a couple of loops from old house records that sounded good together. It works on a big. system, but doesn’t really represent where we are at today.” Your album Rockers to Rockers contains the singles ‘Push Push’ and ‘What a Life’, which have created quite a stir in the UK, ' US and indeed NZ dance scenes. Were you surprised by all the attention? “A little bit, ’cause we never set out to get in the charts, we just set out to make music that turned us on, and hopefully we could make a living out of it. If you get chart success its a bonus, but we’ll never make

music to order.” No Kylie Minogue remixes then? “Not unless I get to meet her” Whats on the go for the HiFi at the moment?

“Well our second album should be out sometime around September, which will have some quite out there material on it. And we’re releasing an album of our own remixes of other artists on our own label, Different Drummer, which will be called Music is Immortal." When you say ‘out there’, are we talking drum ’n’ bass? “Yeah, we have been doing a bit of jungle. I like jungle. It changes the rules. The taboo of a sample sounding like a sample is finally gone. The sampler is now accepted as the main instrument in most dance music, so you can fuck things up as much as you want. “I’ve been using a program called Q Base, which is what the junglists use.. I’d be interested to hear what people think of our jungle tracks ’cause they definitely come out of the machines with a Rockers HiFi flavour.” How does your live setup work? “On stage we have McFarda P chatting, toasting and vibing the audience. Me and Dick are at the back; Dick’s spinning dub plates, sound fx records and spoken word tracks through an effects unit, while I operate the sampler and mixing desk. Dick and I vibe off each other. He might get an echo going on a drum sound, and I’ll put an echo on something else, and we’ll try and make them interlock together. We’ve also got a pretty incredible lightshow.” Are you looking forward to the clean, green New Zealand experience? “I’ve heard different things actually. Some people say: ‘Oh, yeah, New Zealand, it’s beautiful, I’d love to live there,’ and others have said: ‘Yeah, it’s nice, but the straight people are really straight and uptight about a lot of things.’ So, I’ve got an open mind, I’m just glad it will be warm!” Cheers Glyn! See you on the Orientation tour. No straights, alright.

ANDY PICKERING