If there’s a thread that runs through Smagghe’s musical career, from his legendary Death Disco mix through to the tracks he produced with Black Strobe, it’s a tendency to gravitate towards slightly twisted sounds. ‘Dark’ is the word I use, although Smagghe is not quite sure. “I’ll take anything people say about me, so if that’s what you think, then it’s valid, but I don’t think I’m necessarily drawn to dark things,” he says. “I don’t like dumb, happy-happy music, but I’d say that I’m more attracted to things that are strange. I like the weirder side of dance music. I absolutely don’t mind playing disco music, as long as it has a stranger side to it, but I really don’t like this word ‘dark’.”
He ponders the question of darkness in his music for a bit longer, and eventually hits on a description that he likes. “I guess maybe the best way to put it is that the music I like isn’t ‘straight’,” he says. The aforementioned Death Disco mix, released in 2004 but still just as essential today, is a good example of this. It’s crammed with weird and wonderful hybrids of disco and house – music that evokes the glamour of the night life, but with a decidedly sinister edge. “I love disco and I love pop,” Smagghe says. “My only rule is that I like to do things people don’t expect, things that are a bit strange.”
Recently, Smagghe has been spending a good deal of time in the studio with production partner Tim Paris, putting the finishing touches on their collaborative album as A Fine Line. Record sales today are precarious at best, but in some ways, he actually sees this as a positive. “Knowing that you’re not going to make a living from putting out records, in a way, you start to feel very free,” he says. “Nobody’s telling us to do more of this or more of that. So no, I’m not worried. It would be nice to get recognition from people, but we’re really just doing it for ourselves.”
A lot of electronic musicians say that their tracks are inspired by the gear, by glitches and mistakes in synths and sequencers, although Smagghe is somewhat sceptical of that notion. “Producers are always saying things like, ‘Oh, I plugged my machine in and it made a weird noise, so I made a track out of it!’” he says with an audible smirk. “I feel like that’s a little bit far-fetched. I really like the idea of old, faulty machines in tracks, but as for the mistakes serving as an inspiration, I’m not sure. It sounds a bit too good to be true, but it’s fun to say.”
As for his actual source of inspiration, Smagghe says that he often takes a record he loves as inspiration, then twists it in a variety of new ways. “It’s not about copying,” he says. “You can start from a track you like, but that track will disappear in the process and turn into something else. You can do that, or just start from scratch with an idea that inspires you. There’s no one method. Some people always make the same record, and if that’s your thinking, if you just want to keep churning out club hits, there’s a method, but I come at every track differently.”
Smagghe lost a great deal of his vinyl collection in a fire several years ago – many DJs would consider this a calamity, but he took it in stride. “I still have some vinyl, but I’m not a fetishist about it,” he says. “I mean, there are people who fall in love with an artist of label and need to have every one of their releases on vinyl, but I’m not like that.” For him, ultimately, it’s about the quality of the tunes, rather than the format. “There are two types of music,” he says, “good and bad. End of debate. The rest of the things, like the format – that’s all just technicality. I’m not interested in that at all.”
As for the music he’s enjoying currently, Smagghe is reluctant to say. “I could name one, but then later, I’ll think, ‘Oh shit, there’s also this one and this one,” he laughs. “There’s that, but there’s also the fact that I might really like one particular track by one particular artist, but then the next thing they put out might be something I really dislike. Likewise, I might hear a track I really like by an artist I really don’t like. So I never really like to say what I’m enjoying or what I’m not – I just like to listen to a lot of music.”
BY ALAISDAR DUNCAN
