INTERVJU JAFAR

19 November

Lördagen den 19/11 får Lounge(s)  finbesök då Jafar – den ena halvan av producentduon Poussez samt chef for skivbolaget Artizan Music intar båset.
Lounge(s) egen musik-guru Christoffer Falk fick en pratstund med denne gigant inför lördagens besök.

Hello Jafar we’re very looking forward to having you play in Sweden. This isn’t your first time here though is it?
- Hey Chris, no it isn’t, I actually moved to Gothenborg for two years when I was engaged to a Swedish girl, I moved all my vinyl, my studio, my whole life over haha. I really love the city and have missed it. Its great to be coming back to play!

You have been djing and producing for 20 years, thats quite a career, are there any career highlights that you are particularly proud of?
- Thank you for saying so. That’s a pretty hard question. I think being fortunate to have toured quite a bit and played in some pretty amazing places has made me proud. I played in the sun to 4000 people in Brasil, another 2000 in Tenerife. Getting flown over to Malaysia was pretty amazing. Im proud of my releases, some have been average in my opinion, but there’s quite a few I’m really, really proud of.
I think probably one of my proudest moments was actually quite recently when my record label hosted Room 3 at London’s Fabric. That is hands down, the best club in London and up there with Panorama, Space and Watergate. A very proud moment indeed. We’ve actually been asked back in the spring too.

Could you tell us a bit more about your record label Artizan Music? We understand you also have some Swedish artists?
- I run Artizan Music with my two close friends, djs and production partners Maxime Cescau and Andy Touchfingers. We started the label in 2004 and its now home to over 25 internationally-acclaimed artists including Demarkus Lewis, Rithma, Rich Medina, Pete Dafeet, Funky Transport etc. Yes we do indeed have a fair few Swedish artists. When I moved to Sweden our first target was in tracking down Andreas Saag (not to hard given we were both living in Gothenborg haha), I soon got booked to play in Malmo for HouseMusicWithLove and thats where I met Jesper Aubin. We did a joint Poussez release with him, which has literally just come out on the label. We’ve then got a release from a stockholm based producer coming in 2012. I think its the swedish weather. The winter is so bad its perfect for staying in and writing quality deep house and techno hahaha.

Your productions as Poussez with label partner Maxime Cescau, have featured on some great labels like Toolroom and Huddtraxx. You have also remixed and worked with some superb artists like Atjazz, Kris Wadsworth and Gothenborg’s own Andreas Saag. Could you give the readers more of an understanding of what Poussez is about?
- Thanks again for saying so. Max and I had already put out a fair few releases on our own under various different aliases before we started working together. We are very much on each others wave length and it balances well in the studio. Poussez which of course is french for ‘push’ was always about ‘pushing forward’. We embrace so much of modern electronic music, from nu-disco, deep house and techno to abstract electronica and lo-fi gear, so Poussez is about pushing ourselves and our sound forward whilst trying to reference and tie together all those various strains of music that inspires our souls.

Your performance this week at Lounge(s) is only a day after one of your friends and UK contemporaries Jimpster, we understand you have worked together a few times and even share many of the same artists on your labels?
- Jimpster is a legend and one of the humblest, nicest men in deep house. Fact. It also helps he’s a superb DJ, keys player and has a very fine pair of ears to boot (cheque please Jamie hehe). We met years ago, I actually worked for a vinyl distributor that handled Freerange’s distribution during their first years of operation, so we met soon after that and were booked for a couple of gigs on the same bill. PlanB club in brixton was the first I think. He was then playing Room1 at Fabric the night we did Room 3. We had both Andreas Saag and Nacho Marco representing Artizan too, who you rightly point out is signed to both labels.

What can Gothenborg expect from Jafar on Saturday 19th November at Lounges?
- I’m very looking forward to coming over and doing what we do best – joining the dots between modern deep house, tech-house and proper techno. Referencing old and new and of course showcasing a fair proportion of our own Poussez and Artizan tracks without being too self indulgent. My Swedish friend Kristina has requested Hardfloor’s seminal acid techno anthem ‘Acperience’ from the mid 1990′s. She knows this is a very important record to me and who am I to refuse!

What’s next for Jafar, Poussez & Artizan Music?
- Well you’ll be very pleased to hear we’ve two Swedish EP’s forthcoming: Very shortly is Poussez vs Jesper Aubin’s ‘Swedish Mischief EP’ a 3track techno collaboration between us and the Malmo based artist, followed by an EP from a hungarian artist called Soulstream, we then hit the new year with Stockholm based Daniel A. Sollscher who has written a superb 5 track LP.
Poussez is keeping busy, we’ve got EP’s coming on 3AM, swiss label Pins & Needles, Champion Standard and Aki Bergen’s Neurotraxx Deluxe. Oh and we just released a remix of Italian house legends Mateo & Matos. That’s dropped on their label.

Finally, a little bird tells us, you can actually speak swedish. Please prove it to us…
- Haha. Jag kan svenska din javel. ;0) Ser mycket fram imot att komma tillbaka till Sverige! Gott Mos!