By no means a newcomer, but a fresh face on the disco scene, over the course of the last decade Birdee has been extremely active in the dance music world; playing the most prestigious venues and festivals around the globe, collecting support from the world’s biggest players, and even picking up an award for best breakthrough DJ at London’s Fabric.
His music is supported by a veritable who’s who of dance music: DJs as diverse as Groove Armada, Purple Disco Machine, Horse Meat Disco and Claptone have all been spinning his tracks, while radio support has also been outstanding. Pete Tong recently opened his show with Birdee’s breakout single ‘Start The Weekend’.
After releasing debut album Then Came The Sun in 2019 and his first Australian tour at the beginning of 2020, Birdee has just released a collaboration with legend Barbara Tucker on vocals and has lots more in store for the rest of the year. Locked down in LA we were extremely grateful that he could spend some time with us on the phone and be a part of the Switched On Family.
So, how are you coping with Lockdown?
I’m not doing too badly actually. I was in a really weird situation because I am living in LA at the moment but I was in London to play a gig.
I was just about to fly to Italy for a couple of weeks and then all hell broke loose and some of my friends were saying ‘yeah you should still come to Italy it’s fine’. Some others were saying, ‘I think you’d better stay in London and sit it out’.
I literally had to make like a split-second decision just before they shut down the borders whether to try and come back to LA, which I eventually did as my girlfriend’s here.
So, at the moment I’m locked down in my studio. So, I think for people who make music it’s not too bad because we tend to spend most of the day making music anyway. So, in that respect, apart from the weekend where we would be out DJing which has changed. We’re just alone in the studio.
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But yeah, aside from that just, you know, eating a lot of food. And, you know, trying to make the day pass by. It’s not being too bad, I gotta say, it’s getting to the point where I would really like to probably get over the finish line. But it’s not being too bad.
So, you grew up in Rovereto at the foot of the mountains in the North of Italy.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, very small town, not far from Verona. I was there until after I finished university. And then in the late 90s I took short trip to London and was really blown away by the music scene over there.
So, I just decided to make the move there in 2005 and stayed there for 9 years, although I’d also been in London on and off since 99. And then I decided to come to LA, because I wanted to sample something different.
Were you formally trained as a musician or is it something you’ve picked up along the way?
As a kid my parents actually were pretty insistent for me in having a classical music education. So from the age of eight, I learnt to play the piano all the time at school.
What was playing in your house as you were growing up?
Oh, I mean, I started buying records at a very young age. When I was probably like seven or eight. I was very much at the time, into the cheesy side of disco like The Bee Gees etc. And a friend of mine had some Donna Summer records as well. He was my next-door neighbour.
I was a big fan of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, so I had a lot of John Travolta stuff as well haha. But then after that I got into rock. Pretty soon I switched from Disco to Kiss and AC/DC and then spent the next 15 years being immersed in that.
So what was it that appealed to you about the rock scene?
I think actually what happened is that when I was a kid and got into disco, one of the big songs that I was hearing at the time was, ‘I was made for loving you’ by Kiss, which is essentially a disco song played by a rock band.
I remember playing that Kiss album Dynasty, and then some other friends of mine had the rest of their catalogue and explained to me they were not really a disco band but a rock band that happened to make a couple of disco tracks.
And so from then I got more interested in the rock side of things, mostly pretty classic hard rock like AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. Got a little bit more heavy metal at one point, but it was always basically rock.
And were you ever successful in the band or was it just something you did.
It was mostly just playing around with local bands. At one point in the beginning of the noughties I was playing with an Italian band that got signed to Virgin Records in Italy. We did do an extensive tour and played a few big festivals but that was only for like a year or so.
Then I got into music production so for me, the end of the band was the start of my solo adventure.
Were you a DJ first or producer first?
Good question actually because I had started playing around with Cubase and sort of like starting to produce music, just to get to grips with it really. It was such a different thing.
So, I literally just had sampler, a keyboard, and my Atari Cubase. What I do remember is in about 2000 or 2001, I came back from a trip in London with a lot of records but I had no intention of becoming a DJ. So I brought my records over to a friend of mine in Italy who I respected quite a lot as a DJ. And he said, ‘Oh, I really like this stuff like you should play at the next party that I am doing’. I had no idea how to DJ and so he decided to teach me.
I think we had about 10 days or something so he just about got me to a level where I could beat match and off we went. It just kind of happened. It was like the big release of energy that you’ve been accumulating in the studio.
Do you remember what you learnt on?
A couple of 1200s but I cant remember what the mixer was. I had it pretty easy compared to some. Actually, one was a 1200, the other was a different deck but still direct drive, no belts!
So, who gave you your big your first big performance break in the DJ space. And what was it like for you.
I definitely think things took off after I moved to London. I was initially producing breakbeat and it was quite a small circle in London. I remember playing a gig at a bar in Camden called Bar Vinyl, which was a above a shop called Vinyl Addiction, and above that were the offices of Fingerlickin’ Records which was my fave breakbeat label.
So even though it was a small gig it was quite magical for me. I started releasing tracks on a label called West Records who had quite a lot of friends in the breakbeat circle. Within a year I started playing most of the venues around in London, from Ministry to The End, Turnmills, Fabric etc.
I think probably playing the first time at Fabric was the thing that took me to the next level.
So, you quickly morphed from breakbeat into going back more to your roots with your disco sound. Did you have a mentor that led you in that process or did you find your own way?
I tried to find my own way. I mean I had some friends who were branching away from breakbeat and getting more into House Music. One of them was Riva Starr actually.
I saw him make the transition from breakbeat to house. I still loved breakbeat but it had become a little stale. The production level just wasn’t very exciting at the time and there were only a handful of acts that made really good music.
It really was quite a natural thing because the core of my sound was quite funky. Whereas you know some other styles of breaks are a lot more aggressive but mine was always more like Kraak and Smaak, Jalapeno sort of funky vibes. The transition wasn’t actually that much of a difference because as you said it was a bit more of going back to my roots. And it definitely took a while to find my sound, but it did happen quite naturally.
Do you think it was also an age thing as well? A maturity thing?
Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. Definitely. A lot of people in the Disco scene, are kind of like around my age. Everybody’s experimented with different sounds. Even looking at the Australian scene, Late Night Tuff Guy was a techno DJ and Greg Packer was a respected drum n bass name. As you get older, instead of trying to impress with crazy production techniques, you’re keener on making good music per se. At least that’s how it is for me.
So, after nine years in London (and we know you like the weather so that’s part of the attraction) what else was it that attracted you to that region?
Funny enough, as you mention it, I am rereading a book that I read when I was probably 16, or 17, which is Jack Kerouac ‘On The Road’. It is basically about hitchhiking across America. And I do remember reading that book and thinking, ‘Oh, this sounds so much different from our lifestyle in Europe. I would like to go and check it out and experience it.’
Also when I was into rock, a lot of the stuff that I liked was coming from over here like Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jane’s Addiction, Primus. Faith No More; all that stuff was coming from California pretty much. It’s also got a really good funk scene where a lot of session musicians play some super classic records from here.
So I just wanted to come and check it out and see what it was like and yeah the weather does work for me lol.
Do you think it’s helped with your development as an artist?
I’m not sure, I mean it’s definitely mellowed me. The West Coast sound is very, very mellow so I think it definitely helps my transition to a more eclectic funk and disco vibe as opposed to a slightly more aggressive sound. I don’t think it’s changed me radically.
I still think of London as the city that influenced me the most. Musically, every time I go back to the UK, it’s just unbelievable. The English crowd is always so clued up on music. They tend to have a really good musical knowledge, which doesn’t really happen in as much in other places.
It’s been a year since ‘Then Came The Sun’, what does that album mean to you now looking back on it?
I’ve done two other albums in my career, and one was with a rock band. Another one was an instrumental album that I did with a jazz piano player. And both of those were so painful to make that I kind of swore to myself that I would never make another album ever again.
So, when Andy aka Yam Who? from Midnight Riot approached me and said, ‘Maybe it’s time to make an album’. My instant feeling was like, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to make another album. It’s too much work’.
But then I thought it would be quite nice to have that as a statement of how much my music had changed in the last couple of years and have it as a sort of landmark of where I am right now with my music.
I’m actually very, very happy that its out and it got some really good reviews. I’m still very pleased with it. So, yeah. It’s definitely a good memory .
You’ve worked with a lot of Australian artists and labels recently. Do you think they bring something different to the process?
Yeah, definitely. I definitely think that Australia has its own sound outside of the straight disco vibe and Flight Facilities and Empire of the Sun have been big influences.
And then obviously I have been working quite a bit with Hot Sunday records and Christian Pillot aka Colour Castle and then obviously both Dr Packer and Late Night Tuff Guy are other big influences. I was really blown away when I came to Australia and how we literally heard Disco coming out of every single bar especially in Sydney at places like Bondi.
Your collaboration with you, Nick and Barbara Tucker; that must have been a dream come true for you. How difficult was it to get the arrangement right to complement such a unique and empowering voice?
That track actually started out when Nick came to LA because one of the acts he managed had a Grammy nomination. And he hit me up saying hey, I’ve been playing some of your tunes and do you want to meet up and work on something together. I hadn’t quite realised at the time, that he was this legendary A&R guy who had signed the Prodigy to XL Records among other things. I knew who he was but not the whole story.
So anyway, we just met for a couple of hours and came together with a main idea actually pretty quickly. Then we did a bit of work on it separately. And at one point, we realised that we needed a singer on it, and he just casually suggested that he could try and hit up Barbara Tucker. They did some work together previously. He was the one that signed Beautiful People to Positiva.
I instantly said oh wow, yes! And we sent her a demo of the track. She absolutely loved it and got cracking on it right away and came up with a vocal line really quickly. And yeah, it’s pretty much a dream come true.
In the studio drums first, bass, vocals?
Drums first. I learned the hard way that the other way doesn’t work. I’ve definitely made the mistake of putting embellishments over embellishments over things just to realise that the main drum groove had something that didn’t work. So yeah, definitely drums first.
What are the essential elements to use for you that make up a good House track?
Again, going back to the beat, I would say that is the most essential. I mean, I really love a good melody or hook, especially because I come from rock music and pop music so I always tend to think in terms of songs. But at the end of the day, the thing that really sets your track apart from others, speaking of dance music, is the drum arrangement/groove and how it works.
So, what advice can you give to a budding DJ or producer?
Cheesy as it sounds, I would say the key thing is that you need to find your own voice. We all tend to get too lost in the technicalities, like I don’t know – the best compressor for sidechanining but there are a million youtube tutorials for that these days. Find your own sound and find your own style. At the end of the day that’s what sets you apart from everyone else. That’s the key advice that I would give.
Who are your favourite producers?
The Australian producers I have already mentioned. Yuksek is someone whose productions I always play. Purple Disco Machine is really good at bridging the gap between Disco and House in a classy way.
I really love all this new stuff that’s been coming out from the Glitterbox, their quality standard is always very high. Seamus Haji is someone who’s been a bit overlooked, but he’s also amazing and is a great DJ as well. Yam Who?, both his solo stuff and with Qwestlife is very impressive.
I feel Faze Action is an act that doesn’t get the credit it deserves. The Horse Meat Disco album is going to be amazing if the singles are anything to go by. I always love the things Coeo and Kapote put out too.
I’m sure I forgot a bunch of people… Buried King is also a very good up and coming producer from Sydney.
What’s hot right now for you?
A couple of remixes. One with Black Riot Records called Beautiful Animal for Powder Monkeys. And another remix for seminal Italo disco act Rainbow Team.
It’s on an amazing compilation of old Italo tracks all remixed by different people like Re-Tide, Massimo Berardi, Serge Santiago, Maceo Plex, on Goody Music/FullTime Production. It’s gonna be released on vinyl too, which I am very excited about.
Tech Corner
- Daw? Ableton Live 10
- Synth? Juno 106
- Decks? CDJ 2000s
- Favourite Instrument? Guitar
Quickfire Round
- Favourite House Track? Lil Louis French Kiss
- Your Inspiration? Nature. A nice sunset or a swim always help me reset for the studio.
- Favourite Club? I’ve been lucky to play at a lot of amazing places, but XOYO London was a very special gig for sure!
- Love is…? Music and music is love
- What are you most proud of? My last couple of years of releases.
- Who gives you the best advice? My girlfriend. Especially as she has to listen to my music on endless loops 😊 But I also have a set of trusted ears I send my stuff to…one of them is my good friend Phonat.
- How big is your vinyl collection? It’s still in Italy but its nearing a couple of thousand I believe.
Finally. A whimsical question. Your family gets a phone call to say you’re in a bit of trouble. Who are you with?
Definitely not Donald Trump bahaha…
