King Unique should take extended holidays more often. After a mammoth break – well, a long tour – they’re back with Yohkoh, a track with Danny Howells reckons is their best yet…
Matthew Roberts and Matt Thomas have had enough. Or maybe that should be they’ve had enough of having enough. Let’s explain: at the start of the year, the duo otherwise known as King Unique realised that they’d spent about a decade in the studio non-stop. It was time, they decided, for a break. Handily, they’d just released their excellent mix album Electric, so they took off on tour. Eight months later, they were getting the recording itch again. It was time for the duo who have made some of the most memorable club tracks in recent years to get back into the studio and make some more. Then they set themselves the goal of making something that surpassed their previous output, and the resulting track, Yohkoh, ended up taking ages to make.
It’s undoubtedly been worth the effort though. Danny Howells reckons it’s the best tune they’ve ever made, and we reckon he’s right. It’s certainly a change from the almost light-hearted 2 The Left, which preceded Yohkoh, and it’s a track that sees them back in the bubbling, atmospheric, floor-filling house mode we know and love them for.
“We hadn't made a record in over a year, so we wanted to make something memorable, something with a bit of longevity, something that might sound good in a year or two”
“We went through a lot of effort to make it good,” says Matthew. “We hadn't made a record in over a year, so we wanted to make something memorable. We get a lot of people asking us about one of our old tracks, Sugarhigh, so we wanted to do something in that vein, something with a bit of longevity. Sometimes you're happy to make a club track that's stupid and of the moment, but this time we wanted to make something that might sound good in a year or two.
“We tend to work by intuition and do what we like, so the last record we made was quite silly and good fun. This time we wanted to make something that will sound good in the future. So it took a bit longer to make than some records – it was one of those where you play it once and realise you've got to go back and make it right. You keep doing that until the point where you're sick of hearing it.”
“Aside from being a way to stop people asking for Sugarhigh incessantly, Yohkoh is a very uplifting track for us,” says Matt. “We've had a really cool year or not just staring at computer screens and each other – we've actually got outside and seen sunshine too. So it was easy to write something uplifting like Yohkoh rather than something dark and moody and hunched over a computer.”
Now they’re back hunched over the computers again though. With Yohkoh being almost the sum total of their output this year, they’re powering back into their label Curfew and their remixes. On the Curfew front, the latest track, Asylum Sneaker by Magik Johnson, has been big with the likes of Jesse Rose, Adam Beyer and Sasha. "It was a strangely universal tune," says Matt. “And the label’s now been around long enough that people are looking out for its new releases, but we try not to put out anything we wouldn't play ourselves. I'm not saying that's a gold standard, by any means, but I think there's often a temptation with a label to just put out the next release. Now you don't need to put out something every week to make sure you're getting the same shelf space.”
On the remix front, they’ve just finished a re-rub of Luke Dzierzek's Identity in exchange for his mix of Yohkoh, and then Matt’s Merkins project – which sees him producing alongside Steve Mercer – has just done a remix of Elevate, the new Pete Heller and Satoshi Tomiie collaboration. And the remix offers keep flying in.
“Remixing is a very quick way or getting lots of music out very quickly, but our own stuff is definitely the way forward,” says Matt. “It's your own records that people value most.”
“But you can't afford to indulge yourself in the studio anymore and spend ages and ages on every track and remix you ever do,” says Matthew. “We've been quite bad for that in the past, but in the current climate, it's not cost effective. So we've tried to speed up, and we've done a lot of stuff for the Beatport generation where records age in seven days and they're already old. But even some remixes are still a real labour of love, like the Tracey Thorn track Grand Canyon.”
So is there an album on the way then? God knows there are enough people crying out for one. “Maybe if I can get some more fresh air,” says Matt. “I actually think that dance albums never really made much sense. It's a way of clearing out your ideas. I always thought it was a left-over idea from rock music. Things get old so fast with dance music, where's the sense in writing 12 tunes that are going to be old when you release them. I think you should just put things out and if people want to compile their own albums and send them back to me saying, 'This is my favourite King Unique album,' I'll be happy to sign them.”
