D' void and conquer

How’s this for a dilemma? You’ve been making underground techno and house for the best part of 10 years, making sure you know your history, serving your time, getting the nod from all the ‘right’ people… and then… aaaghhh! One of your records only goes on to become a monster, genre-mashing, end-of-nighter-across-the-board hit – a tune that puts you in a place you never thought you’d be (or maybe you secretly did…) What do you do? In Funk d’Void’s case, you step back, survey all around you… and then take the baton and run…

Lars Sanderberg released his tipping point single, ‘Diabla’, in mid-2002 and promptly saw everyone from the Chemical Brothers to Sasha to Laurent Garnier proclaim it the proverbial proverbials. All well and good – but how do you follow that?
“There was quite a bit of pressure after ‘Diabla’ because it had done so well across so many genres,” says the affable Scot from his Barcelona home. “It helped with a lot of DJ gigs and all that, but I didn’t want to rush the follow-up. I didn’t want to take the usual option of rushing out loads of remixes that all sounded the same, I did a few mixes that I liked the sound of – you can’t say no to New Order – but I prefer to do something big every couple of years and not rush stuff.”
Was ‘Diabla’ a conscious decision to write a ‘hit’?
“It was an idea I had floating around for some time – I was saving some samples for it, so yes. It’s the same with the follow-up, I had found a sample of an old Italian house record that I wanted to save for the right time… and I think the right time was now. That’s what became ‘Emotional Content’.”
The much-pondered follow-up to ‘Diabla’ surfaced earlier this year and provoked a similar – if not so universal – response. It’s a gem, but it’s definitely not as ‘techno’ as its predecessor. A conscious decision?
“I think techno has changed quite a bit over the past few years – a lot of the harder, loop-driven stuff doesn’t do it for me anymore. I find that I’ve just got a bit bored of it.”
Why? Older and wiser and all that?
“I suppose so – maybe we are looking for a bit more from our music these days. I think that’s why so much tech-house stuff is becoming so popular – (adopts sarf London accent) it’s got the right amount of techno and house mate.”
Veteran techno snobs might turn their noses ever more skyward with the release of Lars’ excellent new album, Emotional Content later this month. We’ll get into the sticky details in a minute, but first to the matter of the two vocal numbers on the LP.
“I suppose I did actually set out to write a hit,” Lars explains. “Something like a tech-house crossover radio track, one that could pick up plays on the radio. There hasn’t really been one of them yet – probably something to do with snobbery maybe, I don’t know. But there was definitely an element of going into the studio and writing a track with a view to adding a vocal to it.
“Out of the two vocal tracks on the LP - ‘Way Up High’ and Can’t Get Enough Of A Good Thing’ - the former is my favourite and possibly the more successful, but if you look at the latter, which was done with Mark Bell, it comes in at around three and a half minutes, which is around the ideal time for a radio track. I’m sure this kind of attitude will get stick from some of the fans of my older stuff or the more snobbish types, but you’ll have that…”
Is Detroit still the be all and end all reference point?
“Unfortunately, it’s been a while since a record came from Detroit that I really liked – I think I’ll always prefer the earlier stuff, when it was done on the simple machines and was a lot more basic.”
And Volume Freak – out on February 24 on the venerable Soma label – is the sound of a producer moving up and on, but not forgetting where he’s come from. It has the (potential) hits for sure, but it still has the necessary ingredients to keep the more traditional Funk d’Voiders happy. Witness the raw, jackin’ techno/house of ‘Beat The Bleep’, the re-vamped ‘Jack Me Off’ (a classic that emerged in 1996, given an excellent update) and ‘5 to 12’. Plus, there’s the dreamy, Balearic closer ‘Sueno For Somebody’, the two recent singles and the equally as good newie, ‘All That Matters’. In short, it’s a proper fucking album. Recorded over a period of eight months last year, it’s got depth, emotional and warmth. In fact, quite a lot of warmth – anything to do with the move to Barcelona, Lars?
“I think so,” he laughs. “You know, the heat was more of a hindrance than anything else at the start as it took so long to find the right flat and then to set up a studio. And you can’t do a fucking thing over here without air-conditioning. It broke down once and I had to go and buy a new unit immediately, literally walking the streets sweating, carrying the new unit on my back… that’s why I called my studio Sweatbox Studios – most of this album was recorded with me in my underpants” Underground techno? Nah, this is underwear techno… at its best.