The Good Tyrant

Alongside Craig Richards and Sasha, Lee Burridge is resident at the acclaimed, boundary breaking Tyrant night. A DJ since the late 80s, Burridge moved to Hong Kong in the early nineties but is only gaining recognition now. Digital Beat had a quick chat with one of the leaders of the nu-skool.

How did you originally hook up with Craig Richards?
A shared sense of humour really. I was out in Hong Kong and Craig came over and persuaded the promoter to let him play. At the after hour party I just really got into Craig s sense of humour so we stayed friends. Then he came out again and we found we had a shared friendship with Sasha and we d all been talking about each other and music and having a laugh.
Why did you originally go out to Hong Kong?
I was pretty bored of England. There was nothing going on here: I was living in Dorset, a bit too scared to move to London because I d never lived in London before and you get ideas in your head when you live in the countryside! You get scared of electricity! I suddenly got this offer out of the blue: did I want to go to Hong Kong to work in a bar DJing? It was very commercial music in the respect that it was the microphone 60s to 90s music. I just decided to give it a shot, I just went and it all panned out from there
When you got out there did it take on a more serious role?
For two years I stuck at doing the microphone stuff, but I d also taken dance music with me that I d bought or tried to play in England. Again, I met up with a load of people I got on with: nothing was going on in Hong Kong and they were looking for a release. We started doing small parties on a Sunday night and I DJed at it. It became a roaring success: within two or three months, we had to move venue and the crowd grew from 80 people to 500 people almost instantly.
When the big clubs started to come over to Hong Kong, you were the first face theyd meet as the resident DJ
There were all these promoters in Hong Kong and they started bringing over international DJs. I think myself and some friends were actually the ones who ended up looking after the DJs because you can get on, you can talk about music. When I came back to England I rung everybody I met in Hong Kong, and it was basically Craig and Sasha who came up with the goods when nobody else did.
Your hard work has paid off. The last year has been a turning point for you.
It s only really been in the last year that it all happened. The first year I came back was the most frustrating year I ve ever had, because I came from Hong Kong where I was DJing five nights a week to the UK where I was doing six gigs in a year. I wanted to play, it s what I do and love doing. If you can t play it does your head in. At the end of the year I was on the ropes. Is it going to work out? Have I made the right decision? But all of a sudden there were more gigs, Craig had sorted out a lot for me.
What do you make of that nu breed tag? There was a recent magazine cover with you, Anthony Pappa, Steve Lawler and Craig Richards on it.
Well, we re not really new are we? Just in the public consciousness in the UK and they had to come up with a name for it it s just a name. It s identity and I think to a lot of people I could have been just DJing for a year. Unless you read a lot of music magazines, I m still in the realms of Lee Burridge, who? and don t expect to be anywhere else, really.
The Tyrant CD seems to mix up a lot of different sounds: there s house like Illumination and then there s harder breakbeat Is it right that the house material is Craig s and the breakbeat tracks are your selection?
No. If you looked in our record boxes, we ve got this huge crossover area of similar music. If they re not the same records they re in the same vein, be it house or tech-house or whatever people are labelling it, and we ve both got a passion for breakbeat. The CD is just how we play when were in a club. Before we started the Tyrant CD we decided that we have to use records we completely love and have played out. Really, it s got to represent what we do when we re DJing. I think if we pursue this avenue of mixing it up, hopefully, eventually people will know that s what we do and we won t have people coming up to us going oh it was banging tonight, I didn t like it, you didn t play very well . How we play is whatever records come out of the box, really. Blind, muddled judgment as usual!
It also makes your music difficult to categorise, which is welcome in modern dance music
I think that s what we ve done at Tyrant, we ve stuck to what we believed in. Fabric is very important, not just for us, but for the whole, musical movement that s happening at the moment because they re booking a lot of DJs for peak time slots who might not necessarily be in the main room in other clubs. It s the same with Golden, and it s fantastic for me to have a residency there as well. It s an amazing crowd of people, I get to play there every week, and the music isn t that accessible. It s not really a battle but it s not easy to win over some people instantly, but they ve all responded well to it and are getting into it.
Finally, what other plans do you have for this year?
To go into the studio with Craig. I think it s very important that we make music, but if it s shit music it s also important you don t release it! Hopefully we ll get it together. I went into the studio a few times last year, not to release anything but just to get used to it and get a handle on how things work. If I m in the studio I want to be actively involved. I don t want to be there going yeah that sounds good, no that sounds awful .
Craig Richards & Lee Burridge play Homelands Ireland, The Mosney Centre, Co. Meath on April 29th. Tyrant is out now on Distinctive Breaks.