When George Daniel announced the birth of dh2, an imprint of the indie record label Dirty Hit, last year, there was no shortage of unanswerable questions from the pop music peanut gallery. Were The 1975 (the band Daniel drums for) breaking up? Had the dizzying heights of Brat summer (the phenomenon he helped his fiancée produce) altered his musical North Star? Could he actually DJ?
The label’s no-frills genesis, fresh off the heels of The 1975’s two-year tour, was unexpectedly announced, but holistically aligned with the scrappy label that has heralded his now-multifaceted success as a drummer, producer, DJ, and loveable popstar beau. Dirty Hit was founded in 2009 after The 1975 famously struck out with every major label on the market and manager Jamie Oburne decided to go it alone, building the necessary industry infrastructure around the band itself. The launch of dh2, of which Daniel is the label head, is not all that dissimilar. Find great talent and build a machine around them—not the other way around.
In the months since its launch, the label has supported a handful of single releases from Daniel as a first-time solo artist, as well as an album launch for Kelly Lee Owens on her fourth full-length record Dreamstate. Recently joining the ranks is Oscar Farrell, the musical director and bassist for Sampha’s live shows who is planning the release of a wide-ranging club EP on March 14.
Instead of meticulously planned rock and roll stadium concerts, the blossoming label’s engine has come in the form of club nights, spawned on short notice across London, New York, and Los Angeles, and consistently sold out in minutes to a diverse audience hoping to piece together the musical breadcrumbs that the world of dance music is so uniquely attuned at spreading. Last week at the label’s latest showcase at Public Records in Brooklyn, New York, we caught up with dh2’s trio of labelmates to learn more about their infamous club nights and the burgeoning label’s dance music dynamic.
When you’re getting ready to DJ a show, do you have moments in your set that you’re already looking forward to beforehand?
Kelly Lee Owens: Personally, yes. I have a few things that I love and I play most sets, just for myself and I think that’s really important because, yes, you’re there to please the crowd to a degree, but also you have to be in command and take people on a journey.
George Daniel: I think unreleased stuff is fun because it’s nice to confuse people. And it’s quite nice, without sounding troll-y, for people to get it wrong on the internet when they’re trying to guess what it is and you’re like, “nope try again.”
Oscar Farrell: I’ve definitely played unreleased tunes that just flopped really hard when I was still learning to produce. I think at least I know it sounded okay, that’s definitely the bit that I’m looking forward to. It’s actually seeing if people dance along and seeing if that’s the turning point for the direction that you go down.
Like a standup comedian workshopping material, to a degree?
GD: Yeah that’s an interesting parallel because I don’t feel that way with the band, we would never play something if it wasn’t finished, right? Like not in a million years.
What are the differences between DJing in the US versus the UK?
GD: About to find out! Kelly’s probably the most experienced to answer that question.
KLO: It’s funny because I think that people here are more free in their dancing. I don’t know what it is.
GD: Less cynicism. For sure, 100%.
KLO: Yeah, they just love that you’re here and they’re grateful that you’re here and I think there’s a cooler kind of tone maybe in London sometimes, not always depending on where you play but it feels more free here.
GD: There’s a slight amount of romanticism as well, of like a British artist coming to play maybe British-leaning dance music in America.
OF: I’ve definitely got a load of very UK-leaning tunes I want to play which I’m quite excited about.
GD: It makes you double down, doesn’t it?
What’s your favourite club to play at the moment?
GD: I mean without sounding sycophantic towards what we’re about to do, this has been on my list of rooms to play since I knew about it.
OF: Same here.
GD: Phonox I think is one of the best mid-sized clubs in London that we’ve done now a couple of times.
KLO: Unfortunately there’s a lot of closures at the moment happening with clubs and there’s not enough protection and that’s like a global issue. So the pool is actually very small. In South London, there are a few real dank, kind of like underground places. But then, you know, the institutions like Fabric, for example, are still really important because they almost closed.
OF: I do have a real soft spot for Fabric’s history and the mix series.
KLO: Oh my God, we tested out the mixes for my album in Fabric. They let us in for free in the afternoon, didn’t they? In the daytime. And so that shows you like, yes, it’s bigger, but there’s community still. I was like, “We’re not sure about the mixes for the album, can we test them?” And they just let us use their system for free on a Wednesday afternoon, me and George went down.
GD: Yeah, it was really cool.
Do you always try to test mixes in clubs before releasing them?
GD: I would actually feel really not confident finishing, mixing and mastering without ever hearing it in the club because it shows you stuff even if it’s like technically less correct, it might just be not right. It might be like the best mix you’ve ever heard on your headphones in the studio but it doesn’t hit.
KLO: It has to hit the chest, like if a kick drum’s not hitting here then it’s useless ultimately.
GD: Basically kick drum up, bass up, make sure the hi-hats rip your head off. Oscar doesn’t need to say anything because his mixes always sound perfect.
OF: The first take of what you feel is right is usually right. And then you spend three weeks turning stuff up and down.
Where do you go for samples or inspiration when putting together a set?
OF: Lots of record stores, just digging. I love doing that.
What are you looking for in the crates?
OF: White labels, labels, and sometimes literally if you’ve got enough time on your hands, you just pick up something because something about it is interesting. Like today I got a record that I just found really funny because the label email was a Hotmail email address and I was like “I’ve got to listen to this, this sounds great”.
GD: I also think YouTube’s pretty good because sometimes there’ll be edits that had been shut down that people weren’t allowed to release because of samples or whatever so there’s often really good bootlegs and stuff on YouTube that then you need to try and find somewhere else otherwise you’ve got a horrible sounding YouTube rip.
OF: Yeah, and the Reddit rabbit hole for edits.
GD: I will say social media makes that stuff so much easier because everyone posts videos of edits whether they’re out or not and in the comments you’ll find immediately what it is and it’s just like that could have taken you forever, pre like Shazam.
KLO: There’s still a beauty of going to a physical place and finding stuff. In a song, I have loads of weird samples from my iPhone taken on a train for the percussion. I hear music everywhere it’s like really cheesy to say but I do and I find that can trigger an idea. Dreamstate was called “Dream Sequence” for a bit because I had a dream where a stadium full of people were singing this melody to me in unison and I woke up and I had to sing it into my phone and the next day I just went and played the chords.
GD: That’s quite unsettling, like “What’s this song? I don’t know! Am I the only one who doesn’t know?”
KLO: I was like “Has anyone heard this song?”
GD: When I first started listening to dance music when I was like 16, I left school and went to do music and production and my tutors were like here’s Luke Vibert and Squarepusher, stuff I would never ever have found if I didn’t leave my small town and go to Manchester, I gathered a lot of music during that time.
KLO: That’s so interesting to me though, you would never guess that right with George just with ‘75 stuff?
GD: Some of it’s super obvious when like in certain songs, when me and Matty first started writing songs we didn’t know any chords so we made everything out of loops and then the bass was changing. Which is innately a dance music thing, it’s not like it was considered at the time it was just like, that’s the only thing we know. And it’s totally different now, we both know chords and Matty can really, really play.
Nowadays, everyone online is getting into DJing but a lot of dance clubs IRL still feel quite gatekept. Do you think there should be a barrier to entry to certain music scenes?
KLO: It’s hard isn’t it? Because in the current state of things, I don’t think there’s much room for gatekeeping, without community it will die and people won’t have the opportunities that I’ve had for example.
GD: Yeah, if things are struggling to exist. . .
KLO: There is something to be said for collecting your library of stuff and not just giving away all your tracks and having that discovery yourself, like someone’s worked hard for 10 years to gather their tracks and I respect that.
GD: Yeah, I don’t love it when like someone posts the entire track list of the whole night.
KLO: Yeah, it’s cute but it’s also like. . .
GD: It can go both ways because sometimes there’ll be a timestamp and it’ll make you feel really good because that’s your favorite moment and someone else has timestamped it going “What the hell is this?” and you’re like “Oh that’s my favorite thing too.”
OF: Yeah, I wish the culture was a bit less scary to get into, I remember getting quite bugged out going to parties and club nights and things that were more headsy, you felt a bit unwelcomed.
KLO: Especially as a woman. I would be judged, like I had to learn how to properly beat match because I knew if I didn’t, I would not be welcomed. But I also respect that because it is a craft at the end of the day. I sometimes struggle to call myself a DJ because I’ve never learned to beat match with turntables and stuff. Even yesterday I DJ’d with Busy P and Erol Alkan and they’ve been doing it for nearly 30 years and I felt so intimidated
GD: Yeah that’s really scary, so scary.
KLO: But all they did was make me feel welcomed, like 10,000 people at Alexandra Palace but they just gave me all the encouragement and I think now I’m a better DJ since last night. It just opened up this world like “Oh, I can do it.”
GD: I’m really looking forward to watching you after the last night’s success actually.
It feels like the dance music world fetishizes being underground more than other genres. Do you grapple with holding onto a sort of mystique while still wanting to grow your career as an artist?
KLO: I’ve been like an “underground darling” for a while. But I actually want to go beyond that. And what does that look like? What does that mean? I’ve had like a mini-crisis myself to try to figure that out. I don’t know the answer exactly but I do know that I’ve been shedding that mystique a bit. Because it’s like, I’ve been doing it for so long, you can’t keep yourself in that box too much. I’ve kind of gotten over myself in that way.
GD: Yeah, everyone wants to be as big as they can be whilst being true to themselves. Anyone who doesn’t agree with that is lying or is full of shit.
OF: I think it’s just kind of trying not to think about it and go with the music you’re into making.
GD: And hope everyone else joins in.
KLO: And also just like, I worked in record stores for 10 years, and I used to have issues with genres and how limiting they can fucking be. Like Arthur Russell, where the fuck do you put him? Just put an Arthur Russell section, you know, from disco to folk. Sometimes we just want to put people in boxes, and it’s so limiting and boring. And I think personally where I’m at now, I just want to break that down.
GD: A healthy amount of not thinking everything is exactly the same is good. There are some tribal sets of dance music like drum and bass or dubstep and it infuriates people so much. There are rivalries and there are obviously genres that people also hate, but I think it’s a bit more intense in dance music, especially now, because bands basically … don’t exist almost.
What’s the most annoying subculture of electronic music?
GD: Well, EDM shouldn’t exist because it’s not a genre. It was a title given from America to a lot of different genres of dance music and anyone who’s into electronic music knows that.
KLO: I get called EDM sometimes. Isn’t that mad?
GD: Yeah by people who don’t know. And I don’t mean to sound like a dick. I just do feel strongly about the term EDM and that it’s a toxic thing to put things under because there’s like there’s some techno that I think is good and I see people calling it EDM and I’m like don’t, that’s not right, that’s not good.
Who is your dream collaborator?
KLO: Thom Yorke.
OF: Thom Yorke.
GD: I mean, Burial’s never played a show. So if he was like “Yo, I really want to play a dh2 night. Is that alright?” That’d be it.
Photography: Jordan Curtis Hughes