Interviews
Punks Jump Up
(From Chief Mag 2007)
Punks Jump Up are DJs David and Joe, Swedish and English, respectively. Their beats could make your dead grandma shake that ass.
And let me tell you, ain’t nothing can make my dead grandma dance.
What is the origin of the name, are you looking for punks to jump up or just to get down?
The name PJU summed up, musically, where we were coming from when we started out. We spun a lot of hip hop/dancehall/punk in the early days. We jump up and sometimes we get (beat) down!
How did guys meet, why did you start making music instead of just spinning other people’s stuff?
We first met up in Sweden ages ago. David’s from Sweden. Joe was doing a DJ tour in Sweden and was the guest DJ at the club David was a resident at. Much later David moved to London. Both Joe and David were
individually running nights involving Swedish acts. Joe spotted the flyer for David’s night while out looking for some new trainers. Without knowing, he contacted him about the night and we hooked up and realized we’ve known each other since the gig in Sweden. Before you know it, we had a night called Punks Jump Up going. That’s how we started. We started making music cause we couldn’t find enough contemporary music that sounded like what we wanted to buy, so we thought we’d do it ourselves.
You’ve talked before about your DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ethic when it comes to promoting yourselves, and the importance of that kind of creative freedom, but now as you’re getting well-known, what’s the next step for you? How are you going to stay true and still get your sound out there?
You have to surround yourself and work with the right people. We would never compromise on what we want to do, and we have to feel comfortable with what we’re doing. There are ways of staying who you are, and still having commercial success. Not that we’re there yet by any means, but what we’re saying is that it is possible to make credible and interesting music and still be accessible. We’re still very much into the DIY ethic and that will always be there in some form.
When did you decide to quit your day jobs and commit to Punks full-time?
Just recently. Things started to move in the right direction. You have to make that decision sooner rather than later. If you want to do something properly you have to do it full time. We started to get more and more offers for gigs and remix work and that was the green light to take that step. You close one door and another opens .
What kinds of challenges came with running your own label, Cassette Records?
The Hardest thing was finding good music that suited what Cassette is about. In the beginning we had quite a defined idea of what kind of music we wanted to release. We have broadened that view quite a bit now, which makes it easier to find stuff that we want to put out. Before, we were too financially limited to put out that many 12′s , but now we have a deal with Amato Distribution here in the UK and Europe, which should allow us to release three to four 12′s in a year instead of four releases in four years!
Your song “Dance to Our Disco” is potentially the best get-sweaty, spill-your-drink, dance-hard anthem I’ve heard in a while. What was the writing process like for it, and what’s the secret to your funk?
We wrote that track two years ago, so it is actually quite an old tune for us. We wrote the music and the lyrics for the singer Chalk Jaxon (everyone keeps asking us if it’s the singer from The Hives) and he was
up for doing it. The earliest version we did was recorded at Bjorn Yttling’s studio in Stockholm (of Peter Bjorn and John fame) then we re-recorded a year later with Chalk and that’s the version that came out on Kitsune Maison 4. We wanted to make a storming disco tune with a punk edge. Gildas at Kitsune heard it and wanted to put it out. It’s great that it came out eventually, it really sums up what we were into at that time. We’ve moved on from the Dance To… sound, that tune was more a homage to the early 80′s scene. Now we are working on taking those influences and doing something more contemporary.
What English groups in the electro, drum’n’ bass, and grime scene do you like? Are you influenced by them? Do you like the indie hybrids?
We’re influenced by everything around us, maybe not drum and bass and grime as such, but we like the idea of mixing genres up and creating something new with it.
How are Swedish and English crowds different, and why?
Swedish audience can be quite reserved, if sober. Swedes have got an almost Japanese outlook on music, they’re not geographically situated where most things are happening. They study it from the outside and make up their own firm opinion of what something is like and then fanatically worship it. They know more about B sides and catalog numbers than the artists they look up to do. Quite admirable though! English audience? Depends where you go. London crowds can sometimes be quite blasé about things, depends on where you’re playing, whereas crowds in Manchester, Dublin or Sheffield are crazily into it and they show it as well.
What’s the hardest gig you’ve had and where was the crowd the hardest to get on their feet?
The hardest gigs are usually the VIP/model parties where people are more focused on looking good and showing their right angle than going for it.
As for hard gigs, If you had to spin at George Bush’s ranch in Texas, with the president and his daughters eating BBQ ribs and drinking ice cold Bud, what would be your setlist, and more importantly, what would you wear?
I’d probably spin selected cuts from the Crass records catalog (Crass, Flux Of Pink Indians, DIRT, etc.) along with the odd Conflict or Discharge track, then move into more dancehall, bashment flava and round off with a couple of black metal tracks preferably In League With Satan by Venom or Circle Of The Tyrants by Celtic Frost.
For me, I kind of get embarrassed when I reveal to people that I genuinely love 2 Live Crew, JJ Fad (yeah, the “We like the cars that go boom” girls…) and other early nineties rap. What kind of early hip-hip do you listen to, and what is your guilty pleasure?
Don’t get us started on the hip hop! How many pages have we got? Early hip hop? Hip Hop was really interesting in the early days when people were still trying to work out what hip hop was. You had arty people
joining up with the B Boys, that’s when the really interesting stuff happens… Snow- Informer… New edition – Candy Girl.
When you’re all alone at home, what disco do you dance to?
The sound of silence. No, but Seriously… reggae/dub, balearic pop cheese, rockabilly, country music, cajun stuff.
Mellow stuff like Studio’s new album, Embassy. Both bands from Sweden.
How have you been influenced by DFA records, The Rapture and the Clash… and how’d you decide to make the saxophone sexy again?
We had to have a sax section followed by a tom roll section on Dance To Our Disco, two essential ingredients in any track taking influence from the 80′s. That was our chance and we took it. DFA and Rapture kicked off a
new sound based on great classic ideas and therefore reinvented music. Great stuff. It made sense to us and we’re big fans! Clash? What can we say? Untouchable. Big influence on our early stuff and we even made a
tune with the reggae legend Tappa Zukie which sounds like The Fall meeting Sandinista Clash in Jamaica with Tappa chatting on the mic. Watch out!
For your upcoming gig in Paris, what kinds of tricks do you have up your sleeves to impress the discerning tastes of the French?
Just trying to do a great set and have a great time in the process. We’re really looking forward to it!
What’s your favorite pose for photos : the Run DMC or the Gary Numan?
Run DMC.
It sounds like you’ve brushed the dust off of some old drum machines and brought back the hand claps. What instruments do you play and what kind of gear do you use?
We play guitar, bass and keyboards. We use Logic 7, Mac computer, valve compressors and pre amp, a 707 drum machine… some live percussion instruments. Oh yeah, we also have the biggest collection of live recorded hand claps this side of the atlantic!
There’s an undercurrent of early-ninties aesthetic to your T-shirt designs and to the whole “new rave” scene in general. Who did you have design your shirts, and how would you describe the overall look of Punks Jump Up and your clothing label Stiff Couture?
The first T-shirt on Stiff Couture is a PJU T-shirt designed by Kate Moross. Check out her stuff, she’s truly brilliant and she will go big. We will work with designers that we like to create Stiff Couture T’s, anyone we happen to think is doing a good thing and that we want to support. K Moross happened to have an early 90′s feel cause that’s what she is about (among other things), but we thought it looked great
so we did it. PJU’s look is a mishmash of everything we are into, 80′s stuff, 90′s stuff. Dance music, punk, Disco, hip hop, reggae, the lot. We also would like to get more established artist’s to make a design
for Stiff such as Futura, Trevor Jackson (Playgroup) and So me.
What’s the remixing process like? How do you keep the original flavor of the song while injecting it with your funk?
It depends on if we’re remixing a “proper song” (verse, chorus, etc) or if it’s more of a dancy track. We try to listen for what we like in a tune and emphasize that. We like to keep the song as the main focus and add our stuff around it. The remix is our interpretation. We always start from scratch. we haven’t got a library of basslines or beats or whatever that we just pick out from. We jam along with the accapella and see where we end up.
How did you get involved with remixing big names like Digitalism, Don Cash and Peter Bjorn and John?
Most remixes have been offered to us. We’re really good friends with Peter Bjorn and John and we put on their very first London gig at our club night a few years back. They asked if we wanted to do “Young Folks”, and how can we refuse such a brilliant track? Same goes for Digitalism – Pogo, Gossip, Don Cash, etc etc… they are all great tracks.
You seem to have a following in Japan – a record store there sold out of your debut single within hours. Why do you think your music caught on so well in Japan?
Japanese people are soaking up everything that’s new and different and cool. Luckily we managed to tick the right boxes. It was a big moment for us when we realized our first 12″ done so well out there. Hopefully “Dance To Our Disco…” will do well too! We might go over there and play sometime later this year.
What are you doing when you’re not playing with the group? Are there side projects going on as well? Other interests outside of music?
This is all we do at the moment. No time off. We got loads of other interests… Film, food, art and design, stiff couture and cassette records, sleep, plan holidays that never happen!
My girl, film, books, history, the supernatural, stiff couture and cassette records.
What’s up next for you?
We’re finishing off a couple of more remixes now (Bloc Party, another Peter Bjorn & John, Yelle etc) and then we’re gonna put everything else to one side and just concentrate on our own music, our own songs. It’s well overdue…! We got loads of gigs booked for the summer as well!
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