Peace movement

Drums, drums, drums. Everywhere you listen these days, it’s all about the drums. Dark, tribal, progressive, whatever, there’s lots and lots of drums. And Peace Division – aka London geezers Clive Henry and Justin Drake – have had a big part to play in the emergence of the drums-r-us scene. “Yeah, I suppose we just make tracky club music really,” says the amiable Drake. “The stuff we make always has a sort of tribal feel to it really… but that just the kind of stuff we make. It’s not really intentional…”

HOTPRESS gets the impression that the tribal/prog bandwagon may be finally coming off the rails, what with the glut of identikit 12”, dull mix albums and boring, repetitive DJ sets. It seems Peace Division might agree. “We’re starting to move away from all that stuff now,” says Justin. “We’re trying to move away from the boring bongo drums, and are starting to try and change what we do.” Surely this is going to be difficult if, as you say, you make “tracky club music”? “It’s hard to say exactly where it’s moving at the minute, but it’s probably heading in a more housey direction.”

I offer the theory that there has always been a slightly camp, queeny element, almost Junior Vasquez-y (mid-’90s NYC DJ) to the pair’s music, and Justin concurs. “Yeah, I think I’d agree with that – there does seem to be an element of that about some of the stuff that’s coming out at the moment. More of a sense of fun.”

If it’s house that Peace Division are heading for, it’ll be a case of heading back to their roots. Or their acid house to be precise. And Clive, for one, comes from a genuine, Junior Boys Own-affiliated London scene that’s been responsible for deciding more dance trends than you’d care to think of. How did the pair meet? “Well, Clive was hanging out in Ibiza in the early ’90s with a group of his mates, and he came across a track I had done on (Andy Weatherall’s old label) Sabres Of Paradise, and he was really into it. So when he came back, he decided to track me down. I was working as a sound engineer and we decided to try and do a few tracks together. We decided to split the writing credits on the first tracks that we made, and took it from there really.”

Still, taking it from there took quite a while. In fact, it took the pair a good five or six years to really make it. “After we kicked things off, it was really scrappy for a few years,” admits Drake. “People were into what we did, but it wasn’t really going anywhere.”

At the time, the pair were releasing records on the Low Pressing label, run by Clive and X-Press 2-er Rocky to a certain amount of critical acclaim and a similar level of sales. Then two things happened. Their 1999 remix of track by Katcha, ‘Touched By God’ was picked up and supported by that portly NYC legend, Danny Tenaglia. Naturally, the big UK names like Pete Tong had to follow (why they couldn’t do it themselves is another argument) and the track became a bit of a hit. Then they released their excellent ‘Junkyard Funk’ album – an excellent blend of house, techno and prog and a fine artist album – and Peace Division had (finally) arrived. “It just started to snowball after that,” admits Justin. “It was really a make or break time for us, so it’s kind of cool that it happened when it did. It took a long time to get there, but we have.”

The division of labour (excuse the pun) between the pair is quite clearly defined. Justin is the chief knob-twiddler, while Clive is the man with the DJ plan. “It’s just easier that way,” reckons Justin. “Clive’s been DJing separately for years, that what he did before this, that’s been his career if you like. I’ve been engineering for years, that’s always where I’ve been happiest really. I’ve had a lot of opportunities to go out DJing recently though because of the Peace Division thing, so I do play out as well.”

Looking at Clive recent DJing jaunts, it’s easy to see just how far Peace Division’s rough, tough tribal sound has spread – numerous dates across Australasia and Europe have been clocked up on his frequent flyer card recently.

Next up for Peace Division is a rather rocking new mix album on Nrk, the next instalment in the successful Nite:Life series. It takes a different direction from the house-filled offerings of the past few, and concentrates on a more fucked-up, 4am sound. It’s positively seamless too. Justin agrees on this point, and then unexpectedly reveals that the whole project was a “fucking headfuck”. Why? “We really did an awful lot of work in getting it together, getting the tracks we wanted, getting them to sound like we wanted. I think the people at NRK were sick of us, because we licensed so many tracks that weren’t actually used. And it was the same with the last CD we did a few years ago. But it’s important, we had to both agree on the tracks and agree it was good, that it had a proper flow to it.”