Next up we have a couple of lads from Oxford who've exploded onto the London DJ circuit over the last couple of years, with the help of the friendly folk at Corsica Studios and Wolf Music - two authority figures in the city's flourishing house scene.
Joseph Spencer and Nicholas Church have mixed up a special hour of synthy electronica, downtempo goodness and some straight up house music, showing they have the nous and collection to play it on any number of stages. You can catch them regularly at London’s most renowned club night Tief at Corsica Studios where they hold a residency. We had a chat as we always do…
How long has the Casino Times project been underway now? Was it a result of you guys DJing together for a long time or did the production side of it come first?
We’ve been doing Casino Times for about three years now. We both met in Oxford studying the same course at University where we both working on more experimental electronic music and detailed audio design projects and it seemed like a natural progression to start working together outside of this environment. It was the success and huge support of our early productions that brought us together as DJs.
Tell us a bit about your affiliation with the Tief crew and the Wolf Agency, it feels as though you guys share a tight connection with all of the other artists involved with lots of mutual support going on.. Has that been a big help in terms of receiving feedback and pushing you guys forward?
Our first gig as Casino Times was at Tief, Corsica Studios which is run by Matt Hesselwoth (Hesseltime), who was a close friend that has now become our agent and manager. Matt is as much apart of Casino Times as we are and thus far it has been an amazing experience working with him and watching Tief evolve into a solid pillar of underground music in London. The night is also soon to become a label with TIEF001 already mastered and sounding hot with two amazing original tracks from our pals Sisterhood and incredible remixes from Arttu and Juju & Jordash.
As for the Wolf guys, Nick first booked KRL for a night he ran whilst living at Oxford and somewhere down the line we all became pals. Through this we where given the opportunity to remix Greymatter’s – Give It To Me Slow and the next thing we knew we where all on an agency together. We’ve all moved on from the agency now but are going to continue working and releasing with Wolf Music. We frequently ask opinions from all the guys on what they think or our new stuff and the growth of Heart Strings (featured on WOLFEP17) would have seemed unnatural without their input.
I know you guys have some ‘Casino Edits’ due for release pretty soon, what can you tell us about those and how are you going to be putting them out?
The original idea was to put a whole mix together of rough cut disco breaks that we had cut from some of the records in our collection. What started as experimentation evolved into full production creating DJ tools that bring together the energy of disco and the rawness of house.
We are going to be releasing the first in the series on hand stamped 12″ through Phonica entitled ‘Casino Edits’ this summer. This will be two edits by us to give you a taste of what we where aiming for with this project and later introducing more artists as the series progresses.
What can you tell us about this mix, how and where was it recorded and is there any particular themes throughout or any hidden gems we should know about?
We recored the mix in an empty Corsica Studios on a couple of CDJs one rainy afternoon. It as much a house mix as it is a mixtape with lots of digging up of some of the older stuff in our collection that we don’t normally play out. We also thought it would be fun to throw some slower stuff next to some more dancefloor orientated material, on the whole giving the mix a certain narrative which we some how managed to condense in to just over an hour.
As for hidden gems you might hear, one of our favourite Italo tracks, a new Casino Times Remix and one of the A side to the first ‘Casino Edits’.
What else do you guys have coming up release wise, and what are some of the parties you’re looking forward to playing at Tief and over the warmer months?
Apart from the edits we have remixes coming up for the new Foals single ‘Late Night’, the new Christophe single featuring Danielle Moore on Futureboogie and a remix for Jay Shepheard’s & Martin Dawsons’s ‘Cut A Hole’ for Retrofit which we really honoured to asked to do.
Party wise we are going to be in lots of awesome places across Europe and the UK including a couple of trips to Croatia and a return to Berlin for another party session at Renate and some serious Kebab Munching.
Tracklist:
d’eon – #109 (Hippos In Tanks)
Shed – 44A (Hardwax Forever!) (Ostgut Ton)
Soulphiction – Soul Brother No. 2 (Philpot)
Session Victim – Random Blues (Wolf Music)
Worst Case Scenario – Hot Beef (No Ears Red Beard Rosbif Remix) (Rekids)
Casino Edits #1 – A (White)
Oblio – Escape (Gomma)
Topo & Roby – Under The Ice (Instrumental) (Il Discotto Productions)
Aera – Cambio (Aleph Music)
Velfred – The Aspens Turning Gold (Crimera X Beatless Remix)
Taron Trekka – Sun Kissed Shak (Freude Am Tanzen Recordings)
DJ Koze – Cicely (Philpot)
Pink Skull – Defintive Gauze (My Favourite Robot)
Jay Shepheard & Martin Dawson – Cut A Hole (Casino Times Remix) (Retrofit)
Lusine – Febuary (Ghostly International)