Coffee break with Man Power
Having cut himself as a mysterious figure who kept everyone guessing high and low for quite some time, Newcastle's Man Power has been the figure behind both solo and collaborative productions, fundraising parties in his hometown and the owner of a strong record label to polish it all off. From the impact his hometown has had on his DJing, to his future plans for his music and beyond, we caught up with the Northerner to delve deep into his mind.
Hi Man Power, thanks for stopping by for a coffee and chat with us! What kind of coffee are you drinking right now?
I actually just drank a small, full-fat Latte, with 4 sachets of sugar (in one go). I have the smallest tolerance to caffeine imaginable, so brace yourself for some anxious, defensive and overly explicatory answers to the questions you're going to ask.
You kept your alias anonymous for quite some time before the big reveal. What made you keep your identity so discreet and why did you reveal it in the end?
The initial secrecy was in some ways due to a few personal reasons, but for the main part, it was just an experiment about whether music can still be the focus of a musical project, as well as a way of me seeing how people interpret things if they weren't provided with any context. That was really fun, and quite educational to start with. It actually surprised me as it taught me a few things about myself too: who I was when I was free to say (and talk about) things that maybe didn't fit with other people's perception of me, as well as the perception I'd created of myself in my mind over the course of my life up to that point.
It was also fun watching people’s need to claim me as some pre-existing musical voice, with names mentioned including John Talabot, Michael Mayer and Andrew Weatherall, which was naturally incredibly flattering. However, on the eve of releasing my first album, it started to become apparent that a device to make the music more important, had changed into a gimmick that people were talking about instead of the music, so I decided to stop doing it and own my music and opinions again.
Being from Newcastle, how would you say this has shaped your outlook on the music scene and how you play to crowds?
I've read that because I was born in 1980, I'm neither Generation X, nor a Millennial. They've coined the term "Xennials" for people born around the same time as me, because we seem to represent some kind of micro grouping that grew to early adulthood pre-internet, but who were young enough to still fully embrace it as part of their everyday lives.
That sums up my relationship with music too. I know it's very much been formed by childhood experiences, the mood and personality of my regional identity, and my earliest clubbing experiences in Newcastle, but I also think its something I've been able to transcend to the point where I'm as defined by my rejection of my background, as much as I am defined by that background itself. It sounds like a weirdly contradictory way to look at it, so the best way I can kind of intersect the two concepts is by saying that my identity as a Geordie (a person from Newcastle) has actually informed the way in which I approach which parts of my heritage and background I hold dear, and which bits of it I feel fine to jettison.
We're all worldly musically now, but before the internet I had no choice but to be a product of the scene of where I come from. Now I enjoy being able to pick and choose which bits of that pre-internet education remain sacred. One of them is taking the time to warm up slowly and delicately. When I first started playing out of Newcastle I was astounded that people played dance records from the very start in a Nightclub. In Newcastle it was unthinkable that you'd play that until the room was ripe, and you'd ripen the room with ambient music, or balearic sounds, or electronica or anything that gradually allowed you to build a rooms energy level, and let you thoroughly get under the skin and into the hearts and minds of the dancers. You can probably hear that in the mix I've provided.
That’s something I hold sacred from my background, which used to be distinctly of Newcastle, but I don't think the new kids in Newcastle do that anymore, because the new kids are of the world and the internet. I can only claim a historic connection with my city and background because I was present before it was globalised by information technology. I'm not complaining about that, I can just see some of the things I remember as being amazing will die with me. I'm sure every generation sees that happen though.
As well as your solo DJing, you are also one half of Juan Power (with Juan McLean), which has seen you release your Crescendo EP on Life and Death. How does this music duo work and what have you learnt from working with McLean?
Collaboration is a strange thing. This is the first collab where the work, energy, and thought has been equally balanced throughout.
It's quite astounding how complementary we are in the studio, and in general. Like in actual real life too I think our personalities really balance each other out, which is kind of freaky. There's been a bunch of technical stuff I've picked up off him, which I loath to get nerdy about here, but for the main part it worked because we both hit the ground running by having the same approach to work flow - the same relaxed attitude are important with our own ideas, and a ruthless approach to self-editing.
The really pleasant thing I've learnt is that if you gel in a studio, it turns out you gel exactly the same in the booth. The DJing has been a revelation for us both. I often find I have to carry a lot of the weight when I play back to back with someone else. I set up the flow, measure the pace, do the hard work and then pass over the easy wins to the person I’m playing with. With Juan there's a kind of ESP, which I guess is forged off years of djing, which allows us both to sense when to drive things, when to sit back, when to set the other up, and when to take it home yourself. It’s quite a beautiful thing, I'm not kidding!
Are there any elements you fuse into your Juan Power productions which you shy away from with your solo stuff?
Tech House. I'm not even kidding. It’s a term that usually causes my testicles to involuntarily retract into my torso, but me and Juan both had a long chat about music we love which could legitimately be called tech house, so we're trying to re-appropriate the artful elements of the form into something altogether more cerebral and psychedelic.
The issue with Tech House is that it has become a functional form that could in most cases be designed by an algorithm. Its conceived to make people dance, but not to challenge them on an emotional or intelligent level. We're trying to extract its infectiousness and imbue it with the elements that make things compelling to us emotionally or intellectually too. I really hope that what people take home from this answer isn't that 'Juan Power are here to save tech house'. I'm adding this in now so nobody decides to write that as a headline.
Now, moving back to you. Your sets seem to have zero boundaries, blending an irrisatable selection of dark, progressive, acid, disco and even music from greats such as Kate Bush and Sting. What's your process behind the track selection and how do you ensure the flow remains energetic and captivating?
You said it yourself with the word energetic. If you view music in terms of energy instead of in terms of genre, or sonics, then what I do really isn't that weird or revolutionary. All I do is identify the type of energy that’s in a record and use that to direct the energy of a dancefloor. The first thing to realise is that there’s a difference between tempo and energy.
A lot of people get that wrong I think, and assume that slow means low impact, and fast means tough. After that then you find yourself in a role that’s about communication. The floor communicates its needs, desires and expectations of the energy you're providing, and you make a decision over whether you fulfil these, or if you confound the floor. I hate it when people compare music to lovemaking, ‘cause lets face it... it's really fucking creepy to read usually, but going against my best instincts here I guess the best parallel I can draw is the way in which you can satisfy or tease a partner, and also the way that there are a million ways in which you achieve either result.
You've spoken previously about your grandparents and parent's musical taste and the exposure you received when younger, ranging from Blues to Acid House. Is there any particular era you still look back to when creating music?
I'd love to say no, but I make a lot of synthesised music, so the late 70s and 80s is always pretty ever-present in my mind. Vangelis, Laurie Anderson, Tangerine Dream, Wendy Carlos, Jan Hammer, Jean Michelle Jarre, Brad Fiedel, Visage, Depeche Mode, The Human League, Heaven 17... I could go on.
There's an ironically organic, wholly random and somewhat untameable element to the sounds used by these artists, as well something indefinable that possibly just comes across as naiveté when viewed almost 40 years later. Synthesised music sounds so polite now. So well managed and controlled, and correctly executed. I try to engineer some of that wildness and counter-intuity into what I make where I can.
You've been running your record label, 'Me Me Me' since 2016 and you've collected an impressive catalogue of artists, including Red Axes, Andrew Weatherall, Vin Sol and DJ Tennis. What elements do you look for in releases from an artist and their tracks?
I find it impossible to say what I truly look for in music. I guess the only thing I really need is for it to be an extreme expression of something. It needs to lean into what it is. It can be clever or dumb, as long as it's really clever, or really dumb. I like things that are so messed up that they sound like they're going to fall apart, but also things so clean that they make you uncomfortable. I guess it’s just about working with people who have something to say really. I don't care what it is they're saying, as long as it has conviction.
As well as releasing music, ‘Me Me Me’ runs showcases most notably in Newcastle, with one this year being a ‘Food Bank Fundraiser’. How did this come about and how is this charitable cause significant to you?
Fuck it, I'm going all in. There are currently 14 million people officially living in poverty in the UK. 4.5 million of them are children. This is wrong, and I'm from a working-class part of the UK where we look after our own, so when I had a weekend free and asked about doing a charity gig and my business partner Gabe suggested the food fundraising idea, it just seemed like the most obvious and natural thing in the world to ask everyone to get involved and help our fellow people from the region who are less fortunate than ourselves.
Beyond this though, we're the fifth richest country in the world, so any people living in poverty right now is frankly unacceptable and disgusting. It’s a direct result of our current Conservative Government's "austerity" policies, and it now looks like we have an election on December 12th, so I urge everyone reading this to go and register and vote and get rid of the vile forces controlling the UK right now. I'm not going to preach on who to vote for, but a quick look online will answer any questions on the best way to topple the Tories, and it really should be the only conversation anybody is having. We can sort everything else when they're gone.
Young people especially, you may feel your vote is worthless, but please, please trust me and go and register to vote and use it. Your world is being ran by old people with a different agenda to you, and until you vote, you will never be able to change the things that are important to you! Sorry, not sorry.
Which DJs do you dream of having play for one of your showcases?
Danny Tenaglia, Dixon (b2b if you're reading this though, Steffen ;) ), DJ Harvey, Roman Flügel, Gerd Janson, Craig Richards, James Murphy, Paul Woolford, Honey Dijon, The Dewale Bros... I could go on, but there's basically millions of DJs I adore. I'm still very much in this as a fan of dancing myself.
So with the year nearly to an end, have you got anything else coming out before 2019 draws in? And as for next year, can you give us a hint of anything exciting to come?
My next record, the Extended Play EP, is out on Me Me Me since November 8th and features remixes from Terr and Zombies in Miami. That’s closely followed by a single on Skint, featuring vocals from Private Agenda, and then at some point in 2020, I should be making my EP debut on DFA records too. Other than that, I'll be honest and say I intend to release more music than I've ever done before next year. I'm sitting on three complete albums (in three different guises, with three different vibes) and about 30 tracks are my strongest work to date; I'm sick of holding stuff back.
I'm at a stage where I may decide on giving up on working with any labels but my own before the end of next year, but I'm not completely sure about that yet. I'm definitely not going be sending any more music out to labels for the foreseeable future I think though. I'm past changing my stuff to fit what other people want, and I'm also not in to this trend where everybody needs precision "bangers" to release so if anyone is reading this and wants in on the action then they'll need to come to me in the future and take or leave what I give them. I've read that back and I can see how much of a dick I look saying all that there. At the risk of repeating myself, sorry, not sorry.
Interview by Joanne Philpott.
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