Horse Meat Disco Interview
Dec 09 by Gary Knox
Cultural insight
Horse Meat Disco, the brain child of Jim Stanton and James Hillard, are the stars of the Warm DJ agency, guests of the very first Amplify Presents...
Jim joined us for a chat to let us know how their ‘freaks and queers’ smash hit club nights came about and what they have in store for 2009.
How did you guys meet?
I met James Hillard (also co-promoter and DJ at HMD) at a Basement Jaxx party in Brixton in 1999. I had met him through Severino (also one of our residents at HMD).
How long has HMD been going?
For five full, glorious years.
Where was your first gig?
Our first gig ever was at Substation South in Brixton – home of Queer Nation. Mine personally was a wedding!
Where does the name come from?
James was cleaning his flat and noticed a newspaper headline: “Horse Meat Discovered in Salami” so a bit of inventive editing and the name Horse Meat Disco was born!
Horse Meat is big in France. Unfortunately, according to MySpace, you aren’t playing France which kills off a very obvious gag about hungry Parisians but... where in the world do they react best to your sets?
Ha ha, it looks like we are playing in Paris in January now! The Parisians are, contrary to popular belief, an energetic and pretty clued up crowd. In the summer we were the DJs at The Lanvin / Acne party in the Louis XV suite of the Hotel De Crillon which is possibly the grandest hotel in all of Paris. It was an extreme glamour extravaganza I can tell you. Think of all those cliché images you have of the heady days of disco back in the seventies and magnify it tenfold – it was wild! I think people react enthusiastically to our sets everywhere we play because disco is such a release for people – even if you don’t know some of the music, it doesn’t matter; it is designed to make you DANCE!
What makes a great party?
Drag queens – ALWAYS. Disco music played over quality sound systems by world class talent and finally the crowd, as the dance floor is the stage and the dancers are the stars of the show.
What were your top ten tracks of 08?
1. Barry Mason – Body Get Your Body (Faze Action rmx)
2. Lime – On The Grid
3. Kongas – Africanism: Gimme Some Lovin’
4. Revanche – 1979 It’s Dancin’ Time
5. Brainstorm – Lovin’ is Really My Game
5. Theo Vaness – Sentimentally It’s You
6. History Clock – Mediterraneans
7. Queen Samantha – Take A Chance
8. Dolle Jolle – Balearic Incarnation (Todd Terje rmx)
9. Hercules & Love Affair – Blind (Knuckles rmx)
10. House of House – Don’t Stop
What have you got planned for NYE?
We’re having a massive bash at Cargo club London with two of our favourite DJs: Daniele Baldelli (Cosmic) and Tim Sweeney (DFA). There’s all the residents from HMD playing, drag, balloons, lights, action GO!
We see you are playing Snowbombing in March. How does playing a festival compare to your regular nights?
We played at a good few festivals in 2008: Lovebox, Glastonbury, Bestival, Electric Elephant and The Big Chill and they were all amazing as people are just ready for it the minute they step through the gates. You can just go right on and play all the heavy hitters all day and people just go crackers!
We hear you’re starting a record label in 2009. Please tell us more...
Finally, after talking about it for so long, we’re going to be releasing some of our favourite floor fillers from Horse Meat Disco with a slight edit here and there to perk them up so people can let loose HMD dance floor bombs the world over. We’ll also be releasing a compilation CD of full versions of all our classics from the last five years plus.
Any big residencies in 2009?
Yes we’ll be taking over Fabric Room 3 quarterly which fills me with a huge personal sense of pride as Fabric is still consistently excellent on every level. We’ll also be staring a new residency at Otto Santral in Istanbul the best club in the area and we can’t wait to get started on that one and play all our Moroder “Midnight Express” records, ha ha.
What was your favourite HMD memory of 2008?
Probably all the happy faces in the summer evenings dancing to our music at the festivals
What would you rather have – one eye or one tooth?
On a purely aesthetic level I’d rather have one eye – it can even look sexy of you wear the right eye patch right?! One tooth, well that’s pretty grim!
