Sinden: Interview

No stranger to Australian shores, Sinden is back and this time he’s brought a friend. The Essex-born, LA-based DJ/Producer behind that ‘Beeper’ song, is doing a series of co-headline shows with the oh-so-hot Brenmar. Together they will be showcasing the “grey area sounds” of Sinden’s own Grizzly label.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” said Sinden, speaking before doors opened to the first of two Sydney shows, at the King Street Hotel last Saturday. “The London clubbers are a little bit too-cool-for-school but the Aussies just go for it.” Sinden and Brenmar are back in town, playing at Chinese Laundry, this coming Saturday, while fans will also be able to get their paws on an accompanying compilation of Grizzly recordings entitled Pull Up: A Grizzly Retrospective.

Graeme Sinden feasted on a diet of home-grown underground music and US imports not uncommon to an adolescent growing up in the outskirts of London. “I was too young to go to UK garage raves so I was going to underage parties,” he remembers. “I heard a lot of stuff in the record stores. A lot of proto-drum and bass and jungle really influenced me. And as a kid I was crazy about rap music. I loved the Native Tongues crew (Jungle Brothers, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul) and Public Enemy as well”.

In the mid-2000s, when handing out flyers for a club night, Sinden met Jesse Rose and eventually fell in with a group of fellow producers and DJs who favoured a harder, dirtier brand of house and techno, among them Dave Taylor (aka Switch/Solid Groove) and Joshua Harvey (aka Hervé/The Count of Monte Cristal). Together, they started making “house music with rude basslines”.

An accidental dancefloor hit, ‘Beeper’, a fidgety, squelchy monster of a collaboration with The Count, launched Sinden’s profile into the stratosphere. “We had no idea at all that it was going to blow up as big as it did. It was originally a B-side. You couldn’t get a more accidental smash.” It found an influential fan in Annie Mac, a presenter on BBC Radio 1. She played ‘Beeper’ to death before a vocal by US rapper Kid Sister was added and the track given a proper release on Domino. However, despite the single’s success, owing to the large sample borrowed from a record by Fam-Lay featuring Pharrell it was no money-spinner, at least not for Sinden himself. “We really got rapped for the publishing. But it definitely did us good in other ways and Fam-Lay did well out of it,” he says.

In 2008, Sinden launched a record label. “I started Grizzly as an outlet for my stuff and also new artists kept asking me if I could help them.” Now it exists as “a forum to support music that sits between genres and brings a sense of unexpectedness.” Sinden and Grizzly were instrumental in launching the career of one Aaron Jerome, better known as elusive masked beatmaker SBTRKT, before he went on to bigger things.

Sinden talks proudly and excitedly of the strong core of artists currently at the label, including touring partner Brenmar. Born and raised in Chicago, Brenmar now resides in Brooklyn where he is carving a nice niche for himself by marrying the sounds of commercial R&B and the early house sound of the city of his birth. In a typical Brenmar set you might hear R Kelly and Monica cosying up next to Mr Fingers or Brenmar’s own remixes of Rihanna and Justin Timberlake. His excellent single ‘Children Of The Night’ encapsulates all of these influences and you can also hear his input on ‘One Two’, a free to download acid house track by Sinden and Brenmar.

Also on the Grizzly roster are familiar names like Brodinski and Melé and other up-and-comers 5kin And Bone5 and Wafa. Sinden talks particularly highly of a funk-influenced Welsh duo that you might soon be hearing a lot more about: “We put a record out a couple of months ago with Bodhi, who are really cool. They’re going to be doing big things this year on a deeper, melodic, ‘90s house revival tip.”

Another Sinden signee who should already be well-known in these parts is 22-year-old Sydney indie darling Elizabeth Rose, an FBi Radio fave and triple j Next Crop 2012 pick. “I was introduced to her the last time I was in Australia, in 2011,” explains Sinden. “We went into the studio and we just clicked. There was some good material to come from that session although it did take a little bit of time to come out.” One of those tracks was ‘Again’, a lush production which makes the best of Rose’s poppy voice and ear for melody and Sinden’s darker beats. It was eventually released as a single from Rose’s debut EP Crystallise.

With the running of the label, the tour, his own productions and no end of remix requests Sinden is as busy as he has ever been but really happy with it. “I really feel like I’m in a good place right now and that’s the honest-to-God truth. I’m working on some exciting projects: me and Mykki Blanco are working on new tracks and I’ve got some things that I can’t even tell you about yet. Then I’m collaborating with lots of artists. Yep, it’s busy but everything’s where I want it to be.”

Article published in The Brag, 1st April 2013
Photo courtesy of TogetherBoston