Tom looking back through your discography it appears you have an incredibly prolific back catalogue on a multitude of labels yet it seems more recently that you have broken through into the collective consciousness, is this because you have been hiding yourself away in Wales locked in a room with a load of old drum machines?
Wales was great for getting on with your shit. Cutting off and getting ball deep in the studio. There aren't many influences around so it was easy for me to develop a sound or identity at the early stages of my music making.
Another advantage was learning how to weave or knit wooly jumpers. Like a hunter would collect skulls or go about stuffing a pheasant to place on the mantle piece, I'd tear a bit of wool from each of my sheep conquests. They always found it quite erotic. The rams were interesting, horny little fuckers they are - massive bollocks too - could sometimes get in the way a little. They wore little harnesses with a pin on, this would leave a mark on the females after they were impregnated, in turn notifying the farmer. The harness was a great source of grip when I was in control of he rear end. It was always great to escape with a drum machine after being in the fields all night with your torch :)
Are you reluctant of adopting the role of DJ/PR machine?
Is it that obvious?? I can be a little difficult to be fair. When out on the session with my PR chappy he does often comment at what he's got himself in for. Sometimes I find submitting charts, recording a mix or pinging out a release to get some mutters of - 'support' or "this is great, downloading for Dave Seaman" a little stagnated. This scene should be coming up with more interesting ways of marketing the music than that really..
Are you a marketable person
Yes
why/why not?
I love fishnet boxer shorts / underwear
Can you achieve success without hype?
Yeah for sure. A gradual climb with a steady and decent output of music is a much better way of achieving success I think. Everything going 'boom' in an instant tends to leave room for the arse to fall out of it and everything to fall down rapidly. Saying that could be a little contradictory, I mean Jeremy Healy had hype in the 90's, disappeared and now he's absolutely killing it - topping all of the recent end of year polls.
Can you describe your music?
A creatively suffocated and confused clump of matter that people will ask themselves "can i actually dance to this?"
Your live show is a pretty visceral experience and is pretty much as live as an electronic music permanence gets in the true sense of the word, were there or are there any influential figures that inspired your performance?
Mic Fleetwood and his percussion waistcoat. Seriously
What made you first pick up a drum machine?
Hearing Jeff Mills on his 909
Is it important as a producer to have the kind of tactile experience of hardware gear and what does it bring to your studio productions that can't be achieved in the box?
Personally for me, software bogs me down, too many options for shit that turns out sounding shite anyway. Software brings a tendency to use a preset sound, as it already sounds great and makes you lazy, and you can hear this across so many of peoples productions. Personally, when you have a few things outside of the box, it brings along experimentation. In turn, old equipment leaves deficiencies in sound, of which can really breathe life into a recording.
You have been touring your live show for quite a few years now, can you tell us about some of the more unusual events you have played?
Recently, it has to be banging out tunes from an ice cream van whilst pretending I was in Helter Skelter in 1999, spitting a few aimless bars down the microphone. This triggered an argument with other budding MC's wanting to battle with me. Thinking that me shouting "how u feeling ladies ladies ladies, it's the party time, time to come alive.." or "make some noise if you are unidentified flying bad bwoi" was actually anything other than ironic. All of this after a torrid 12hour acid trip and 3 days into a session at Glade festival. Thankfully I have never picked up the Mic' since.
What has been your favorite gig to date?
Difficult one to answer. Fresh in my brain has to be Club Vibe in Curitiba in Brazil, without sounding completely cliche, they showed a lot of love there..
If you blow up in 2012 like we believe you will, will you bee adding a lazer and full AV show to your live performance? Perhaps some fireworks like the Swedish House Mafia?
Oh for sure. I'd love to follow the House Mafia's model, lovely blokes them lot.. wonderful music too. Key developments to the performance and everything surrounding it would be throwing a tantrum if the promoter doesn't deliver the chauffeur driven Mazerati, or telling the sound man I'll kill him if the crowds ears aren't bleeding from the horrendously generic off beat baseline. I may manufacture opportunities to find myself arguing with celebs like Paris Hilton in a hotel bar, jump up and down like I'm in Green Day behind a couple of CDJ's with a mix cd playing. The highlight of the show though would be a large red button to my left, complete with hinged protector sleeve, crosshair display and joystick control. This system would control a foam cannon that unleashes hell within the 15,000 seater arena. I'd use it to locate ugly men wearing scoop neck t-shirts in the crowd and shower them in a foamy jizzm. There cannot be anyone even remotely ugly at a Swedish House Mafia feat. Tom Demac 'concert'. On a more serious note, the liveset is always growing, new machines and synths will b added no doubt through 2012.
What gigs have you got coming up?
Really looking forward to Rotte Sonne in Munich for NYE. I've been promised DMT whilst submerged in 6ft of snow.
and release wise?
The New Year's looking good. Releases penned for both Hypercolour and Glass Table. The Glass Table release will be remixed by both Actress and Cosmin TRG - properly decent. Oh, there's a release on My Favourite Robot with my good friend Duncan Edward Jones singing - more poppy efforts than what people have heard from me in the past… The spawn of my new record label 'Bonny & Clive' and my first album should be ready around the middle of the year too I hope. In the middle of a band project with some massively talented folk in Manchester too, that's going to be really interesting.
TOM'S UPCOMING ANALORD REMIX OF SUALDE - LISTEN
TOM'S SOUNDCLOUD
TOM'S BLOG