BEYOND THE WIZARDS SLEEVE
Interview by Marisa Brickman
Image by Christian Smith

Beyond the Wizards Sleeve is a purely futuristic, psychedelic powerhouse. A project composed of two dudes who each have their own respective careers, but come together as one to freak people out and melt minds.

Erol Alkan is most well-known as one of the world’s best DJs, the founder of the infamous TRASH party in London (R.I.P.) and one of the most sought after remixers/producers around. Richard Norris basically invented acid house – his band Grid put that shit on the map! He’s a producer, a musician and a prolific music journalist. Hello godfather.

Erol and Richard put their ears, brains and hands together under the moniker Beyond The Wizards Sleeve to create what they call “re-animations”: they take a song, chop it up, extend parts, add new instrumentation and create lushly blissed out new tracks that rival the originals. We didn’t think Midlake’s “Roscoe” could get any better or the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Lightyears from Home” could sound trippy, but we were wrong.

At the time of this interview, Erol was celebrating a birthday with his wife while Richard was waiting for his wife to have a baby.

What are you currently working on?
Richard: Various new freakbeat experiments, new Grid album and tracks, building my new studio, BTWS re-animations.
Erol: Various new beatfreak experiments, I just finished the Long Blondes album, almost done the Mystery Jets album, and some more bits with Late Of The Pier. Also trying to get my studio working again after six months
of neglect and working elsewhere.

How did the two of you meet and what was the common bond?
Richard: Can’t really remember how we met first, but Erol had a show on an internet station I ran. We started work on BTWS when we were both guests on the Sean Rowley BBC London show and Erol heard a bunch of psych tracks I was playing.
Erol: The music was so good that I thought that I had dreamed it all.

What is a good intro to or overview of psych for people who want to school themselves on the genre?
Five Essential tracks?
Richard: I’d say psych is generally beat music gone freaky, but there’s dozens of different sounds and styles. 1. “Barricades” – The Koobas 2. “Madman Running Through The Fields” – Dantalian’s Chariot 3. “Hell’s Fire” – Topper 4. “How Does it Feel To Feel” – The Creation.
5. “Jabberwock” – Boeing Duveen & The Beautiful Soup
Erol: 1. “Baby Your Phrasing Is Bad” – Caleb
2. “Defecting Grey” – The Pretty Things 3. “Revolution” – Tomorrow 4. “Time Has Come Today” – The Chamber Brothers 5. “See My Friends” – The Kinks.

What does the word re-animation mean?
Richard: We have re-ignition, lift off.
Erol: To bring it to a type of life, but in a different way. The word remix is now a perfume, a soft drink and part of a Puff Daddy album title. It doesn’t quite seem to hold the weight it used to.

How would you describe a typical BTWS arrangement? How do you approach each track and what do you do technically in the studio?
Richard: Depends. The re-edits we do individually most of the time, and have three each on the EPs, although sometimes we’ll work together. For the re-animations, we’ll send ideas through cyberspace and have both our studios working on the track at the same time. We’ll then meet up for the final mix. We both do the same stuff technically – programming, editing, keyboards, various instruments and mixing, although I’ll usually do the initial arrangement and Erol will be more involved in the later stages and the final mix. Sometimes it’s the other way around.
Erol: Some edits have been done in a matter of hours, and if we feel its fine, then it’s seen as done. We both have different approaches to the mixes – it can go through a number of drafts before anything is deemed as done. The Chemical Brothers one was completely overhauled even when we thought it was 90 percent done. It’s always an exciting process.

You do really limited edition runs and your records fly out of the shops. Do you have crazy rabid fans? What do you think the appeal is?
Richard: No fans with rabies but I’m sure being unhinged helps.
Erol: I think we allure music lovers. There is something satisfying about BTWS. It has different values. There’s a lot of heart in there, and I think that’s what people see, hear and feel. I don’t know if we have ‘fans’ as such.

What’s your favorite BTWS track and why?
Richard: Midlake “Roscoe” re-animation; this was where it started to really come together for me. I can’t choose a single track from the mini-albums. I love them all.
Erol: I’d go for Midlake as we managed to make it even more incredibly sad and touching then the original, which – by the way – I absolutely love. The Findlay Brown mix [“Losing The Will to Survive”] is probably the only one which rivals it. I may go for a joint first with those two. Edit wise, I couldn’t pick one out either.

Richard – you started out in a band and then moved to producing? What was your role in the bands you’ve been in and how has that influenced your evolution into the studio?
Richard: My role was initially guitar/vox when I was a small child (I was in my first band aged 13), then keyboards/sampler in the Grid, then more of a programming/ engineering role too, as well as producing other artists like World of Twist and Joe Strummer. I think if you want to make computer based music, it’s good to try as many studio jobs as possible from tea boy to producer. It’ll all be of some use in the future, rather than just being sat at your computer. It’s worth knowing how to record guitars and drums and vocals, as well as keyboards.

Erol – you’ve built a career with a foundation in DJing and now you’re doing producing – how has DJing
influenced your style and how you operate?
Erol: To be honest, I don’t think the DJing has influenced me that much when it comes to production. I try to
get under the skin of the song as opposed to beginning with making something for the dancefloor. If anything, sequencing tracks across an album is heavily influenced by my approach to putting a DJ set together.

What are the weirdest records you own?
Richard: Psychedelic Christian records, some acting records, complete with scripts, hundreds of twisted spoken word albums.
Erol: Far too many to mention. I’m a big fan of what people call outsider music. It’s to some people extremely odd and rather rubbish, or to others and me to a degree, it’s an insight into some bizarre and exotic minds.

What are your most treasured records?
Richard: Blossom Toes We Are Ever So Clean album, Skip Bifferty’s self-titled, The Innocent Vicars “She’s Here” (the first record I made).
Erol: Original 10-inch acetate of “Rock Around The Clock”.

Together, as DJs – you guys play some of the most wicked sets I’ve ever been privy too. It takes an amazing knowledge of music to be able to combine obscure tracks with newer stuff. When the two of you DJ together, what’s your approach, how does it work?
Richard: It started in a back room in Shoreditch playing back to back, one on, one off, for seven hours straight, and it hasn’t changed much. It’s mainly enthusiasm to hear these records out at proper volume, then a bit of nudging behind the decks. We’re gonna stretch out and start using Ableton Live soon though, which should reshape things nicely.
Erol: Yeah, we have a loose approach, we’ll play a certain area of the music we love for an hour, then switch it to something different, maybe go garage for an hour, then we’ll agree it’ll be a good idea to pull out some Mod records, or maybe we’ll play folk for a bit. We like to read the dancefloor in
a disco sense, and then take the dancers on a journey. Some of the nights we have done at Catch rank highly in my all time fave gigs.

What are your approaches to DJing, remixing and producing?

DJing
Richard: It’s most excellent hearing an 18 minute Can track played loud – it’s transcendent.
Erol: I like the fact that a record by The Action can make a room explode in 2007 as much as a Daft Punk record would. As a DJ, I feel a duty to make sure that we continue to illustrate this.

Remixing
Richard: I have to love the track and hear something in it that could be given the Wizard’s treatment before agreeing to mix it. We turn down more than we accept. When we do accept we love them and make them into our children.
Erol: Yep. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

Producing
Richard: Deep joy
Erol: A never-ending journey.

Do you plan to produce bands as a duo?
Richard: There is talk of this, nothing concrete but someone who we’ve already mixed wants us to work on their new album.
Erol: Yes.

What’s next for BTWS?
Richard: A compilation album of our mixes to date, an album of original material and some audio visually
over stimulated DJ spots.
Erol: Decision-making. Chess.

What are the present and future sounds of music?
Richard: Colour, experimentation, wigging out
Erol: More colour.