Flux Pavilion talks Tesla album/tour, working with rappers and forgetting about sound

November 18, 2015 -

Daily Beat Staff

Right before his big set at the 5th Annual EDC Orlando, I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Circus Record's head honcho, Flux Pavilion. In the midst of his big headlining tour, the UK native and I discussed his new Tesla Album and what else he's been up to as of late.

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Daily Beat: How's the Tesla Tour been going? I know it's been a while since you've headlined a big tour of your own like this.

Flux: Yeah. This has been so great. We've had a lot of shows and a lot of shows tomorrow night as well. There's 38 shows and it's been awesome basically. Can't really think of any other tour that I've ever done where I ended up feeling so inspired and invigorated. Normally after a tour you're like "I'm really looking for some time off" but I'm not. I've already written, I think it's 11 songs since I've been on the tour, which normally takes me like a year. I just kind of keep having ideas I guess. So that's been cool.

Daily Beat: So I know you've been touring with 12th Planet, NGHTMRE and LOUDPVCK, etc. How's it been working with them around the clock?

Flux: It's been really cool. 12th is just one of those legendary guys. I got to have him at the start of the tour. It's this thing where we have headliners and support and normally is like RIGHT. My vibe has always been, just play the best set you possibly can and if your set is better than mine then I'll be supporting you next year. And 12th Planet is such a good DJ. Same as on the Freeway Tour. I had SKisM, who's like one of my favorite DJs. I told him the same thing and it's good to have that because it makes me have to pull my finger out and kick myself in the ass and make sure I'm not just relying on the lights or relying on being the headliner. I'm actually making sure my set is the best thing it can possibly be and 12th Planet is really good for that because he's great. After watching him jump around I'm like, I need to not be lazy and I need to get into this.

Daily Beat: And I'm sure that they are all your good friends too so it must be fun being with them all the time!....So, I wanted to highlight your Tesla Album, can you tell me a little about what went into making it and the significance behind the name Tesla?

Flux: I've always wanted to put out an album as Flux and I kind of thought that I've always had this Flux Pavilion sound and if I put out a whole album like that it would be quite boring. You'd get three tracks in and be like "yeah, this all sounds the same." So i thought, how do I write for an album, whilst also maintaining the attitude of Flux Pavilion? I just forgot about the sound completely and thought it doesn't really matter what the tracks sound like as long as I can play it in my sets and they feel good. That completely changed the whole landscape of the record. So, now my sets are completely different because I'm playing all of these tracks that are quite odd, especially the tracks "Pogo People" and "We Are Creators" that are pretty strange for the current climate of EDM. Regardless, they go down really well in my set, which is really nice. It makes my set feel a bit different.

Daily Beat: Yeah, there's a lot of variety in the album so it will work for people these days - they really want variety in a set.

Flux: People want to hear stuff that they recognize, but then also I've always been a firm believer in the idea of, if you just make something good, people will love it regardless of if it sounds old or if it sounds completely different to what's popular. If it's good and they can dance to it, then that's good electronic music - at least to me that's what electronic music is all about. That was kind of the process of writing it. Like, forget about what's cool, forget about what's hot, don't worry about Jack U. Even though that's like the coolest, hottest, most fresh-sounding thing ever. Don't worry about any of that, don't try and copy that because they've done that. I'm just trying to do my thing.

Daily Beat: Do you think that while working with everyone on tour that you might possibly come out with a remix EP?

Flux: Uhmmm, probably not a remix EP, but maybe a collaboration EP. I've definitely been working on a lot of music. I've just been talking to Snails as well about making a track together and yeah you can safely assume that with all of the support people on my tour there's definitely a chance that I might be releasing collaborations with them in the future.

Daily Beat: Yesss!! "Off the record" though of course.

Flux: Yeah "off the record." I'm just saying if you look at it this way you can probably just guess what's coming next....

Daily Beat: So, I see you've been working with a lot of rappers lately. What's that been like because I know you worked with Riff Raff?

Flux: Yeah, it was really cool. For me, what I loved about dubstep was its similarities with hip-hop. It's kind of like going back to Rusko kind of records. It's like a simplistic groove, which I always really liked about  Jurassic 5 where the groove is so good that you can repeat for four minutes and you really don't care about it. Dubstep, for me, has that same quality, where it has such a great loop that you can listen to it over and over again and it feels good. So, bringing hip-hop into what I do is kind of a no-brainer for me because it feels like I'm just writing really huge produced hip-hop anyway. Like, "Gold Dust" and "I Can't Stop," they feel like hip-hop tracks to me.

Daily Beat: Up-and-comers wise, is there anyone you can spotlight that's doing amazing right now?

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Flux: Uhmmmm, yeah. Normally we sign them because I run a label as well. So there's these guys called DISKORD, they are like the new wave trap stuff i guess. I've taken a new perspective on it, like a British perspective. It's really interesting to me because when you hear British people write trap, it feels so disconnected because we don't have the same hip-hop culture. It's the culture. A lot of people from the UK can't really write trap music because it's not ingrained in their culture in the same way that American producers don't write much grime and south London garage just because it's not part of their sort of soundscape. DISKORD kind of took the whole inspiration from trap and then was like, okay, we're going to try and do this the British way. I don't know if that was intentional, but that's what it sounded like to me. So, we signed them because it's interesting to hear all of their musical ideas. I don't come from that world. Like, the small town I grew up in the UK, there wasn't really a trap scene. Or like, Gucci Mane, he wasn't on the radio when I was growing up so I can't write trap records. It's not authentic for where I come from.

Daily Beat: Well, you're getting out of your comfort zone, so I think that's really cool.

Flux: It's the sound. It's like great music, there's lots of layers to it really I think. You can make quite shallow music that kind of sounds good, but it's quite shallow. I think that never really lasts because it doesn't really go deeper. Good music, to me, starts to hear people's intentions and you hear people's energy as well. This is why I think Diplo smashes it because he writes music where you can hear that he believes in it. Also, his framework and his life/background is also completely sewed into his music, which is why if someone like me came out with a trap act you wouldn't hear that because it would be so shallow. I would just be copying what trap sounds like, but I wouldn't be able to deliver what trap feels like. I wouldn't know what that's like because of going back to where I'm from. So, it's interesting to hear an act who's managed to make something that feels very British, sound like American trap music. So they're the people to listen to.

Daily Beat: So since it's Friday, we're going to do a little #FlashbackFriday edition question. Can you tell me anything about yourself that someone would not know about you?

Flux: Uhhhhh. Something interesting?

Daily Beat: Yeah anything!

Flux: Actually, I got a gold award in a tournament for Badminton. I was quite a good Badminton player. I did it for about six months and I used a be a good batter in Cricket as well. So yeah, I guess that's something I never told anyone before.

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As always, it was a pleasure to steal a few minutes of Flux Pavilion's time and we're definitely HUGE supporters of his new album so go buy it now on iTunes/Beatport!

Flux Pavilion: Facebook / Twitter / Soundcloud 

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