Mr. Scruff: “Sack it, we’re getting the bananas out”

Manchester’s Mr. Scruff definitely isn’t lacking in style. Currently on tour from Birmingham to Southampton and back, the solo DJ/producer is ready to wile the whole night away with marathon sets and earl grey tea. Andrew E. King caught up with the artist ahead of upcoming gigs in Birmingham and Leamington to ask how he maintains his signature approach.

BM: You describe yourself as a DJ, a producer, a tea drinker and a cartoonist. If you had to describe yourself in one style, what would you say?

Mr. Scruff: It’s difficult because I get something different out of each thing. The DJ thing is very varied and wide ranging with long sets. The producer thing is influenced by the music I’m into, which I add a lot of myself to: I add my cheeky attitude and humour into it, and it comes out a very British sound I think. The tea thing, I mean, I just drink tea all day like everyone else does, so that’s nothing unusual. But the cartoon thing, now that’s very stylized – everything else develops and moves forwards and outwards whereas the cartoon thing… I’ve been drawing in that style for 25 years now: its sort-of a comfort thing. It gives a friendly face to the posters and the album covers: it’s a little bit of daftness I do in my spare time. I know people like it but its quite nice doing something people really like without having to rely on it to earn money.

BM: A lot of your music videos have a similar style to your art: how involved are you in their production? How much control do you have?

MS: A lot. The videos fall into two categories: “proper videos”, like ‘Sweet Smoke’ and ‘Music Takes Me Up’, and the other ones that are cheap and cheerful videos. They’re just done using the visuals that I have at my gigs. A lot of it was just using YouTube, seeing that people were uploading my tunes with a static image for five minutes. Seeing that, we’re not going to spend thousands of pounds on a video for every song, but we’re gonna do something cheeky to at least give people something to watch. It was one of those things where the budget was tiny but we had a lot of fun doing it and it gave us a lot more choice when we’re using visuals in the venues as well. We just wanted to make a little something daft really… I definitely need to pull my finger out and do another “proper video” soon.

BM: How do you decide which songs get a “proper video”?

MS: A lot of that is in discussion with Ninja. As an artist, you get so involved in the creation of your music it’s difficult to get some distance from it. So sometimes, when you hand a load of records to the label, it’s nice to have them say “okay, we think this should be a single, or that should be a single” because after a year in the studio, you don’t really know which way is up.

Once we decide what’s going to be a single we pretty much take control from there. Jim, who does the visuals for my DJ sets and stuff, he’s worked on the last few videos with me and it’s nice, cause he’s a guy with a “proper job” in video editing, but he knows with me he can have a bit of fun. We can let our hair down and go for it: at the end of the day it’s just two geeks who’ve managed to get hold of a lot of posh equipment. It’s nice to express a tune in a visual way, and they’ve all been quite well received, regardless of the style.

BM: I absolutely love ‘Music Takes Me Up’…

MS: We had such a good time with that one. We took about three or four days to do it. There was me and Jim, and two people from his animation company, and we were just walking around with fruit on sticks… It was brilliant. And Alice loved it: she loved the fact she was a singing lemon.

I find that a lot of music videos are so serious. Trying to portray something or a certain persona, an unattainable level of style of beauty of whatever, whereas we were just like… sack it, we’re getting the bananas out. I dunno. It’s pure fun, and it’s nice. I don’t do videos with that level of involvement often. It’s like, you set aside a week where you don’t feel like you’re working: you’re just gonna do some doodles and see what happens. It’s nice to be involved in something creative without being knee deep in the technical side as well. It’s good to work with people you trust and leave them to it.

BM: Do you have venues you trust as well?

MS: Absolutely: actually, I should say something about a couple of gigs coming up. They’re both places I’ve been lucky to play before. The Hare and the Hound is run by a very good friend of mine, Adam, who’s a real lynch pin of what’s happening in Birmingham. Those nights I’m excited about: two back to back gigs in the same venue – it’s something I’ve never done before. And the Leamington venue, the Assembly, is amazing… it’s very grand. I love those venues where you walk in and have to take a breath, like you’ve gone back in time… The way they’ve acoustically treated that room without it being an eyesore, it feels very comfortable. Like your front room, because of how they’ve treated the acoustics. It’s a big part of why people like the venue. I love venues like that: venues where you get more out of the night than a hangover and tinnitus.

For more information on Mr. Scruff, check out his website at www.mrscruff.com.