Dan le Sac: “There are so many artists that end up getting robbed blind”

Photo: flickr/Braden F

Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip have worked together for just under a decade producing hip-hop sounds with a mix of electronic beats, spoken word and rap. Their musical style is distinctive yet hard to describe, further pushing their genre boundaries after a recent collaboration with dubstep producer Flux Pavillion.

Friendly, likeable, and humorous are the words I would use to describe British DJ and producer Dan Le Sac. At the start of the interview it became apparent that the guy who is best known for his collaborative work with Scroobius Pip is a conglomerate of funny, serious and talented; and somewhat of a musical innovator.

Boar Music: How did you think of your name, Dan Le Sac?

Dan Le Sac: I had giant testicles as a child. My nickname was ‘Sack Boy’, ‘The Sack’, or various plays on those, so it was just a more polite way of saying that!

BM: You and Scroobius Pip began as solo artists, so I’m quite interested in how you two came together.

DLS: Scroobius was doing his first tour, the Relying on the Kindness of Strangers tour, during which he hopped in a camper van and drove round the country performing outside gigs and trying to blag gigs off people. I blagged gigs off him, I got him a gig, and at that gig I was performing, he was performing separately and I performed a couple of live mash-up things with his stuff and went from there.

BM: Your music is quite difficult to pinpoint on a genre, how do you describe your music sound?

DLS: I don’t describe it. I just teach people how YouTube works and tell them to type in my name and then listen because it’s so varied. Some of it’s so cinematic and instrumental and structured, but some of its just messy, hard noise. I’m just an idiot who can’t focus on one thing for long enough.

BM: Who would you say influences your music style?

DLS: I’m a huge Joy Division fan, love New Order, love Mogwai, love Aphex Twin. You know, there’s plenty out there but I’ve never been one who believed anything was bad. If you put me in front of a Girls Aloud album and I’ll be able to tell you the good things.

BM: What got you into music production in the first place?

DLS: Just my cousin. When I was in my teens – it would’ve been early teens – I think he was maybe 10, 15 years older than me. So he knocked about as Depeche Mode were coming up, and we come from really similar towns just down the road. He got into that sort of synthpop thing and was in a little band that looks oddly like The Human League, so it was just knocking about with him and learning. Then when I passed my mock GCSEs, my mum and dad bought me an Atari ST second-hand which then let me start producing for myself.

BM: Do you influence Scroobius’ lyrics and does he influence your production style, or are you completely separate in what you do on the tracks?

DLS: Well, no. It’s an odd one because we’re both still consider ourselves solo artists. This is a collaboration – it just so happens that when we collaborate it’s far bigger than anything we could hit on our own. But it’s what we do when we’re away from each other that speaks more to what we do when we’re together, because we have all those moments when we get to go off and work with other people and then bring those ideas back to what we do.

This album has been our best album in terms of the way it’s been reviewed and where it got to in the charts, and I think that a lot of that is to do with us going off [to work with other artists]. I worked with various female singers and took those experiences and made something different to what a producer and a rapper would normally do, and when it comes to the actual content of the tracks, we definitely influence each other. Certain tracks will inspire a lyric, and with tracks like ‘Gold Teeth’, I wrote a hook and that triggered Pip to write an entire track off the back of it.

When I passed my mock GCSEs, my mum and dad bought me an Atari ST second-hand which then let me start producing for myself.

BM: I feel like a lot of your music holds quite strong themes and positive messages such as ‘Get Better’, and I wanted to know what influences that.

DLS: Just being human; we’re humans and we live in the world we do tackle dark subjects as well as be positive. But I think there’s just no room to rant and go “ugh the world’s shit, ugh,” which is not for most people who are supposed to look on more positive things. We already have to deal with things like suicide in our songs so it would be horrible if all we were doing was saying “everything’s rubbish!” We’d end up topping ourselves!

BM: How passionate would you say you are about the themes and lyrical content in your songs?

DLS: Oh no, I just do it for the money! [Laughs] Nah, obviously a lot of the things are driven by Pip because they’re his words and he’s the one who has to live by them. There’s the odd thing that we talk about where I’m not as passionate as he would be, but then when we get to tackle things like suicide and depression, which are hugely important things that I’ve spent a lot of time around and in in my life, it makes me feel good that we get to get that message across. When I’m standing on a stage, there are people listening and between those songs my job is to then make them forget that it’s sad and tell knock-knock jokes.

BM: Who’s the best person you’ve collaborated with?

DLS: That’s an impossible one to answer. This guy called Pete Dolan – an American rapper who just toured with me and Pip – has been on both our solo albums and he’s definitely the person who’s the most underrated, amazing rapper. He’s got a passion for putting on a show – I love him to bits. But then he’s my best mate as well so I might be a bit biased! We’ve also worked with Sarah Williams White, an up-and-coming songstress and we get to take her on tour and do stuff with her. It’s always good – we wouldn’t do a collaboration if they were dicks!

BM: Do you have any upcoming collaborations that you’re working on at the moment?

DLS: At the moment I’m just concentrating on touring with Pip. We’ll probably both start tinkering away at other stuff in the summer. In two days’ time we go to Europe for a whole month so I’m concentrating on working out if I’ve got enough pairs of socks.

BM: Do you feel that your music promotes new artists and new music into the scene?

DLS: I think that we do make certain things a little bit more accessible. [Pip] is a big lanky, pigeon-chested, beardy rapper from Essex – if he can stand on a stage and do that, then there’s no reason why anyone else can’t. I think there’s also just the fact of what we are: we’re independent, we don’t have management, we don’t have a massive label, but we’re doing it and people have actually heard us and we get to go to festivals and headline stages. So I think in that way we do, but who knows?

BM: What is it like working without management?

DLS: Stressful! [Laughs] I’m sitting here, it’s Friday, I’ve got a cold and I’ve got piles of paper around me, so the accounts have to go off today and I’ve got to get that merch from here to there and this, that and the other. But at the same time it’s nice to be so directly in contact with not only the audience but the people who put you on, the promoters, everyone you work with – at least you’ve met them.

And when we did have management it was someone hugely close to us so we’d always like to , not even from a money-grabbing point of view, just from being involved. There are so many artists out there who don’t know what goes on with their own business, if you want to call it that, but they end up getting robbed blind. Management is very helpful for a lot of bands but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

BM: I’m quite excited about you coming to the Copper Rooms. What are your aims when you perform in concert?

DLS: To do everything we possibly can. When we tour the UK we can play the upbeat stuff and the downbeat stuff, we can play the meaningful stuff and the shallow stuff; so it’s about putting on that full show that shows the audience every side of us but also without preaching. You don’t want to go to a gig and then just be grumpy and crying into your beer. So we do the dark stuff but we ultimately want people to be happy when they leave so it’s about finding that balance between up and down and just giving everyone a giggle.

Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip are set to perform at Warwick SU’s Copper Rooms on April 25. For more information, visit their website.