Sound Revolt: What do you think about Depeche Mode?
Lee Coombs: I love Depeche Mode. They are fucking unbelievable.

Sound Revolt: Once you said you liked your breaks/house pigeonhole. That is pretty surprising statement as for an artist. Is that mean you’re gonna stay devoted to breaks till death?
Lee Coombs: I don’t pigeonhole myself, other people do it! I do what I do. Because I’m with Finger Lickin – as I said before – I always gonna be associated with breakbeat. I got close connections with people like Meat Katie, Dylan Rhymes... And we are to decide; we’ll make anything: techno, electro, house, breakbeat... I even write some downtempo stuff for my album.

Sound Revolt: Your biggest compilation to date was “Perfecto Breaks” with loads of remixes and re-edits of yours. It seems you had a lot to do working on it.
Lee Coombs: Yes, I spent three months on it. The goal was to include brand new records and to make them all sound like they where supposed to be played together. There was some singing, some real music... not just beats and hard noises. I wanted to make something that was as good to listen at home, as it was in a car or in a club.

Sound Revolt: And now you’re working on your artist album. What is it going to be like?
Lee Coombs: This is different because it’s gonna be a hundred percent original material. It’s a hard work. For now eight tracks are ready but I want to make twelve or thirteen.

Sound Revolt: How is your label doing? Will you release the album on Thrust?
Lee Coombs: No, under Finger Lickin. But my label’s doing very well. I’ve been on my travels picking up new tracks, but I also got Meat Katie making records for me, DJ Buck, myself, D Ramirez... and many more great producers.

Sound Revolt: Tell me about your collaboration with Meat Katie. I think Mark’s sound is much more harsh and heavy. How do you find compromises?
Lee Coombs: We haven’t made many tracks together. I wouldn’t also say that Mark’s sound is harsh; it’s just more minimal. But when we come together we get a nice middle ground, so we do around styles. You know, I fight with a lot of people in a studio but actually Mark is one of the guys I don’t fight with.

Sound Revolt: Is that true that “Import” track has its title from the party you’re gonna play on tonight? What did you like here so much?
Lee Coombs: Yes, we started off doing a remix for a label. For some reason it was unsellable for the release but we still got a track and we were convinced it’s really good. Mark and I both played in Import!, really enjoyed the night so we decided to call it “Import”. Why not. [Laughs]

Sound Revolt: January usually is a month of last year’s summaries. Would you please give me the names of your favourite tracks, venues, djs or albums in 2003?
Lee Coombs: I can’t really talk like that because I never go to see other DJs’ play as I always DJ myself. Producers... Last year we got around a group which was: me, Meat Katie, Christian J, Dylan Rhymes, Rennie Pilgrim and Elite Force. Between the six of us we do around sound. Rennie is a bit different, he’s more breaks but he fits in to what we do when we write music together. It’s the first year I started work with other people, because before I preferred to write music on my own. If you ask me about my favourite producers – this is the group of people I write music with.

Sound Revolt: What was your favourite party?
Lee Coombs: Favourite party?
Bartek Winczewski (event manager): I know the answer.
[laughs] What was it, Bartek? I think my favourite party of 2003 has to be New Year in San Francisco. I played there on a party called “Breakfast for Champions” [Lee says that with capital letters].

Sound Revolt: Just like the famous movie!
Lee Coombs: I don’t know anything about the movie. Don’t compare it to anything, just call it a party, all right? [Agreed] So the party started at 7 in the morning on New Year’s Day. I played for about three hours there and this was like spiritual experience; this was fantastic! It wasn’t like an obvious crowd. You could see that everybody was totally into the music for the whole time. And it wasn’t a question of drum build-ups or anything like that – everyone just totally got the groove there. That’s the goal. That is what I head for a party.

Sound Revolt: And what 2004 is going to be like for you?
Lee Coombs: Hopefully my album is gonna be out in April/May this year on Finger Lickin. Look out for new releases of Thrust Recordings. The next one is my own release called “Tribal Tension”. I think the promos are already out.

The End

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