Silver g-strings, two tyrants that don’t listen to their solo albums and how Resident Advisor makes Burridge a P.Diddy fan – this and much more you can read from this interview with Lee and his lovely girlfriend – Camille. Enjoy!

Sound Revolt: Do you still visit Hong Kong?
Lee Burridge: As much as possible. I was supposed to go there in two weeks time but my friend, who’s the promoter has failed miserably and lack of communication means I’m not going.

Sound Revolt: Has Hong Kong changed since you moved back to England?
Lee Burridge: It used to change even when I was there. It’s such a vibrant city. They’re always knocking something down. You wake up one morning and a building is missing and a new one has been put up. It takes them 3 months to do that – they are very fast. It’s changed for me the most way, ‘cause when I was there a lot of people could work there without a visa, which now is impossible. So the travel aspect of the city isn’t really happening anymore. The people who used to run out of money in Australia and Thailand and come to Hong Kong and work don’t do that anymore. It’s still an exciting city but I think it’s lost its sort of attraction for a lot of young people who are travelling.

Sound Revolt: Why did you choose that city in the first place?
Lee Burridge: It kinda chose me actually. I was living in Jamaica briefly and after coming back to England my life turned out to be very boring. It was beautiful in the countryside but hard to live really.

Sound Revolt: Playing for sheeps wasn’t good enough for you?
Lee Burridge: 10 o’clock at night and everyone is in bed! I was working in a night club and somebody handed me a business card and said - “Do you want a job in Hong Kong?”. I was like “Yeah, alright! Let’s go!”. I ended up playing pop music, rock and roll, disco, hip hop and stuff in a bar, speaking on the microphone.

Sound Revolt: Karaoke?
Lee Burridge: Nearly as bad

Sound Revolt: Time for more recent issues.„Let’s get ill” was last year’s Miami smash hit. I personally don’t like that tune at all.
Lee Burridge: I don’t like it either.

Sound Revolt: But this year you said that the hottest tune was „My World” by Erick Morillo and P Diddy.
Lee Burridge: I never said that.

Sound Revolt: According to Resident Advisor you did say that
Lee Burridge: No, I never said that.

Sound Revolt: Strange. I read the WMC Perspectives with Lee Burridge just yesterday.
Lee Burridge: Well, I’ll be contacting Resident Advisor. You know why? Because they asked me the question and I didn’t answer it. So they just put that in. I’ll be going to Resident Advisor tomorrow and asking them why they put that.

Sound Revolt: Really?
Lee Burridge: Yeah, I don’t even know what that tune is.

Sound Revolt: What about the g-strings you bought for Bill Patrick?
Lee Burridge: (Laughs) Bill is a good friend of ours and he jokingly send me his new mixed CD he’d made. I opened the envelope and there was a black leather glove with fingers cut off and studs on it. Camille shows up with this awful silver g-string, which I of course wore but we decided to give it to Bill Patrick. So it’s like a second crotch g-string. Bill really got into it. He said “I’ve been wearing it for my girlfriend, sexyyyy”. And then Camille went “Yeah, Lee looks sexy in it as well”. He screamed like a girl.

Sound Revolt: Did you wash it after...
Lee Burridge: Of course not! (everybody laughs)

Sound Revolt: Tech-house is getting more and more popular lately. It’s taking over progressive fans – I’m one of them. You play both these styles. Do you think tech-house will be getting more and more popular?
Lee Burridge: The funny thing with tech-house is that it’s become a certain sound whereas before it was supposed to be descriptive of mainly a night you went where you heard electro, techno, house, deep-house. It’s always good when things get popular but I guarantee as soon as they become popular a lot of people don’t like them anymore, because of “oh, everybody likes it” attitude. A lot of producers make records that they think are their interpretation of tech-house so it becomes watered down. Orange juice is not that good when you pour water in it, is it?

Sound Revolt: Right. Do you think that the key is to avoid melodies?
Lee Burridge: No, I like melody. The key is to avoid contrived ideas. Lots of people give me CDs of music and everything is OK but instead of making one great track they make 10 OK tracks. They use all their ideas over 10, when they could make just one. Maybe that would be the way things could move ahead and be interesting.

Sound Revolt: Maybe there is a demand for 10 average tracks?
Lee Burridge: When I was in Miami I must have like 150 records. Some of which hopefully will be exciting but I guarantee most of which will sound the same. Eventually people get really bored of hearing the same over and over and over again.

Sound Revolt: But that’s the thing that happened to progressive really. Producers stopped inventing new things and everyone was making similar tracks.
Lee Burridge: Yeah. I know it myself, because I didn’t really know much about production and still don’t know a great deal about it. The way a DJ or somebody that wants to make a record makes one is you get three records that you like and take them to a producer and say “hey, I like this bit, I like this bit and I like this bit”. And all you end up with is a little bit of everybody else and if everybody does that... You know, it’s like a sponge of water - you wring it so much that it eventually is dry. It’s sad when people say you play progressive house you get defensive. That goes for me as well. You know, I still play progressive house – how I consider progressive house - but it’s become the uncool thing. Which is fine, ‘cause eventually it will come back around maybe and people will start putting different ideas into it and it will suddenly seem interesting again. I don’t like the whole idea of just calling thing by a label but on the other hand you have to know what you’re into so it has to have a name really...

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