FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1999. All Rights Reserved
| Music by Aubrey McInnis DJ ANDY SMITH Back on New Year’s Eve of 1996, as excited people were pouring into a massive Montreal club expecting the party of a lifetime, Andy Smith’s hands went behind a set of turntables and a mixer to adjust a few wires in order to cut out excess noise. Seconds later, there was a huge spark and the power went out in the entire club for nearly half an hour. Three years later, 32-year-old Andy is an internationally renowned DJ, having stood behind the decks for Portishead since their beginning. Not to say that the electrical short was his fault or anything, but Andy has a lighthearted way about him and appears to be an adventurous sort who doesn’t mind getting his hands messy, though he’d rather be knee-deep in vinyl than mud, cables or wiring. Take for example his critically acclaimed mix disc, The Document (expect a follow-up this year), which ranges from funk to pop to hip hop to lounge with samples from Barry White to Peggy Lee and scores of others. Andy is known as one of the most diverse DJs in existence, who plays a little something for everyone without losing a steady vibe. Just when you think he’s over his head in an irretrievable sample, he smoothly switches to another song – and the song is probably as much an old favourite as it is out of the blue. That talent is something he’s honed since his early days of DJing and it’s one of the reasons he first hooked up with the rest of his Portishead bandmates. "Basically, I lived in Portishead... just out of Bristol in England. I grew up there, and Geoff Barrow, the main kind of guy behind the whole Portishead thing, also grew up there. There was a youth club in Portishead and I used to DJ there, like take over on a Friday, Saturday night and just play lots of hip hop and old ’70s funk," Andy says from his home in the U.K. "There wasn’t really that many people there – I think they came down because it was a bit of an old thing and they really didn’t know what it was all about. But Geoff knew all about it and he came down and we just got chatting and he was working on some music at the time, so he had a sampler and asked me if I had any records to sample. And I had the records so I just hooked up with him – we played crazy records and just kind of worked on beats. That’s how I met him." A few years later he’d find himself still supplying the samples and creating an appropriate atmosphere for Portishead’s moody, intimate shows. But he doesn’t necessarily keep the beats downtempo... probably because that’s what the crowd expects. He says that he pulls out everything from original hip hop records and Henry Mancini soundtracks to James Brown records and fun stuff like The Meters. "I constantly think about what to do next to make people say, ‘Wow, I wasn’t really expecting that,’ rather than just dancing for two hours and then sitting down and not remembering the night. I like people to go out of the night thinking ‘Bloody hell, he played the Rolling Stones.’ I think that’s the future of DJing – to make an interesting night like that." Although he keeps audiences gleefully on their toes, for Andy it is more surprising that the passion of his youth has become so popular in the late ’90s. "I didn’t really think that would ever happen, no," says Andy. "I guess when I was DJing clubs, it was just the club that you go to and it was never live music. You’d never go to a club because there was a DJ that was playing, you’d just go to the club because it was the club. "The way it’s changed around now, the DJs, you know, they’re the person that people come to see. It’s good, you know," he continues chuckling, "I’m quite happy with that." However, Andy explains that without the musicians, there would be no music for the DJ to play, underscoring his point that musicians are just as important to the club as the DJ, since they create the library of eclecticism from which the DJ depends upon. And in Andy’s case, that’s a fairly large library to keep stocked. |
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