So, we bring you this Christmas bundle of interviews with some of the DJs, featuring MAY68 and The Whip, along with twisting our monthly blogosphere blog into a Kleptones only-zone. So, grab the best mash ups on the web by one of the best DJs in the country just below here. Enjoy everyone’s stories of house party memories – don’t miss the one about the sink misuse – and then get all the info on how to join us on the 31^st at the end.

Trust us, you don’t want to miss this.

The Kleptones   
Influenced in the early days of Orbital, Eric Kleptone is one of the best mash-up artists around. In the same vein as DJ Yoda his ear for tunes which can integrate and his high powered, dance floor-classics filled DJ sets make him one of the most essential laptop fiddlers for any party worth its salt. Guess what? He’s going to be bringing the Ableton-powered madness to our House Party and we can’t wait. We have an interview with the man and then four essential tunes you need to download for free from his site – along with an exclusive new track, taken from his upcoming album. If Orbital sent him out of space, then The Kleptones will take you to another, strobe-filled dimension.

How’d you get into DJing/recreating sounds in the first place?
Just being a music fan, plain and simple! Right from being really tiny (and I mean really small – I got my first record player when I was six) I’ve been obsessed with music, and as soon as I was old enough I started joining bands and making mixes and DJing at parties  – I was the kid with the tunes, which meant I got plenty of invites! – pretty encouraging… To be honest, not a lot has changed! I’m still the kid with the tunes, in my head anyway…

Who inspired you, or who do you think is the most creative in the world of mash-ups/ambience?
When I was around thirteen, a friend of my older brother started giving me pause-button edit tapes of mixes he’d made – if you don’t know, pause-button editing was like a simple early version of DJ-ing/sampling using a tape deck to make a mix -what you can now do with a little cut and paste action on a computer, but in those days took a cassette deck with a good action and a steady hand! There are loads of examples of people doing this in places like New York to make Hip-Hop mixes (Check out Steinski & Double Dee for example), but this friend was mixing up everything from 60s rock’n’roll and 70s Funk to comedy records and ambient stuff – I got really inspired by the journey you could take people on linking and overdubbing clips together, so inspired by him I started to make my own.

Not long after that I heard The Art Of Noise and early UK cut-up dance tracks from people like Marrs, Bomb The Bass and Coldcut, alongside more experimental stuff by artists like Negativland in the USA – I immediately made the connection with my crude tapes, did some research, found out about samplers and started saving my pennies!

Talk us through ‘Night At The Hip-Hopera’, how did the idea come about?
I got a pretty good reaction to the first full Kleptones mashup album  - “Yoshimi Battles The Hip-Hop Robots” which inspired me to take things a bit further – We’d found the instrumental tracks for the Flaming Lips album through a shady Ebay deal, so I started digging online for other source material and located a really obscure double-CD of Queen backing tracks made for the karaoke audience in Japan. This chimed with me as I’d been a fan of the band for years – the second record I ever bought was “Bohemian Rhapsody” – so I ordered a copy and waited patiently for a couple of months for it to turn up…

At the same time there was a lot of attention in the press about the changing nature of copyright – on the one hand relating to big businesses wanting to extend copyright terms so they could (unfairly, in my opinion) keep hold of their most profitable creations (a fight that still goes on), and on the other hand relating to the amount of MP3 swapping that was going on online – something I was very much involved in. I’ve always wanted to use samples for something a bit more purposeful than just making people dance or laugh, so all the ideas fell together at the same time.

And how did you go about making it?
Apart from the Queen material, I’d been collecting hip-hop acapellas for a while (there was quite a few lurking on the b-sides of old 12”s), and have been collecting weird sounds and spoken word for a long time – right back to making the mixtapes I mentioned before, so I had a really good library of material already. The software I used was a lite version of Sony Acid, which was perfect (although I use Ableton Live now). It was just a couple of months of trial and error – seeing what vocal worked with what instrumental, not just tempo-wise, but also thematically – whether things gave off the right vibe together. After that the spoken word stuff got picked to enhance the vibe that the track was giving off… Listening back I’m astonished at how well it all fitted together, but it was a real labour of love. Still is!

You’ve had 500,000 downloads so far, is it weird to be ‘large’ but also be so underground at the same time?
I think we’re close to the million now, including the other albums. Is it weird? Not really… the sort of thing I do is very, very difficult to take overground without some pretty heavy help from lawyers and record labels, and you have to surrender quite a large amount of creative control when you get involved with those guys. This has always been a form of personal expression, and, although I could compromise, it would be hard, and I think the people who are genuine fans would be able to tell. Also, I like that people find out about us through friends, blogs and gigs too – I love getting texts and emails from people saying that they’re blowing parties away with my stuff – that’s better for the heart than a chart position – I keep telling myself that, anyway!

Bands have been fiddling with knobs and dials a lot this year… any bands you think made any progressions with modern technology?
There’s always progression being made – not anyone specific, but in general – Over the last decade people have definitely got more used to seeing people merge technology, live music and DJing, but it’s only in the last year or two that people have been developing better controllers for the tech – allowing people to  visibly perform better with their tools, which is important to me – I don’t want to look like I’m checking my email – I like showing off! I’ve been waiting for designers to come up with the tools that would make a real live audio visual Kleptones show a possibility without breaking the bank or cutting any corners. It’s getting pretty close now though.

You’re DJing at Same Teens’ NYE party, what have you got in store for the party goers then?
I think there’ll be a few special mixes put together, and there’ll be a good chunk of the new album “Uptime/Downtime”, which is still mostly unheard, though It’ll be coming out hopefully at almost exactly the same time as the show! We couldn’t get it finished in time for release in the noughties, so instead we’re going to release it at midnight on 01/01/10, which should make it officially the first album released in the new decade! Such is the beauty of an online release.

And if there’s one tune to end the last night out of your life, what would it be?
“True Faith” by New Order. Because it would sum everything up perfectly.

Dancin’ Papa
http://www.kleptones.com/music/Detroit/The%20Kleptones%20-%20From%20Detroit%20to%20JA%20-%2018%20-%20Dancin%27%20Papa.mp3
David Bowie VS old school hip-hop. Eric makes it all make sense.

A Night At The Hip-Hopera
http://www.kleptones.com/music/qhh/Hip-Hopera_full.zip
An hour and twenty minutes of the most insane mash up you’re likely to hear. Just get the whole thing right here!  

Voodoo Sabotage
http://www.kleptones.com/music/demos/kleptones_voodoosabotage.mp3
Straight from the new album, which will be released 1^st January, 2010, on the midnight dot!

What has been your track of the year/decade?
Ahh! There are too many great songs to nail it down to one, this year I really liked the Yacht record [See Mystery Lights] that just came out on DFA. Rave is king – Zodiac Cartell remix is a bit of a beast.

What’s been the highlight of 09 for you?
We had a wicked summer and are really ready to get the new album finished and out for the spring. We’ve been working on it in between every gig over the last two years and have been playing some stuff live which has gone down really well so we’re looking forward to next year but I guess this year it was great to play the other stage at Glastonbury, I think that’s the biggest crowd we’ve played to, it was boodiful!

What’s the perfect dance floor filler and what can we expect from your DJ set?
I guess sometimes you have to play things that are a little obvious to pick the crowd up and that’s usually one of the many amazing Soulwax remixes, either the ‘Hey Girl’ one or ‘Kids’ but the Justice ‘Phantom 2 Mix’ is a little old but still out of this world.

Will we be seeing you pulling out the moves on the dancefloor? 
I love to dance, I hope we get chance to dance after our set is done, I want to find a fake bedroom and bounce on a bed!

The Whip will get you moving

THE ANSWERING MACHINE

The Answering Machine

What will make this New Years Eve one to remember and what’s the oddest/best thing you’ve seen at a house party?
For the oddest thing we’ve seen at a house party was Mr. Chips from Catchphrase dancing with Marilyn Monroe, it was a fancy dress…

What’s been the highlight of 09 for you?
We’ve had so many highlights this year, we’ve done 7 UK tours, been to America 3 times, just got back from Tokyo. Spending a month in New York was pretty special although it would have to be the release of our debut album, that’s something we’ve wanted since we were all about 14 years old. 

What’s the perfect dance floor filler and what can we expect from your DJ set?
For us the ultimate dance floor filler is The Rat by The Walkman, it’s unrelenting, raw and it just makes you want to grab a friend and scream the words at them.

Russell autoKratz (Kitsune)

What are your top tips for any aspiring DJs?
I think it all comes down to being passionate about music, scowering blogs for new sounds, new directions. And then just getting out there loads and playing shows. In the early days of autoKratz we got the deal by just playing lots of shows all over for no money. You just need to get out there, hassle people for shows and work really hard. 

What dance track defines the last decade for you?
I wouldn’t like to define the decade with one track, but the most important track for me would have to be ‘Leave Them All Behind’ by Whitey. It’s a combination of everything I love about music, one of my favourite tracks ever. 

Are remixes the way forward, or just a fad?
We love doing remixes as it’s an opportunity to interpret other people’s ideas in different ways. It’s exciting to be able to take the music of someone who you really respect, and twist it in to something different. We’ve had some great opportunities to work with people who we really respect – La Roux, Underworld, Fischerspooner… it’s great fun to work with vocals you really dig off. So there’s no way remixes could ever stop being exciting to people, as fusing together different peoples ideas will always create exciting results.

BERGKETEN

What’s the oddest/best thing you’ve seen at a house party?
Some (jackass) guy using my Kitchen as a toilet at 7 in the AM

What’s been the highlight of 09 for you?
Secret Garden Party without a shadow of a doubt, amazing festival exactly how it should be, a close second would be The XX’s performance at Now Wave in September which brought me very close to tears! 

MAY68

What will make this New Years Eve one to remember and what’s the oddest/best thing you’ve seen at a house party?
This is the first New Years Eve we get to go out together and DJ as MAY68, therefore it should be pretty amazing. The best house party we’ve been to was a few years back at the Bee Gees’ family home (where we once lived), Matt’s DJ set literally tore the place apart, and ended with him going through the living room window.

What’s been the highlight of 09 for you?
Supporting Glass Candy at The Deaf Institute.

What’s the perfect dancefloor filler and what can we expect from your DJ set?
The first few beats of a classic you weren’t expecting. We’ve got an
evening with the best electronic disco bangers and a few aces up our sleeve to catch you off guard.

Will we be seeing you pulling out the moves on the dancefloor?
Of course, when we’re not behind the decks we’ll be tearing up the floor like its NYE 1968.