Nick Warren joins Super Progressive for an interview covering his indie rock influences, what the Bristol scene was all about, DJing for Massive Attack on tour, his Back To Mine mix, his eight Global Underground releases, his popularity in Argentina, and what the Winter Music Conference is all about.
Originally aired June 9, 2022. Transcribed by James Wright.
Super Progressive: We’re here with the man, Nick Warren.
Nick Warren: Very nice to be here.
Super Progressive: So nice to meet you. The reason why I’m so excited for this one, I just want to let you know when we started this project, my older cousin, Ned Shepherd, who performs with DJ Sultan, he gifted me his old Global Underground collection. And I was super fascinated, and I’ll never forget, the first album I put on was GU24: Reykjavik and what that showed me about this music, it was the first time I had heard anything that was so down tempo and so patient with building a mix. This for me, opened my eyes and my heart to what the progressive sound and the culture is all about.
Nick Warren: Cool.
Super Progressive: Yeah, so I’m really excited to talk about it, and one thing that I found so interesting with you is that when you talk about your music influence, we think progressive house as a derivative of house music, but your influences are also actually indie music.
Nick Warren: Well, I’d go for it’s all indie. I was never really into the early house stuff, garage and that whole soulful house thing – I had no interest in it. But then my background, you see, so when I was younger it was like most people, your dad’s record collection is a part influence, and he was really into people like Jean-Michel Jarre, who was a French synth artist, and it wasn’t really the tracks on those albums, it was the bits in between the tracks, which were just these soundscapes and drones and sort of weird sound effects and stuff. That’s what really interested me, and so then it was bands like, I suppose Kraftwerk of course, Depeche Mode, the Yellow Magic Orchestra, all that early synth since the post-punk, it was punk in the early days so you had stupid haircuts and bondage trousers and stuff and from there it went into that whole post-punk scene so it was very much a European influence of my music really.
Super Progressive: Really cool and I think that one thing I’m interested in is, you have this indie background and then early on in your career you’re asked to be the touring DJ for Massive Attack, and this is going down in the Bristol scene, but what did you learn from that experience? It’s not like a traditional DJing in the club DJing experience. What did you learn, because I think it’s a really unique opportunity.
Nick Warren: Well, it was a natural thing to do because we were mates first – especially Grant Marshall/Daddy G for Massive Attack, we were great friends and we DJ’d together. 3D from Massive Attack who does a lot of the lyric writing, he would say he was an indie boy, punk bands and then it was the fusion of the dub and black music background with the indie scene because we were all brought up with it. You see going back a bit further in the UK, if you went to see punk bands, in between the act, it was always a dub reggae DJ playing dub reggae. So that fusion of dub, punk and indie, which in my opinion is where Massive Attack truly are and were, because if you listen to albums like Mezzanine for instance, that’s got a much more dub, punk and indie influence. So we all liked the same music and my job was great with them because my job was to warm up the room before the band came on. So my job was not to play any floor fillers or bangers, my job was just to make the mood right, which is great fun because you can play anything – I used to scratch in Frank Sinatra over Gang of Four or Stiff Little Fingers or Future Sounds of London, it was anything and it was just a great way to learn the art of DJing.
Super Progressive: Definitely and you talk about these indie influences, this reggae dub influence, it makes me think of Jam & Spoon’s remix of Moby – Go that your Back To Mine Mix all builds up to, and another way this indie/dub influence shows itself is like I was saying on GU24 Reykjavik, Ulrich Shnauss’ Nobody’s Home that moment, and I think it’s cool that these really unique moments in some of my favourite mixes of yours showcase this aspect of your career.
Nick Warren: Yeah, because the Ulrich Shnauss track is a perfect example – it’s a very famous hip hop break that’s used by Ulrich, but he’s obviously influenced by labels like 4AD, Cocteau Twins and acts like that so it’s that huge reverb chorus idea over really strong Hip Hop beats and that’s always worked for me.
Super Progressive: Yeah, those have been some of my favourite moments in your mixes and so we’re here with you and I don’t think there’s any better person to ask this question that I have. You’ve had 8 Global Underground releases throughout the entire timeline of the series, and rather than going through each mix with you, one big question I have that I’d appreciate your insight on is, what is it about these mixes, that allow them to stand the test of time, where kids like me, 10 or 20 years later are going back and listening and there’s something different about them?
Nick Warren: Well, I think, I don’t know is the honest answer, but then I would say that they were a snapshot of vague particular time, but the skill of compilations is making an album which will still sound good in 15 or 20 years time, and so choosing the tracks is super important with that in mind. You can’t be thinking, oh, well I should be aiming to use the latest, the trendiest track. So you try and choose stuff that’s timeless. Okay, it might be much faster than it is now, but if you notice, I don’t have any vocal tracks I put on those and vocals date really, really quickly, I can’t think of a single vocal track I put on there.
Super Progressive: That’s so interesting.
Nick Warren: I think that instrumental mix, which the whole progressive sound is built on, I think it’s about making sure that you’re very careful about what goes on the album.
Super Progressive: Totally. That’s really great insight and I’m excited to go back and listen to these mixes again, knowing the intention behind the track selection, it’s really cool. So on Tuesday we got to see you and Hernán play – that was really special because it was definitely one of the most lively audiences we’ve ever been around, that was really awesome and one thing in talking to all these DJs is how revered and how special they talk about the Argentinian scene. I know that you spend a lot of time down there now with Soundgarden. Can you kind of explain the magic of the Argentinian people and the scene there?
Nick Warren: Well, I’m lucky, I’ve been going since 2001.
Super Progressive: Wow.
Nick Warren: It’s the first time I went, and Petra and I now go for three or four months a year and live there and do the gigs, and I think that for me, the Argentinians love the fact that we spend time in the country. We walk around the streets of Bueno Aires or Mendoza or Rosario, and people stop and talk to us and they love that. So I think that’s part of the reason that my popularity has been so good there. But then the crowds are super enthusiastic. Their whole nightlife, their whole society runs around that nightlife really. People eat late, people go out late, people dance late. The summers are fantastic, of course. So all the parties are outside from November through to March, but then also the club scene in the winters are super strong. You have to give respect to the people that started the scene; Hernán (Cattáneo) and his ex-manager, Martin Gontad, who used to run a radio station in Argentina. That radio station was the only place where people heard electronic music on the radio because mainstream radio wouldn’t go near it and so their programming of that music, their choice of DJs that used to invite to Pacha, which was the only club in Bueno Aires back in the early 2000s, that’s what guides the musical taste of the audience there. So they weren’t brought up on EDM, they weren’t brought up on a cheesy trance. They were brought up on cool underground, mainly progressive idea of electronic music. So they were very well educated in the beginning and then if you’ve got younger brothers and sisters listening to their older brothers and sisters CDs or music and they’re influenced by that, you have this culture of high quality electronic music being passed down to generations and that’s why it’s so strong.
Super Progressive: It’s so cool to learn that. I guess the last question I have, which we’ve been kind of asking all the DJs we’ve been interviewing here is you’ve been coming to Winter Music Conference for years now and this is our first one and we kind of got a taste of the magic, which is like going to see the DJs and then you see DJs encouraging the other DJs on as fans on the dance floor. What do you think has stayed the same about Winter Music Conference over the years and maybe what has been lost to time due to the progression of technology and such?
Nick Warren: Well, I think the main thing that’s been lost in my opinion, especially this year is there’s no Europeans here.
Super Progressive: Oh, interesting.
Nick Warren: The audience is all this side of Atlantic, which is unusual because in the past there were thousands of Europeans that would fly over, and so it was a very mixed crowd. There’s a lot of South Americans here, there’s lots of Mexicans and there’s lots of Americans and Canadians. No one else is really here this year. The DJs obviously are here, but the crowd isn’t. I think that’s also a lot to do with it’s stupidly expensive here now in Miami.
Super Progressive: Definitely!
Nick Warren: To book a hotel room or something here now for most people, to book a week here and fly over from Manchester, if you’ve got a normal job and stay here, you can’t do it. That’s gone, which is a real shame because one of the best magics of this week was that whole mix of people from all over the world coming together to listen to DJs, and also for us to go, me, I can go to Get Lost, this afternoon we’re going to go and see Rodriguez Jr. And a few other people on South Beach, and it’s being able to bump into friends and hang out with other DJs and see how everyone’s getting on. Obviously after the lockdown, everybody being locked up for two years. It’s great to see everybody. We all look a bit older, but it’s exactly the same. But yes, it’s still great to have all these parties in one week. We have a ADE also now, which we never had in the past with Miami. Miami was the only music week all year. But now we have ADE in Amsterdam, so maybe people think based in Europe, okay we’ll wait for a ADE. So it’s a shame, but it’s still a magical week.
Super Progressive: Totally. One of my favourite things I learned about the history of this week was it used to be a launching point for the summer season and you would break, as a DJ, the big records you were excited for, for the summer.
Nick Warren: Yeah, that doesn’t happen anymore. No, it’s funny because you see, the thing is in the early days you’d have DJs say, Dubfire, Carl Cox, me, Sasha, John Digweed, Hernán (Cattáneo), Josh Wink, the BA record, which everybody plays. But these days everyone is so genre defined now it’s like a techno DJ is not going to play a progressive track or a vocal track and vice versa. So it’s a shame that that’s the record of WMC has kind of gone these days.
Super Progressive: Definitely. I think one thing I’ll say about that is the one thing I’ve learned on this journey to Miami Music Week and talking to all these DJs and learning about what progressive really means, it’s not a sound, but being a progressive DJ to me and part of the progressive culture is more of a mindset and an approach to the music and the programming of the music. And I think when we saw Sasha and we saw you and Hernan, I was going anticipating, I’m like, I wonder if we’ll hear some tracks from these mixed compilations we’ve been studying. But what it means to be progressive is to always be on the forefront, always bringing these new sounds and influences to light.
Nick Warren: Of course, I think I played one or two and I played a couple on the boat of new remixes of really old tracks. But then I think if you go down the route of playing our classics, it’s a one-way street. It’s very hard to turn around and come back out of that. So I tend to stay away from the classics.
Super Progressive: No, totally. I mean, as music fans, we appreciate it because you are the taste maker and it’s amazing. But yeah, I just wanted to thank you for having us here. This was an interview we’ve been looking forward to for months now, so thank you very much.
Nick Warren: It was a pleasure.
