With the 3rd installment of his Crate Diggin’ series coming out next month, we managed to catch up with the Robsoul Label Boss, Phil Weeks in between gigs in Ibiza, Rimini, Miami and New York!
Originally starting Robsoul as a platform for releasing his own music in 2001, the label grew much bigger than he could have anticipated and has seen releases from a number of big names including; DJ Sneak, Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, Pete Dafeet, Mike Dunn, Theo Parrish and many more.
So what was the idea behind the Crate Diggin’ Series?
The main idea was to bring back some tracks from the past. Tracks I’ve been playing for years and still love to play now. Tracks everybody still asks what they are when I play them out. Some tracks are rare, unknown and others pretty standard for the people who were already there at that time. But for me, this is the best music, best production with the best sound quality (from hardware) that I really love.
We know how difficult it can be to come up with an all time Top 10 so to select 30 tracks must have been a challenge. Can we expect a Volume 4 in the near future?
I got to disagree actually, 30 tracks to select in a range of over 15 years is very easy. I think I selected around 60 tracks before we sent the request to each label. And this quick selection came up pretty fast, in no more than one hour I would say. 3 more volumes would be an easy game if I feel we should be going on with this concept.
The tracks you’ve chosen span back to the 90’s. How do you feel that the music has changed over the last 20 years?
As I was saying earlier, the music changed, mostly because of technology. The creativity is still amazing but the sound quality is not the same, and the overall groove of tracks is also different for the same reasons. I like this old sound. That’s what’s touching me. I still can find some new and fresh music that still sounds the way I love but this is now a minority.
Do you think that technology is killing the more melodic styles of the last two decades gone by?
Technology opened the door to more “producers”. Some are just doing that as a hobby and are not as passionate as we were all back in the days. Selections is then tougher.
We understand that the artwork was done by your daughter, which is pretty cool. Clearly you have artistic family roots! Do you ever see yourselves working in the studio together?
At the moment, no. My big daughter (10 years old) is incredibly talented to draw, to invent stories, super creative, even more than me (without getting high yet! 🙂 ) but I don’t feel any huge interest from her on the music side. She already did a few bits of artwork, and she’s now working on a video clip, for my next double pack “The Art Of Sampling”. Gonna be very hot!
What has been your favourite gig of 2013 so far?
I’ve been playing over 60 gigs since beginning of the year.
I got to say that 3/4 of them were just great!
Any what gigs are you most looking forward to?
I’m right now on a plane going to Bucharest, then driving 5 hours to the mountain in Piatra Neamt. I’m looking forward to this one to party with my Romanian friends! Also I can’t wait to be back to Ibiza later in August for Wisdom Of The Glove/Pacha.
Are there any people you’ve come across this year as ones to watch in the future?
Alci from Zurich was the revelation for me this year. He’s now part of the Robsoul family. He’s amazing and will do great things in the near future. Also, you need to watch out for Nail who is not a newcomer (he was already producing beats 20 years ago) but he’s coming back very strong this year.
Ok – lastly, can you tell us a joke?
I’m someone always looking for fun as you know, but I got no joke! My humour is all live shit, same as music!
Thanks Phil – we hope you enjoy the rest of the Summer!
http://www.robsoulrecordings.com
