Interview – LTJ Bukem

For over thirteen years, one man has presented a times smoother, and cutting edge, side of dnb to the masses of the electronic community. Within that time, LTJ Bukem has managed to solidify himself as a true leader of style and achievement within the genre, whether it be with his own production and works with MC Conrad, or his multiple releases through the acclaimed Good Looking Records label.

Danny Bukem is a study of passive aggressiveness. Aggressive in the music industry, and his passion for his projects, and passive on external opinions and at times derisive attitudes and rumour. Yet from his outlook, the journey to the upper echelon of an explosive genre has been nothing but fulfilling.

“I think that passion and drive are two main attributes that you have to have to be successful in anything in life. I think you also have to take a large amount of risk with what you are doing.”

Having run the Good Looking Records label for thirteen years, Bukem is no stranger to risk taking – the majority of which have presented a positive outcome.

“Some of my decisions might not have turned out the best way but I don’t regret them or anything I’ve done in my life. Its all been an interesting journey and a massive lesson on people and how people tend to operate. Also on business and how to get on – there are no rulebooks to making an independent drum n bass label.”

Yet with a plethora of releases, and world wide acclaim, Bukem acknowledges that he is more of a perfectionist than anything else. “I’m never happy with the sound quality of anything, I always think it could be better – but that’s just how I am, always wanting things to be better.” he responds. Making note that he can not find favourites amongst his works, he is happy that each seems to capture a period of time when it was produced. “All of the progression sessions are equal in meaning to me because all of them have had music picked out reflects the moment they were or the atmosphere and the vibe of the night that they were.

His long running production endeavours notwithstanding, Bukem also claims a half of one of the longest running and successful DJ/MC partnerships in the genre, and the powerhouse of the Bukem/ Conrad duo is one that continues to find fans across the globe.

“Honestly, I’ll tell you why me and Conrad have such a good partnership, its because I earn him a lot of money!” Bukem responds, with piss-taking laughter. “Why would he want to go anywhere else without Danny Bukem when I can get him 200 gigs in a year! First of all, let’s get that out of the way! Secondly, and seriously, on the production side of things we do work wonderfully together. He kind of understands me totally as a dj and enjoys my music and what I play. I totally respect him for what he does in his lyrical content, his way of expressing things – he lets the music breath and doesn’t go all out and turn it into a one man show. That works for us. It works with him and what we do – it helps if you can lock someone down and take their music everywhere you go, obviously your shows going to get better the more you work together.”

From the appreciation of Conrad’s talents and their continuing partnership, matters that are even closer to home are equated with no less humour and mildly sarcastic overtones than those concerning the status of his record label. From the lack of activity in the past year, the rumour mill surrounding GLR has been never-endingly saturated with news revolving around debt, the closure of the GLR studios in England as well as gossip that Good Looking was, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water.

“First of all, all the people that talk on Forums about Good Looking dying – how come none of these people have contacted me or my business partner of indeed Good Looking Records?” Bukem asks, slightly perplexed by the entire situation. “Secondly, all these people – these are the people, who talk this way, are going to be those who will never achieve anything in their life personally. These are people who couldn’t even reach or begin to accomplish what I and good looking have done in the last fifteen years.” And whilst the light hearted derision of the situation is evident in his tone, and yet there is no evidence of anger at any of the ongoing rumours.

“How can someone who can’t achieve what I have achieved piss me of? I’d have to be a kind of weird individual if those kinds of people pissed me off.”

Bukems scorn for the entire internet-rumour phenomenon are plain and obvious to see, as the immense pride he takes in his work – his passion and drive, are bottomless. Yet in a business which follows no conventions, other real life activities have often had to take the back seat to his professional life.

“After fifteen years – well, most people in life take holidays once a year. My partner and I have had one in fifteen years, I think we’re entitled to have a year off if we chose to have a year off!” he responds, slightly weary. “That’s exactly what we’ve done for twelve months. Also, I mean, please – the fact that people even mention that – it doesn’t piss me off, but I find it very eye opening.”

Not one to rest on his laurels, even his period of “time out” from the workings of the industry has been less than complete. “I’ve been writing some new music. I’ve done some work with Conrad. We’ve got a ten years best of progression session album from Fabric, we’ll put that out on DVD – going to do a Progression Session maybe in Australia – I’ve got lots of things to do. My business partner and I are also renovating the studio building – that’s taken the best part of two years. It’s really hard to do when you are never around.”

“I did ten years of monthlies, and I needed a break man – it takes a lot of effort organising. You do gigs every week for ten years, and then suddenly people are like ‘what’s going on, you’ve gone bankrupt or oh no, its all over’ and I’m like, well, no its not – we’re doing Fabric monthly, so shut the fuck up anyways. There’s one message that I want to leave people – go and do something publicly to add to the scene. Add to Good Looking, go write some music and start a record label – go and get fifteen people into an office and get forty artists – then run that for ten years. Progress peoples lives and make a difference – when you’ve done that, then come back to a forum and start talking about Danny Bukem.”

Beyond the rumours, and beyond the hype, Bukem lays down the coming tour enthusiastic fashion. “We’re celebrating thirteen years of the label, we’ll do some new stuff and try to give them some stuff they haven’t heard and maybe try to educate them, but at some stage in the set we’re going to go retro at some point int he set, maybe at the beginning maybe at the end – we’re just going to celebrate some of the music that’s been round in the scene and the reason why we are here now. We’ll play a couple of tracks kind of celebrating that.” And, that said, the reason for his enthusiasm for his upcoming tour is succinct and directly to the point: “We Love Perth man. We love it.”