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Armand Van Helden Interview

What's been the pinnacle of your career so far?
"For me the biggest pinnacle for so far that happened was basically the first timed I heard one of my records on the radio, I know it sounds pretty childish. For some reason for me that was… I just like to progress, as long as I feel I’m progressing I’m not really getting over excited about anything, I’m sitting there like OK, my record’s on the radio - to me that blew my head back, it was Witch-Doctor the song I did, "Wow my record’s on the radio!".

You famously cleared the dance floor at Space with a hip-hop set, can you tell us about that set?
"it’s kinda true, but kinda not. I’ve learnt something from little things like that, I’m so happy that it happened in the first place cause it was kinda like my intention. I’m just learning about how people’s perceptions are manipulated when you have a big story (because I always get asked about it). I learned now that it’s a conversation piece - so people can ask, can hip-hop and house live as one? That’s the question. I don’t know I was thinking of all that when I did it.
What is was, (I’ll try and make this the shortest version I can do, cause it’s not really short). I played 3 hours of house (I’m chilling), I always bring and on occasions I drop a few hip-hop records and it’s not the first time I played hip-hop at Space on the Terrace, it’s actually the 3rd / 4th time I have, it’s just that the times I played it, it was when TLC ‘No Scrubs’ came out, it was all hot (No 1 in the UK), there was no booing - it was only love for TLC, then I played Aleia and then I played a hip-hop record and then I went back to the house set - 3 little things smashed in the middle and nobody had nothing to say, Perceptions are definitely funny.

At the end of the day, my friend is there, we’re all hanging out Morales is there, having a good time getting in to New York mode, I like "fuck it I’m tired of playing house, I’m gonna play hip-hop" - this is who I am anyway. So I play and everything is fine, 15-20 minutes almost 30 minutes go buy, there was a drag-queen kept coming up to the booth, telling me to cut off the music (she, well he/she whatever works there) "What are you doing, this is not what this is about?" they’re saying something to me. "I’m like whatever - I’m gonna go back to house, just give me a little bit to go in to a little thing here", so they went and got the person that runs Space on the Terrace he was like "Yo - your off!" and My friend was in the booth, the next record I had on was the ‘Thong Song’ (it was my friend’s favourite song and he’s was drunk), he’s in the booth next to me saying ‘boo’, booing that I had to leave - and so he’s encouraging the crowd to boo, he wanted to hear his ‘Thong Song.’ There you go.

There was some people, the floor did dissipate that’s the truth, the truth is I did get booed and the truth is at Space the floor did somewhat empty out, so they’re both right but they’re not right in that context."

What's been you're worst experience DJ'ing?
"I don’t’ have a worst, but the only thing I don’t like is when, I like to talk to people, I don’t mind talking to people when people wanna talk to me, but I don’t understand why people wanna talk to me when they’ve had 4 E’s and 8 lines of coke, because it’s not really like they’re gonna remember what I saying in the first place… All of these people wanna have this long discussion with me, well why don’t we setup lunch when you normal? Why you gotto go on and on, and keep saying the same thing 3 times and keep telling me about your opinion that really I don’t give a shit about?"

You’re best ever club event and why?
"I don’t know about my best but obviously a good night for me is go out, do my thing, if I do my gig and end up with two beautiful girls back at my hotel room I’m pretty happy, that would top off my night! In order to have it happen - you have to try to make it happen."

Where did your love of Rock music develop from?
"That was when I was young, I grew up in a musical home, not musical in terms of musicians, in terms of my father played records (he wasn’t a DJ, maybe he should have been one), he played a lot of records, a lot of rock, a lot of good rock, not like heavy metal or anything like that (he wasn’t big into that stuff), more like Fleetwood Mac and stuff like that. Even if I told my folks I didn’t really care for this music, I actually did, when you get older you start to appreciate what that music was - wow this shit I remember this, this is fucking banging."

What are your views on the future of dance music and club land?
"For me it’s the same, it always has it’s little things that try to knock it out of the box, everything peaks, it had somewhat of a peak, (not in America cause in America I don’t know 1% of the population buys dance music records, if that), out here I think the dance music thing’s a lot bigger, it’s just pretty consistent, it comes up and down (in terms of commercialism), but I’ve seen it come up and down a lot. One things that’s never gonna die is peoples going out to dance to dance music. Whether people are like "oh the scenes shit" or "oh it’s so commercial", I don’t really follow what anybody got to say to me about that. People are gonna go out to dance regardless of if it’s your type of sound or not."

You used to promote club nights, tell us about that?
"I did a club night called The Flight, and I did a club called the Loft that was when I lived in Boston. Back in those days we were basically what we were doing was what nobody does, I was like one of the ballsyest promoters even to this day I’ve ever seen. I was the type of promoter that had no fear, in other words I would take your down-town crew wanna-be fucking crowd and mix it with most ghetto thug crowd and throw ravers in for desert. People were like what are you doing? In a way I noticed of the power of the youth, what I was doing, kids from the ghetto were coming in to this club and they were experiencing this culture that they’ve never seen in their lives, and they seeing black people and Spanish being all be gangster, they’d come in wow there’s actually my people in here acting civilised, they’re like me but their not acting like a stupid idiot, it would catch on. I would let in these young kids, and what it would do the club would brainwash them, they’d be coming every week like fucking religion, next thing you know it’s a mean staple and they’re actually schooling the new people that come in trying to cause problems."

How’s your Arm label doing?
"Arm for me was just a label that I came up because I listened to a lot of the hip-hop moguls like Russell Simmons or Dame Dash, I listen to what they say about business. They were always saying, always sign your music to your own label, then do a joint venture, have the label pick up music from your label. All that came out on arm was really my music, it’s still active but I haven’t done any music on Arm. A real label would be like Subliminal where they sign like whoever’s hot and they put out the record, I haven’t signed anybody - it’s not really like a real record label."

What else do have lined up?
"I’ve got a lot of stuff on the burner, I’m contemplating what to do with it, I’m waiting about a month after ‘Me & My Name’ actually comes out on the streets. It’s funny cause when I’m dealing with the labels and the whole business side, they’re all talking about some record that the public doesn’t even have in their hands yet, it’s a little difficult for me to start thinking about things, as far as I’m concerned there is no record, it’s not for public consumption, maybe the whole press machine’s been wound up, average people in the street can’t buy this thing, my prospective comes in a month after that, then I go ok, how’d the record do, then I start to place my next move, it’s like chess."