Seb Fontaine Interview

Seb Fontaine interview image

We catch up with Radio 1's (now former) Saturday night resident DJ and Type head honcho Seb Fontaine back stage from Type at Brighton's Concorde 2 on their trip to the seaside for a summer love south coast special.

You've just taken your London night Type from The Cross down to Brighton's Concorde 2, what did you think of the layout and the crowd & will you be coming back for more?
"This is one of my favourite clubs in Brighton, you know what the thing about this club is it's not the kind of club to go deep and dark, this is a club to rock it a little bit and have a good time, it proved it's self tonight - for the first night to do Type down in Brighton to go against both Cream and Bedrock it was a tall order, and I think we’ve done really well, it was really really cool and there was quite a few people from Type in London so I'm really happy."
Seb Fontaine image
"You know what I’d like to do is speak to Alison (Concorde 2) and maybe try to do this regularly actually, I think tonight went well but it's only ever gonna be a really success if you work at it, if not every month, kind of every other month, something like that, it would be nice to do some more, I think the venue's wicked, I love this venue... It's got a warehouse vibe but it's also got a really nice vibe, loads of smiling faces! I think sometimes the fun has gone slightly out of clubbing, but now it’s gone back to smaller venues, a tighter vibe, you can see people enjoying themselves again."

"I think when we all started doing this, when we all started doing the club scene, as much as the music was good, it was still all about going out, having a beer, maybe chatting to a nice female and I think it all needs to get a bit more fun and every time I've played here it's always been fun so this is one of my favourites (he's previously played for Cream which has since been moved to the Honey Club)."

It was your birthday recently, how old are you & how did you celebrate it?
"32 and we had a Hawaiian BBQ, so even some of the fellas turned up in grass skirts, we had a big four-poster bed in the garden and everyone was lolling on that, it was a good BBQ."

Did you attend this years Love Parade, if so how was it?
"I didn't actually, you know what I never do because that’s my birthday weekend so Radio 1 have been trying to drag me over to Germany and we had Type and Erick Morillo on the night. The club only holds say 1100, and we had like 2000 people outside and it was just one of the best nights, it was so fucking good! I just think the Love Parade it's just a bit too glow-stick, I'm into just being at home and being with Erick (who’s a good mate of mine) and that was a good night."

Why do you think the Love Parade never really got going over here?
"Well it did, the first year was amazing, I would site it as one of the best gigs I’ve ever done in my life, walking on to that stage in front of 80,000 people, I was like a younger, better looking Mick Jagger! It was brilliant - 80,000 you can’t argue with that, I mean that is something I'll probably bore my grandchildren with in years to come, but the first one was amazing.."

"I think in Germany it grew from like 5,000 to 10,000 to 20,000 to a million, and I think it was just too big for the UK to handle, 200,000 people in one go, I think it was just a bit scary for any local council to deal with. We saw the problems last time with Brighton beach and Norman. When you have something that bloody good, I thought that was really unfair because a lot of the stuff that the papers cited was a complete load of bollocks, some of the people that hurt themselves or fell ill was like 4 hours later and stuff, I thought it was rubbish. I think councillors obviously get scared about that whole kind of thing, that’s why I think it never took off over here, but the first year was amazing."

What was your first big break?
"Meeting me!" interrupts Vanessa his Mrs, manager and Manager of The Cross, "hang on I thought this was about me!" Seb brings it back to what is what.

"First big break, I had a good couple of things happen to me, obviously Radio 1 was a good thing but I was a big DJ by then. Cream was a very good thing for me, becoming resident at The Cross was my first big residency in a London house music club. Before that when I was stepping up from playing Hip-hop and Rare-Groove to playing house music I suppose doing Subterrania with Norman Jay & Jeremy Healey, that was when I was a warm up DJ for Norman, you know that was probably my biggest moving up stage, although I could cite one of 4 things that were good."

Favourite clubbing cities?
"I think it changes, but I think at the moment London's having a good one, I think The End's very good, Fabric's very good and The Cross is very good. Clubbing has changed, gone are the days of the 4000 people venue, Super-market style places with the cloakroom queues 300 people deep, I think people want between 500-1000 capacity, I think people wanna kinda mingle I think it needs to be a bit more friendly, that's why we chose this venue, everyone at Type chose it, we all like this place."

Seb Fontaine Interview continued