Hernán Cattaneo
Posted by ariadna on Tuesday, November 30, 1999

Hernán is so cool, so humble and so great as a DJ. You may have already known that but this second interview really proves it.

Last time we talked you were touring with Oakenfold. You said you were satisfied being the opening DJ because you were relatively unknown in North America and it gave you the opportunity to play for large crowds. Did it work out for you? Did it open the doors you hoped it would?

The tours with Paul were the very first times I had been to North America. I was an unknown DJ in North America and it was a great introduction. We did a tour of 22 cities in about 30 days and I had the opportunity to play in many places that normally I wouldn´t have been able to. It was great because afterward my records started being released in North America and I was able to do five more tours... I´ve been to LA, NY and Miami about five or six times since so yes, I think it worked out well.

Didn´t it bug you that you had to play more mellow sets?

You know, for me, I like playing mellow. I like mellow house. I like
playing a bit of everything. I am a pretty versatile DJ. That´s why I like doing long sets because I can start with deep house, then house, then tribal, progressive, breaks, and at the end, techno (but not too hard). Warm up sets, though, I like. I like the music I play. A DJ has to know what he/she has to do in each moment. One can´t be egotistical. If they´ve contracted you to do a warm-up you do a warm-up and you have to be happy with that. And if you´re not going to be happy with that then you ought not to do it. I have no problems to do warm-ups, especially when it is for important DJs.

(Telephone rings)

It´s good to do warm-ups and I’ve done many for Paul, John, Sasha, Deep Dish... I love doing it for the DJs I respect and, for me, it´s great. I think it’s fine that I do them. As well, you have to see the bigger picture. It´s not just that day that warm-up. That warm-up is going to give you the opportunity to come back and do your own show and then the next time is when you get to do exactly what you want to do.

What have you done since the last time you were here?

I´ve been around the world a few times spinning. I was in the US a lot,
London, around Europe, doing festivals, Coachella last year, Homelands,
Creamfields, and Global Gathering. Also a lot in South America, the scene has grown a lot. I just finished my last compilation with Renaissance in January. Since January I´ve toured in Australia, Asia, Europe, America and South America – where the scene has being growing a lot. I´ve been promoting my album as well and trying to do some things in the studio though I haven´t really been able to because I’ve been on the go so much. I was able to do some things for Bedrock, one track with Dean Coleman that´s on the compilation and now I’m working on a track with Randall Jones. Basically, lots of DJing and traveling.

So you´ve been making up your own tracks too.

Well, like I said I haven´t had much time but I did that track for Bedrock, another with Dean Coleman that´s on the Renaissance album, and another track with Randall Jones and another with Martin Garcia, my associate in Argentina.

Do you see yourself making more music in the future?

Yes, well everything is a question of time. Well, see, in two, three days in the studio you can make a track and it´ll be fine but if you want to make a really good album that takes much more time and I haven´t had it. I’ve been very busy as a DJ. I think they´re all phases. In the first years of my international career I was really focused on traveling and playing everywhere I could... now I am trying to find space in my schedule so I can produce because it´s something that I love and it´s something I think I need to do.

So you just need to spend more time at home, in London.

Yes yes yes yes, it could be in London or South America. Instead of going back to Argentina for three - four days I could stay for 15 days and spend more time working, no? I would love to but like I said the last years have been very very busy? Which has made me very happy and it´s all been wonderful but, like everything, there has to be a downside and the downside here is not to have enough time to be in the studio. I’m with three agencies that keep me very occupied and so I don´t have much free time.

Do you think it’s the natural thing to do, make your own music?

I think there are various factors. First, electronic music is made with
technology and technology is advancing at a great rate. Making your own
tracks is much more possible today. I travel everywhere with my computer and with that computer I can make a record or edit other records that I receive or make remixes or retouch tracks, lots of things. The possibilities now are incredible because today in the afternoon I could have finished a song, I burn it to CD and tonight I play it. Before it was impossible to think that way. As well there is the tendency for djs to make their own music because the DJ is constantly working with the dance floor and sees what the dance floor needs so if you can do it for yourself I think that’s great.

Do you think vinyl will become extinct?

It’s possible. It’s very possible. Today about half the DJs play with CDs, not with records, I´m one of those. I play a lot with CDs, as well as vinyl. But it all has an explanation. It´s got nothing to do with a hate towards vinyl but today’s dynamic is so fast, for example a producer in Australia could have made a track yesterday, he e-mails me a link and I download it, put it on a CD and I can play it today. That track doesn’t even have a label. You see? I could play it today, which would be option A or option B is that I wait for that guy to find a label, which will take months. So in about three months he has finds a label but then it takes another three months for that label to decide if it´s going to edit that track and that´s only when I will receive that track, which today I have on CD, on vinyl. So do I play it today or in six months?

Now.

So then how should I play it?

On CD.

And so that´s why I play so much with CDs. At least my style of DJing is trying to put on as much new music as possible, not playing the tracks that people already know, some tracks sure, but for the most part you should always be introducing new music. That´s the type of DJ that I am and that many others are too. So the best way to play the newest music is to play it on CD.

I remember that before, when I’d go see a big name DJ, they´d always play well known tracks but nowadays they´re much more cutting edge, and I’ll recognize two tracks at most.

Well, like I said it’s just that the dynamic of electronic music is very fast. There are always so many records coming out. So many because nowadays it´s so easy to make electronic music. I receive tonnes of tracks every week from anyone?

You mean people that are already in the business?

No, just from producers that are not known, not Satoshie Tommie. Just kids. When I play people will come up to me and give me their CDs of things that they’ve done. And a lot of it is good. There’s a lot that isn´t good or needs some work but there are some great things and lately I´ve been playing a lot of music by unknown producers that is really quite wonderful and the same thing with my Renaissance CD. When I first added them to the CD they didn´t even have a label because no one even knew who they were, these kids didn´t even know how to edit their own tracks, they simply just gave me their CDs and I had them sign a contract so I could use their work.

So when you use the work of an unknown producer you give them credit.

Yes, I give them a push.

Nowadays I feel that DJs are treated like artists, like celebrities.

Celebrities or artists? They´re two different things.

Celebrities. I think there are lots who have celebrity status.

They have or they think they have?

The public thinks they´re celebrities, idols. They are so smitten by the look and lifestyle they ask for their autographs and swoon over their every move. When I found out people were asking Djs for autographs I was shocked! I couldn’t believe the fans had become like that. Do you think the whole concept of ‘The DJ’ is going to get ridiculously over the top that it will all go to hell?

Look, that´s already happening. It’s going to happen and it´s happening
today. People are projecting their idea of what a DJ is. There are some
that are in love with the whole concept and there are some people who
couldn´t care less. I don´t really care for it. What I care about is
playing music for people and having that people enjoy it. I don´t care if they take photos of me or ask me for my autograph. But, there are people that love it. I think the commercial side has already reached that height and, like you said, it is already going to hell in many places, like England for example. But there is always the underground. That´s where you´ll find the quality and the essence.

Did you go to the Dancestar Awards ceremony?

No, I didn´t go.

One of the categories was best celebrity DJ. The nominees were Paris
Hilton, Adrien Brody, Rosanna Arquette, Cameron Douglas and Danny Masterson. When I read that I felt like they were making a mockery of the scene. Do you have an opinion?

I think this is the fault of those people that follow those DJs. I would have never created that category but I think the people behind the Dancestar awards are just responding to what they think the public wants and so ultimately the general public is responsible for this. Probably if you advertise that Paris Hilton is headlining your party no true lover of music will go.... You wouldn´t go because you think she´ll play good music. The people that would go would do so only because she is a celebrity DJ.

I love your journal on Resident Advisor. It totally shows the difficult life that you have. You show that your life isn’t one big party but that you work hard and your career is very labour intensive.

I always say the same thing: DJs are blessed because we do what we love; we travel the world, we meet awesome people, we stay in luxurious hotels and on top of everything we get paid for it. There´s got to be something bad, there has to be a downside. If not then it wouldn’t be real. The downside is this: spending the whole day alone or a lot of time alone, a lot of time on planes - especially if you´re from South America because if I were a DJ from London I would always travel but I could always come home but I hardly ever get to go to my home in Argentina. But I wouldn´t complain about that, on the contrary, I consider myself someone very blessed. It’s not all happiness and fun like many people think - some people think that all I do is playing records for a few hours and spend the rest of the day doing nothing. I spend hours and hours listening to piles of new music. I will never be able to finish listening to the stacks of music I have, I’ll never finish them because once I get close to the bottom they’ve been restacked... and that´s hard work. It’s not that fun. What would be fun is to hear only the records that are good but that´s part of the job. That´s the work. I don´t charge for playing music. I do that part for free because that´s what I like to do best in life. What I do charge for is the traveling every day on a plane, staying in a hotel instead of my own home. Because regardless of how nice the hotel is it still isn’t home and anyway, once you´ve been in two hundred hotels they all start to look alike. So one charges for being alone all the time, for being away from family, not for playing music. I play the music for free because that’s what I love.

Does it affect you when you´re playing and the people aren’t dancing or when they´re going off so hard?

Well obviously you want the clubbers to have the most fun. It’s always more rewarding for one when the people are having the greatest time of their life dancing than when they´re just standing around. However, the experience of the years has shown me how to figure out why they aren´t dancing and, conversely, why they are dancing. Sometimes the people are going off but you know that with or without the music they´d be going off because they´re so messed up. That isn´t rewarding in the least because you know they’re not going off because of your music, they’d go off to any music. Then there are times that you are playing for people that truly understand what you are playing.... Sometimes people don’t dance but maybe it´s because they simply don’t like electronic music and that´s not your fault. Sure, the promoter pays you to make people dance and you hope that you will make the clubbers dance but it doesn’t always happen.

So you never feel bad if the people aren´t into your music.

O yes, totally. Sure I feel bad but sometimes it´s just not your fault. Like sometimes when you play in the VIP, those types of people are very boring, they´re not there for the music, they’re there because that is the most fashionable club at the moment. They’re not there to see me or hear my music. So, if those people don’t enjoy themselves I wont feel guilty because I know it would be the same reaction with any other DJ... if I play somewhere where the people are really up for it and I play poorly I feel bad.

And what is ´play bad´?

To do a bad job. Not technically. Well, sometime technically. There is a minimum standard to have a reasonable technical ability. But sometimes you might not put on the right records. Or bad programming. Sometimes when you play somewhere that you haven’t been before you start playing house and you start building it up and no one is dancing til you start playing the heavier and then you think to yourself, I should have played this all night, but you didn´t know. Sometimes it´s the opposite. You´ll start with house and everything is perfect, you start bringing it up and you get pretty heavy and then the people leave the dance floor because from their point of view it´s too much but you didn’t know that you should have kept playing deep house all night long. However, during you set you keep an eye on the dance floor to see what should be done next. No one´s infallible though, we all make mistakes, well I do anyways.... Sometimes it´s not a question of making a mistake, just that things didn´t go as planned.

When Zabiela played a few weeks back there was always a group of people behind him checking out what he was doing. He mentioned in the interview that he felt that he was being observed. Does that ever happen to you?

I have a different manner of DJing. James is a DJ with amazing technique; he does incredible things with the records. I have a different way with the music. I tend to have mixes that are discrete and longer. I’m not all that fun to watch spinning. You´re better off hearing me than watching me. James is great to listen to but it´s also a pleasure to watch him.

Electronic music is totally taking over Argentina. It’s not isolated to the large cities, even the small cities have large electronica clubs that are super popular.

Well, in general the Latin American really enjoys to party, is very enthusiastic about it. As well the electronic music scene is growing exponentially, in Argentina and South America. You’ll find that the clubs that usually played pop music now have a DJ that plays electronic music and because it is something new it is met with a lot of enthusiasm. A good way to measure is with Creamfields. The first Creamfields in Buenos Aires had 15,000 in attendance. The second year 23,000. And the third one 40,000 people. And the last Creamfields was held in the midst of the economic crisis where it was thought it would be hard to sell tickets yet 40,000 came. That shows you how it’s been growing.

Last question, which Argentine DJs can we expect to see playing globally in the future?

Martin Garcia, who is my colleague in the studio, is the best that there is. He plays like me but, perhaps, a bit more deep. I love what he does. Another DJ, with another style, is Zucker. He plays very very well. He’s like the Fatboy Slim of Argentina. He plays pop, rock, house, breaks, funk. He mixes everything, he’s very eclectic. He’s great, I like what he does. His style is nothing like mine but I really like it.



http://www.hernancattaneo.com
http://www.residentadvisor.net
http://www.buenosaliens.com
http://www.metro951.com
http://www.pacha-ba.com
http://www.dancestar.com


To see photos of Hernan’s set please visit: http://www.2dollas.com/Photos/HernanCattaneo/