Jamie, that was such an honor to have you. How do you feel? I feel amazing. That was fantastic. Great vibe here, beautiful location, great sound. What more can you ask for? You look really relaxed all the time. What makes you so relaxed in life? Meditation, breath work. Yeah, I do a lot of that kind of stuff. Just try to focus on the now, be present, not overthink things and just try to make my body and my mind feel as good as possible and then everything else comes naturally. I can definitely feel it. Let's have some bit of history about this beautiful place. We're in Bosnia, in a city called Jajce. It's a 50,000 year old waterfall where we are. It's really beautiful. I was speaking to some people from the city and they're trying to get this location to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, which is something they totally deserve, I think. How do you think this location fits to your music? First of all, I want to say, not only this particular location right here, it's beautiful, but everywhere around all the lakes. I was actually shocked. I was like, "Wow, this place is so special." They definitely deserve to have the World Heritage recognition. I'd love to come here for a week, just to walk and hike and cycle. It's beautiful. As far as my music goes, my first record, my first ever release was called Amazon. For many years, I named all of my remixes after different bodies of water in the world. So various, different rivers and lakes, Nile—whatever it was. I try and find something online, a river or a lake, and name the remix that. I definitely have a close, a big love for water. Who doesn't love water? I drink a lot of it too. I love nature. I love being surrounded by it. I grew up in the countryside in the mountains of Snowdonia in Wales. I always go back to nature for my peace. Definitely my music, some way, shape, or form, is formed by that energy. It's very nice to be able to come here and do it. I'm so happy that you say that because it means that we made our job good because we invited you in this location. - You did, yes. - You do so many things in your life, not only DJing, of course, producing, you're a label owner. You're also curator for Paradise for a long time now, and many, many other stuff. What's your main focus nowadays, like at the moment? My main focus primarily is my family. I have a new baby daughter. They come first, but on my career, I wrote a lot of music during the pandemic and in the time afterwards. That's coming out in a few different projects at the moment, just working in the release dates and stuff. There's a lot of bodies of work, let's say. I just try and find a nice balance between digging for records. Obviously, right now, it's very busy preparing to open Paradise and Amnesia for the summer, which will open on 22nd June. It's really just finding a good balance between finding time to make music, finding time to find records, finding time for my family, obviously, making sure I'm healthy. I've been doing this quite a long time now. As you start to push on in the years, you definitely have to take care of yourself a little bit more. I try and focus on that, exercise. Just the usual normal life. Totally normal. So you were speaking about your residency at Amnesia, which is starting very soon. I think you play every Wednesday from June. I wanted to know first, how can you make sure that you still renew yourself for every set every Wednesday? Because I can imagine you're not playing the same set. - Musically? I mean, I remember... It's a very good question because I remember being on the dance floor in Ibiza. Before I was playing there every week, I was in most of the clubs every week as a young dancer, raver. I remember listening to DJs play every week. I always used to think, "You know what, if I ever get the chance to play every week, I want to make sure that I'm also catering for the people who live there, who come every week like I was." So when I started doing the weekly residency, I just made myself spend a crazy amount of extra time looking for records. Usually, I arrive home on Sunday from touring, sometimes Monday, and I dedicate usually one night and one whole day, so 12, 15 hours, only finding music. I used to go through certain genres every week and listen to everything that's been released that week. It's a lot now, but I would say that during the summer, I listen to at least 3,000 sound clips a week. - Wow. A week? - Yeah, a week, yeah, every week. You know, I just make a huge playlist, I edit some things. But I think that DJing, just like producing, when I was learning to produce, I had to spend eight hours every single day, day in day, week in week out for years, to train your ear and to learn how to develop your own sound. DJing is the same. You want to be serious and you want to make sure that you're exciting yourself and you're exciting as many people as you can, even people who come to see you every week, you have to spend the time. That's crazy. And how many tracks do you have on your USB key? Oh wow. I've got like... I actually did this the other day because I was curious. In my recordbox, there's 30,000. 30,000? 30,000 sounds, yeah. That's crazy. And do you even remove some tracks sometimes or not at all? I do. What you can do now is you can cloud sync them. Everything you have is on Dropbox. So, you know, I don't sync. Everything's not constantly on my laptop. It's on the cloud. But do I get rid of things? I've tried a few times and I end up spending five hours getting rid of things and then getting rid of like 10 tracks, you know? I mean, don't get me wrong. There's a lot, not all of those 30,000 that are good. I'll probably never play a lot of them again. But, you know, there's a reason why you bought something. You never know when something's going to come back around. And it's crazy when you find a track from so long and you play it. Well, that's what I've been doing a lot recently is going back through my, that's why I knew how many tracks I had. You know, I've been really spending a lot of time going back through my old, because, you know, when I go on to Beatport, for example, I'll buy tons of records, songs and they might not be right for that week. They might not be right for that month. They might not be right for that year, but they're there. And I always find things that was like, Oh, wow, when did I buy that? I didn't know. Or I'll find something on SoundCloud and I'll be like, I'll go to buy it. And I'm like, you've already got it. So, yeah. That's a beauty. And you, you talked about the fact that you named some remix and tracks with the river. Now you have this track made especially for this location: Pliva. It's crazy. And so you did it with AMÉMÉ, right? Yes, exactly. - Who unfortunately didn't catch his flight to play after you. Yeah, he missed his connection. He made it all the way to Poland. But we are so sad. - Yeah, me too, he's a good guy. Great DJ and producer too. So how was the creative process with him when he created this track? Well, I, you know, I've been working on a lot of music during the pandemic and I had this one track and, you know, it had this like vocal that I'd found and had... I finished the track and it was one of those things where I played it to people and people like, yeah, and I people liked it. But there was something not right with it for me. And I spent quite a few sessions trying to get it right. And I just said, you know what, this isn't quite right. And then myself and AMÉMÉ, we went to the Louis Vuitton show in Miami during Art Basel together just after Virgil Abloh passed away. And on the way back from the show, we were just talking and I was like, you know what, let's collab. We'd vibed all day and we were like, you know, let's collab. And yeah, I sent him the stems for this track and he did some work on it. And then we went back and forth on a few last minute touches. But that's what came out. It's a really, really, really nice track. And I especially love the drop, like, which is kind of... - Yeah, yeah, he did that to be fair. It's got that Afro vibe to it. Yeah, it's great. Great. Smashed it with that one. And let's talk a little bit about paradise. I mean, what's your private paradise? I mean, not for a party, but to relax. Where is your paradise? That's a good question. You know, I spent two and a half months this winter in Bali. And I've been there many times before. But I had never been there for two and a half months. And I absolutely loved it. You know, I'm probably going to go back there every year for because I always take, you know, you asked me earlier how I could stay sane. I always, for many years, I've taken like 10 weeks off touring in the winter from January to March. And I usually do it when I lived in LA, I'd just stay at home there. But now I'll probably go to Bali. But Bali is an amazing place to relax. And for my 40th birthday, —I'm old—I went to the Maldives with my wife, just before we had our baby. And that was so beautiful. The people were so nice. The food... I'm not really a huge beach, relaxing holiday guy. I can't just lie still. I need to do something—work, studio or something. Did you dive? I didn't dive there. No, I can dive but I didn't dive there. Just lots of snorkling. I learned how to windsurf though. And I got really into windsurfing. And that was good. And Bali is good for that. Yeah, Bali is good for that as well. And surfing. And I was gonna surf in Miami right after —because we were in Miami right after the Maldives— But I was too scared of the sharks. Too many sharks in Miami. I was looking at it online, how is the sharks? Where the sharks in Miami? It was like, "Yeah, last week there was a shark." I was like, OK. No way. I think I'm good for my interview. But there are also some questions from the online audience. Two of them. First question, can you tell us anything about the Welsh electronic music scene? Mention something that no one knows about. - Wow. - Difficult one. - That's a difficult one. I mean, there's definitely a lot of great artists that come out of Wales. You know, a couple of new that I know of. And then there's definitely... I've played in Cardiff a couple of times. There's a really, some really good events there. Where I'm from in North Wales, Wales. There's an amazing—actually, this is a good one. There's an amazing festival near where my family is from in Anglesey. It's called Gottwood. I've never been personally, but... Gottwood it's called. Yeah. And, you know, lots of my friends, Craig Richards, and lots of people play there. And everybody loves it. So that's a great thing for the scene up there. The other thing I guess is when I was young, you know, in the early 90s, —showing my age again—, but there was lots of illegal raves in the in the slate quarries. There we have, you know, much of the mountains in Snowdonia have been.... There were slate mines. So there's open slate, fit slate fields, it's actually really beautiful. It's like another planet. But inside those, you can go hiking for miles and it's like little waterfalls. And I was too young. But I know they used to do lots of cool raves in the 90s there. So I kind of wish—my cousin would come and she'd exchange mix tapes with people. And when she was finished with the tapes, I would get the tapes. And that's how I got into dance music. Oh, nice. I mean, I've seen Wales from pictures, but I've never been. But I think next time we invite you, it should be in Wales. Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful, beautiful place. The town I grew up with is like this huge, like pristine castle, like, probably one of the biggest castles I've seen still traveling around the world. And it's a little port town is called Carnarvon. It's beautiful. The sunsets there are amazing. It can be cold... But it's beautiful. Unpredictable weather, right? Unpredictable but beautiful. And last question, because now it's raining. Yeah! Speaking of the rain. Which is the best sunrise dance song and which is the best sunset dance song? Because Cercle is about sunrise and sunset. Sunrise and sunset! Wow, wow, wow, wow. I'm so bad on the spot with songs. Oh, what's that song called? Otherwise, you can think about it and tell me and then we will write it down. I'll think about it because I want to get... A couple of them come to my mind. I come from the days of buying vinyl and looking at the pictures. Not the track name. So I'm good with track names but not not on the spot like that. So we will write it down on the, you know, the comments. So now the mystery box, which is a little gift that the city of Jajce is offering to you. Wow, good presentation. Oh what's this? - So it's a wine made from here. Oh, wow. They start this winery seven years ago. It's the only winery which is here in this area. And before that, I think before like at least 500 years, there hasn't been any winery here. Oh, wow. - So I hope you like it. Okay. I didn't taste it, but... You also have a nice book from the city. - Oh, wow. - And other gifts, but they are too big. So we'll offer them after. We have a lot of gifts. Is it a new like Tesla or Lamborghini or something? Yeah, it's waiting for you. - Private jet. Oh they got me my own private jet! Oh, thank you. You're welcome. No problem. So thank you very much, Jamie, for tonight. It was a great honor to have you. And also I wanted to thank the Love Fest team that made an amazing job in production for the show. Yeah, they're great. I play for them in Serbia. They're fantastic guys. August 4th? August 4th I'm playing yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So come over to that guys. It's a great festival. Definitely. So thank you so much to their team and thank you so much to the Jajce team as well. Dragan and his team. Well, you've been amazing. And of course, thank you so much to our Cercle team. So dedicated and professional team. So we are so happy to produce this kind of events. So thank you very much to them and see you. See you next time. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you to all those guys. And yeah, see you soon. See you on the road somewhere. I'm sure. Cheers. Cheers.
