Kirk Degiorgio’s been making music for more than 3 decades, and DJing even longer. Coming out of the soul, and then rare groove, scene Kirk was one of the first people in London to embrace the then new sounds emerging from mid `80s Detroit. In the early 1990s he launched his own label, A.R.T. – short for Applied Rhythmic Technology – and in doing so helped to cement a tight-knit community of UK techno producers. The imprint’s roster included Aphex Twin, Neuropolitique, Nuron, members of B12 and Black Dog. Under the alias of As One, Kirk continues to release sublime, sophisticated machine music. Tracks such as Amalia and Isatai are rightly considered timeless classics. Meridian was a favourite of Jose Padilla, at Ibiza’s Cafe del Mar. The course of Kirk’s career, however, has also allowed him to sometimes swap the hardware for humans and explore his jazz roots. For example, he’s recorded with Azymuth, and as Offworld, he’s covered Sun Ra. As The Beauty Room, he produced two albums of stunning soul. Kirk recently translated his “techno” into a big room remix of Radio Slave’s smash, Strobe Queen, and he’s now released an E.P. of similar house-shaped bangers on Jimpster’s Cyphon Recordings.

Where are you from?

East London. I still live in London. 

How did you first get into “dance” music? 

Hearing my Mum’s younger sister playing music that I never heard on the radio. I was eleven years old. 

You put together this amazing comp, Soul Of Science, back in 2000, that had stuff like David Axelrod, Leroy Hutson, and Herbie Hancock’s The Spook Sat At The Door on it. Were your roots in jazz and fusion? Hip hop and breaks? 

My roots are disco, soul, funk, boogie, jazz-funk, early rap followed by electro, jazz, hip-hop, house, techno…

Were you a rare groover? 

Yes, especially in its peak years 1985-87

Pre-acid house, which clubs / parties would you go to? 

Mostly Essex soul clubs, such as Goldmine, Zero 6, local Ipswich clubs – where I lived in the eighties, Flicks in Dartford… Then I moved back to London to study and went pretty much everywhere clubwise: Dingwalls, RAW, Soul To Soul, Shake & Fingerpop, The Belvedere Arms, Boilerhouse, The Wag, Delirium…

Were you buying loads of records?

At school I`d save dinner and pocket money to buy used jukebox seven-inch singles from a local Ipswich record shop, then an import store, called Disc-O-Rama, opened in town. There was also a good record stall on Ipswich market that specialised in soul and disco. I spent every penny on records in those days. Later, as I got old enough, I would get the train down to London and get electro from Groove in Soho, and soul, jazz-funk from City Sounds in Holborn. I also had family in London still and would give them lists of records to buy me from Bluebird and City Sounds. Then I worked in Reckless Records part-time whilst studying.

How did you land the job at Reckless?

In 1987, my first year as a student, I put on a club nights back in Ipswich with two friends. It was called Sweat. I used to look for rare records in second hand stores such as Reckless in Soho and Record & Tape Exchange on Goldhawk Road. I recognised one of the Reckless staff from my Sweat nights, and it turned out that he was actually from Ipswich – that was Patrick Forge. We bonded over this connection, I asked him if he had vacancies, and he gave me a part-time job. 

Who else was working at Reckless at the time? 

The Mighty Zaf, Trevor SF, then Sean P. All legendary DJs now.

Was it a good place to make connections?

Pretty much every DJ in London and the South came through Reckless – either to buy stuff or sell unwanted promos. All the music journalists too… I knew most of the DJ’s personally: Gilles Peterson, Norman Jay, Roy The Roach, Kirsten the Funky Fly, Bobby & Steve…

Can you remember the first time you heard a house record?

Love Can’t Turn Around. Flicks, Dartford 1986. The DJ was Colin Hudd.

In 1988 what parties were you going to? 

May 1988 was the start of the Acid House boom. I went to all of them – and previous Rare Groove dominated nights like Delirium became heavily House too. The Trip, Spectrum… I still went to soul and jazz dos like The Belvedere and Dingwalls too.

When people hear your name they probably first think of techno? Can you remember the first time you heard a techno record? 

The outdoor raves of late 1988 and 89 played lots of the first Techno tracks: The Dance, It Is What It Is, Strings Of Life, Off To Battle…

Did you make a distinction between the music coming out of Detroit versus Chicago? Or was it all simply music? 

Yes, I was familiar with the name Juan Atkins from my electro days. He was appearing as producer on those early Detroit techno E.P.s and I could clearly hear the musical lineage from Cybotron. The instrumentation and production were markedly different from the Chicago house too. Early techno and house was all played together in those early years – and techno tracks were included on the very early house compilations – but the sleevenotes usually referred to the ‘Detroit’ produced tracks as a having its own lineage.

You were obviously aware of this music before Neil Rushton’s genre-defining comp gave it a name.

Aware of the music, but nobody I knew was referring to it as techno until that compilation. It was just referred to as the ‘Detroit produced’. An even earlier compilation, with sleevenotes written by the same journalist, Stuart Cosgrove,  who wrote the notes for the Virgin techno compilation, referred to the Detroit tracks as ‘Trance Dance’… and this was just a few months before. So it was clear to many that the music had its own distinct quality. The name ‘Techno’ just caught on, whereas ‘Trance Dance’ didn’t. It was a good name I think – the Detroit sound was futuristically dystopian, whereas Chicago house came out of a more overtly retro, disco-influenced scene, via DJs like Ron Hardy, Frankie Knuckles, the Hot Mix 5…

What were the first “dedicated” techno parties / events that you went to? 

Not until events like Lost started bringing over DJs like Jeff Mills later in the early 90s. Even the sets by Detroit guest DJs in those early days included a lot of Chicago house, Nu-Groove, UK rave, etc. 

Was there a “scene”? A tight knit community of enthusiasts? 

Yes, especially focussed around the Central London record stores such as Fat Cat, Black Market, and Reckless.

When did you decide to start making music?

I went to Detroit in 1990, with the Mighty Zaf and some mates. We were buying rare records to sell back in the UK. On that trip I got to see the studios Juan Atkins and Derrick May were using, and it looked manageable financially, if I sold some of my rare records. It was just a case of learning how to use it all.

What equipment did you have? 

I bought a brand new, recently released Roland R8 drum machine, an Akai S950 sampler, a Roland D5 synth, a Fostex mixer, Atari 1040ST, with Opcode Vision sequencing software, and a DAT machine. A Reckless regular, Kwame, gave me a broken Roland 303 – the envelope amount knob didn’t work. After my debut release on B12, I added an original Roland TR808 and Yamaha SPX900 effects unit. My friend Matt Cogger had come back to the UK after running Transmat for a year, and Derrick May had given him some equipment as payment. Matt didn’t have the room to store them so he gave them to me to look after. It was a Yamaha DX100, Kawai K3 synth and a 2-track reel to reel.

Was it easy to pick up gear? 

Yes, very easy and cheap in those days. There were stores like Turnkey, 5 minutes away from Reckless on Charing Cross Road, plus the Classified Ads paper Loot always had stuff.

When did you start A.R.T.?

1992.

Was it easy to start your own label back then?

I didn’t have a clue, but B12 gave me all the contacts, and I used Key Productions to take care of everything for me. I used Kudos Distribution, followed by Great Asset, in those early days.

You had Carl Craig on the label early on. How did you meet Carl?

I met Carl at a club night in Leicester Square. He was over on the Inner City / Rhythim Is Rhythim tour, and staying with Mark Moore and Sarah Gregory. 

I’ve heard stories about Carl being based in London / Ladbrooke Grove in the early 90s, and that the some of the Retroactive releases were made on a set up on the floor of his bedsit. That folks like Mark Moore and Peter Ford, from Rhythm King were really tight with him. Is any of this true? 

Yes, Sarah Gregory had a place in Westbourne Park where he stayed most of the time. That’s when I met him.

I guess at the time, A.R.T. was just you and your friends enthusiastically getting your music out there, but 30 years later those 12s really capture a moment, and some real creativity. Were the folks – Black Dog, B12 – on the label all good mates? Did you all hang out and collaborate? 

I already knew Andy and Ed from Black Dog as they were from Suffolk and also came to the Sweat nights we put on in Ipswich. In fact, I knew them years before that as they used to come into town and break-dance battle my Ipswich mates whilst I DJ’d.

Mike Golding of B12 used to come into Reckless to buy the rare techno we brought back from the US. He played me the first B12 on a demo tape on a Walkman in the shop. Likewise Andy from Black Dog came into Reckless and told me that they had a little studio nearby and asked me to come and input some ideas. That’s how I met Ken Downie.

Grant Wilson-Claridge also started coming into Reckless and playing us early Rephlex releases. That’s how I teamed up with him for the Philosophy Of Sound & Machine ART-Rephlex joint-release.

Tom Middleton then followed bringing in promos of the first Global Communication E.P.s.  

Was it a tight knit community, these people making this kind of music in the UK? Who else was involved? Luke Slater, Mixmaster Morris, Steve Picton, Mark Broom, Robin Scanner? Are you all still friends, in touch now?

Steve Pickton was another Reckless regular. Luke I got to meet at later Lost nights. Morris was always around supporting our releases, and I remember going to a few parties around Camberwell with Matt Cogger where Morris was holding court. 

Ben Sims worked 2 minutes away at Our Price on Oxford Street, so he was another regular who came in looking for rare stuff. Some of the Centerforce DJs used to come in – Rob ‘Caveman’ Elliot and HMS Steve, Chalky White from Rage and Dungeons – literally everyone!

Were you tight with the folks at FatCat? Ambient Soho?

Fat Cat yes, Ambient Soho no. I was good mates with Lee Insync and Matt Cogger and they introduced me to Dave Cawley and Alex Knight from FatCat.

Did you party or play at The Brain? Were you a regular at Scanner’s Electronic Lounge at The ICA? Or later Jon Tye’s Scratch Club events? 

None of those appealed to me. I came from a completely different music scene. I liked ambient music, obviously, but the soul / funk element of the music is what I was looking for in a night out.

Did you play live? Did you organise your own parties and events? 

Nope. Live shows were pretty rare in those early days. I didn’t organise any of my own techno nights until Machine in 2011. 

Once you started to license A.R.T. stuff to other labels, like R&S, did you begin to pick up A&R work, and start to get offered projects like comps? 

The compilation requests came a little later in the mid-nineties. Tom Millington at New Electronica, was a fan of my ART releases and phoned me up. 

I was wondering were the folks at Eevo Lute like kindred spirits? 

Yes, Carl played me some of their early releases which he`d licensed for Planet E. I didn’t meet Steffan Robbers personally until a few years ago actually – but of course I was a big fan. I re-released the Max 404 E.P. on ART.

It was an exciting time, lots of interactions between labels like Ninja Tune, later Mo Wax, who were encouraging the kind of cross fertilztion of techno with other genres of music… Hip hop, post-rock… 

By the mid-90s, your music, on labels like Clear, Mo Wax, Ubiquity, and Far Out, made the jazz / fusion references more “overt”. As Offworld you covered Sun Ra, and recently on BBE  you released the Modal Forces / Percussive Forces LP. Is this simply a reflection of you becoming more confident in the studio? Is this direction that you always intended to go? 

I was never wanted to just imitate Detroit techno, so from the very first album I put my musical influences into the mix. Most UK / European techno artists were from an electronic pop /indie-rock background so my music stood out as being unique and different from most. Luckily James Lavelle at Mo Wax and Andrew Jervis at Ubiquity understood it. Later I moved into a direction where the jazz and funk elements predominated, thanks to working with labels such as Far Out where Joe Davis trusted me to produce Jazz-Funk legends Azymuth for example. For somebody who bought Jazz Carnival on Import seven inch as a 12 year old kid it was a dream come true.

I also worked with Tony Allen, Chris Martin of Coldplay – thanks to a hookup at Parlophone/EMI, and legendary session drummer, Chris Whitten who you can hear on Waterboys ‘Whole of the Moon’ and many other classics.

Were you involved in the west London broken beat scene? 

Only on the periphery as they had a very organically grown tight-knit scene. But I was a huge supporter of the music. I knew IG Culture from mutual friends. I knew him when he lived on a South Acton estate making hip-hop years before the broken scene. I also knew Phil Asher from years before. Dego and Marc Mac, of 4Hero, were two of my fave artists and they asked me to DJ on Kiss FM as part of their R-Solution slot alongside Phil Asher. That was the start of the whole broken beat scene with Co-Op nights.

In 2006 you were part of the Beauty Room project, on Peacefrog, which from the outside was a surprising musical curveball – mixing soul, and sort of soft / yacht rock. Soul Horizon was a stunning single. Can you please tell me more about this project? How did you meet vocalist Jinadu, and form the band? 

Good question, as I cannot recall how Jinadu and I first met! But we obviously did somehow, even though he`s from a completely different music background to myself. He was more of a Peter Gabriel, Radiohead fan than anything soul /funk, but that tension in our backgrounds is what made the project work so successfully I think. We both pushed the other back on our musical comfort zones and came out with this beautiful, unique blend. We did have common ground, both being Steely Dan obsessives, and I think you can hear that in the music too.

Was the album a long time in the making?

We did two albums, and yes they both took a lot of time – years – and cost a lot of money. Thanks to our supportive manager, Mark Melton, and the professionalism of the session players and engineer Peter Henderson – both albums are amongst my proudest achievements. 

Did the band tour?

The band played at The Big Chill festival, the Radio 1 Worldwide Awards at Cargo, and did a Live at Maida Vale session for Gilles Peterson`s Radio 1 show.

A lot of early / mid-90s techno has begun to be reissued and unarchived, by Warp, the Global Communications guys, Steve Pickton, B12, and the Belgian label, De:Tuned. Do have any thoughts on why this sound has so much longevity? I’m old, so personally there’s a fair amount of nostalgia involved.   

Like you say, part of it is nostalgia, part of it is a preference for that dynamic production sound – before the loudness wars – the almost naïve quality of the compositions… but I think the strongest reason is the timeless nature of this music. It was never the mainstream popular techno sound of its time – it was quite niche even back then – barely selling a thousand copies before Warp, R&S, Ninja Tune got involved with some of us. Also, its not easy music to make. It requires a level of harmony, melody and skilful, non-straight 4/4 drum programming, to pull-off successfully. Therefore the number of artists making this type of musical sub-genre has always been quite small. 

Talking of De:Tuned, in 2019, they released a new As One album, with the visual artist, Catherine Siofra Prendergast, who`s another UK-based techno veteran. How did you hook up with Catherine?

Catherine is actually my wife. She has an amazing ear for music, her family are all musicians. She has little patience for all the technical stuff – just focusses solely on getting the music down by ear. Genius with melodies. Similar to Jinadu. The combination of her melodic and critical listening sensibilities is a perfect compliment to my sense of harmony and hyper-technical approach.

Last year you remixed Radio Slave’s club smash, Strobe Queen. How did that come about? 

Matt at Rekids made an approach via our mutual friend Dean Muhsin and I jumped at it as I’ve always been a fan of both Matt personally and his label. Since 1994 I don’t think there’s ever been a time when I haven’t got a remix on the go! I`ve done over 100 or so now. But that was a special one – to be on a release with legend Eric Kupper was a real privilege.

You now have a brand new E.P. forthcoming on Jimpster’s Cyphon. How far do you and Jimpster go back?

I was fan from the very early Jimpster releases, and the first time we worked together was on the straight jazz version of Amalia for Ubiquity. Jamie played Fender Rhodes on that.

I was wondering, what do you find yourself listening to at home? 

Everything. I have all my old vinyl digitised. Took me years. Its all catalogues properly in Playlists with metadata, etc. It`s probably one of the largest well-maintained digital catalogues you’ll find.

For decades you seem to have been incredibly prolific. What equipment do you have at the moment? 

My studio changes all the time. Recently it was almost all hardware, with the DAW used as a tape recorder basically. Now I’m working on some projects that require lots of large virtual libraries, so its back in the box. It will be a hybrid again no doubt.

Are you constantly making new music? What are you working on right now? 

Yes, I’m currently finishing up an authentic Dub project, using only techniques from the mid-seventies, including live 4 channel mixdowns.

Kirk Degiorgio`s Living On The Frayed Edge E.P. is out now on Cyphon Recordings. 

You can check some of the A.R.T. back catalogue over at Bandcamp. 

A big thank you to Kirk for the chat, and to Sharon Andrews at Shine PR for setting it up.