This the second part of a conversation with Sean Johnston that took place last year, just before Christmas. The aim was to help promote the forthcoming A Love From Outer Space compilation, which is due on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, care of Material Music (You’ll find a full review here). In Part 1, Sean took us track by track, from venue to venue, through all the places ALFOS has called home. Now he talks more generally about how the party / phenomena’s “gnostic sonics” continue to evolve.  

How are you? Have you been busy?

I’m fucking exhausted, mate. The last few weeks have been pretty intense. I was in Italy, Chieti, Pescara. It’s on the Adriatic coast. It’s a tiny, tiny little rural place, in a fairly sleepy part of Italy, but my dear friend, Arturo Capone, runs a party there. Just through the force of his personality and enthusiasm he’s managed to make something really special happen there. I put him in the same same category as the people who run the Golden Lion in Todmorden. He’s had A Love From Outer Space. He’s had Harvey. He’s had Ivan (Smagghe). He’s had Vladimir Ivkovich. He’s had Radio Slave. Plus all the big Italian guys. I’ve played there maybe 5, 6 times, but you know, it’s kind of a very, very unlikely setting for any sort of acid house shenanigans. It was fun. A lot of fun.

Do you take ALFOS all over the place now?

Yes. Weirdly it’s more more popular now than it’s ever been. Phonox sells out weeks in advance. The February one’s already sold out.

Has the crowd changed over time?

Yes, but no, is the answer to that. There are many people that still come who were at the first one at The Drop. It’s a weird demographic, because a lot of people who come are people of our age group, older people… but conversely there are a lot of youngsters now as well. 

I’ve DJed at things like the Gottwood Festival, for example, which is absolutely full of youngsters, and picked up a whole new crowd from there. Playing at the Houghton Festival on a regular basis has also been instrumental in bringing in younger people. You get a few, and then next time they bring all of their mates. 

I know a few people who go and a big part of it for them is the sense of community. It seems that everybody knows everybody.

Yeah, it’s nice and it’s not been forced. It’s happened organically. When we started out we were just playing music that we liked, which attracted like-minded people, and then it attracted more like-minded people… and then Andrew passed away. 

When I did that gig, at Phonox, the week that he passed, that was very instrumental in the cementing of the community. That and then the Emergency Broadcast System. I think that when people were incarcerated in their own homes, and was a real outlet. The online chat while I was doing it just went fucking insane. 

I guess because of the lockdown, everybody was grieving and it was a way for them to reach out.

Another important aspect of the community thing is Convenanza, where once a year people from all over the world can come together in a really magical place. Community. Build it, and they’ll come, Rob.

You worked at it though.

It didn’t feel like work. It just felt like having fun, mate, to be honest. But yeah.

Is it still fun? I was listening to the to the mix again today and you can’t help but get caught up in it.

Yeah, every time. Every single time. Every single time that you put me behind a behind a mixer, and the fader goes up, I just get this shit-eating grin on my face.

Are you now inundated with people who’ve specifically made music for ALFOS?

When Andrew and I started thinking about what ALFOS was going to be, what it was going to be like, at that point in time, there was a fair bit of slower music, but there wasn’t the shitload that there is now.

Do you think that you, Andrew and ALFOS are the main reason for that. For more people making slower tunes? 

There are a lot of people making slower music, but a lot of is really lumpy. Where people have kind of missed the point. A lot of it is really kind of testoserone-tastic. Laddy. 

I can tell straight away if something’s going to work. There are some tracks that are more new beat-y, and a bit more kind of aggro, but I think that some people think that if they make a slow banging techno record that it’s going to be an ALFOS record. 

The stuff that you’ve included on the comp, it’s quite minimal. It takes a while to reveal its hook… but the hook is always euphoric. I think we’ve talked about this before. There’s nothing dark there. There’s always ultimately an uplifting vibe.

Transcendence, Rob. That’s what it’s about. It’s good to have some deep bits and some trippy bits, and there are moments where you get people locked in. You know, if it’s a night time party, then say between 2 and 3 – if it was finishing at 4 – There’s definitely an hour where it can go kind of track-y, but you know the payoff’s gonna come in in the last hour.

Do you think ALFOS has become a genre? I get sent a lot press releases for things that describe new tracks as ALFOS-esque. Does it piss you off?

It took me and Andrew fucking 10 years to figure out what an ALFOS tune is, and what an ALFOS tune is in a constant state of flux, anyway. The beauty of it was that it was always open-ended. People are going to do what they’re going to do. I try not to take any notice. I just focus on me. 

As far as the aesthetic is concerned, there’s a dub-y influence. There’s a cosmic influence. There’s sometimes something of an ethnic / ethno influence. Sometimes there’s space for euphoric piano music, but at the same time there’s space for really heavy bass. It’s how you stitch them together.

Listening to the comp I was thinking that 10 years ago you might have been playing a dub record next to a post-punk record, next to an Italo record, but that now, each of the tracks you’re playing already has all of these influences mixed in. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Absolutely.

I was listening to your Electric Elephant set, and then the comp, and while the tunes have obviously changed, the overall vibe, I think has remained the same. The way that it builds.

If you plotted the energy, there’s there’s a definite a curve. The shape of curve depends on the length of the set, the crowd, the circumstances. 

The tunes you’ve selected for the comp, they all have that payoff – you just have to be a little bit patient and wait. 

The whole thing about from A Love From Outer Space is, you have to be patient.

I guess with a regular crowd there’s the opportunity to build anticipation, because everyone’s dancing knowing what’s coming next. 

I’ll tell you what it’s interesting – the ones where they don’t know what’s coming next. When you find yourself in a situation like at a festival. For example, this year at Gottwood, which is at a beautiful site on the Isle of Anglesey, and it’s a really young crowd – they’re all fresh out of university. It seems to be like a rite of passage when you finish university now to go with your mates to Gottwood. I was booked for the Sunday afternoon. It was pretty sparse when I started. A few people turned up, then a few more. I started at like maybe 90 BPM and got up to about maybe 116. By the end it was rammed, and they were all really having it… and they didn’t know what was coming. 

Do you think that the sound of what you’re playing now relates back to the music we heard at Sabresonic? 

Some of the stuff that I play now is quite “proggy”. Progressive House, and trance, became dirty words, really just because so much of it was being made. There was a lot of shit, but there are also some great progressive house records. 

When Sabersonic started, Andrew was playing stuff like DJ Dag and Dance To Trance, Psychick Warriors Ov Gaia. I still do like a really good techno record. Have you heard Rex The Dog`s Vortex. It’s fucking ace!

I saw a clip of you playing Underworld’s Rez at Phonox.

It wasn’t planned. It just happened. 

Do you often play old tunes like that, or is it just every now and again?

Every now and again… but every time I do someone always videos it. I play for 6 hours and the only clip on Youtube is me playing an old record (laughs). 

It’s probably some old timer super excited because you’ve played their favourite tune, and they haven’t heard it out for like, 20 years.

I did also play Mmm… Skyscraper I Love You. It sounded incredible.

Released on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, A Love From Outer Space // A Compilation can be ordered directly from Material Music.

You can RVSP here for the release day listening party.

For those in Japan, here’s a heads up. In May, Sean will be bringing ALFOS to Womb. 

I’m already planning my outfit.