Gene Hunt Interview
GENE: There were a few things that separated me from the other DJs. We had the reel-to-reel with pitch control on it and we had the cassette deck. Most of my music was on tape and on reel-to-reel, so I would turn the turntables off and go from tapedeck to reel-to-reel all night.
"I use so many different elements. I'll put five different snares together and then put an effect behind it which gives it a totally different pattern. I'll grab natural sounds from the elements from being out, being at the museum, hearing a sound when I'm at home."
5: No DJ coming through the ranks now is going to know what it's like to mix off a reel-to-reel - it's got to be considered a lost art. How did that work compared to turntables?
GENE: It's a totally different situation. You had to pull the tape out, run it through a lead, cue it up and find the right spot. It was a little more intricate than just putting your record on a platter and cueing it up with your hand. It was a lot more technical but the sound quality was a lot more immense. And you got a chance to play a lot of things that the other guys didn't have.
Back then, I also had a drum machine, and I'd toy around and make these really abstract tracks. They call that "Techno" now, obviously, but back in that era it wasn't called Techno. I'd call it Disco because that's where it all came from. A lot of people don't know that Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson used to come to the Music Box. When Ron Hardy and I spun at the Music Box, they brought us "Strings of Life".
The music been split up into all of these particles when it comes from one solid base. It's all a 4/4 form of music. I've heard Disco records that are 140 beats per minute. I've heard Disco records that are 110 beats per minute. These days, people feel like anything past 127 beats per minute isn't House Music. You can't define that. Music is your interpretation of what you feel. It was just music to us - just some funky ass tracks!
5: The percussion on your original productions isn't just snare-hat-snare-hat... You have some sounds that I've never heard on record before.
GENE: I use so many different elements. I'll put five different snares together and then put an effect behind it which gives it a totally different pattern. I'll grab natural sounds from the elements from being out, being at the museum, hearing a sound when I'm at home. I'll grab different sounds and put them together so as to contrast them and then run them through a processor which gives me a different sound altogether. If I did things in a normal way, I'd have a normal sound.
5: It's a degree of artistry that you usually don't see. You're crafting every single beat.
GENE: Every single beat, and there's always something going on. A lot of guys, when they make their tracks, they take a loop, they go on and ride it and then they pour all the other things on top of it. I want you to have excitement like a roller coaster when you hear my tracks. That's how I think about my music: like a roller coaster. I'll take you up the slide, suspend you up at the top, and then send you down for the rush, let you have a few loops and turns. I never want the ride to get boring.
5: You moved out of Chicago and retired from House Music during the 1990s. Why was that?
GENE: I retired around 1994. This was a really important time for House Music, and I was gone. I moved to California and started producing a lot of Rap music and working with a lot of Rap artists - I started production with Bones Thugs'N'Harmony, Snoop Dogg...
I continued to release both House Music and Techno, but I just stopped DJing because I lost a sense of it. Ron Hardy had passed away, Lil Louis had gotten a major label deal with "French Kiss" and moved to New York, and it just seemed like the whole scene was crashing. I found another niche and something else to do.
When I came back in 2000, after missing those years, it took me a bit of time to get re-adjusted. Some guys are here today and gone tomorrow, but I must have made some kind of impact if I could start when I was 15 years old back in the early '80s and come back. But it was an adjustment. I had to surround myself with the new guys. They knew who I was, but I had to reinvent Gene Hunt. It took me a good two or three years just to re-establish myself, and I'm still getting into that rhythm right now.
5: There's a very small group of people from your era that are still working DJs, in the sense that they spin regularly in their hometown.
GENE: There are only a handful of us that are around as far as legendary veterans. There's Wayne Williams, Terry Hunter, Andre Hatchett, myself and a few others... We look out for one another. Obviously, Frankie Knuckles still plays too. But being out there in the trenches, playing with a lot of younger guys like Jamie 3:26, Stephen P. and Paul Harris, the guys I play with at The Note - there are a lot of new and up and coming guys that are great.
5: You play serious old school nights as well as for younger crowds who might not recognize the classics. What's your take on breaking new music?
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