FEATURE INTERVIEW



With Another Cinematically Themed, '80s-Flavored Full-Length, Felix Da Housecat Is Ready For His Next Close-Up.

Published in the November 2007 issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 20 - Number 11
By Justin Hampton

Los Angeles—It’s damn-near midnight. He’s been on a plane for six hours. He just played a two-hour set at the Pimlico Race Track in Baltimore for the Virgin Festival where it was just shy of 100 degrees in the shade. Surely, he must be jet-lagged or fatigued.

Yet somehow, Felix Da Housecat is finding the spare energy to outpace, outdrink and outparty pretty much everyone in his entourage following him to L.A.’s Club Avalon where he’ll play a two-and-a-half hour set. Granted, he couldn’t find Armand Van Helden’s “I Can Smell You” on beatport.com before the show, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Clearly, this is a man that can’t be stopped. Even before the crossover success of 2001’s Kittenz And Thee Glitz, Chicago-born native Felix Stallings, Jr., made big tracks, running the Chicago house record label Radikal Fear and devising enough musical alter egos to keep David Bowie company on a good day. In the meantime, he’s helped launch the Stateside careers of Kittenz collaborators Tommie Sunshine and Miss Kittin and charmed tastemakers like Thom Yorke and Marilyn Manson in the process.

Nailing the hipster zeitgeist with Kittenz And Thee Glitz has been a tough act to follow, Felix admits, but his latest full-length, Virgo, Blaktro & The Movie Disco [Nettwerk] shows a confident return to the ’80s synth-pop/Italo-disco hybrid that made Kittenz purr, while throwing a few dancefloor stompers like “Tweak” and “Future Callz The Dawn” in for good measure. Somehow, in the midst of the mad flurry that characterizes Felix’s life, we managed to get him to explain how he did it this time around.

DJ Times: What’s on your DJ rider nowadays? What gear do you like to perform with?
Felix Da Housecat: Right now, I’ve been messing with Serato for like, seven, eight months now. I was in Budapest or Croatia, and that dude named Max Graham was DJing on it. I was like, “Dude, why are you using a computer? What is this? CDs are bad enough, me using them, but you using a computer…” He goes, “Well, let me show you something.” So he showed me two CDs, popped them in, showed me the laptop, and it was like a jukebox. I was blown away. And what made me jump on Serato is that it [saves] your whole set. Like, so I have a different set in every city. So if you look at my laptop, it’s like, Dubai, Greece, London, Barcelona. I think that’s just so cool that you could just study your sets and see what you did wrong, what you did right.

DJ Times: How do you do that?
Felix: Perfect example, I was in Baltimore earlier today [for the Virgin Festival]. And [my manager] Dan [Ross] was like, “I need your sets so we can have it on the radio.” And I’m like, “Well, my track listing’s on the computer,” so I was able to pull it up. And it beats carrying five record boxes. I miss rubbing a record on my belly and stuff to clean the vinyl—I miss that part. But man, I don’t miss lugging five cases on an international flight and they lose your shit, man. So I’m feeling Serato and I use a Pioneer 800, the DJM-800 mixer. And then I use the CDJ-1000s and stuff, so I’m pretty simple in that department. I use the 15-inch Black Mac. So that’s what I’m rolling with on the DJ.

DJ Times: What’s the breakdown of your source material—vinyl, digital files, CDs, etc.?
Felix: I stopped using vinyl, like, 2002, I think? Then I went to CDs and I would lose my CDs. They would get scratched up. When I was doing vinyl, people would bump into the turntable and the records would be skipping, because the parties I be playing are like really intense sometimes. Sometimes people will be getting so hyped, jumping on the tables, so I got tired of that scratching. And then I went to CDs, and I got tired of my CDs scratching and handing them out and stuff. And I was losing them. I’m very careless with stuff like that. [So now] I’m all computer-Serato-Final Scratch, digital age. I’m sorry to sell my soul to the dark side, but Darth Vader does rule, baby. [Laughs]

DJ Times: Moving on to your new album, what characterized the production phase this time around?
Felix: I work with a programmer, this dude named BC [aka Alain “BC” Croisy], and what happens when we’re working on Logic is I always go to my ’80s references. I always go to Prince & The Revolution or... Prince & The Revolution [Laughs]. I try to go back to my references and when I’m ready to pull it up, BC will be there on Logic and I was like, “Man, can you give me a sound on the synth?’

DJ Times: What’s different here?
Felix: For the past albums, I was mostly using my Juno-106, my Sequential Circuits, my E-MU 6400 Plus. I was working on a lot of Cubase. For the first time on this album, I wanted to go use a different studio, work with different engineers and work with different programmers. So with this album going in, it was moreso that I was using a lot of plug-ins from Logic. Once we got a sound we liked, we pull up another sound and layer it, then we’d go to another sound. So one thing that stayed, I used the Linn drum sound samples and replayed them. I used this little box, the DigiTech Vocalist, for all of my vocals that I’ve been using over the years. I call it “the magic box.”

DJ Times: How did the album’s sound change once you left Barcelona?
Felix: I went to Atlanta and I hooked up with Dallas Austin. And his system is like a fucking spaceship. Like, anything you need, you just point your finger and it just falls in your lap. [Laughs] So, when I got there, we weren’t using too much outboard gear. I was working with this engineer named Rick Shepherd and he took what I did in Barcelona and just mixed it through his set-up, which uses Apogee converters. This is the first time I’ve done an album where I had more people involved on the engineering and programming. Because I was just so burnt out doing it myself, I just wanted to get more people involved and just sit back and focus more on the writing and playing the synthesizers and doing the beats and everything.

DJ Times: What distinguishes Logic from the Cubase/Pro Tools setup you were previously using?
Felix: The thing with Pro Tools is, it’s great for audio. It’s amazing for audio and stuff. But when Logic came out, [it] was one of the first systems that had the audio, the sequencers, the MIDI and the keyboards. So I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna roll with this, man, because right now, [Pro Tools] doesn’t have the virtual synths.” Now you can rock virtual synths on Pro Tools. But I’m so hooked to Logic right now—like, I can make a song in an hour on Logic. Pro Tools is like three hours.



For his vocals in the studio, Felix uses his "magic box."


DJ Times: What new production tricks did you learn in the making of this album?
Felix: Well, because [BC] does R&B and hip-hop, [he knows how to] stack and stack and stack and stack and stack vocals. And that stuff used to drive me crazy, so he taught me how to take a verse and just molt it. He was like, “Man, you should do it in this, ’cause it’s not really been done in electronic music.” I was like, “No, man. I don’t wanna be sounding like R. Kelly on a dance record, you know what I’m saying?” [Laughs.] He was like, “Just try it.” So what we ended up doing was… we stacked it. But we would sing in different harmonies and then I would pan, ’cause one of my tricks is panning. So I just thought I would take the vocals, and I’d have the singers sing in one octave and then have them drop another octave in another key on the left speaker to give it that effect. So we would spread the vocals to make it sound really big.

DJ Times: How many tracks are there on average for the songs on this new LP? Are they fairly simple songs, generally?
Felix: I think “Radio” has the most tracks stacked. Most of my songs are pretty simple, maybe like five or six tracks going. I like to keep all of my drums on one track as far as EQs, but stuff like “Radio,” when I try to get a sound and I can’t get where I’m going I keep layering and layering and layering. And then once it’s layered, I strip it back down and see what my favorite sounds are. It varies per track. Like, “Monkey Cage” is just straight stripped down and it works. “I Seem 2B The 1” is simple and that works. Stuff like “It’s Your Move,” we got the guitar, the bass, the drums and a cool melody on top and that’s cool. But on some songs, there’s a lot going on.

DJ Times: Like what?
Felix: You know, like “Tweak,” there’s a lot going on. “Future Callz The Dawn,” there’s a lot going on, a lot of stacking. But me coming from the dance music, I try not to overstack them, because when you hear in a party or even in a car, when you’re lounging, you can hear the melodies in songs a lot better when they’re simple. ’Cause at the end of the day, a lot of people, they have very simple minds and they grab the melody. If you’ve got 10 melodies going at the same time, they’re just not gonna get it. You as an artist or musician, you like all those melodies because you can identify with each individual track, ’cause you hear it stripped down, but when your audience hears it, they’re just gonna hear one thing. So at some point, you gotta try and make it simple where people can relate to it. And I think the simplest songs work the best when it comes to electronica.

DJ Times: Tell me about “Tweak.” That seems to be the purest dance track on the album. How did you create those siren noises?
Felix: The siren is a synth and then it’s, like, this Public Enemy siren sample that we reversed, and we layered them. So if you really listen to them close, it’s like two synths going at once and one is overlayering it. So there’s two sounds merged with one. And then we put a light effect on it, like a little light reverse effect and then we put the pitch shift and started pitching it up, like, da-da, da-da-da, [in order] to make people lose their mind at a party.

DJ Times: I was going to ask what you think about Digitalism and Justice?
Felix: Oh, I love that stuff, though. I love Digitalism. I love Justice. I don’t think the Klaxons are New Rave, but I love their stuff. For me, it’s very hard to dance to, because it’s more focused on trickery than it is four-to-the-floor. You can’t play that all night. That New Rave stuff is very robotic to me—but it works. But listening to that all night, you’ll go crazy. You listen to anything all night, the same thing, you’ll lose your mind.

DJ Times: How do you feel about the successes of Tommie Sunshine and Miss Kittin? What do you think of the new work they’re doing?
Felix: I’m proud of Tommy. You know, I met him in Atlanta. He was working at Satellite Records. This was, like, ‘98, and the first time I went to a strip club. And that’s how we clicked. He knew about some of the past stuff, and he was really good with writing. He was educating me on all the cool, white producers like [Jean-Marc] Cerrone and Serge Gainsbourg and all that. Growing up, I listened to, like, Marvin Gaye, James Brown and Stevie Wonder. I didn’t know nothing about it in the suburbs of Chicago. So Tommy introduced me to a whole other world of music, so I’m really proud of him and what he’s done and everything.

DJ Times: And Miss Kittin?
Felix: As far as Miss Kittin, she was already a star before I got with her. I heard the song she did called “Frank Sinatra.” When I heard that, I was like, “Man, we got to hook up.” But DJ Hell would never introduce me to her. So I ran into her in a festival in Switzerland. She picked me up from the airport, and I’m complaining. I didn’t even know she was Miss Kittin. She drove me all the way to the hotel with her boyfriend at the time, dropped me off and I was, “Like, OK, I wanna meet Miss Kittin.’ So they took me to her trailer and it was the person who picked me up. So I said, “Can we work together?” We did “Madame Hollywood,” “Silver Screen,” “What Does It Feel Like?” and all that. And after that, I just think she just went to a whole other level. And I can’t say it was just because of me. I just think we both had a good chemistry. You know, her and the Hacker are making a new album right now.

DJ Times: What do you have planned for the next year?
Felix: I’m just happy that I’ve been blessed to make another album, ’cause there’s a saying, “You’re only as good as your last record.” So a lot of people don’t know, the pressure’s unbearable to try to make an album that you’re happy with [that’s] better than the one before. For me, I’m my own worst critic. So I haven’t even had the energy to even [plan] towards anything. I’m just happy that I was able to finish and I’m happier with it than I am with Devin Dazzle And The Neon Fever, you know what I’m saying? Because Kittenz And Thee Glitz was so hard to try to match. They put so much pressure on it. When I came in with Devin Dazzle, people just expecting a Kittenz And Thee Glitz “part 2,” and in actuality, it was a little different. It was still Felix Da Housecat. But I think for me personally, it was something missing.

DJ Times: What was it?
Felix: I think that was focus. And I think with Virgo Blaktro, I was so focused on it and I knew what I wanted, so I was like, “I was just happy that it’s done.” I haven’t even thought about anything coming up. I’m just happy to be doing the interview talking about it rather than to be thinking about remixes and more DJ shows ’cause that’s the story of my life. I get on a plane, play a party, land, get on a plane, get on a party, do interviews. So as far as me looking forward to anything, I haven’t even thought about anything. It’s just nonstop right now.