Published in the July 2009 Issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 22 - Number 07
By Brian O’Connor

After getting off a plane in London, Adam Freeland walks through the airport baggage pick-up and is reminded why he’s such a Serato/Ableton convert: he doesn’t miss the days when he watched helplessly as the baggage carousel delivered his vinyl, scuffed and shattered, followed by an unhinged, busted crate—a sad procession known as the “DJ’s Trail of Tears.”

Mercifully, it’s been a couple years since Freeland lugged vinyl to a gig; lately, in fact, he’s been focused on more organic pursuits: a proper band, for one, named Freeland, that’s been touring since the South by Southwest conference, promoting Cope™, a fully realized, if not slightly schizophrenic, representation of Freeland’s breaks/techno/electro sound he’s been trading in for more than a decade. With singer Kurt Baumann and contributions from Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, Cope summons big-beat fuzz (“Do You”), LCD Soundsystem (“Under Control”), and identifies the electro-delic reel of David Essex (“Rock On”), or at times a jacked-up My Bloody Valentine. We spoke to Adam Freeland, while he was passing the baggage checkout in the London airport.

DJ Times: You’ve moved to L.A. from your native England. Why?

Freeland: Well, I live out of a bag, out of hotel rooms, but L.A. is where the bills get sent…but it was a girl that prompted the move—that didn’t last that long, but I fell in love with L.A. instead. When I first went to L.A. years ago, I had the cliché reaction: plastic people and no vibe. I think if you don’t know L.A. it’s easy to get that impression, but it’s one of my favorite cities in the world now.

DJ Times: How has the city changed your music?

Freeland: The collaborations would never have happened in Brighton. You just can’t call Tommy Lee and have him play drums on your record if you’re living in Brighton, or Joey Santiago. It was real easy to make happen; and I think also going out more than I’d ever have, to see music, every night of the week, has changed my music. The whole energy there, people aren’t just hanging around, they’re getting shit done and it makes me not be a slacker.

DJ Times: Describe the adjustment going from DJing to a live thing.

Freeland: The challenge is mixing the technology and the instrumentation and getting it to sound really fat. There’s a lot of tweaking away, and there’s always room for improvement. I’m running stuff from Ableton Live, doing samples and running some soft synths as well, from an MS20 Korg, and doing backing vocals as well.

DJ Times: Tell us about the room for improvement.

Freeland: I’m running things so my drummer’s playing to a click, because we want the live show to sound as much like the record as possible. A lot of those sounds can’t be made live—they took hours of production to get that sound. So it’s a matter of figuring out how to trigger what without making your life a nightmare. When you’re a DJ, you can do anything, experiment, but with a band they’re not psychic—so they gotta know what’s coming up.

DJ Times: When you DJ, do you miss vinyl?

Freeland: I travel with Serato and Ableton, and I just started using Ableton six months ago. My only issue with it is I think it’s very un-rock-n-roll to look at the computer screen while playing live or DJing. So I always make an effort to put it on the side, I think it’s important to maintain eye contact with the audience. To me, the point of using vinyl-based technology like Serato was just sentiment; Ableton just allows me to do key mixing, looping, and remixing live. When you do it well, it’s just incredible—and I’m loving that. But I still think vinyl sounds the best.

– Brian O’Connor