Lee Walker is a fresh-faced House producer making global waves from his studio in the UK. Just in the past half decade, Walker has had smash releases with esteemed labels such as Defected, Elrow, and Hot Creations, solidifying his name as a staple House music act. Now, just ahead of his debut on Dirtybird with a track on their Summer Funk Compilation, Walker has had a short chat with us to dive into his music, inspirations, current endeavors, and favorite party moments. Catch the interview below and take a peak at his track ‘Rock Climbers’ which premiered on our SoundCloud just today.
WWD: Describe your creative process for this track. Where were you when you made it? what were your inspirations and how long did it take to create?
Lee Walker: For this one I was at home just messing around with an LFO while bored in front of my computer and tapping a single note on my keyboard, then the Rock Climber riff came out of it and decided to build something around it, the entire track didn’t actually take that long maybe a few hours at most, it was one of those that’s just fun to do and flows straight out.
WWD: Can you elaborate on your relationship with Dirtybird? How did you link up with them?
LW: When I made Rock Climber I immediately thought of Dirtybird as a home for it because it was wonky and a club bomb, which Dirtybird do release after release. Everything just seemed to fit. We sent it over to Deron who sent it to Barclay [Claude Von Stroke].
I guess Barclay liked it, because it was all signed up pretty quickly which is always a relief, nothing worse than the waiting game!
WWD: What inspired to start making house music?
LW: Well when I first got into production at 15 I was making Makina music, when I turned 18 I joined a music tech course at my local college to keep my Mam off my back, that’s where I met Lee Pennington (Penno) of *riffraff, Zoo Project and generally being a bit of a divvy fame. He showed me some stuff that I’d never heard anything like before and it snowballed from there. Since that time me and Penno have done a lot together be it playing *riffraff, doing our old live show project Groove Syndicate or playing at The Zoo Project, it’s been a good road!
WWD: You’ve just released tunes with big labels like Defected, Hot Creations, and now Dirtybird, whats next for you?
LW: I have some stuff in the works but it’s not concrete enough to speak about at the minute, but when I can finally announce it, it’ll be pretty exciting, I hate being this guy who’s all “you’ll have to wait and see”, but you will haha.
WWD: Tell me a bit about your new label we the people.
LW: We, The People is a concept me and Graeme [my manager] came up with late 2016 and decided it was going to be focused on putting out mint music from more up & coming/unestablished producers, just to show people there are a lot of bangers outside of the Beatport top 100 and some DJ’s never really look that far for their music, it also, or at least I hope, will give the producers we feature a good boost due to the PR we want to schedule around the label and the releases. We are planning on launching this year, but it really is a “wait until the time is right” thing, but one thing is for sure, we have 3 EP’s lined up and our curtain raiser will be from Dublin based full blown Manc N.A.N.C.Y who has sent me some absolute weapons, then we have Adison & a Berlin producer called C.Rius. At the minute it’s all about timing the first release right and going from there and I’m really excited to get this music out as I’ve been sat on it for a while now and I know the producers are shuffling in their chairs to get it out.
WWD: Do you have any tips for up n coming producers?
LW: The same advice I always give, don’t expect everything to happen overnight, it’s took me 10 years to get anywhere at all, it can take that long, it can be faster, it can be longer, so make sure you’re in it because you love it and not for the flash in the pan success, making good music is key but being able to get it to the right people who give a shit about what you’re sending them is imperative. Don’t give up, keep pushing forward and get out and meet people in your local house music community, they’re as important to your success as you are.
WWD: Tell us about one of your all time favorite party moments.
LW: I’ll give you two since I never listen to instructions.
From behind the decks I played Circus last year around May time, the line up was massive, people like Black Coffee, Yousef, Richy Ahmed, Jackmaster and so on and the party was an Elrow special, Do Not Sleep with of course Darius Syrossian was in the second room, I was in a third room and when you’re in a third room, you don’t really expect it to be busy, it was, it was absolutely wall to wall all the way through, and playing that 4 vodkas deep with a sombrero on with a smirk on my face while dropping Sandy B – You Make The World Go Round was a particular highlight, everyone was just having it the entire time.
From in front of the decks, Paradise at DC10 last summer one Wednesday they had Lil’ Louis on, aside from his set being one of my favourite I’ve ever seen and having my tiny mind blown, I’d say a lot of the fun I had there can be attributed to having one too many San Miguels and going through the backstage area with Graeme lightheartedly ripping the piss out of people, we had some ripping the piss free conversations as well but mostly walking over to people and gently ribbing them was the highlight, most of my stories I either can’t fully remember or you had to be there to realise how fucking funny it was, to be fair, this was fucking funny, you’ll just have to take my word for it, anyone who’s ever met me knows my sense of humour and how I’m dry as fuck and love to rip people and be ripped in return, I think it’s just the Teesside way, we all hate each other and love each other at the same time because we are a pack of bell ends.
Buy the Summer Funk Compilation here: https://www.beatport.com/release/summer-funk-ep/2073145
Connect with Lee Walker:
https://facebook.com/LeeWalkerMusic/
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