Touching Bass: Ben Pearce

Woah there British weather, you are so two-faced. Just a couple of days ago me and my housemates were seeping minimal heat from our living room radiator and cherishing every single centigrade rise. Now life is one big Calippo ice-lolly and BBQs are the talk of the town. Let’s not complain though. In homage to this balmy stint of ours, me and house music fave, Ben Pearce, had quite the summery tinged chat about Italian cuisine, festival time and playing golf. The Manchester-bred DJ was responsible for one of last year’s most replayed tracks in ‘What I Might Do’ and since then, he’s been nurturing his own label, Purp & Soul. His Touching Bass edition is suitably juiced with the type of tropical vibes that only my Jamaican uncle can emit with his regular nostalgic accounts of "back home". Enjoy that sun.

Noisey: Hey Ben, where are the majority of your gigs these days?

Ben Pearce: Pretty much Europe. It’s pretty hectic especially around this time. Scenery-wise and culturally, Italy is amazing but I prefer playing at the clubs in the UK because of the atmosphere and everyone is really up for it. You get to visit places but you usually only get to see the airports and the hotels. It’s frustrating more than anything, I'm not complaining because we have great jobs as DJs, but sometimes you’ll drive past a museum or something and you want to go visit.

You mentioned Italy, are you partial to a spag bol every now and then?

I quite like cooking so I love a bit of Italian food more than anything. Maybe not spag bol, but I love fresh fish, cold meats and mozzarella. It’s all very awesome.

So what would be the main course in the Ben Pearce bistro?

My girlfriend’s favourite is the steak pasta and cream mushroom sauce with some peppers. She loves that with a bit of rare steak.

I still can’t do rare…

You have to do well done? Mate, you’re missing out. Have you tried it?

I tried rare once or twice but I can’t do it…

It really does depend on the quality of the meat, I guess. If you go to a good quality steakhouse then that’s definitely the best place to have it rare. If you get poor quality meat, it’s just all very chewy.

Chewy epitomises Aldi beef; student life. When it comes to playing your track ‘What I Might Do’, do you still enjoy playing it as much?

Right now it’s still very much the only reason people come to see me. I don’t like the song any more because it’s worn really thin on me and I critique it so much but I do get times when the reaction is incredible. I don’t think I’ll get bored of it just based on people’s reaction.

What’s your favourite YouTube guilty pleasure?

There’s a channel called ‘How To Basic’ which shows you how to make basic meals but it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. When I first watched it, I couldn’t stop laughing and was in stitches for about an hour because he has so many videos on there. That’s definitely a recommendation.

If some DJing cherub were to ask for advice on how to get into the game, what would you advise?

It’s so hard starting now because so many people do it. It’s not a bad thing, but if you're just starting out, you need to buy some decks and teach yourself and then find your own niche. There’s not really one recipe that works. You get immersed in it by playing vinyls because you have to know the tracks and where they break. You don’t have a waveform or timer to tell you where the track ends and that way you learn it more.

How are things moving with your label, Purp & Soul?

We’ve got nine artists who are all doing amazing stuff. Their unreleased roster of tracks are growing and growing. We’ve just planned our next releases, one of which is a tune I made with vocalist, Aniya Das, and then there’s Real Connoisseur putting together an EP, which will be the next one.

Are you a Man United fan?

Yeah.

Congratulations on winning the league.

Thanks very much, I don’t know why I'm saying thanks, but yeah.

Do you play football yourself?

Yeah, I used to play football when I was younger but I got an injury when I was 16 and started playing golf more. I still play a bit of 5-a-side every now and then. I used to play either attacking midfield or right midfield when I used to have some pace.

And you mentioned golf?

It’s something that I'm about to get into because I miss it and I used to play quite competitively. I just stopped playing for some reason, when you’re young and going to parties and not much else.

What else have you got planned for summer?

Just a lot of gigs it seems. I'm getting back in the studio to write some more original stuff. I've just been in the studio with Black Orange Juice and that’s going really well. We’ve got quite a few buzzing ideas from that. Over summer, I'm doing a lot of festivals and European touring. Hopefully I’ll find some time in between to go on a few holidays or something.

Are you just working from laptop or do you work with hardware as well?

It’s just my laptop at the moment and I'm trying to get some hardware but I don’t want to over do it. I’m gonna get a UAD so I can run everything from it. I definitely wanna experiment with working with different things. When I was working with Black Orange Juice, they just got a bag of couscous out to use as a shaker. That kind of improvisation is just the best. I don’t know if couscous counts as hardware.

Couscous shaker?!? Finally what’s coming up from you?

Working with Black Orange Juice at the moment and we’re just seeing what will come from that. I wanna get into making songs for artists as well as just producing tunes that people enjoy.

Among a slew of summer dates, Ben Pearce plays out at both Field Day and Farr Festival this year.

TRACKLIST

Mukunguni - Puredi

Sepalcure - Make You

Coma - Make You (Dauwd remix)

DJ Koze - Marilyn Whirlwind

Mohammed Alidu - Aikaso (Murlo remix)

Martyn - What Is Room 101

2ndSun - Never Knew

Fort Romeau - SW9 (Lowtec Remix)

Rhythm And Sound - Poor People Must Work (Carl Craig remix)

For Touching Bass check out:

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