D E E PC H I L D
has
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over the
3 decades, with 5 full
Helengthbeen out.to hismusiclaunched lastown record label,many
albums
name. He also has about just as
sample libraries
He’s just
his
and
releases more music under 2 different names. He’s been living in
Berlin for almost 5 years now, and is scheduled to tour the U.S. early this
year. You’d expect Rick Bull, aka Deepchild, to be excited by all these
projects, but true to form, he is trying to challenge himself, his music and
his spirituality and make sense of his own career. I found him in a very
reflective mood, but very up and jovial as well, constantly laughing and
being extremely humble.
I hadn’t spoken to him or seen him perform for almost a decade. He
wasn’t a DJ back then and he had very long dreads. “Around
2004/2005 I started DJing in bars to start with, playing lots of Hip Hop,
Soul and R’n’B and Dub and stuff like that. As an experiment because
I have nothing to lose, and I’m not very good at it and if people think
I’m shit then I won’t feel crushed. To be honest I’ve always felt unduly
intimidated by the Sydney DJ scene. I felt like I couldn’t fit into it,
because I wasn’t cool enough, but it worked really well and I played
the main stage at the Exit Festival 2 years after I started DJing. I played
at Panorama Bar the same year. I guess it kind of worked out.”
That’s what I mean about him being humble, and I had to point out that
with his music and dreads, how could he not be cool? And by the way,
what happened to the dreads? “They were really really long” he says
laughing. “I started to get fit and they were getting in the way and soaking
up a lot of sweat and grime. And I was starting to get weary of being asked
for weed the whole time”
And life in Berlin?
I’ve been in Berlin now for 4 years, kind of living the dream. It’s been
up and down. I was back in Australia in June last year and the shows
were just massive, then I was booked heavily till October when it
became really quite. This has been the pattern for the last couple of
years I have these months of really solid bookings then some months
of just nothing.”
So are you writing more?
‘I’m writing so much. My income has shifted from relying on touring
to doing sample packs at the moment. And then, I have a couple of
sneaky aliases that I can’t really talk about, which have been picked
up most recently by Billboard Magazine, which is interesting. So I kind
050 djmag.com.au
of been investigating other projects which have been, I guess, still
electronic music related but on an almost darker, shoe gazey, grimy,
satanic tip’ he says almost questioning himself before he laughs at
his own description. Then he quickly adds ‘just as an experiment, and
they’ve been going remarkably well. That’s also being distracting me
and potentially generating some income. I feel like the game is
changing so much. You know since I’ve been in Berlin I’ve played
Burkhand twice, The Panorama Bar once, Detroit Music Festival blah
blah blah, which you know are all these big clubs, but it’s been really
difficult to find consistency in it all.” Here I had to ask what he meant.
Consistency in DJ gigs or Live gigs? “Both. I guess there’s a
generational shift and I’m not going out as I used to, as well. In the
best possible sense, everything that I’m writing and producing is
being better received than ever, and it’s really nice to have these sort
of secret side projects, that people don’t know is me, but in terms of
monetising it I’m trying to work out new strategies.”
My mind was still wondering what he meant by ‘satanic tip’ and the
music he was producing under a different name that gets picked up
by Billboard Magazine. “So are you telling me this whole satanic thing
is you producing pop or commercial music that makes it to the
Billboard Charts?” “No, no, it’s the absolute opposite. If anything, it’s
more instrumental, akin to the territory that labels like Blackest Ever
Black is exploring, or say some of the stuff on Warp, or artists like
Actress for example or old favourites of mine like Vladislav Delay. It’s
either kind of downbeat or it’s like drone music. This is the curious
thing, its way less accessible than the Deepchild stuff. I got be careful
as to what I say because people may be able to work it out.”
I couldn’t help but laugh here, and he joined in with me, then he
tried to explain it a bit more, “OK, for a the longest time I’ve had this
fascination with the sounds of intercepted transmissions. You know,
like Cold War Russian ships. I don’t know if you’ve heard I’ve been
doing this sort of regular monthly podcast called ‘Diversions’ which
is on my Soundcloud page. I’m just about to do the tenth episode,
it’s a two hour episode and it’s all exploring music you couldn’t play
on the dance floor. Anything from contemporary classical music to
drone shit to spoken word. A lot of poetry like Linton Kwesi Johnson,
like dub poetry shit. I know this sounds really pretentious but I’ve
been including bits of Baroque music, excerpts from the Royal
Shakespeare Theatre Company. Soundtrack music by like Hans
Zimmer, classic sci-fi.
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