“Alright boys, wake him up. Slap him around a little. Let’s have a little chat with Doubleclick here. The boss says he’s been hiding out wit Tobin, workin on somethin. We’re gonna find out what it is.”
My boys slap Joe ‘Doubleclick’ Chapman a few times, then pour a bucket of water over his head. He finally comes to, sputtering water. He looks around blearily then realises he’s tied to a chair in a dark room wit no windows. I show him a CD case. It is That Girl, by Two Fingers.
“Alright Doubleclick, what the hell is this?”
“That’s our new single, it came out May 4th. We’re quite excited about it,” Doubleclick babbles. I think he’s scared. That’s good. We like ’em scared.
“Relax Doubleclick, we just want to have a little talk. Tell us about Tobin. You met him in Brighton, right? Do you live there now?”
“Yes, I’ve been there for a couple of years but spent a couple of years before that living in Montreal, which allowed me to work with Amon side by side.” I don’t say anything. “He’s in California now. I’m hoping to get there later in the year. In the mean time we’re just doing things separately and playing the results to each other. We can work independently.”
“That’s good. That’s very good. Now, tell me how you get your sound. The Boss thinks Brighton has somethin’ ta do wit it.”
“Brighton certainly. It’s not just the scene but the record shops as well. Brighton has many second-hand record shops. Despite what they say about the record industry – that no-ones buying music etc – virtually all the record shops are still alive there. It means you can walk in and spend all day listening to LPs, then walk out with a bunch of music from around the world. Some things you buy cos you know they’re exactly what you want and other things you take a chance on. It’s not just about finding odd little bits of hip hop, but also Middle Eastern music, African music, whatever it is. I often buy something because its got a musician on it who is on another record that I have.”
“Thank you Doubleclick, you’re being very informative. Keep goin like this and Lefty won’t have ta use the pliers. Now, tell us where ya gotcha name.”
“It started because I worked with a friend at first and the two of us were trying to think of a name. We wanted to make music on computers which was unusual at the time, to do the whole thing with software, so we decided to call ourselves Doubleclick. It just sort of stuck.”
“Oh yeah? Dat’s a good story. I won’t tell ya why we call dat guy Scrotum, cos it aint a good story. It’s a bad story. You wouldn’t like it. Tell us another story Doubleclick. Tell us what kinda music this album is. What is it, hip hop? Dancehall? We’re confused over here.”
“It’s a tricky thing. In our heads it’s distinctly a hip hop record because we know the approach we use, but people who consider themselves strictly hip hop heads are going to have serious questions, because it doesn’t sound like the hip hop that people are used to. It doesn’t really fit into any other genre either, something I’m actually quite pleased about. We played our stuff to hip hop people and they’d say its really dark, really weird, difficult to get their heads around. Then Amon’s fans are quite upset you know, they’d be saying ‘what’s this poppy fluff you’ve been making’. It’s either too dark or too light.”
“Ok Doubleclick. Enough about the album. The Boss will tell ya what he thinks of dat when the time comes. Now we wanna hear about Tobin and you. What’s your connection to Tobin, huh?”
“The friendship between me an Amon is extremely important. When you’re collaborating it really helps to either know the person really well or not know them at all so you’re completely disconnected. It’s great to work with him, its like an extension of the friendship. All the MCs that we worked with have been fantastic as well. Sway is extremely professional and friendly; he made the whole thing very easy. Miss Jade was great as well. She’s really down to earth and it was great to meet her. We had a lot of fun in the studio and ended up doing more tracks together than we originally decided to. It’s been great working with all of these people.”
“Well if you’re recommendin ’em, we’ll have ta check ’em out. Maybe Lefty will get to use his pliers after all. That can’t be all you do though Doubleclick, what else have ya been up to?”
“Well I spent last weekend icing cakes for a children’s party at the community centre. That’s not very hip hop is it? I do sculpting as well. I got into it by accident. My American girlfriend wanted the whole American Halloween experience and wanted me to carve a pumpkin. I thought ‘if I’m going to carve a pumpkin I’m really going to carve a pumpkin’ and I went to town with it. I want to get into doing proper permanent sculptures in wood.”
“Well when you do, make sure the Boss sees a little of the cash flow, know what I’m sayin? Ok boys, let him loose. Ya done good Doubleclick, real good.”
