Releasing his first album in twenty years, the legendary house DJ talks Jen Long through the influential songs from his formative New York years.
With Spectrum, his first studio album in two decades, Roger Sanchez took a lot of influence from the UK. But for his Nine Songs choices he dives back to the New York of his past with an integral selection from his days as a breakdancer and DJ.
“I actually sat down and gave it quite a bit of thought from the perspective of when I was coming up, starting out as a dancer, before I became a DJ, and how that informed my choices as a DJ,” says Sanchez from across the table of a busy café in central London. “What the sound was at that point in time, and how these tracks really helped form the foundation of where my own sound evolved from.”
A Grammy winning DJ and producer, Sanchez grew up in New York in the ‘70s and ‘80s, a time when music was evolving across genres, hip hop was breaking out, and the club scene was blowing up. Not only do his, quite frankly, incredible choices tell that formative story, his passion and deep knowledge of music is evident across the thirteen tracks of Spectrum.
Working with a diverse range of collaborators across the record, every track has a big hitting hook and the feel of honed, instantaneous groove. It may be Sanchez’s first record in twenty years, but he has not been taking time out. Alongside running two labels - Stealth Records and UNDR THE RDR - he’s been playing around the world, remixing and collaborating with other artists, and even hosting his Release Yourself podcast.
If it wasn’t for the pandemic, this new album may never have been started. “In a way, Covid gave me my point of no more procrastinating. I'm constantly on tour. I learned to produce out of a backpack, but the constant touring doesn't always give me the breadth of space to really germinate the ideas,” he says.
“The UK opened up first for touring, so I wound up getting a flat here in Shoreditch, and I would be spending summers in the UK. I'd be connecting with artists here and soaking in that London vibe and the UK vibe, so that really has informed a lot of the energy and sound of some of the tracks in the album.”
Across the album, Sanchez brings together an impressive roster of artists new and loved, from the big hitting “Grinnin’” with Fedde Le Grand to the soaring emotion of “Dark Days” with UK act Leo Wood. “She’s an amazing writer,” he says. “She's a vivid painter of a picture verbally. That really, really, really worked well. We both understand hooks. She's really incisive, but one thing that I loved is she was willing to try to find the not easiest, but the cleverest way of saying something in the most concise way, so that it connects and is impactful. For me, it's like writing with someone like Fiona Apple. So that level of simplicity but depth is what I was really going for.”
One album highlight is the bouncy angular groove of “I Don’t Wanna Know” with Melanie C. “I think that's probably one of the biggest curve balls on the album, because I don't think people would have put it together,” he smiles.
“I was talking to my management team about who I wanted to work with on the album. He was the one who said, ‘What do you think about Spice Girls?’ I'm like, ‘collectively they’re brilliant, but the most underrated one is Mel C, as far as I'm concerned. She's got so much dynamic and a powerful voice.’ My concept was I wanted to do an underground track with Mel C on it, which is like, what?! I love that ‘what’ moment. That's not what you expect to hear.”
Contrasting Spectrum with Sanchez’s Nine Songs selections, it’s clear his origins are very much in selecting for the dancefloor - pulling out the hooks and beats that will connect and keep people up. “I try to make it something very evident in the fact that I came from the underground and my roots are always going to be there, but I open myself up to collaborating with different people because of what they bring - their energy and their perspective - to any project that I'm working on,” he says.
“This particular album was probably my most collaborative album, and I just was like, I'm going to open myself and co-write and try different things with different people. I DJ almost every weekend. I'm hearing and playing new sounds and seeing what connects on my dance floors, that really helped me bring my sound to the present while maintaining the root of it.”
“U.F.O.” by ESG
ROGER SANCHEZ: That track was influential to me, because when it came out, I was a breakdancer at the same time, so I remember hearing that track. I started to DJ around the same time that I was a breakdancer and that's where I started finding out the root and the source of a lot of these tracks and these sounds.
The other track that I didn't put down from then, which is a big influence, is “Moody.” So if I could do a dual, a double up, ESG – “U.F.O.” and “Moody” were incredibly foundational for me. “U.F.O.” was playing it at the wrong speed, slowing it down because it's a 45rpm record, and if you played it at 33 it was a hip-hop beat.
So that playing at the wrong speed was what all of us DJs in New York were doing. It gave you that hip-hop bounce, and those women were incredibly forward thinking, and their raw sound just worked. The stuff that was coming out of 99 Records at that point in time was some of the best underground sound live from New York.
BEST FIT: One thing that I noticed going through your choices is that so much of this has been sampled and used in house or hip-hop tracks. I think that's an entry point for a lot of people with ESG, is hearing them being sampled by Dilla.
I think, because I came up during that period of time, I had the benefit of it being completely new and creating something - the ethos of the hip-hop DJ. I started off as basically a hip-hop breaks DJ, of taking something that maybe shouldn't be played at a certain speed, but now you've basically remixed it live on the fly, and now you've adapted it to the dance floor, and that's really been my mentality throughout my entire career. How can I take this and make it work here? So it's a little bit DIY.
“Cavern” by Liquid Liquid
Again, 99 Records, that's the name of the record label that released both ESG and Liquid Liquid. That record was then taken on, came out as ‘White Lines’ - Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel, but that break bass was such a big dance floor dancer record, and again I go back to my breakdancing days.
These tracks I would breakdance to, and then as I was playing them, that would inform my decision as to how foundational it is. The beats and the bassline really are very key to a lot of my building musically, and in terms of how I structure beats. The bounce that my tracks have, a lot of that came from the kind of rhythmic element of the drums and the bass bounce from “Cavern.”
ESG and Liquid Liquid were so early with that proto dance-punk sound, it's interesting to see how that has informed hip-hop as well.
If you look at groups like Liquid Liquid, you also look at metal groups like Can. They have a sound that, even though they're different genres, they kind of cross at these really interesting places.
Both feel very New York.
If you could imagine B-boy battles and breakdancing in the streets, that's what you heard in New York at that time.
“Let No Man Put Asunder” by First Choice
I fell in love with the original OG track, but I wound up playing Frankie Knuckles' edit because of the way he structured it as a real kind of club thing. I went to the Paradise Garage in New York City, so I actually heard Larry Levan playing that version, and the impact it had - just the way he was running the hits. It really connected with me, and I think as house music started creeping into New York City, because this is still disco, the kind of direct connection between those two were places like The Loft, Paradise Garage.
Hearing those, I would then go, ‘OK, I see how I can fit this into what I'm doing.’ But the original OG version that I heard, it's just that rhythm, that drum section with a bass run on it. That bass and drums are really kind of like the engine for what I do, and so I really pay attention to those elements,
I guess when you think about early house music, you think about Detroit and Chicago. What was happening in New York?
New York was like this melting pot where you had what became known as freestyle, or like early hip-hop, but you also had disco and soul. So all of these elements, as an early DJ, it wasn't genre specific, it was whatever connected with the floor and made it move. How you can then take those tracks, cut up breaks between a funk track, and now all of a sudden it's like a disco or breakdance record.
Then we started getting into what became known as electro later on. All those have a common thread that we were playing those tracks without saying, ‘I'm into this genre or that genre’, there really was no genre. Hip-hop became more of a genre, but at the point of inflection it was just about what makes your floor move, and I really like that eclecticism, because it allows you to have surprises.
It must have just been such an interesting time to be coming through and be finding your own sound. Of all the moments that you could start DJing, you landed on your feet.
I feel like I've been incredibly blessed to have been born and grew up with a particular set of circumstances. I went to the High School of Art and Design in New York City, because initially I was going to be an illustrator and a comic book painter, and then I moved into architecture. At the time that I was coming out, I became a graffiti artist. So, the early hip-hop movement and the early DJ movement, you had graffiti in the background as part of it. You have early hip-hop, you had disco, and then it changed into house music.
All of these things were part of my growing DNA, as I grew up in the city of New York, and specifically the way the parties were happening across the city in certain boroughs. The Bronx had its thing, Queens had its thing, Manhattan and Brooklyn were doing their thing, but there were a lot of common elements. It was really about these small nuclear scenes that were very organically grown that would spread, and I think every DJ differentiated themselves by their selection and how they implemented that.
But all of these elements came together - I recognise the unique placement and the nexus that I found myself in that period of time. The only thing I can say is I'm incredibly fortunate and blessed that I grew up in that period of time, but I'm present now to understand, and I've seen how it's transitioned over the years.
“Now That We Found Love” by Third World
For a bit of context, the other track from Third World that I used to play was called “Try Jah Love”, which was kind of like a very slow disco number. So it was interesting - they’re a reggae band that started shifting into this place. That record was absolutely massive at The Loft and Paradise Garage and that was my first introduction to that song.
I hadn't really heard The O’Jays version before I heard that, and that became such a staple in my DJ sets. Again, the bassline and the percussion, the rhythmic section of that track really is what drove it for me. It kind of bridged the gap. It brought in the reggae element, which I loved, but it really had a very soulful and disco element to it, and I think that's what connected for me, again part of the DNA of some of the tracks that I've done. I've actually sampled the beats for that in the background of some of my tracks, just to take that kind of bop, that flow of the track or the rhythm.
Where were you finding your tracks at the time? Were you seeing these artists live? Was it record shops?
See, the interesting thing is there was really the culture of the record shop, which you kind of miss nowadays. Every week I would go to either Rock and Soul, Vinylmania… Later on it became Trax Records, Satellite Records, but in the early days it was really Vinylmania and Rock and Soul, which were the two main 12” shops in Manhattan that I would go to.
Basically, you make friends with the salesperson who kind of gets to know you, and they would start putting piles of tracks aside for me and go, ‘I know you're coming in next week. I've got new tracks coming in. I'll pull some for you.’ They would help pre-select what I would do and after I went through that, I would then spend hours in the store just going through just the shelves and going through the crates and digging.
That's literally where ‘digging in the crates’ came from, because we would spend hours - all those DJs would spend hours - just trying to find something, especially if it was a limited edition or a test pressing.
That's where I found a lot of my tracks. A lot of them were either suggested to me by the salesperson, something that I found, or I heard another DJ playing it and then I found it. I did find some for myself, and I was like, ‘Ooh, I'm not going to tell anybody about this. This is my little secret weapon.’
“I Want To Thank You” by Alicia Myers
At that point in time, it was whatever would connect with the audience that would make them dance, but there was also an emotional quality to it. Interestingly enough, Alicia Myers really is one of those tracks that connects with both the soul, R&B, hip-hop, and the house kind of clubbing/disco community.
It was lower tempo than the faster disco tracks, it was such a soulful track, but it's a four-four kind of disco beat, so it really does give this crossover in between, and it was interesting because it was basically a gospel record, it's a prayer.
I was kind of surprised, I couldn't imagine it being played in the club, but it was a huge hit.
Well, here's the thing, for a lot of people that went to the club, especially for the black and Latino community in New York, a lot of them go to church, and then the club would become the church. It's interesting how the gospel elements started creeping into disco, and then later on gospel house music. It was put in a format that wasn't preachy, like God, God, God, but you know what they're talking about, if you know.
So that spiritual element combined with the soulful element really connected with the dance floors that I played at, and for me it was more like where I would put it in the night time would either be before the peak hour or as a kind of closing track.
“Running Away” by Roy Ayers
You know what's interesting is, as I'm listening back to you repeating the tracks that I selected, it's a very New York club playlist. From that drum roll, as a DJ trick, like I'd be cutting up that, and then it would drop into the beat. Again, disco. Roy Ayers, one of my favourite all-time jazz and soul artists, and I mean “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”, one of my favourite songs - “Sweet Tears”, all of these tracks.
“Running Away” was the club anthem in New York City at that point in time. Anytime I dropped that record the dancefloor would explode. No matter which set I would play, from open format hip-hop sets to straight underground house sets, whenever I dropped that record, it was one of the ones that always went off.
Again, that drum rhythm is so funky, I sampled that too, but specifically for the swing of the hat. That bassline is incredibly funky, and jazz is also a big component of my sound, and especially my early productions. I leaned really heavily into jazz, and Roy Ayers was a major influence.
I suppose he also had a major influence on hip-hop at the time?
100%. But here's the thing. This is the crossover for me. I come from hip-hop. I come from before hip-hop was hip-hop. I come from what became hip-hop, and from my drum programming down to the funk and bounce of a lot of what I do, the hip-hop element is there because it derives a lot from funk and soul.
So a lot of the things that I would play in my sets, you would technically call them open format because it works for all kinds of audiences, but the funk and the soul, it's very New York, that’s probably the best way I could put it. And New York, there was a period of time when hip-hop and house were both on the same format in most of the clubs.
In fact, there was what I called the ‘New York 10’ - there was a list of 10 house tracks you can play at any hip-hop open format party. 10 New York City house tracks that were big in New York that would work no matter which party would play them. Inevitably you’d find hip-hop DJs playing them, guys like Todd Terry, Kenny Dope. There's a strong hip-hop connection through that.
I noticed listening through all your tracks, every song has a very determinable hook. It feels like you're just primed to know what's going to work, like in a sample or on a dance floor.
I think that comes from DJing, really. Seeing what connects with people and the part of each track that resonates with people. If it's a song, what is the hook that they're singing, or what's the part that they know? Even if it's an instrumental track with a little vocal hook, there'll be something that people remember, and those memorable sections of tracks really light up the markers in my brain, so as soon as I hear them, I'm like, ‘Okay, that's it, that's the bit.’
“Moments In Love” by The Art of Noise
I wasn't expecting this.
I like to throw a little curveball in there.
But then I thought about it, and it's full of hooks. It's been sampled by everyone from Charlie XCX to J Dilla - it's such a huge song.
So, here's the thing, a lot of the connections as well to these tracks is they're breakdance tracks. So Art of Noise, “U.F.O.”, these are all tracks when I was a breakdancer that I'd be dancing to, that then became part of the hip-hop lexicon and then became part of house music and club museum in general.
Trevor Horn is an absolute genius. You're talking about the man that did this, later on he produced Seal, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” I get very nerdy about the production aspect of it, and as a producer his sonic vision was amazing. The records just sounded massive, and that particular track was all about those huge drums. I can remember scratching all of that into my DJ sets and playing it for breakdancers.
But the interesting thing is, at that point in time, again, there wasn't so much the genre-fication of records to work in the club. It was more what got people dancing. I think it was a little bit more creatively open at that point in time, because it's really open to interpretation of how you utilise the elements of that to make it work on the dance floor.
I didn't know who Trevor Horn was. I just heard Into Battle with the Art of Noise, I saw the album cover, and I had heard that being played. I'm like, ‘What the hell is this track?’ And then it was just so odd, but it’s just… the beats. It always comes down to the beats.
Even listening now, I’m like, it can't work on the dance floor, surely?
As a breakdancer, I can tell you it did.
“Melting Pot” by Booker T. and the M.G.'s
It's a hip-hop breakbeat breakdancer track. So the other thing is, besides breakdancers in the clubs like The Loft and Paradise Garage, you would have dancers battling each other on the dancefloor, doing these back flips, and you know, sliding across the floor. I heard “Melting Pot”, I believe, for the first time at the Paradise Garage, and it was weird because it's a Stacks record kind of Memphis style. What would you call them?
It kind of has a jam band element.
It's like a jam band bluegrass feel on some elements, like a rock soul. It's kind of like the band Barrabás. It's kind of this rock element with soul, but the drums would drive that fact. That beat is what really made that a dancer track. So, some of these tracks I remember from dancer battles.
So in some of the clubs you weren't necessarily just playing for the dance floors, as in the general public, you were playing for the dancers?
You have moments. There's some ‘this moves everybody’, and then there's some tracks where the dancers would create their own show in the middle of the dancefloor. Some of them start off as breakdancers, but then there will be what we call loft dancers - dancers at The Loft that would just throw themselves all over the floor. Again, this is all very New York, so I'm kind of providing it from that perspective of like, ‘this is my list’, but I remember those dancer battles with this track.
I suppose it's like that thing where you watch movies that are based in New York City in the 70s, in glamorous clubs, and you're like, there's no way it would have been like that…
It was like that. It was the Zulu Nation parties in Bronx River.
Growing up at that period of time as a breakdancer, as a teenager, breakdance battles are where I started really injecting myself into the culture. Then after being a dancer, I would look at friends of mine who were DJs like, well, actually, I kind of want to do what they're doing. They're making people dance, let me try that. Because I understand what it's like from here, and I want to see what it's like from there - to see if I can make people move the way I like to move, and I think that connection for me was very direct and very evident.
But I could tell you, it was all those dancer battles. I know they looked Hollywood, but they went down, they really did.
“E2-E4” by Manuel Göttsching
So, Manuel Göttsching is what I call the end of night - the dancer's track. The dancers are the guys that would be putting baby powder on the floor, doing stands, sliding across. The best way I could describe it is, and at the Paradise Garage which was a memory that stuck in my head - one-thirty in the afternoon at the Paradise Garage, and we've been there from like four in the morning.
One-thirty in the afternoon, and there's maybe thirty-five people in the club - it's massive. Larry is still playing for those thirty-five people, because those are the guys that are basically throwing themselves on the floor doing these incredibly athletic flips. A lot of them were former breakdancers.
I just remember baby powder on the floor, these guys sliding one end of the floor to the other, because there's a very hypnotic element to that track that feels like you're floating in outer space. So that is kind of the “E2-E4”, which then later on was sampled in “Sueño Latino.”
So everything from that track comes from that - that’s the root of that. It’s literally a fourteen-minute track that you turn the record over to continue playing the same track. It's wild.
I remember buying all of these records as imports in places like Vinylmania and Rock and Soul that were coming from Germany, the UK, wherever they were coming from. A lot of those tracks became big in the New York City club scene, but they were imported from different places. So, I think the other thing is, as a DJ back in those days – it was buying the import, which was necessarily a limited edition.
We DJs were kind of hoarders, we liked to have our secret weapons. So I had this track that you wanted, and I got the last copy, I'm going to keep that as my secret weapon. I think that's kind of the mentality of why those records became so big, because some DJs would put it in constant rotation. Then it became about who can find a copy of it.
Spectrum is released on 5 June via Undr The Radr / Stealth Recordings
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