Mark Farina, How Does Your Garden Grow?
“ I find they really over-do the genres in Europe. They like lots of adjectives: Deep-minimal-tech-house night; Classic-45s-only night. They get really selective. ” Mark Farina.
So, you’ve created your own musical subgenre and people have been eating it up happily for nearly ten years. Congratulations, but… where do you go next? Mark Farina, who recently celebrated new growth in his musical garden with the release of Mushroom Jazz 5, seems content following the ebb and flow that is the constantly changing musical landscape of House music, and the more complex sub-genre of downtempo.
The very existence of the Mushroom Jazz sound is quite remarkable and unexpected in and of itself. Who would have ever guessed that a San Francisco transplant (by way of Chicago) would make the world dance to the jazz- flecked, mid-tempo beats usually delegated to the side-rooms and chill-out rooms of raves and after hours soirees?
While Farina is usually closely linked to the San Francisco deep house scene, it would be a mistake to pigeonhole him to such a specific, sometimes narrowly restrictive, sound. A look into his musical past, as well as a listen to any of his eclectic DJ sets, makes clear that it is Farina’s flexibility and musical breadth that have allowed him to remain an influential musical champion for nearly twenty years.
By now, everyone knows about Mark Farina’s inspired musical friendship with Derrick Cater in the burgeoning Chicago house scene of the late 1980s. Their shared musical lineage makes perfect sense too, since they both favor chunky, funk-drenched House grooves. But how did Farina come to such a palpable sound? How does he manage to thrive on what would seem to be two extremes of the dance music genre? At home with his dog in San Francisco between appearances on the Mushroom Jazz 5 tour, Farina took the time to speak with JJazproJect
about musical balance and evolution and why he would never every drown music in a pool of adjectives.
Alex R. Mayer: Tell me about your upbringing and some of you earliest musical influences.
Mark Farina: I grew up in Chicago and I played trumpet from 5th grade until high school. The first concert I went to was Rush when I was 6th grade, the Moving Pictures tour. Neil Peart was a big influence of mine early on in terms of drumming. In high school, somewhere around 1983, I started to get into more electronic stuff, early Depeche Mode, The Cure. I was into the Waxtrax sound. That was the first city record store. Ministry was one of the first local industrial bands, and then from there I got into Front 242, Skinny Puppy, and Nitzer Ebb. There was a club called Medusa’s, which was popular in the mid-80s in Chicago. They would have a lot of Waxtrax artists perform at like 4AM unannounced. That was a big influence on me when I was young. They would heavily mix industrial electronic music and the beat would never stop. I remember the House mixes were too disco-y for me at the time. But I was still hooked by the whole DJ thing. It wasn’t until around 1988, after I graduated college and had been playing industrial, that I started to get into Detroit techno or acid stuff, like Derrick May, and Juan Atkins.
ARM: In what ways did you bridge and meld your musical styles when made the move from Chicago to San Francisco?
MF: It was a slow transfer. I was working at Gramaphone Records at the time and was playing three or four nights a week in Chicago and it was starting to get stagnant. All your friends were DJs and everyone bought records whether they were DJs or not, which was a good competitive breeding ground, but work wise it didn’t pan out so well. In those days, DJs would play all night and you had a hundred DJs going for one job, trying out for one slot. The San Francisco scene was starting to get heard about with guys like the Hardkiss boys, John Williams coming to
Chicago. The Chicago sound, DJ Sneak, Heather, Derrick Carter, Diz, was a minority in San Francisco—Funky breaks, darker-tech house, were the dominant scene. Our Chicago style of mixing, remixing on the fly, was popular when we came out. People were blown away by it. We would mix all the time and no one was doing that in San Francisco and people seemed hungry for different DJ skills.
When I did move, I was worried about losing the Chicago sound. There was a big acid jazz scene, with different styles and tempos. I think the whole Mushroom Jazz thing wouldn’t have developed if I had stayed in Chicago.
ARM: So how did the Mushroom Jazz sound come about? Did you ever expect it to reach the level that it has today?
MF: I didn’t really anticipate it. It started out as a mixtape to listen to after the party; that was the initial idea. I played that style in Chicago but there were just couches and people nodding their heads. It wasn’t until I came here that I realized people danced to this stuff. I was doing so much house stuff; I was surprised that they wanted to do a downtempo CD. With the acid jazz boom in the mid-90s, there was a bunch of stuff coming out that seemed to fit in well with that style. As the whole downtempo thing fazed out, around the time of D n’ B, there was less good import downtempo to find. Hip-Hop has also kind of changed, the whole thing was based upon the slower, funky 90s Hip- Hop and now with the whole southern Hip-Hop twist, it’s become something of a scarcity.
ARM: How have you seen Mushroom Jazz progress and how do balance it with the House side of things?
MF: Well, it’s interesting. Having invented my own sub genre, I can do what I want. It’s always been a base tempo. Finding music has changed more with Mushroom Jazz then with the House side. I used to buy mainly a lot of European records, now I buy mostly US instrumentals. I find it’s harder to find music that fits the MJ sound. A specific example is in terms of vocals, it’s hard to find tracks that aren’t too R&B. A few years ago you could find stuff that was still soulful, but not like an R&B ballad. Especially with the male vocals, people like Omar. I don’t find a lot of that stuff that fits the style. I’ve had to streamline the sound but I still like the way it’s come out. There are different productions and a lot more dubbier stuff.
Bridging the two, I do through a lot of samples. I know what tempos work best in different cities. The two tie together well. Adding Hip-Hop samples to house is something I like and I do it each week, creatively mixing and bridging House stuff with Hip-Hop samples.
ARM: It seems as if Dance music these days is constantly being broken down and subdivided, almost to the lowest common denominator. Is the fusion of Mushroom Jazz a sign of a musical future with fewer genre boundaries?
MF: It’s hard to pinpoint. I find they really over-do the genres in Europe. They like lots of adjectives: Deep-minimal-tech-house night; Classic-45s-only night. They get really selective. In America I feel like a lot of club nights have started to decline a bit in some respects; the nights will be lumped into one; more than they used to be. Guests might be a little more diverse. It’s melded into just a good party night. I find that I can play an old 80s track or an obscure James Brown track without worrying about it being “vocal house” or “filtered disco” night. When it’s just a good party, I feel you can be a little more open, throw out some surprises. In San Francisco there are still lots of pure House nights, but not all cities have that. Some nights have been streamlined.
ARM: It’s interesting to hear you say that, as I have found that Dance music here in America is more apt to be over-labeled and sub-categorized; you see so many genres, within a genre, within a genre.
MF: I think I was born to avoid labeling. The Chicago house style was always so open. You could play a vocal track and then a minimal bleep track and a Detroit vocal followed by a deep Kerri Chandler something… it was always our nature to be different. Some DJs keep an even line for the whole set. I like the peaks and valleys method; up down and around kind of way, as opposed to aiming for a set plateau.
ARM: How much time do you spend on Producing? How do you balance your studio work with your DJing?
MF: It’s kind of a hard thing to balance. I teeter between both. I can’t always do both unfortunately. I find that sometimes I won’t turn on the production gear because I can’t get into it if I have a lot of gigs going on. I’m lucky to have a formula. I’ve been producing since High School when I got my first drum machine, so I can do stuff in a minimal amount of time. 6-8 hrs to get the basic idea down and then fine tune. A lot of times if I’m producing I may not be thinking about if I’m going to play it or not, it’s just about getting a groove on and seeing how it works. Sometimes if I hear a sample or a loop, it will be more geared to the dance floor but if I’m making tracks it’s kind of more abstract and less recognizable. If I have a dancefloor loop, I make DJ tools, which is like an in-between production stage. Especially with CD technology I can make versions for playing out. Back in the day the only option for that kind of thing was pressing acetates or using pitch cassettes. It’s kind of the new phase. It’s cool just to make up an idea, like a mash-up, which really we’ve been doing since 1985.
ARM: What is your favorite piece of equipment and why?
MF: I would say the [Akai] MPC 4000…. I started on the 2000. I like the pads and it allows me to put the vocal bits where I want them and do what I want to them. It’s great for drum sounds and sampling your own sounds. I also like Emu XL7 and MP7, it’s like a drum machine unit. I’m into pads. I like touching different things. I’m not a good mouse person, I like having everything run all at once and pressing buttons in and out.
ARM: With the continued expansion of digital technology and media, how much do you keep your hands on wax?
MF: I still get records every week, so I still like records. I must admit, I play CDs out more. It’s nice not to worry about my vinyl getting lost anymore. I used to have to buy 2 copies of things if I really liked it, and leave one at home. I’ve had records stolen and whole crates lost. It’s nice to not have to worry about it and know that my records are safe at home, and that I don’t have to blow my shoulder out anymore. At home I listen to records, I still think vinyl is the best way in terms of keeping stuff. CDs can just fizzle out, the ink eats through them. Vinyl you know will last.
For awhile, I was almost getting bored with vinyl; creatively you can only do so much. With the CDJ, I feel I can be more creative on the spot. With acapellas and pitch transposing, you can do stuff you could never do before. Before CDs came out, you could buy 2 copies of a record, but only play things within that pitch and it was a bit limiting. Now you can throw pitch out the window. You can change the tempo and keep the pitch. It allows me to be an On-the-Spot Party Rocker, which is what I like to do.
Words by Alex R. Mayer
JJazproJect would like thank Mark for taking the time to speak with us. Also, many thanks go to Gunnar @ OM Records and Guy at X-Mix Productions for helping to arrange the interview.
So, you’ve created your own musical subgenre and people have been eating it up happily for nearly ten years. Congratulations, but… where do you go next? Mark Farina, who recently celebrated new growth in his musical garden with the release of Mushroom Jazz 5, seems content following the ebb and flow that is the constantly changing musical landscape of House music, and the more complex sub-genre of downtempo.
The very existence of the Mushroom Jazz sound is quite remarkable and unexpected in and of itself. Who would have ever guessed that a San Francisco transplant (by way of Chicago) would make the world dance to the jazz- flecked, mid-tempo beats usually delegated to the side-rooms and chill-out rooms of raves and after hours soirees?
While Farina is usually closely linked to the San Francisco deep house scene, it would be a mistake to pigeonhole him to such a specific, sometimes narrowly restrictive, sound. A look into his musical past, as well as a listen to any of his eclectic DJ sets, makes clear that it is Farina’s flexibility and musical breadth that have allowed him to remain an influential musical champion for nearly twenty years.
By now, everyone knows about Mark Farina’s inspired musical friendship with Derrick Cater in the burgeoning Chicago house scene of the late 1980s. Their shared musical lineage makes perfect sense too, since they both favor chunky, funk-drenched House grooves. But how did Farina come to such a palpable sound? How does he manage to thrive on what would seem to be two extremes of the dance music genre? At home with his dog in San Francisco between appearances on the Mushroom Jazz 5 tour, Farina took the time to speak with JJazproJect
about musical balance and evolution and why he would never every drown music in a pool of adjectives.
Alex R. Mayer: Tell me about your upbringing and some of you earliest musical influences.
Mark Farina: I grew up in Chicago and I played trumpet from 5th grade until high school. The first concert I went to was Rush when I was 6th grade, the Moving Pictures tour. Neil Peart was a big influence of mine early on in terms of drumming. In high school, somewhere around 1983, I started to get into more electronic stuff, early Depeche Mode, The Cure. I was into the Waxtrax sound. That was the first city record store. Ministry was one of the first local industrial bands, and then from there I got into Front 242, Skinny Puppy, and Nitzer Ebb. There was a club called Medusa’s, which was popular in the mid-80s in Chicago. They would have a lot of Waxtrax artists perform at like 4AM unannounced. That was a big influence on me when I was young. They would heavily mix industrial electronic music and the beat would never stop. I remember the House mixes were too disco-y for me at the time. But I was still hooked by the whole DJ thing. It wasn’t until around 1988, after I graduated college and had been playing industrial, that I started to get into Detroit techno or acid stuff, like Derrick May, and Juan Atkins.
ARM: In what ways did you bridge and meld your musical styles when made the move from Chicago to San Francisco?
MF: It was a slow transfer. I was working at Gramaphone Records at the time and was playing three or four nights a week in Chicago and it was starting to get stagnant. All your friends were DJs and everyone bought records whether they were DJs or not, which was a good competitive breeding ground, but work wise it didn’t pan out so well. In those days, DJs would play all night and you had a hundred DJs going for one job, trying out for one slot. The San Francisco scene was starting to get heard about with guys like the Hardkiss boys, John Williams coming to
Chicago. The Chicago sound, DJ Sneak, Heather, Derrick Carter, Diz, was a minority in San Francisco—Funky breaks, darker-tech house, were the dominant scene. Our Chicago style of mixing, remixing on the fly, was popular when we came out. People were blown away by it. We would mix all the time and no one was doing that in San Francisco and people seemed hungry for different DJ skills.
When I did move, I was worried about losing the Chicago sound. There was a big acid jazz scene, with different styles and tempos. I think the whole Mushroom Jazz thing wouldn’t have developed if I had stayed in Chicago.
ARM: So how did the Mushroom Jazz sound come about? Did you ever expect it to reach the level that it has today?
MF: I didn’t really anticipate it. It started out as a mixtape to listen to after the party; that was the initial idea. I played that style in Chicago but there were just couches and people nodding their heads. It wasn’t until I came here that I realized people danced to this stuff. I was doing so much house stuff; I was surprised that they wanted to do a downtempo CD. With the acid jazz boom in the mid-90s, there was a bunch of stuff coming out that seemed to fit in well with that style. As the whole downtempo thing fazed out, around the time of D n’ B, there was less good import downtempo to find. Hip-Hop has also kind of changed, the whole thing was based upon the slower, funky 90s Hip- Hop and now with the whole southern Hip-Hop twist, it’s become something of a scarcity.
ARM: How have you seen Mushroom Jazz progress and how do balance it with the House side of things?
MF: Well, it’s interesting. Having invented my own sub genre, I can do what I want. It’s always been a base tempo. Finding music has changed more with Mushroom Jazz then with the House side. I used to buy mainly a lot of European records, now I buy mostly US instrumentals. I find it’s harder to find music that fits the MJ sound. A specific example is in terms of vocals, it’s hard to find tracks that aren’t too R&B. A few years ago you could find stuff that was still soulful, but not like an R&B ballad. Especially with the male vocals, people like Omar. I don’t find a lot of that stuff that fits the style. I’ve had to streamline the sound but I still like the way it’s come out. There are different productions and a lot more dubbier stuff.
Bridging the two, I do through a lot of samples. I know what tempos work best in different cities. The two tie together well. Adding Hip-Hop samples to house is something I like and I do it each week, creatively mixing and bridging House stuff with Hip-Hop samples.
ARM: It seems as if Dance music these days is constantly being broken down and subdivided, almost to the lowest common denominator. Is the fusion of Mushroom Jazz a sign of a musical future with fewer genre boundaries?
MF: It’s hard to pinpoint. I find they really over-do the genres in Europe. They like lots of adjectives: Deep-minimal-tech-house night; Classic-45s-only night. They get really selective. In America I feel like a lot of club nights have started to decline a bit in some respects; the nights will be lumped into one; more than they used to be. Guests might be a little more diverse. It’s melded into just a good party night. I find that I can play an old 80s track or an obscure James Brown track without worrying about it being “vocal house” or “filtered disco” night. When it’s just a good party, I feel you can be a little more open, throw out some surprises. In San Francisco there are still lots of pure House nights, but not all cities have that. Some nights have been streamlined.
ARM: It’s interesting to hear you say that, as I have found that Dance music here in America is more apt to be over-labeled and sub-categorized; you see so many genres, within a genre, within a genre.
MF: I think I was born to avoid labeling. The Chicago house style was always so open. You could play a vocal track and then a minimal bleep track and a Detroit vocal followed by a deep Kerri Chandler something… it was always our nature to be different. Some DJs keep an even line for the whole set. I like the peaks and valleys method; up down and around kind of way, as opposed to aiming for a set plateau.
ARM: How much time do you spend on Producing? How do you balance your studio work with your DJing?
MF: It’s kind of a hard thing to balance. I teeter between both. I can’t always do both unfortunately. I find that sometimes I won’t turn on the production gear because I can’t get into it if I have a lot of gigs going on. I’m lucky to have a formula. I’ve been producing since High School when I got my first drum machine, so I can do stuff in a minimal amount of time. 6-8 hrs to get the basic idea down and then fine tune. A lot of times if I’m producing I may not be thinking about if I’m going to play it or not, it’s just about getting a groove on and seeing how it works. Sometimes if I hear a sample or a loop, it will be more geared to the dance floor but if I’m making tracks it’s kind of more abstract and less recognizable. If I have a dancefloor loop, I make DJ tools, which is like an in-between production stage. Especially with CD technology I can make versions for playing out. Back in the day the only option for that kind of thing was pressing acetates or using pitch cassettes. It’s kind of the new phase. It’s cool just to make up an idea, like a mash-up, which really we’ve been doing since 1985.
ARM: What is your favorite piece of equipment and why?
MF: I would say the [Akai] MPC 4000…. I started on the 2000. I like the pads and it allows me to put the vocal bits where I want them and do what I want to them. It’s great for drum sounds and sampling your own sounds. I also like Emu XL7 and MP7, it’s like a drum machine unit. I’m into pads. I like touching different things. I’m not a good mouse person, I like having everything run all at once and pressing buttons in and out.
ARM: With the continued expansion of digital technology and media, how much do you keep your hands on wax?
MF: I still get records every week, so I still like records. I must admit, I play CDs out more. It’s nice not to worry about my vinyl getting lost anymore. I used to have to buy 2 copies of things if I really liked it, and leave one at home. I’ve had records stolen and whole crates lost. It’s nice to not have to worry about it and know that my records are safe at home, and that I don’t have to blow my shoulder out anymore. At home I listen to records, I still think vinyl is the best way in terms of keeping stuff. CDs can just fizzle out, the ink eats through them. Vinyl you know will last.
For awhile, I was almost getting bored with vinyl; creatively you can only do so much. With the CDJ, I feel I can be more creative on the spot. With acapellas and pitch transposing, you can do stuff you could never do before. Before CDs came out, you could buy 2 copies of a record, but only play things within that pitch and it was a bit limiting. Now you can throw pitch out the window. You can change the tempo and keep the pitch. It allows me to be an On-the-Spot Party Rocker, which is what I like to do.
Words by Alex R. Mayer
JJazproJect would like thank Mark for taking the time to speak with us. Also, many thanks go to Gunnar @ OM Records and Guy at X-Mix Productions for helping to arrange the interview.
Philippe La PlastiQue - 8. Jun, 11:29
