DJ and producer Dan Pearce – aka Eats Everything – is known for his eclectic genre-hopping DJ sets and dancefloor-filling tracks that pull influences from house, garage, old-school rave and beyond.
Pearce's recent album, We Lost Ourselves and Found a Family, is a rip-roaring tour through his dance music influences, stuffed with cameos from the likes of Goldie, MJ Cole and dubstep MC Sgt Pokes.
We visited Pearce in his Bristol studio to talk about the new project, his changing approach to production, and how his approach to DJing influences everything he does. Reaching back to his early days and the techniques behind his aptly-titled 2011 breakout tune Entrance Song, Pearce says his process in the studio has evolved dramatically.
"I listen to some of my old tunes and I'm like - how the fuck was I doing that?" he says. "They were definitely a little more free and quirky. I don't know what I'm doing now, but I knew way less back then. I was in a box room with two massive Mackie HR824s, right in your face, and I was just making it up as I went along."
"It didn't seem to matter because my tracks sounded big in the club"
Pearce recalls how the Entrance Song's low end was made up of two opposing elements that wouldn't expect to sit together well in a cohesive mix. "The bassline was a big 808 sub tom, and the kick drum was a 909 with a fucking massive tail," he says. The two shouldn't work together! I don't even think they're in key.
"Now, in everything I do, I make sure the kick is in key with the bass, and there's a perfect relationship and they're singing to each other... but back then, I didn't. It didn't seem to matter, because my tracks sounded big in the club, and they were working out well for me."
Elsewhere in the interview, Pearce talks about producing bootleg edits of other artists' tracks for his DJ sets, revealing that he's crafted more than 3700 edits during his DJ career. "It's what I spend a lot of my time doing, either removing drums, adding drums, taking breaks away," he adds.
"With old vinyl records, often they don't sound great so I'll rip them, put them into Ableton, put them though Infected Mushroom Pusher and add extra drums. I have set drums that I use in each of them - I have five or six little drum loops that I'll use. It means my sets have a constant rhythm to them."
Watch the full interview on the MusicRadar Tech YouTube channel.
