Dave Clarke

Dave Clarke is a DJ with an anarchist streak a mile wide and punk in his soul. Nothing says this as potently as his new album, ‘The Desecration of Desire’. Electronic to the hilt yet full of rich, dark songwriting, it’s been almost two years in the making and comes 14 years after his last full-length outing.

“The desire to write songs has been bubbling in me for ages,” Clarke explains, “My first album was a collection of tracks, the ‘Red’ series of EPs, plus other stuff. With my second, even access to my studio was an issue. Those two felt like collections. This one’s more like a book, a chronology. I’m so happy with my studio. I’ve stayed away from club music. Finally, it’s just me, my imagination and a touch of fearlessness about opening up.”

Dave Clarke has long embraced sounds outside staunch electronic dance, from Savages to Idles to old favourites Bauhaus. Such music informs his attitude as a DJ, using Serato on a 13” Macbook Pro Retina for ruthlessly effective, fat-free techno and electro sets. It also heavily flavours his new album, on which he’s worked with vocalists such as US alt-rocker Mark Lanegan, gothic synth don Mt. Sims, Brighton electronic artist Gazelle Twin, and Portishead associate Anika. He’s even included a version of new wave cult hit ‘Is Vic There?’ (originally by Department S) featuring Paris-based DJ-producer Louisahhh.

A serious car crash in Serbia in July 2016 also affected Clarke. It fed into the album’s pensive mood, and gave him a desire to DJ less but to inject more of himself into the sets he takes on. “I still love DJing with a passion,” he enthuses, “but the album also ignited a flame within me about making music, about being totally true to myself. It’s been a long time coming…”

Dave Clarke was born and raised in Brighton, England, but currently resides in Amsterdam, a city which revitalized his life and work. The offspring of a technology loving father and a disco-soul loving mother, it was always evident that Clarke would cut a swathe through music. As a youth he ran away from home, sleeping in car parks and on beaches. He took lousy jobs in shoe shops, living off £5 a day, to subsidise his income from badly paid local DJ gigs – anything to further his involvement with music. “I didn't really engage at all with the outside world,” he recalls, “I was your typical disenfranchised JD Salinger-inspired young adult that used to hide in and behind music.”

Clarke’s debut release was in 1990 on XL, around the time the label was launching The Prodigy. He used the name Hardcore, a guise he then took to the legendary Belgian techno-rave imprint R&S where he released various EPs (some as Directional Force). By 1992 Clarke’s own label, Magnetic North, was on the rise and he unveiled the classic ‘Alkaline 3dh’ (as Fly By Wire), among others. A next level career boost was round the corner when his ‘Red’ trilogy were unleashed on Bush Records in 1994. These catapulted Clarke into a different league and he suddenly found himself remixing the likes of Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City, The Chemical Brothers, New Order, Depeche Mode, Moby, Leftfield and Underworld. Undisputed landmarks in techno, DJ Mag rightly incorporated ‘Red’ in its All Time Techno Top 100 list.