Londoner, DJ Counselling has been a part of the vibrant underground scene in London for almost twenty years, making music under various monikers and covering different genres of electronic music. Since 2 years ago DJ Counselling moniker emerged and it’s connected mainly with ‘feel good’ lo-fi house music. A couple of months ago we had the opportunity to premiere ‘One of with the Sun’, the track which was part of highly successful and critically acclaimed ‘Tomorrow’s World’ EP released via SoSure Music.

DJ Counselling has been busy in the studio and while we still enjoy ‘Tomorrow’s World’ EP, the new EP is on the horizon and ready to hit the stores on October 25th. Today we are pleased to premiere the track ‘Hand in Hand’, a definite future hit!

We also had an opportunity to chat with DJ Counselling about his beginnings in music production, the time he spends in studio, the scene in London and more.

Why DJ Counselling? 
DJ Counselling has 2 meanings really, the first is that every DJ/Producer that has been doing it for a long while needs some form of counselling :) especially because of how soul destroying the music industry can be, the other is that when you play a set or listen to an amazing set, whether it’s in a field, by the sea or in a club, if the music and the vibe is just right, I see that as a form of therapy, where all of your everyday worries cease to exist for a perfect moment. 

Let’s help our readers to get to know you better. When did you start producing music?
I started in about 1999 with my brother under a bunk bed with an Akai S3000 xl, a sea of floppy discs and the largest and heaviest monitor the world has ever seen, I had my first vinyl release in 2002 but this was all under different names and mainly making drum & bass music, the DJ Counselling project is less than 2 years old. 

I saw on your instagram that you play drums, and it sounded much like DJ Shadow, Massive Attack type of vibe. What are your music roots and biggest influences? 
Yes, I have been playing drums since a very young age and my whole family is very musical, in the 90s my love of hip hop and funk breaks really developed my style and I would learn to play the way Shadow cut up these breaks, Portishead’s Dummy album was also a massive inspiration to me, I still play a lot with my brother who is a great pianist. My love of Hip Hop started at a very young age, I’ve got a great photo of me (aged 12) giving my brother a cassette of ‘36 Chambers’ at Christmas! We went from Public Enemy to Gang Starr to Pharcyde to Nas to Little Brother and now thankfully with the likes of Rapsody around, this sound will never die.
I think my love of dance music also started here with early releases from Inner City, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Aphex twin as the soundtrack of some great memories, at the same time as this my love for alternative rock and metal fueled my childhood and I still listen to most of those bands now too, like Fugazi, Tool, Helmet, Therapy?, Faith No More, NIN and Deftones to name a few. 

Do you play any other instruments? 
I dabble but drums is my main instrument, I really like to record great players and capture something special in the studio.  

What is the favorite piece of gear and/or software plug-in in your studio? 
For my productions I suppose any of my vintage synths, I love the analog gritty sound that you simply cannot recreate from plug-ins (no matter what the companies tell you, they’re lying), One thing that I’d be stuck without is my old Roland SDE-3000 delay which I send all of my synths through, even when bypassing the delay, that machine colours the sound in a way that I’ve never heard from anything else. 

Who or what is your biggest inspiration when in studio? 
My dog Daisy, she sits in there with me if the tune’s good, she leaves if it’s going nowhere, she’s such a vibe dog :) I think of my parents a lot too when in the studio and I use a lot of their old gear from the 70s. 

Your ’Tomorrow’s World’ EP that we had opportunity to premiere here at Delayed 🙂 gained support by many DJs and presses around the world including the legend Laurent Garnier but it also reached the other side of spectrum of electronic music, as EDM superstar Martin Garixx charted it. It also hit No1 on Beatport’s Deep House Chart in July.  Did you expect that EP will reach out to broader circles in electronic music world when you finished the EP? Did you have ’this might be ‘the’ release’ moment? 
No, I never get my hopes too high, that sounds awful but it’s true, I just make the best music I possibly can and hope people relate to it, I get really lovely messages from people saying they love certain tracks and that means the world to me, much more than getting big plays like that from Martin Garrix, that was quite a surreal one though:) It’s brilliant to get noticed on a platform such as Beatport, the amount of submissions they get must be insane so to get to the top of the pile every now and then is a big achievement. 

If you could choose, which track would you pick to remix?
There’s loads… I’d love to do a new version of ‘Dirty Cash’ or ‘Promised Land’, I’d love to remix anything that has Thom Yorke’s voice to work with, a DJ Counselling remix of anything off ‘Baduizm’, I’d love to work with John Martyn’s voice… ‘Alberto Balsam’ by Aphex Twin. 

What would be your ideal setting to DJ at?
Anywhere with beautiful people, a good vibe and positive energy, I love to play by sun drenched beaches but I’m also happy in a muddy, rainy field.  

How does your day look like when you don’t work on music? 
I don’t know what you’re talking about :) 

What are the places where we could listen to Lo-fi house in London ?
The London house scene is really vast, you’d find it hard to switch on any underground radio station and not find quality house music, Balami, Soho Radio, Netil, Worldwide, NTS, Radar and Reprezent are all pushing the scene forward, also venues like Printworks, Electric, and XOYO regularly book some of the biggest names in dance music. 

London’s scene and UK’s scene in general has been producing some of the biggest names not just in electronic music but the music world in general. Give a shout to some new upcoming producers that we should pay attention to? 
Yeah it’s brilliant, especially in South London where I am, 3 of the records that were in the short list for this years Mercury prize were made around the corner from me. 

Shout to Simon Mós, he’s got some amazing modular music coming soon, definitely one to watch for 2020, THATMANMONKZ has a brilliant record coming out very soon, I’m also loving the sounds of Happy Cat Jay and Matt Masters, all of which are ones to keep your eyes on.  

What is next on the horizon for DJ Counselling ?
I have a new single dropping on 25/10/19 called ‘Find Love’ which I’m really excited about, it’s on a new label called ‘Ten Flowers’, you can all hear it when it’s premiered on 3/10/19 from the great guys over at Eton Messy, the other track on the release is called ‘Hand In Hand’, I also have a couple of remixes that should be out before the end of the year and am well on my way to making 2020 my best year yet.
Thanks very much to everyone who has supported me over the past months, I’ve been connecting with some lovely people and can’t wait for the journey to continue, Bird Up! x

Listen to the premiere of ‘Hand in Hand’, SoundCloud exclusive for Delayed: