Too Much Junkie Business
Junkie XL reboots the music industry in his own image
By Matt Diehl
Read more of CityBeat's special e-music issue:
Moby's 'Night' Out
The Circus Stays in Town
Running the Voodoo Down
Life in the Fast Lane
Something 2 dance 2
The Cool Kids Are Alright
Kazell
Junkie XL is used to future shock. Since his debut solo album, Saturday Teenage Kick, was released a decade ago, he’s been exploring the “Future of Computer Hell” (the title of …Kick’s final track) as a big-room icon of electronic dance thump. As well, he remains a music-industry iconoclast, having pushed beyond accepted practices of marketing and distribution well before Internet downloads hobbled the major-label machine. But in 2002, on the eve of what became a permanent move to Los Angeles, he was merely shell-shocked.
That year, the life of Junkie XL (born Tom Holkenborg) changed forever. First, he found himself transformed from an underground rave hero into an unlikely international superstar after his remix of Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation” topped pop charts in 24 countries; even Holkenborg’s distinctive stage moniker (earned from his status as a “studio junkie” capable of marathon recording sessions) got sanitized to “JXL” so as to protect “The King” from any further drug associations. “I fell into a creative loophole after the Elvis remix,” Holkenborg explains today. “You fall into a little hole after that kind of success. People started recognizing me on the street when I’d go shopping. It all made me question who I was as a musician.” Yet Junkie XL’s existential crisis hadn’t seen nothin’ yet: Soon after his biggest success, Holkenborg lost his mother to cancer and his sister to heart disease in the very same week. “Losing half of your family is such an emotional blow,” he states with understatement utterly typical of his Dutch nationality. “It was all very macabre and drastic – the perfect time to do something different.”
“Something different” meant trading the European lifestyle of Holkenborg’s Amsterdam hometown for the City of Angels. As radical as it seemed at the time, going Hollywood inevitably proved Junkie XL’s most natural career move. Holkenborg’s inherently cinematic, action-packed grooves had already been found on the soundtracks of multiplex blockbusters like Resident Evil and Blade (whose infamous bloodbath-at-a-vampire-rave opening sequence pulses memorably to Junkie XL beats). During a trip to L.A. to meet with music supervisor and iconic KCRW tastemaker Jason Bentley to discuss working on The Matrix sequels, Bentley suggested a change of scenery. “Jason and I became good friends,” Holkenborg says. “Anyone I’ve met here, I met through Jason Bentley; he’s my biggest supporter in town. He said ‘Man, you should move out to Los Angeles – it’s going to be great for you here.’” “I was just a fan, and Tom had a real interest in coming to L.A. and making inroads in film,” Bentley says today. “He grew so quickly and rapidly, he set up his own studio in nine months! He has the ability to adapt; he’s just a chameleon.”
With nothing to lose, Holkenborg packed his bags and became “artist in residence” at Machine Head, the Venice-based sound design and music licensing company founded by Thompson Twins engineer Stephen Dewey that Bentley was working out of at the time. As his music became even more prominently placed in films, videogames, and commercials, Junkie XL discovered his peers in the electronic-music world scoffed at such blatant careerism. Yet Holkenborg had long figured out that for artists working in truly alternative styles, music licensing was a more attainable and effective avenue to reach audiences than pursuing commercial-radio airplay. “Around 1993, I delivered my first track for a videogame called Test Driver 2, and it opened my eyes,” he recalls. “I realized that the music I made was so underground, it would never be accepted by the standard MTV/radio setup. After that, I was interested in getting my music into all kinds of media.”
Junkie XL’s omnimedia approach to his career extends to his new album, Booming Back At You. Instead of signing to a traditional label, Holkenborg is releasing his fifth long-player in collaboration with Artwerk, a hybrid company fusing the resources of pioneering videogame company Electronic Arts with Nettwerk, the powerful management concern and indie imprint that first brought Coldplay to the U.S. Nettwerk has been a leader in turning the negatives of music’s digital era into a positive, even down to paying the legal fees of a Texas teen sued by the R.I.A.A. Electronic Arts, meanwhile, has long been wise to music’s role in defining their brand in hit games like Madden NFL and The Sims. Discussing the vanguard nature of his current business affairs, Holkenborg can’t help but emit a dry chuckle. “All my colleagues called me a sellout the minute I sold a song to a movie,” he continues. “They said music should be ‘pure’ – that you can’t make money off it like that.”
According to Junkie XL, success remains the best revenge: Electronica producers today are seeing their traditional income-producing areas dry up – deejaying, mixed compilations, selling CDs and 12-inch records through conventional record labels – and they’re desperate for new revenue streams. “The same people who called me a sellout are now lining up at Electronic Arts to get a job. That’s the reality,” the artists says. Junkie XL’s reality, meanwhile, hardly bites: Computerhell, his studio complex the artist says in Venice, is chicly appointed in Zen modernist style and state-of-the-art espresso machines. Computerhell is the base station for Holkenborg’s growing sonic empire, but he makes it look like more fun than work. Padding through the studio rooms in his trademark floppy cap and long brown scarf, dodging dogs racing across his scruffy Le Coq Sportif kicks, Holkenborg looks in on assistants hovering over Macs running Pro Tools. He then checks the various hard drives and servers that keep Computerhell running 24/7, pumping out movie scores (Holkenborg works frequently with acclaimed composers Hans Zimmer and Harry Gregson-Williams on films like Domino and Kingdom of Heaven) and remixes for everyone from Britney and Avril to Bloc Party. Despite the dominant digital trappings, analog doesn’t get short shrift, either: There’s a MiniMoog propped in a corner, as well as a sprawling collection of vinyl that spans from Spandau Ballet to Russ Meyer soundtracks. In a nod to Holkenborg’s Amsterdam roots, a rusty one-speed bike leans near the entrance, unlocked. His Southern California evolution, meanwhile, is symbolized by the muscle car collection in Computerhell’s parking lot: Holkenborg takes special pride in his perfect-condition, azure ’64 Chevy Impala (with Krager-replica rims), and a restoration-in-progress ’67 Ford Galaxy convertible. “Driving cars like these is insane,” he says. “It’s a young boy’s dream.”
Published: 03/26/2008
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