Too Much Junkie Business

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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.”

Holkenborg’s dream of youth appears throughout Booming Back At You as well. In a sense, Junkie XL’s latest artist album is a journey through his musical past, present, and future. Raised in a musical family, Holkenborg, now 40, started playing numerous instruments around the age of four. By the time he turned 16, a job in a local musical-instrument shop provided an electronic epiphany he would never turn away from again. “Early synthesizers like Synclaviers and Fairlights cost a million bucks,” Holkenborg recalls, “but then they finally became affordable in the mid-’80s. I was fascinated by the new keyboards, Midi technology, and the birth of sampling. I knew that combining all that with traditional musicianship would be it for me.”

To further these ideas, Holkenborg joined the Dutch new-wave outfit Weekend In Waikiki; later, he formed the Wax Trax-influenced industrial-metal duo Nerve. The canniest tracks on Booming can indeed be traced back to this early musical lineage. “I picked influences that were important to me over the last 20 years,” he admits. As such, there’s a raw, dancefloor-dynamite cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Cities In Dust,” a proto dance-rock classic from 1985. Elsewhere, “Not Enough” mixes the anxious piano runs of Sparks with Depeche Mode’s electro-pop drama, while “Clash” collides Bad Manners bluebeat into Gary Glitter glam, and the title track pumps up the volume like M/A/R/R/S. All, however, get retrofitted with volcanic beats suitable for today’s modern club systems.

Strangely, Holkenborg admits “I didn’t like dance music in beginning. I was a big fan of electronic music like Yello and Kraftwerk; Trevor Horn’s work for Art of Noise and Frankie Goes To Hollywood was also very important to me. As a result, I didn’t like the first techno releases from

Detroit; I thought the production sounded really crappy. It took me until 1990 to get it, when I first went to underground dance parties. I realized it wasn’t about the production, but the community vibe – the experience of being with each other in one room, with the smoke, the drugs, the repetition of rhythms … I was like ‘Wow, this is the shit!’” More full raver disclosure: While he plays live at festivals, like at the upcoming Coachella, you’ll never catch Junkie XL behind a pair of decks onstage. “I can’t DJ!” he admits. “I’ve tried a couple times, but I just can’t sync the records; I don’t know how it works. That’s why I’ve always positioned myself more as an artist and producer.”

Still, since that one fateful rave, Junkie XL hasn’t ever looked back: Typically, he’s incorporated every passing club genre, from big beat to progressive, into his grooves. Booming proves no different:

Decidedly contemporary aspects contrast evocatively with Holkenborg’s retro-futurist nostalgia. Lauren Rocket of local Warped Tour-friendly band Rocket adds howling vocals to three tracks; celebrity Angeleno DJ Steve Aoki collaborates on the mosh-pit-meets-acid squelch of “1967 Poem.” It’s all part of Junkie XL’s role as club statesman, uniting the dance-music factions under his digital umbrella. “Steve Aoki wakes up with a million amazing musical ideas and can only execute four of them,” Holkenborg explains. “It’s magic when we work together: Steve knows what people like and is totally connected with all the cool dance music out today. I really love the new bands like MSTRKRFT, Justice, Digitalism, and Boys Noize. Still, while their music is super interesting, it’s not ‘clubby’ enough – there’s a gap between genres like progressive and house and this new movement. With my album, I’m trying to build a bridge between the two, combining that punky aggression and roughness with all the other dance music styles.”

Junkie XL’s diverse, inclusive take epitomizes the dance-music expat scene that’s given Los Angeles clubland new dimension: superstar dancefloor pioneers from Paul Oakenfold to Daft Punk to Adam Freeland have all moved here from foreign lands for a more widescreen angle on things. “Judging L.A. by Hollywood is like judging the whole of London by Leicester Square,” Adam Freeland says. “This is the only place I’ve lived where you feel that you can do anything. Eat any food you want; see any band; find any subculture; meet any creative mind; experience any art. You can be totally involved in the core business side, yet be on a beach, up a mountain, or in a wild desert within no time.” Holkenborg admits that his own cultural mishmash would never have come about if he’d stayed in his native Netherlands. “L.A.’s a great place to live, to be an artist,” he says. “People respect me more here than they do in Holland. There, I would always be told something I wanted to do wasn’t possible; it was always like, ‘Act normal – you’re already crazy enough.’ But here, the crazier you are, the better! It’s a really thrilling life.”