Sawtooth Superchumbo
Tom Stephan speaks to Onbeat about the travails of being a global DJ and producer in demand.
By Dennis Sebayan
It might sound fabulous to be a world traveling, swashbuckling DJ, but many people don’t realize the trials and tribulations involved: dedication, choice, sacrifice, staying relevant, time management and frequent travel. To survive on the cutthroat global DJ circuit the way Tom Stephan, aka Superchumbo has done, is a gigantic feat all its own. He and I sat down at the Hudson Hotel in NYC last December, for what he calls “Tom’s Christmas Tour,” with a chuckle. His brief Northeast jaunt took him back home in Elmira, New York to see his family (that’s where he’s from) and to gigs in Toronto, Montreal and New York City.
Afterwards, Tom flew out to Italy for two club engagements just outside of Rome on New Years Eve and for additional performances there the fifth. The night of his DJ stint at Cielo, Tom is buzzing about the great music he's about to play. This is the third time Tom and I have ever spoken for an interview before. The first, was for Chelsea-centric, NYC magazine HX, which made cover back in 2002. At the time, Tom was making a splash in London’s underground club circuit, having done remixes for Kylie Minogue and Missy Elliott, et al. But not many people had heard his sound here in the states.
The second time we spoke was around the time of his album debut, Zowie Wowie, in 2005 and he had become more of a household name. Each time, Tom seems a bit more confident in his skin - the globetrotter label has finally begun to stick.
Changing Times
Formerly signed to New York based Twisted records – home for productions by DJ Vibe, Danny Tenaglia presents Kult of Krameria, Guy Gerber and Oscar G & Ralph Falcon - Tom branched off and started his new Chumbo Mundo label, as an outlet for his own productions. “I left Twisted, basically because we were in two different places, geographically and maybe a little bit musically,” he explains. Tom, who is based out of the UK, couldn’t put out material as fast as he wanted. “I was basically tied to someone else’s release schedule.”
According to Stephan, the timing for his label was just right, considering the climate for dance music vinyl these days. “Vinyl sales are way down, people are just selling things on the Internet,” he declares. “It’s really hard to release a record, if you haven’t released a record. I don’t know what the future for dance record companies are. [Chumbo Mundo] gives me the freedom to put tracks out when I want to.”
Creative freedom has always been a challenge Tom is willing to tackle, considering his kinship with vinyl – Chumbo Mundo presently presses vinyl. He says they sell what they press, in the range of a couple of thousand records. But it’s no longer like the days of dance music yore, where labels would press 10,000 copies to distribute worldwide. “I suppose there’s going to be a day when there won’t be any vinyl, but not yet. I think it’s only a few more years, if that.”
Travel restrictions have also changed up Tom’s playing format from vinyl to CD, but not by choice: a barrage of club commitments last summer had him traveling on up to 15 different flights on a given weekend. “There’s no way that I could have checked any luggage…I could only have hand luggage,” he remembers. “That CD case [points to a wallet filled with discs], that’s all I could take with me. So I finally gave up.”
A Tough Decision
Tom, who has been a pro DJ for twelve years, points out obvious difference in playing vinyl versus MP3 tracks burned onto CD. “I got copies of this Nitzer Ebb remix [“Control I’m Here] I did on vinyl. I’d been playing the CD out and I got the vinyl pressing, and it sounded so much better.” He thinks it’s tough to see MP3s as a step in the right direction: “We shouldn’t be degrading sound. But it’s the way it’s all going. I was just online, getting a new remix Steve Lawler did. If you look at that, that’s pretty amazing.”
Tom may love the sound of pressed vinyl, but the accessibility that comes from Beatport and other digital websites, along with exclusive mixes dropped down on the wire through instant messenger, keeps Tom -and his global gigs - on the cutting edge. "There was this email sent out from [sound system manufacturer] Funktion 1 that said, 'Dear DJs of the world: we’re trying to make your club sound as good as they can. Please, stop playing bad MP3s.'"
He thinks 320 kbps MP3s are pretty good, and he wouldn't play anything lower quality. "When you play anything less in a club, I think it’s really difficult thing because it’s really hard to pinpoint the difference," he explains." It’s not like the hi-end is all gone. It sounds ok, but something bothers you. I think the average person on the dancefloor might just want to leave. Not everyone’s standing there saying, 'He’s playing a really low quality MP3.' They’re saying, 'Let’s go get a drink,' or 'This DJ sucks.' We’ve advanced so much with clubs and sound systems – it’s gotten so much better, and we’re taking this giant step back.”
The Demands of Dancing
”I had the weirdest response in Portugal a few weeks ago,” Superchumbo recounts. “I knew that Portugal was very tribal – so I started off playing an hour, two hours of tribal stuff before I dared going in another direction. I played a few electro things and I don’t know if I’ve ever cleared a dancefloor so fast before.” The crowd, as he remembers, was gone. “They were standing at the edge of the dancefloor, crossing their arms like, ‘We’re not doing this.’”
“I just looked up and I said ‘Oh my God.’”
The glory of a DJ doesn’t come easy, apparently. It takes countless trials and tribulation. Tom, whose sound is a particular cheeky, industrial tinged electro house deathblow combo with hints of tribal, has come to the point where he won’t play anything he doesn’t want to play. In years, he hasn’t had to. But it wasn’t always that way. “I used to, when I was starting out,” he states. “It was constantly trying to get the balance of compromising what you really wanted to play, up so you enjoy what you’re doing.”
His new album for Peter Rauhofer’s New York City label *69 is a great indicator of what is on Tom’s radar, as he mixes through his own clever cuts (“Dog”) to electro (Marc Romboy “Body Jack”) to minimal (Ben Klock “Earthquake”) to grinding industrial (Superchumbo Dub of Pet Shop Boys “Minimal”). Through it all he keeps the energy up, mixing in a maximal type style that all fits.
“To me, electro sounds great when you’re coming out of some minimal tracks,” he expounds regarding his mixing style. “And then you play electro for a while and it sounds exciting. Then you play something tribal. That’s what sounds great – the mixture. I really try to be sensitive to where I am and what they expect here. I play from here to here, and then I play that section.”
Tom, who rose up in the underground gay and straight clubs during the nineties (including the back room at Turnmills, his own Roach party at Turnmills every last Saturday until 2003 and Vauxhall gay club Crash), has established himself to the point where he’s traveling all the time. Between the jet set life and his new Chumbo Mundo label, does Stephan have time for a personal life?
“I don’t have too much of a life outside of this,” he admits. “Fortunately, I like what I’m doing, especially because I’m traveling all the time. Which is good, because once you go around often enough, you make friends in different places.” Watch for Tom Stephan, aka Superchumbo, in a city near you.
Tom’s 2-disc mix compilation, Let’s Go Chumbo is out now on *69 records.
For more info, visit http://www.tomstephan.com
