Tom Holkenborg is best known for composing music for movies like Kingdom of Heaven and Resident Evil, but in the world of electronic music Tom is known as the world renowned Junkie XL. His latest album is Today and I had a chance to speak with him before he left for his European tour.
Check out the official site for Junkie XL
Daniel Robert Epstein: Whats going on today?
Junkie XL: Im back at home in Los Angeles.
DRE: Oh you live there now?
XL: Yeah. Ive lived here for over three years now.
DRE: Did you move out there for work?
XL: Well, since 95 Ive been making music for videogames, commercials and movies. At a certain point I was like, Im just going to move.
DRE: Do you like it?
XL: Yeah, its a huge change comparing to what Amsterdam is obviously. But there are a lot of really cool things going on here as well. For starters the climate and the people are also really friendly. The work is just amazing. So its a good spot to hang out.
DRE: What was the inspiration for Today?
XL: As an artist and the albums that I made, my work was always big conceptual albums with a lot of famous people working or singing on it. Combined with the fact that a lot of the remixes I did lately were done for well-known artists like Coldplay and Britney Spears so for this album I just wanted to go back to basics. I find this album was more just spending three months in the studio and making cool tracks instead of having a really big concept.
All the music on the previous album, even when I worked with those other people, was my music as well. They were not remixes. I just wrote songs together with all those people. But for this album, I just wanted to write songs on my own and make it more personal, more about me.
DRE: How was that process for you?
XL: It was pretty revealing because normally I would spend up to two or three years on an album, not constantly. But I would take like two or three years to release an album. For this it was just getting in the studio and then after three months, see how many tracks you have and that was going to be the album. That was really refreshing for me.
DRE: Was it a conscious decision to not use anyone else?
XL: Well I work with a vocalist, but not a well-known vocalist. It was definitely a choice for me to make it simple and to make something that is more about where I stand right now and how I feel about certain things. So thats also the reason the album is called Today. Its an album about changes such as moving from Amsterdam to LA, but also missing Amsterdam and missing your friends and family and stuff.
DRE: How did you find your vocalist?
XL: I was looking for somebody with a voice that would almost blend in with the music and would sound like an extra instrument instead of a vocalist that was put on top of the music. One of my best friends is a talented songwriter in LA and he knows a lot of people here in town. He knew the singer, Nathan [Mader], so we just got together and it clicked.
DRE: So you cant sing?
XL: I can sing, but you dont want to hear my voice.
DRE: [laughs] How long would it take to do a track?
XL: Some take longer than others. Like any artist, you have tracks that are written in five or ten minutes and other tracks that keep you turning circles in and you cant make it happen for whatever reason. Then finally it gets revealed how it can be done and then you just do it.
DRE: Where do you do all your work?
XL: Ive got a studio in Venice which is also where I live. Its a place where I worked on my album, but I also do all my movies here and videogames and all the stuff that Ive been working on.
DRE: Have you ever worked much at other peoples studios in LA?
XL: Not necessarily LA, but Ive been a musician since I was four or five and I started working in studios when I was 15. Ive been an engineer, a producer. I worked my way up in the studio. Its normal here in the US to start making coffee and cleaning up the studio and then rolling the cables and work all your way up. Ive seen many studios inside out.
DRE: Has your work ethic changed since you started working on movies and videogames?
XL: No, not necessarily. Ive got a certain approach for how I create sounds and how I create music. Ive got a certain approach how to deal with certain things and I try to adapt that to everything that I work on even though the work methods are different. With a movie, you have a picture that you have to make music for, so funnily enough, that can be sometimes more liberating than making your own album. For some of the movies Ive been working on lately like Domino, the Tony Scott movie, you can do really underground sound design/soundscape kind of music. My record company will not even release it as a CD because its too dark. But I can make that kind of music for a movie. Its a weird paradox. If youre an artist, you could do whatever you want to do, but if you would do that, your record company would not release it.
DRE: Strange since Domino is a pretty mainstream movie.
XL: Thats why I think movies and videogames, but also commercials are the new radio for electronic music. Ive done music for certain commercials like Cadillac, Coca-Cola or Nike or Adidas where the music I make for it is so underground. Theres no way people would ever buy that. But in a commercial its great. Thats the beauty of that medium.
DRE: A lot of people say that the kind of music you do can be cold and impersonal, how do you make it less so?
XL: Well the definition of what personal and cold is subjective. There are people that love country music and think Dolly Parton is the best female vocalist on the planet, if they hear modern R&B, they would say thats cold. So thats a very subjective thing. Within electronic music and dance music, electronic fans would categorize one group as being cold and machinery and something else as being warm and pleasant to listen to. So its very hard to determine what that aspect is because it totally depends on who you talk to. But in general, I would say that my music has more organic elements to it than many other electronic musicians. I think thats the reason why more people pick up on my music.
DRE: What movies are you working on now?
XL: Now Im working on Dead or Alive, which is a movie that is based on the videogame. Its coming out sometime this uyear.
DRE: How was working with director Corey Yuen on that?
XL: His fight scenes are unbelievable. I think this is his Hollywood debut as a director, but hes also working on something else so I deal more with the producers of the film and the film editor than the director himself.
DRE: What came first, the videogames or the movie work?
XL: It goes hand in hand. The last video game that I worked on extensively was the Matrix videogame, Path of Neo, before that I did Destroy All Humans.
DRE: Did you work with the Wachowski brothers on the Matrix game?
XL: I didnt deal directly with them. With the Matrix there are so many composers and artists that were involved with that.
DRE: Are you still doing live gigs?
XL: Yeah, I just finished my first part of the US tour, which was about 30 gigs. Ill be in Europe then back here in the fall.
DRE: Whats the live gig like?
XL: Well, I bring a bunch of computers on stage and recreate whatever I do in the studio and just turn it into a good party vibe.
DRE: When did you start to use computers for your music?
XL: Around 85. I am a traditional musician. I started playing piano when I was four. I got a drum kit when I was seven. I started playing guitar when I was 11, bass pretty soon after that. I played violin for a little bit. By the time I was 16, I started working at a music shop where and around that time computers became available for music and synthesizers and samplers on a larger scale. From that point on, my music always was half-electronic and half-organic.
DRE: Do you still use instruments now?
XL: Yeah, I play all the instruments. In those days, you had to go to a very expensive studio to record everything, multi-track everything. Now I can do it all in my own studio with a program like ProTools. The new album is very guitar heavy and I recorded all the guitars and the basses and stuff like that.
DRE: Are there bands that you wouldnt want to remix or stuff you would want to try just as an experiment?
XL: No but those things change as well. 15 years ago, I would be like, Oh if only I can ever do a track with Robert Smith or Dave Gahan. Then you do it at a certain point and it changes to something else. Especially while youre getting older, youre also focusing on the new generation of people thats coming up. So who you want to work with and who you dont want to work with is something that is subject to change.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
Check out the official site for Junkie XL
Daniel Robert Epstein: Whats going on today?
Junkie XL: Im back at home in Los Angeles.
DRE: Oh you live there now?
XL: Yeah. Ive lived here for over three years now.
DRE: Did you move out there for work?
XL: Well, since 95 Ive been making music for videogames, commercials and movies. At a certain point I was like, Im just going to move.
DRE: Do you like it?
XL: Yeah, its a huge change comparing to what Amsterdam is obviously. But there are a lot of really cool things going on here as well. For starters the climate and the people are also really friendly. The work is just amazing. So its a good spot to hang out.
DRE: What was the inspiration for Today?
XL: As an artist and the albums that I made, my work was always big conceptual albums with a lot of famous people working or singing on it. Combined with the fact that a lot of the remixes I did lately were done for well-known artists like Coldplay and Britney Spears so for this album I just wanted to go back to basics. I find this album was more just spending three months in the studio and making cool tracks instead of having a really big concept.
All the music on the previous album, even when I worked with those other people, was my music as well. They were not remixes. I just wrote songs together with all those people. But for this album, I just wanted to write songs on my own and make it more personal, more about me.
DRE: How was that process for you?
XL: It was pretty revealing because normally I would spend up to two or three years on an album, not constantly. But I would take like two or three years to release an album. For this it was just getting in the studio and then after three months, see how many tracks you have and that was going to be the album. That was really refreshing for me.
DRE: Was it a conscious decision to not use anyone else?
XL: Well I work with a vocalist, but not a well-known vocalist. It was definitely a choice for me to make it simple and to make something that is more about where I stand right now and how I feel about certain things. So thats also the reason the album is called Today. Its an album about changes such as moving from Amsterdam to LA, but also missing Amsterdam and missing your friends and family and stuff.
DRE: How did you find your vocalist?
XL: I was looking for somebody with a voice that would almost blend in with the music and would sound like an extra instrument instead of a vocalist that was put on top of the music. One of my best friends is a talented songwriter in LA and he knows a lot of people here in town. He knew the singer, Nathan [Mader], so we just got together and it clicked.
DRE: So you cant sing?
XL: I can sing, but you dont want to hear my voice.
DRE: [laughs] How long would it take to do a track?
XL: Some take longer than others. Like any artist, you have tracks that are written in five or ten minutes and other tracks that keep you turning circles in and you cant make it happen for whatever reason. Then finally it gets revealed how it can be done and then you just do it.
DRE: Where do you do all your work?
XL: Ive got a studio in Venice which is also where I live. Its a place where I worked on my album, but I also do all my movies here and videogames and all the stuff that Ive been working on.
DRE: Have you ever worked much at other peoples studios in LA?
XL: Not necessarily LA, but Ive been a musician since I was four or five and I started working in studios when I was 15. Ive been an engineer, a producer. I worked my way up in the studio. Its normal here in the US to start making coffee and cleaning up the studio and then rolling the cables and work all your way up. Ive seen many studios inside out.
DRE: Has your work ethic changed since you started working on movies and videogames?
XL: No, not necessarily. Ive got a certain approach for how I create sounds and how I create music. Ive got a certain approach how to deal with certain things and I try to adapt that to everything that I work on even though the work methods are different. With a movie, you have a picture that you have to make music for, so funnily enough, that can be sometimes more liberating than making your own album. For some of the movies Ive been working on lately like Domino, the Tony Scott movie, you can do really underground sound design/soundscape kind of music. My record company will not even release it as a CD because its too dark. But I can make that kind of music for a movie. Its a weird paradox. If youre an artist, you could do whatever you want to do, but if you would do that, your record company would not release it.
DRE: Strange since Domino is a pretty mainstream movie.
XL: Thats why I think movies and videogames, but also commercials are the new radio for electronic music. Ive done music for certain commercials like Cadillac, Coca-Cola or Nike or Adidas where the music I make for it is so underground. Theres no way people would ever buy that. But in a commercial its great. Thats the beauty of that medium.
DRE: A lot of people say that the kind of music you do can be cold and impersonal, how do you make it less so?
XL: Well the definition of what personal and cold is subjective. There are people that love country music and think Dolly Parton is the best female vocalist on the planet, if they hear modern R&B, they would say thats cold. So thats a very subjective thing. Within electronic music and dance music, electronic fans would categorize one group as being cold and machinery and something else as being warm and pleasant to listen to. So its very hard to determine what that aspect is because it totally depends on who you talk to. But in general, I would say that my music has more organic elements to it than many other electronic musicians. I think thats the reason why more people pick up on my music.
DRE: What movies are you working on now?
XL: Now Im working on Dead or Alive, which is a movie that is based on the videogame. Its coming out sometime this uyear.
DRE: How was working with director Corey Yuen on that?
XL: His fight scenes are unbelievable. I think this is his Hollywood debut as a director, but hes also working on something else so I deal more with the producers of the film and the film editor than the director himself.
DRE: What came first, the videogames or the movie work?
XL: It goes hand in hand. The last video game that I worked on extensively was the Matrix videogame, Path of Neo, before that I did Destroy All Humans.
DRE: Did you work with the Wachowski brothers on the Matrix game?
XL: I didnt deal directly with them. With the Matrix there are so many composers and artists that were involved with that.
DRE: Are you still doing live gigs?
XL: Yeah, I just finished my first part of the US tour, which was about 30 gigs. Ill be in Europe then back here in the fall.
DRE: Whats the live gig like?
XL: Well, I bring a bunch of computers on stage and recreate whatever I do in the studio and just turn it into a good party vibe.
DRE: When did you start to use computers for your music?
XL: Around 85. I am a traditional musician. I started playing piano when I was four. I got a drum kit when I was seven. I started playing guitar when I was 11, bass pretty soon after that. I played violin for a little bit. By the time I was 16, I started working at a music shop where and around that time computers became available for music and synthesizers and samplers on a larger scale. From that point on, my music always was half-electronic and half-organic.
DRE: Do you still use instruments now?
XL: Yeah, I play all the instruments. In those days, you had to go to a very expensive studio to record everything, multi-track everything. Now I can do it all in my own studio with a program like ProTools. The new album is very guitar heavy and I recorded all the guitars and the basses and stuff like that.
DRE: Are there bands that you wouldnt want to remix or stuff you would want to try just as an experiment?
XL: No but those things change as well. 15 years ago, I would be like, Oh if only I can ever do a track with Robert Smith or Dave Gahan. Then you do it at a certain point and it changes to something else. Especially while youre getting older, youre also focusing on the new generation of people thats coming up. So who you want to work with and who you dont want to work with is something that is subject to change.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
paulieglaze:
Junkie is the fucking boss!! 
s_eldorado:
Great article - TH has been one of my very favourite artists since I first heard him almost 10 years ago. We ended up licensing a bunch of JXL tracks in Need For Speed 4 and they fucking ruled for racing.