Bigger & Better

Few in Australia's dance music community have notched up as many tours, releases and received as many awards as Sydney's Kid Kenobi. Having just returned from a month-long tour in the US and Canada, the long-time Ministry Of Sound and Jam Music artist is now set to unleash his own label - Klub Kids - and a brand new compilation on the masses.

Speaking from his home in Sydney, where he’s catching up on “boring, day to day crap”, Jesse Desenberg is a busy chap at present. Having been bunkered down in the studio and on a voyage of musical self-discovery the last 12 months, Kid Kenobi has re-emerged and, as he explains, the “evolving beast” that is Klub Kids is a result of his searching for a new creative spark and an outlet through which to showcase his own ever-developing love of music. “It was just a personal thing for me, trying to find new music that I found inspiring,” he says of his sabbatical in 2007. “I was playing breaks for a very long time and there was a whole bunch of new music coming through … but I couldn't really find a sound that reflected me as an artist or the kind of music that I'd always loved.

“So I kind of struggled to find something I could identify with. I wasn't really feeling myself in a lot of this music. That kind of changed last year with a lot of the fidget stuff. I don't want to use that blanket term but things came back with more of that so-called black influence. More reggae coming back in, more hip hop influences, the old rave stuff coming back in.”

'Klub Kids', Desenberg's first compilation in two years is a double disc release broken up into  'The Club' and 'The Dub', is the result of Desenberg's musical re-awakening and features cuts from the likes of Armand Van Helden, Dizzee Rascal, Resin Dogs and Stanton Warriors. “Dub and reggae were always going to be massive influences,” he says, referring to the second dubbed-out disc. “That was the first music I was really exposed to as a child, so it's been pretty important to me. It was nice to take those new influences and have some dub-steppy stuff on there but not having them be run-of-the-mill stuff.”

Kid Kenobi's 'Klub Kids' is out now through, erm, Klub Kids.

A SONG ABOUT

Sydney-based connoisseurs of all things house, the Ping Pong DJ’s are headed to Monastery this weekend. You’d better strap on your best party face, ‘cause it’s likely you’ll be dancing into the wee small hours. One half of the duo, Brenden Fing, tells us why.

So your Facebook profile says you "rock more clubs than Tiger Woods" - how do you approach your club sets in terms of track selection?
Ultimately it’s about finding a large amount of tunes that you know will move any dancefloor and choosing the right tracks at the right time on any night. If you go into any set that’s been planned too much, you can find yourself cornered in. You have to read and understand the crowd that you are playing to.

The definition of house has been mutated over the years and now it has many different guises - but to the Ping Pong DJ’s, what is house and what does it sound like?
House is a very broad term, it’s an umbrella for what is a large genre. House is a 4/4 beat, it’s as simple as that. Anything can happen. Progressive, electro, disco, tech etc. In its purest form you would say house music is all about the synths and stabs and big rolling basslines.

What are your thoughts on electro - although it's saturated clubland to the point it's stifling the scene, is there good electro out there?
There is still some awesome electro out there. Again, electro is a massive genre. It’s hard to say how it’s stifling the scene, when there is still good electro being produced. Electro just became the most popular sub-genre of house music and now people seem to hate it. It is here to stay whether we like it or not. I tend to think it brought a lot of strength to the dance scene within Australia.

How did the Ping Pong DJ’s come into being - was it a meeting of great minds or did you cross paths at a house party?
Matt (Nukewood, other half of the Ping Pong DJ’s) and Raye Antonelli had arranged to tour Stupid Fresh from UK. We wanted to do our own party with them in Sydney, so the party Ping Pong was born. So that we could jampack the line-up we decided to play together. It went down really well and we immediately started getting booked together a lot more often. Sometimes it’s hard to be right next to each other all the time ‘cause we both fart so much, ha ha!

When it comes to jackin' the dancefloor with hundreds of sweaty young folks dancing like their lives depended on it, what's your secret formula to keeping the party happening?
We are entertainers. It’s essential that you understand what level the crowd is on to be able to connect with them through your music. You also need to look like you are enjoying yourself. If you just play music - then you are not doing your job properly. If you know your music you can take the crowd up and down and throughout the tunes.

Have you ever been requested to play Operator Please's 'Just A Song About Ping Pong'?
Never. We pity the person who asks. We will point them in the direction of the nearest exit.

So don't be shy here, who has the better ping pong game - Matt or yourself?
Matt has stressed to me that he’s the better player, so my answer should say so. However, if you ask him who is better at golf, tennis, rugby league, kayaking, squash, basketball, and pretty much any other sport - he will probably tell you he is better at that too, ha ha!

If we gave you a bag of oranges, four deck chairs, a highly strung poodle, 20 metres of rope and enough Bacardi to get the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man drunk - what sort of mischief could you two create?
Can you smoke orange peels? First things first, we would probably attach the oranges as wheels to one of the chairs and then make the poodle drag us down to the local bottle store so we could exchange the Bacardi for vodka, and then the party would get started.

The Ping Pong DJ’s play Monastery Saturday May 16.