I went online to try and get back a lot of the vintage stuff I’d sold, but I had to pay a little bit more and there was stuff I couldn’t afford

pseudos, like The MD Xpress, The Jass Mann and QX1. I’ve always been a humble cat and don’t wanna have a whole lot of records out with my name on, so I would make up names and just say it was produced by Mike Dunn. I wanted to be known more as a producer than an artist. But this album is like all of my pseudos rolled into one project, which is why I called it My House From All Angles.”

How did you approach bringing all those styles together under the one roof?

“When I started this record, I thought the tracks were just OK, but then I began sending them to my manager and he was like, “fuck D, these tracks are getting better and better”. Instead of rushing it, we just kept doing more and more tracks and swapping them out, but it got to a point where if we kept doing that it would have gone on forever. Some of the tracks were supposed to be for Defected, but we ended up pulling them back and using them for this project. I want to get the younger kids into it and pull that crowd into our world. They don’t have to live there, just know it.”

You have some strong acid house elements in the tracks, and it almost sounds like that’s come full circle?

“I’m hoping so, and I’m hoping that the way I did it on this album will spark more producers to do it that way too. Some people think of acid as just a noise, but it has to have a vibe to it. It can work if it’s done correctly. When we were making those tracks we actually programmed it all in just like we used to back in the day. You can see the smile on my face when it comes to using all that technology, but what makes a good House track is simplicity. What people don’t understand is that one sound is always playing off another. That’s what makes house music house music.”

It’s a very analogue-sounding record, so I take it you’re still primarily using hardware?

“Thank you for asking that question. That was the whole concept of the album, and I went back to using all my hardware stuff. You see, the mistake I made was that when I started using software I sold all my vintage gear like the Juno-106 and my Roland TB-303. I thought the computer had everything I needed. I’m still upset when I think about everything I got rid of, but I did keep some pieces. I also went online to try and get back a lot of the vintage stuff I’d sold, but I had to pay a little bit more and there was stuff I couldn’t afford. But I’m not going to pay anybody $4,500 for an 808 or $3,500 for a 909 or a 303 when I bought one for less than $600 back in the day. The great thing about what Roland did is that they came out with the Boutique versions, which sound amazing.”

How do you feel they compare to the originals?

“They sound just like the originals, and I’m more into the sound than how they look. To get to the point, I wanted the album to have a real analogue feel, not running soft synths through plugins to try and make them sound dirty. I wanted the album to sound raw and not polish the sound too much, and for it to have that warm, thick sound. I mean there’s a lot of plugins that sound really close to the hardware and are extremely good, but I didn’t want to be looking at a screen or grabbing a mouse; I wanted to look at a module and turn some knobs.”

So you wanted to have a performance-based approach, just like you first did?

“Yeah, because using software is not the same – it’s just night and day. You got the 303 plugin and you’re using controller knobs and trying to assign CCs to it, but no, when I use the TB-303 I’m just messing with stuff on-the-fly. It made me feel young again to produce in that way. It took me back to a time when Armando and I were back in the studio together working on stuff. It felt good and it felt right.”

Presumably, computers and software do play some role in your production process?

“Recording, sequencing and mixing. I love using Logic and Ableton. I produce more of the musical stuff on Logic, and Ableton’s just so quick that if I want a delay I’ll just drop it in. But I have a hybrid system, so I’ll use both hardware and software. I use a lot of the Dangerous Music stuff and have some high-end mic preamps, compressors and limiters. I also still have some of the old DBX stuff. But I mostly use software for audio processing, because I don’t know where my delay time sheets are, which is what we used to have in the studio and would tell us all the right numbers to get the right delays.”

How do you plan to support the album live?

“Pioneer, if you can hear me, I need some things: They have this thing called the XDJ-1000, and I’d love to do some of the album on-the-fly with that. It’s like a Nexus 2000 NXS2, but you can actually program stuff while you’re playing and lock it up to whatever you’re bringing in. Otherwise, if I do a live, one-man-band thing, it’s going to get kind of complicated. Ideally, I’d have two or three cats doing stuff, but unless the album really takes off, I don’t think anyone’s going to pay for that [laughs].”

want to know more?

My House from All Angles is out now on vinyl from MoreaboutMusic and Mike’s own Blackball Muzik