“I'm almost ashamed to be known as a DJ”: Dave Clarke on the state of dance music and the making of Archive One

Music, like fashion, comes and goes in cycles, and there’s no doubt that dance music in 2024 has a significant ‘90s flavour to it. 

From the euphoric synths of old-school trance to the rough breakbeats of jungle and high-tempo kicks of gabber, modern club music is rife with call-backs to burgeoning ‘90s rave scene.

For ‘90s techno figurehead Dave Clarke, however, being a DJ now is a significantly different experience to how it was back in the day – and not necessarily for the better. 

Speaking to Future Music around the 30th-anniversary reissue of his seminal Archive One album and Red EP series, the ever-quotable Clarke described a shift in the perception of how people view DJs in recent years.

“I've gone through phases in my life of being really proud to be a DJ, I'm sort of in a phase now where I'm almost ashamed to be known as a DJ,” Clarke says. 

"There's so much light on stage and they're all dancing – I've got nothing against people dancing but it's just that the performance is more important than the music. We're sort of in a strange era where there are way too many people that call themselves DJs.”

Rather than go full ‘old man shouting at clouds’ though, Clarke takes a positive outlook, likening the current shifts in DJ technology and attitudes to the rise of punk and new wave in the 1980s. 

“I think eventually, in a year, or two, three or four years' time, those people that see these [current DJs] that obviously cannot DJ will probably step up - another generation of people that are actually going to be great. 

"With punk, there were some good groups within that who are still playing now and they will always still be around, so some of this new generation [of DJs] that are good at what they're doing, they'll still be around. 

"But the people that are pretending and dressing up weird and just doing stuff to get attention – who are managing social media well, but not the decks very well – people will see that and think 'Well, I can do this, but I can do this in a different way.'

"You'll end up with what happened after punk, which was new wave, which is sort of arty and more interesting with more depth. At least that's what I hope.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Clarke describes the studio gear and the challenges involved in producing techno in the mid-’90s, as well as relating his philosophy for tackling remixes. 

Watch the full interview in the video above.

Dave Clarke’s special edition Archive One and Red series vinyl boxset is out now.