Star Slinger

It’s the 1st of May and Star Slinger is playing Camden Rock at the Camden Crawl. The room is rather sparsely populated and despite the best efforts of this “one man beat machine”, as he was described by Pitchfork, the sound system just isn’t playing nice this evening. At the end of his set a crowd approach the DJ booth, my friend is the first to reach him and proclaims obnoxiously, “Can I have a hug?!?” Star Slinger peers at him through his long brown hair with a slightly confused face and has evidently misheard him, “Thanks but I don’t need a hug.” When my friend clarifies, Star Slinger reconsiders for a moment, and then gives him a full-bodied embrace.

I’m reminded of this exchange when interviewing Star Slinger a week or so later. He has a very personal online presence, talking to fans on his Facebook page and his Twitter, and posting his personal email account on his website to allow fans to contact him directly. I ask him what he thinks of getting fan emails and first he jokes that sometimes they’re “really ‘fan-ish’ and you imagine them being a dork or something.” But then thinks about it for a moment and goes on to say, “But I guess I’m a dork really. I remember being that kid who was really fan-ish and I usually give people a little reply”.

Such is the duality of the artist Star Slinger, who is easily the hottest act of the year, and the man behind the music, Darren Williams, who describes himself as “the kid with decks at school” who wanted to be in with every crowd and open his ears to the full spectrum of musical genres.

“I wanted to be a bit of a wide boy and be into everything”, he says, explaining that he DJ-ed with the “chavvy kids” while also playing guitar with the “geeky rock kids.” His desire to be diverse is a thread that runs through his music today. His debut album _Volume 1 _is an eclectic mix of danceable tunes that demonstrate his ability to tease, stretch, and chop samples into exciting new sounds. Artists often stick to one sound, and when they try to change direction it’s often badly received because people aren’t used to it, he argues. “With electronic music it’s easier to be eclectic. Especially if you sample, it’s easy to show that your music taste is vast rather than narrow.” But his love of sampling goes deeper than simply showing off his musical knowledge: “I like making the most of something, a six-second clip […] those parts of a record that want to be heard more.”

In that sense Star Slinger is as much a music lover as he is a musician. His Facebook page is full of other artist’s songs that he wants to share with his fans. “I try to fill my ears as much as possible. I think you’re lacking something if you’re not listening to music,” he says confidently, before taking himself down again, “but maybe if you read books you’ve got one up on me because maybe you’ve learnt more.”

The speed at which he has made a name for himself is quite astounding. He only started putting his music online and sending it to music blogs last June. (The first blog to really big him up, a Swedish site called No Modest Bear, called Volume 1 ‘a stunning instrumental album’). Come 2011 the Guardian were calling him the ‘best new act of the year by miles’. To put it bluntly, if you play someone a Star Slinger track, 9 times out of 10 they’re going to love it. He counts Diplo and Donald Glover among his celebrity fans and the queue of artists asking for remixes stretches out the door and around the block – he’s applied his deft touch to tracks by musicians as disparate as Broken Social Scene, Gold Panda, and Nicki Minaj.

Broken Social Scene - Texico Bitches (Star Slinger Remix) by Star Slinger

Gold Panda - Marriage (Star Slinger Remix) OUT MARCH 1st by Star Slinger

Nicki Minaj - Moment 4 Life (Star Slinger Remix) by Star Slinger

He says that he does his producing when it’s dark. “I like to save the night for it. I’ll think about it in the back of my mind all day. I’ll already know what vibe I want.” When I point out that his music sounds summery rather than Burial-esque he simply shrugs and says “I’m not so conscious about time really. I think everyone’s got their own fucked up sleeping pattern”, adding that having a job without a strict morning timetable helps.

Recently Star Slinger posted a somewhat cryptic message on his Facebook: ‘It’s dope to be humble.’ When I ask him about it he explains that he realised that he was biggin’ himself up a bit too much. But it’s understandable given his meteoric rise. “To me it’s still crazy that I’m getting so many plays,” he says. “I never thought I would get the success that I have had. Everyone self-deprecates after university, there are so many opportunities but so much competition.”

It’s interesting to see how grateful for his success he is. He’s not blasé about his life at all. I ask him about giving music away for free on the internet and he points out that most of the music he puts out isn’t free. He’s been paid by a record label to do the remix. “People just think that you’re a hobbyist putting out free music, but I’m not a hobbyist, this is my job.” I ask him if he still works and he looks at me seriously before pointing out, “This is work.”

A few weeks later he’s playing at Stag & Dagger festival, headlining at the Queen of Hoxton. It’s as far from the gig at Camden Crawl as imaginable. The place is packed and the crowd is dancing like they’re in an R. Kelly video. When I talked to him he described the music that he loves as “lush, full and wholesome” and the music that he makes as danceable music “for conscious people, not just for mindless fist punching”. With the crowd’s energy driving him on, his set is a perfect synthesis of those two ideas. His set isn’t completely perfect, there are a few hiccups along the way as he experiments with new tunes, but to use the words that he used to explain his respect for Diplo: “A DJ’s set doesn’t have to be smooth and perfect, it’s more about the buzz that they create.” The buzz at the Queen of Hoxton is huge. The crowd start shouting out remixes from his extensive catalogue. One title stands out amongst the noise, his remix of ‘Marriage’ by Gold Panda. There’s that customary pause for thought, the initial step back when he says “I don’t usually play it live.” But as the calls grow louder and refuse to desist, he probably remembers being a kid obnoxiously shouting out song names at a gig and relents. And as the bells at the start of the remix give way to the bassy fuzz underwriting the track, the crowd practically explodes.