I’ve been a fan of Filthy Dukes ever since i first heard their remix of The Rakes ’22 Grand job’ – at that point in my life it spoke to me! Naturally i’m keen to check out the boys perform live when i go to this year’s Wireless Festival in London’s Hyde Park on Saturday, but i jumped at the chance when i got the opportunity to pose them a couple of questions prior to the event.

As a DJ often away from home i was curious to see what challenges not living the 9-5 (the 22k job) presented the guys and how they dealt with them but also, am i the only one who gives serious consideration to where he might go if presented with a time-machine a la Back to the Future? You can but ask…

YMISKM:
We know that producing, recording and playing can take up the majority of time from your daily lives. How does your family or girlfriends respond to this routine you put yourselves through? Will there be a time when you have to move on from music?

Dukes:
Well there have been some failed relationships in the wake of making albums, djing, remixing and so on within the filthy dukes. It is an antisocial life style, although you are out and meeting people all the time, it ultimately means that at weekends when most couples or friends are hanging out, you are in an airport or a hotel in another country. Having said that though, this is the life style we have chosen and it can work, it just takes some effort from all parties, to travel with the band, go to festivals, clubs etc. It does mean your partner has to like your music of course. It also means during the week you have to make the effort too. I think if you want to make it work you can, but it is hard work and as we all work during the week too on various projects like record labels, producing promoting and so on. There are also so many positive things too, going to amazing festivals or staying in Paris for the weekend is quite a nice thing to offer a loved one in return for coming to gigs in Hull.

YMIKM:
You guys wake up one morning and there stands a shiny brand new ‘Delorean’ time-machine, what dates would you guys dial in and why?

Dukes:
At the moment I am pretty exhausted from Glastonbury and we are djing at Fabric on Friday then two festivals on Saturday so I could do with a little nap. I might choose 1900 and go and hang out with Matisse on a French hill side for a bit and have a long snooze. Then I would be ready for the weekend. However I would probably then get excited so pop back to 1968 and go to the Rolling Stones Rock N Roll circus, hang out with them and Keith Moon and see what mischief could take place. I might then just pop back a bit to 1960 and find Jean Luc Godard in Paris whilst he was making A Bout De Souffle, one of my favorite films. He went through some crazy head fucks thinking his film would be rubbish, so I would tell him everything was going to be ok and he would make a masterpiece, although that might ruin it I guess. Then I would move forward to 1973 and go and see Kraftwerk making Autobahn, it must have been so exciting knowing how revolutionary electronic music was then and that no one had really heard anything like it. They would have been working with Connie Plank who designed and made the mixing desk we have in our studio, he would have been using some of it to record Autobahn, so we could ask him why channel two never quite works properly. Ok I’m tired again now.

Thanks to the Dukes for indulging us.  Filthy Dukes will be appearing live at this year’s Wireless Festival, held in London’s Hyde Park on the 4th and 5th of July - for further information on the line-up and how you can get tickets please visit www.wirelessfestival.co.uk