5 Steps with Hervé

Joshua Harvey, otherwise known as Hervé, is a producer/DJ from the UK.

Hervé is known for bass-orientated as well as eclectic productions and DJ sets. Ten years ago, Cheap Thrills – helped pioneer the ‘fidget’ house sound and with it champion a new, fresh sound which kicked started the careers of is out founders and key artists on the label including Fake Blood, Jack Beats, Lone and Project Bassline, amongst others.

With a decade’s worth of music in their back catalogue, Cheap Thrills have gone all out to mark the occasion with several compilations including this previously announced free download one and 10 Years of Cheap Thrills: from here

We chatted to Hervé about the 5 pivotal points of his career in our 5 Steps series.

DAVE TAYLOR/Switch/Dubsided

I met Dave through an old school friend called Steve Jones who worked at Slip ‘n’ Slide Records where Dave happened to have his studio. All three of us would meet near the offices sometimes at lunchtime with our packed lunches and talk about music. One day, I gave him a disc with about 8 tracks on – Hervé stuff and I think a couple of early Voodoo Chilli tracks – and he promptly signed me to Dubsided. Once the first record came out and shortly after the first Speaker Junk two-tracker (see below) came out, things just took off and went nuts! Dave was the first person to really and truly help me and believe in me, and also gave me really good advice.

SPEAKER JUNK/SPEAKER JUNK RECORDS

Speaker Junk was me and Trevor Loveys. Dave introduced us after Trevor left Switch and we immediately became friends and started working on tracks. The first twelve inch we did was a two tracker, Scratch Up The Music and Run The Track, and out of nowhere, they became ground zero for what was called wonky/wobble house.

It all started happening for us very quickly after we released that 12″. Within 4 weeks of release we got some gig offers for the UK and Europe and the first people to ask us to remix them were Basement Jaxx which was amazing, they just hit us up from the email on the vinyl.

The remix did really well for us and we went on to do a bunch more remixes and gigs, I had so much fun travelling around with Trev, it was chaos but always massive fun.

I was being pulled in so many directions very shortly after we started Speaker Junk, with Herve and The Count & Sinden also taking off, and Trev was doing loads of solo tracks too, I just didn’t get time to do more stuff. Trev doesn’t live in London anymore and I miss him as we don’t get to meet up as much as we would like to, but it was great fun putting Speaker Junk back together one last time for “Just Lose It” on the comp.

HERVE MIXMAG COVERMOUNT CD

I remember being in Dave’s studio when he got asked to do the Switch one thinking “wow, I’ll never get asked to do something like that”, so it was quite a big deal for me when it happened – before that my main ambition was to release some records and earn just enough to live off of being an artist.

I haven’t heard it for years and years though so I’m not sure how well it’s aged!

BEEPER

Beeper was basically the last track on a 4 track EP, something knocked up really quickly (I think I already had the beats from a project I had started but didn’t get past the drums, and the bass sound was from my Novation K-Station, amongst a bunch of presets I’d made and saved).

The idea was to create a hybrid of UK garage/drum n bass/US hip hop and it seemed to work. Annie Mac picked up on it in a big way at Radio 1 and it also blew up in the clubs, I heard it everywhere!

That one last-minute track done for fun, blew up so big we ended up signing to Domino Records on an album deal, but that’s another story…

HALLUCINATED SURF

My last album, Hallucinated Surf, was divided into two parts – 10 club tracks and 10 downtempo tracks. The 10 downtempo songs are the best things I’ve done so far I think, I’m really proud of them. The actual release of the album was quite disappointing as I don’t think it was worked in a way that best suited it.

I’m now getting the tracks back from the label that released them (Skint/BMG) so that I can re-release and rework the album as I don’t think it was really promoted properly. It will be a kind of redux with extra tracks and some great remixes included too.