Tim Healey- Electric Tease: Saving House Music From DJs
Author: Jonty Adderley
Sunday, November 24, 2002
Though he started out as one of psy-trance's most prolific and creative producers nowadays Tim Healy's musical palette is considerably more diverse, embracing funky house, engineering work for John 00 Fleming and his own rock/ dance/ eclectic project Electric Tease. Pictures on his Electric Tease site show the erstwhile Goa king sporting heavy metal bullet belts and dodgy tattoos, emphasing his commitment to transgressing musical limits.
"It's no longer considered that exciting or fresh to say 'I went out raving last night', Tim told Skrufff's Jonty Adderley.
"So we've got to bring people back and make it more exciting, musically, stylistically and in other ways."
One of the 'other ways' he's already started exploiting is using live girl on girl sex shows to accompany his performances, an idea he's so far limited to Japan. "People in Japan seem to expect me to appear with them, now," he laughed.
Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): I know you're nowadays working with John 00 Fleming, what exactly do you do with him-
Tim Healey: "I engineer for him at the moment and we've done a series of remixes and have a couple of new projects in progress as John continues his DJing career. He literally called me out of the blue last year and I've been working for him since then. With John's music, I'm trying to supply a skill as opposed to wholly taking the lead and when I'm working just by myself the main advantage is that I'm calling all the shots (making all the decisions). But equally it's as much of a challenge to answer someone else's needs and deliver what they want. I think the exact details might be a little too revealing, it's safe to say that he brought in my skills as someone to work the machinery."
Skrufff: Where did the Electric Tease identity come from-
Tim Healey: "I've been thinking about an interesting name for years and it's related to the fact that my approach to music is about more than purely dance music. I'm more globally orientated and significantly moving out of dance moulds on some projects, so I was keen to have a name that didn't tie me to a particular dance scene. Having recently departed from the psy-trance scene I was very keen not to be labelled with a particular style again. It also came from when I got a gig in Japan some years ago when I brought in some strippers. I was releasing material that was more sexy and funky anyway and it went hand in hand with these strippers on stage."
Skrufff: Where did you get the strippers from-
Tim Healey: "They sourced them for me, I happened to have a friend in Japan who was well connected in that area. The reason we had the strippers in the first place was initially just because of a joke. The promoters asked me what else they should put on stage and I jokingly said strippers but being Japanese, ie polite and extremely efficient, they took me very seriously, though they were admittedly a little concerned. I then did a TV appearance on a mate's TV show, and I told him we were doing a theme of a sleazy, clubby kind of environment, so he built a pole dancing bar in the television studio. I did a PA and basically mimed, DJing in front of these strippers and by the end of the performance they were doing one-on-one action, which I really wasn't expecting. The production crew had come to watch it and at the end simply said, 'That's fine, we'll book them for Friday'. Ever since then, people in Japan seem to expect me to appear with them."
Skrufff: What's your view on the health of house music today-
Tim Healey: "It's certainly no secret that many labels are in a state of flux and people on the street's opinion of house music has never been so negative but I think altogether it's a time to reassess. Dance music's not the latest thing is it, there's so much more to life and< Tags