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RS: You did one of my all-time favorite songs and I've always had a question about it, Angelic's "It's My Turn." I know it's related to a Sunscreem record, now I'm wondering what the basis of that track was.
Judge Jules: There was an instrumental that they did that Darren Tate sort of worked on. I wrote the song, the lyrics, the vocal melody, and got my wife to sing it. So the plan was to get my wife to sing on a record and I kind of chose a track which I didn't at the time know was Sunscreem, but that's sort of the way it worked out.


RS: OK. When you're in the studio do you normally write a track then put a song on top of it, or what's like your songwriting process?
Judge Jules: It depends. If you're doing something of your own from scratch, then you'd probably do some very basic chords and then write the song, and then you'd probably only do twenty percent of the track, then write the song and then sort of do the remaining eighty percent of the music afterwards. But quite a lot of songwriting stuff I do is collaborations or submissions for writing stuff over things that start life as an instrumental, an instrumental that maybe does well that a record company wants a vocal version to give it more radio palatability. In that case, obviously you write over an existing backing track.

RS: So, you have this show on BBC. Do you have a harder or easier time getting your music on the radio, do you think?
Judge Jules: Well, every track on the BBC of my own that I play has to be submitted to the Head of Music for approval, and I can't be seen to be showing a disproportionate amount of support to my own stuff, any more so than I would do as a club DJ.

As a club DJ, I probably play about two of my own records per hour, maybe three. On my radio show I would play a maximum of one per show, so out of twenty-five tracks in an average two-hour show. So I'm lucky that I've got, you know, I've got a radio show with more than a million listeners that I'm able to play my own records on, but at the same time I certainly can't do it too much.

RS: Cool.
Judge Jules: I can't take the piss, but I don't know if you understand what that means, that's what we say in English.

RS: Explain the term please?
Judge Jules: We say I can't take the piss, which I mean I can't, you know, make laughingstocks of them by basically?

RS: Being? OK, I understand. OK, you can't make a mockery of them by being too self-serving.
Judge Jules: You can't make a mockery of them, that's it, yes, exactly.

RS: Did you come over for Miami this year?
Judge Jules: I didn't because I had a family wedding to go to this year. I've been there for the last, at least ten years, probably more, so I felt I could skip it for one year, and I'll definitely be back next year.

RS: What would you like to say to all your fans out there?
Judge Jules: Just, hopefully you enjoy the music that I'm making and please eMail me via my website because I try to be one of the most approachable DJs and I can't think of any of my peers who would answer every eMail they get sent. But sometimes it can take me three or four days to get back to people, but I will literally answer everything, because I think it's an invaluable sort of feedback.

RS: Talking about the feedback, do you ever hear about songs from the people writing to you?
Judge Jules: Frequently. Sometimes it's difficult to see the wood from the trees, you know, I can pick out the records I'm going to play and I can look on the dance floor and feel the chemistry and know that this is getting, it's generating a great reaction. But then there might be one or two records that just? there's a stream of eMails from people asking about it. And very often it tends to have great legs and great longevity.

RS: I've also curious, I know you kind of get flooded with music every week from all kinds of sources. (1) How long does it take you to filter through what you get and, (2) how long does a record stay in your rotation?
Judge Jules: I mean I get about three hundred new tracks a week, so I actually employ somebody to narrow that down to about a hundred because, you know, he can recognize the two hundred that are inappropriate for my style. And then it's the remaining hundred I go through. And then there isn't really a golden rule to rotation, anywhere between, well anywhere between sort of three weeks and three months. If I've got sometime exclusively and I know not many other DJs have got it, then I might play something for a very long time.