international news _ 20th March, 2006
Alex Smoke Lashes London's 'Too Many Wankers'
Text by Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)
Glasgow minimal maestro/ Aleister Crowley fan Alex Smoke accused Londoners of being over-pushy and false this week, telling DJ Magazine 'I could never live in London there are too many wankers'.
The softly spoken Scot refused to retract his comments in a subsequent chat with Skrufff, laughing 'My brother lives there, I was born there and I have lots of friends there but I stand by my comments'; there are undoubtedly and unquestionably more wankers in London than Glasgow," he said.
Soma's latest rising star was chatting about his upcoming album Parabolia and suggested Londoners are intrinsically more ambitious than those in the rest of Britain, prompting many to act inappropriately.
"The people you meet in London are living there to achieve something and get somewhere so you get the pushiness coming in, which means that when people are talking to you, you always have that slight sense that they're going to say 'by the way, this is my new CD'," he complained.
"I always get that a lot in London, people saying either that or 'this is a DJ mix that me and my mate did, it's pretty good'. I hate it when people tell you they're great," said Alex.
His comments were not so different from Liverpool house star Yousef, who similarly found himself less than impressed with London nightlife, when he started visiting the capital more regularly several years ago.
"It seems to me that clubbing in London isn't much fun. It's not that people don't listen to the music, but they do seem absorbed in the fashion aspect of clubbing or who's looking at them," Yousef told Skrufff in 2002.
"It's full of music business people who hop from one venue to the other without paying much attention to what's going on around them, or listening to the music or getting into the vibe," he suggested.
Alex Smoke's new album Paradolia is out shortly on Soma Records.
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