L-VIS 1990 talks future of clubbing, gear, and mixing

From Brighton to Tokyo to Philadelphia, James Connolly aka L-VIS 1990 has been working and filling dancefloors for over twenty years. Best known as the co-founder of Night Slugs – one of the UK’s defining dance labels of the last 15 years – alongside Bok Bok, L-Vis 1990 played an integral role in introducing audiences to a melting pot of hyper-specific global club sounds that shaped much of club culture in the 2010s and continues to this day.

Following a hiatus that saw him focus on his other alias, Dance System, Connolly is back as L-VIS 1990 with a new EP for Bristol's Club Djembe and a renewed focus on bringing forward artists he's passionate about.

Proud owner of a pair of TYPE 20 MK2 monitors, we recently spoke to him about the changing face of club culture and challenges in capturing some of the same energy as previous generations as well as his studio gear, finding the right room, learning to mix, and the importance of pushing against the tides.

HEDD: You said recently that small venues and clubs have been crushed by festivals and mega lineup parties. How important were smaller, DIY gigs to your musical growth? And what do you think is needed to keep them alive in 2025 and beyond?

L-VIS: I think that DIY venues and spaces were the most vital thing to me as a DJ and producer coming up. I first started DJing in pubs, playing for a whole night for £50, and then started throwing my own events when I was 17 - I wasn't even allowed to drink in venues yet and I was throwing parties!

Without those nights where we could just be ourselves and get our musical ideas across, I wouldn't have anything, you know. That's where I booked Bok Bok to come play. If I hadn't had that small DIY space, where I was booking like-minded people to come play, I wouldn't have met Bok Bok and then from that, I wouldn't have started Night Slugs - which had such a big impact on the worldwide underground dance music culture. Had a big venue in Brighton, like a 5,000 or 10,000 capacity venue existed then, would I have thrown that party? Would I have met Bok Bok? Would Night Slugs have existed?

I think the big problem with the UK at the moment is there's way too many festivals, which are expensive, and younger clubbers don't have the money to be going out every week like we used to in the past - I was out three or four nights a week! (laughs). The drinks weren't that expensive, the drugs weren't that expensive and you wouldn't have to spend eighty pounds to get into a place like Drumsheds (a large-scale venue in London) or a festival. It's just sucking the life out of club land because the younger generation aren't going out to smaller club events.

I feel we've come through this late-stage capitalist, DJ festival, maximal thing, and it feels like the tides are going to change a little bit now because of it. I think a lot of people have had enough and I think we could be going back to our roots a lot more with DJing smaller venues and DIY stuff. An experience in real life, an experience that's not experienced through your phone or through a laptop watching a Boiler Room or something like that. It's going to be about connecting with people, which clubbing was always about. Some of my best friends came about through connecting with people in club spaces.

HEDD: What are the differences you see on dancefloors now?

L-VIS: The main thing that's changed in clubland is people are afraid to let go and be themselves within these spaces. People are just a lot more aware of being watched, or viewed, or witnessed in a way. Our whole lives are online and out there to the world, and I feel club spaces have become a place where you still feel like you're being watched or you're scared of being off your face because someone might film you and then put it up on TikTok! Clubs used to be a space for freedom, to be yourself and open up, and be messy. For me as a young clubber in the early 2000s, it was vital that I had that space where it could just be myself. More clubs now are working on this and banning phones and I think that's the way forward.

But at the same time people don't dance with each other in club spaces, they're just looking forward at the DJ and no new connections are being made when you're just looking forwards. Those DIY spaces are important for that because you can hide the DJ, and the DJ can be further back, on a different level. Stages are the worst thing for DJ culture (laughs) Imagine if Larry Levan put himself up on the stage and then everyone's just looking forward instead of dancing with each other. I think moving things back to smaller spaces will help club culture for sure.

HEDD: Some of your recent Instagram posts included your MySpace top friends from back in the day including Mumdance, Tomb Crew, Diplo, Duke Dumont, etc. You talked about how you used to jump on each other's shows and parties and how it was a collaborative era. Do you think DJs and producers are more or less connected now than they were in 2015 or 2005?

L-VIS: So I think we're a lot more disconnected because of all of these big festivals and big parties booking people for big bucks, and having these exclusivity clauses. There's a lot less chance for people jumping on each other's sets. A lot of festivals now lean on the same acts as headliners and it's been the same for almost 10 years. You see the same people at every festival, and the bigger festivals are more scared to take risks on who they're booking.

We used to all throw parties, I would go to play the Mausoleum in Philly with Bok Bok, Kingdom, and Joker and it was Diplo who booked us. We'd be doing little parties at The Lock Tavern with Duke Dumont and everyone would be there. It was a lot more of a DIY community, it felt like it was us and we were all together and we were in control. There were a few festivals, but that wasn't the thing which overtook what we were doing. It was all about the DIY stuff and it felt more free, “I'll come play your thing, you play my thing,” let’s do this thing as a community. Just being connected is the most positive thing of all of this. I think MySpace was the most connected I got and the relationships I built there felt like communities. But that community has kind of been lost through social media and individualism that corporations have been pushing on us.

On Instagram, you can't have a collective, on Spotify there's no record label page. I want to go browse the Underground Resistance label catalog and you can't do that  unless someone has created a playlist or whatever. They're trying to make us as individual as possible so that we spend money. They don't want us to be collective, they don't want us to get together and come up with ideas which will take us away from this individual living. So I feel with everything that is going on in the world now, like Donald Trump and Elon Musk, Open AI and Mark Zuckerberg, they own these companies and we as creatives and artists and thinkers will not want to be under any power from them. Eventually as artists and as creatives, we're going to want to be off these things, so we're going to have to go back to the smaller side of thing, create our own systems, and culture, and smaller communities, and we're going to have to communicate in a different way with people. I was just talking to The Blessed Madonna about it this morning and she told me, “We've all got to come together, we've got to bring back that DIY energy.” We had to do it in the past because that was the only way, but now we have to do it out of choice, to escape the capitalist infrastructure.

HEDD: Your studio is a bit of a mixture of classic drum machines, crunchy old school mixing desks and some modern synths. What are you looking for when you're buying equipment?

L-VIS: I guess I'm just looking for individual synths or drum machines which have a certain character, and that don't do things my other machines do so then it's like having a band in the studio. I can play a Roland TR-727 for the congas or a Roland TR-909 for the slamming techno drums. My Access Virus synthesizer is my ‘UK’ sound, I just use that on everything if I want to do some mad wobbles and pads.

I'm just looking for unique items, and not necessarily the expensive ones, I've never been one to spend five grand on a synth. The first synth I bought was a Korg Poly800, it was a cheap synth and just had funky bassline sounds where you could do some Prince kind of stuff with it. Even the Yamaha Portasound PSS-480, that's a kid's keyboard, and I picked it up for £70, and that is literally the sound of early Ghetto House. DJ Deeon and the guys in Detroit were using that synth. Back then they were finding the cheap bits of gear in Guitar Center or whatever, the Roland TB-303, the PSS-480, Mackie desks, whatever they could find, and that became the sound. I've always felt a connection to that early Chicago and Detroit stuff, these weird machines that have this character. Like the Roland TR-707 drum machine has the weakest, weirdest kick, but it has a sound and a feeling, and you can feel that machine has a personality and I like that.

Generally I'm buying older stuff, because it's like “that's the drum machine that was used on that record,” or like the Sequential Circuits DrumTraks, Prince used that on a record and so I want it to then use it in a different way. There's only been a few bits of new gear I've bought and it’s just handy to have those in the studio.

With speakers, I always buy new, and the HEDD TYPE 20 MK2 have been my staple in the studio for the last year and a half to two years.

HEDD: How would you describe your approach to mixing your music?

L-VIS: I feel that as a dance music producer, the mix is part of your process, and it’s part of your sound. I've always mixed my own stuff but there's been a few times when I've tried to get other people to do it, and it just doesn't work for me.

With my production in general, I try and make the whole song within one session so I mix and go. It's all happening at the same time because I have to finish in that session. I find it hard to go back to demos, I'll go back and tweak, but I need to do the whole structure, and I just do it really quickly and I do a mix quickly, and I've got my go-to plugins and techniques down. I like to be able to have the tune ready to go play out, straight away.

Then it's just going back through and refining, turning things off or just making sure that the bass and the kick aren’t clashing. But I think the more I'm working within the space of bass-, garage-, dubstep-type stuff, the more I'm learning about space. The less kicks the better. I've only just got into smaller kicks which leave space for bass. Back in the Night Slugs days it was all heavy Jersey kicks and my bass sounds were more on top, funky, Prince kind of vibes. But now I'm experimenting with bass and sub and finding out how to create tunes where there isn't actually too much mixing that needs to happen.

My first EP in 2008, I mixed it myself, this is back in the DIY time when we didn't have any money. I went to get it mastered and I said to the engineer, “Can we get some more bass in here?” And he was like, “There is no bass in this record!” (laughs) As I went on I felt like, “Oh yeah, I'm getting good at mixing.” I keep on getting better and there's more and more you can learn. I feel like now I've just got to a level I feel really confident and my monitoring setup helps, and the sound of your room - I think that's the most important thing.

HEDD: How much do you change monitoring level whilst you’re working on a track?

L-VIS: When I’m working on a track it’s not loud loud, it’s mid-loud, not ear-bleed level. If you've got a good room and good monitors you don't need to push it too much. It’s mainly the bass, you want to be able to feel it when you're in the studio, and I think the HEDD TYPE 20s are good for that. I normally start my sessions on the TYPE 20 and then I have Yamaha NS10s with a sub as well. I'll flip to the NS10s when I'm starting to go into the mids, but then I'll go back to the TYPE 20s to check it's all in place. If the bass is too much on the TYPE 20s you can hear that. So I'll just tone it down and I'll level it out a bit more.

HEDD: You talked about the importance of speakers and the room and your overall listening environment, so what is your monitoring chain and what was your process of settling in your room and settling in with speakers?

L-VIS: I moved into the room I have now at Ten87 studios in London in August 2024. I had just got the TYPE 20s in and the NS10s were already there. Danny (Trachtenberg, who shares studio with L-VIS) has been a help with setting stuff up and he had an Audient Nero monitor controller.

This is the first room I've had where it sounds how it's supposed to sound. I'm happy, I can create a mix in here and I'll take it into any other room and it sounds how I expect it to sound. My last room was a small box and had the TYPE 20s in there but they were so close to my face the bass was just (makes booming bass noise) so all of my mixes didn't have enough bass. My old room was in the basement underneath a barbers in Dalston and the first time I bought the TYPE 20s I thought, “Yeah I’m gonna buy these speakers and I'm gonna mix my new EP on them,” and I almost killed myself. That room just was not set up for it! I’d bought an SSL Big SiX for all my summing and the HEDD TYPE 20s and I thought it was the worst mistake of my life because nothing sounded right. But no, it was just the room. The room is the most important thing.

HEDD:So when you've finished your track and you've mixed it, all in a day - do you master it as well or send it off to a mastering engineer?

L-VIS: I have my own master chain, there are a few plugins recently that have changed the game for that. I got that SSL Fusion pack with the Violet EQ and Transformer, which just levels it up. There’s the Cradle God Particle plugin as well, it’s a good one for just adding that extra something. I don't know what it does but it does something magic to a track. So my master chain is part of my mix process now, I would just generally leave the limiting off, and then I will send that unlimited version to the mastering engineer. I'll get it sounding as good as possible and club-ready, just without limiting basically. I've been using DJ Tubby, of Newham Generals, to do my masters recently and he just knows how to do underground club-based stuff.

HEDD: When you get those masters back, what is it that you're listening for? Is it the sonics? Is it how it makes you feel? Do you listen on lots of different speakers or do you just go with a trusted pair?

L-VIS: I listen on the TYPE 20s and the NS10s and then just some Sony earpods. I test it in a club if I'm out DJ’ing, but I can generally tell just from feeling it. I'm not one of these people that's sending things back 100 times. Just make me feel good, and make me feel happy. I think I'm getting there with my mixes so the mastering engineer doesn't really have to do as much. We're out of the loudness wars as well thankfully so it's back to dynamics, and I just want my bass to sound nice and round at the bottom and a little crispy at the top, that's it.