Australian DJ Kaz James has had a stellar year. In between travelling the world and playing shows at some of the biggest party destinations in the world, he released a track with David Guetta and had his new single “Show me Love” spend three weeks at the top of the Aria Club Charts. While touring in Australia, Kaz sat down with us for a chat.
Hi Kaz, thanks for chatting to us. Is it good to be back on home soil?
Yes, definitely. I’m quite privileged to be able to have lived overseas for ten years now, and come home and do as many shows as do and still have fans and people turning up.
You’ve been travelling a lot lately, what have been some of the highlights of the last few months?
I don’t know really, they are all amazing. I guess for me Ibiza was really special this year. I did 25 shows and it still has an amazing energy about it. I also had my own residency in Mykonos this year. We ended up doing one of the biggest nights the club ever had in history. That was definitely a highlight: especially as I was quite nervous to put on my own night in Mykonos. We booked a line up and we had different DJs from NERVO to Steve Aoki to Sneaky Sound System, just basically my friends on the line up which was really cool.
Your most recent single “Show Me All Your Love” spent three weeks on the top of the Aria Club Charts. Did you expect it to be that successful?
Definitely not. I didn’t really know how it worked so when my label rang me up and said “you’re number one,” I was like “Really?” I’m very happy that everyone supported the single.
Do you think 2014 will have been your most successful year professionally, so far?
I don’t know, it depends what you consider professionally successful. Is it the year I sold the most records? No, when I did Body Rockers we sold millions of records. This year I put a record out with David Guetta, “Show me Love” went number one, I did a remix that went number one in the UK. It has been a very good year, but it depends on how you measure it.
You just mentioned David Guetta, and you too made a song together earlier this year, and you performed on stage with him at Isle of Dreams. How did it all come about? How was performing on stage with him?
I’ve known David for a long time. He asked me to open up his world tour last year and during doing all the shows with him, I think maybe it was a flight back from Germany on David’s private jet, as you do, we were going through music and I played him some things I had been doing like the guitar riff that is in the track and a vocal idea, and he liked it. He asked if he could work on it so he did the drop and we just kept going back and forth until we finished it. He’s an amazing guy. He works really hard, is really talented and most of all is just a great guy. It has been a really good experience working with him. I’m very lucky to have him on my side.
Do you think there could be another collaboration in the future?
Yeah, we’ve been talking about it. He is knee-deep finishing his album. I think definitely, when we get a second together we’ll try and do something.
Back to your life in London, I was reading that you actually own four cafes there. How did that all happen?
Basically I needed a new studio space in London and my mate had this building in Shoreditch and he wanted to get rid of it. The rent was super cheap because it was this old school lease. So I asked him to give me the second floor so I could put my studio there. Then he asked what I wanted to do with the ground floor and I said, “I don’t know, just put a coffee shop there or something.” Then we began to rent the studio out commercially so we would have people all sorts of musicians hanging out downstairs, so it got quite well known quite quickly.
Do you ever pull the early morning shifts and start at 5:30am?
No, no, I’m more of a creative director and my business partner David runs all the day-to-day stuff. I’m quite lucky to have him there so I can focus on my music.
And you get to take advantage of all the free coffee as well.
Yep, which is kind of dangerous when you are sitting in the studio all day, drinking coffee. And then at night the bar does cocktails. So you get high on the coffee and drunk on the cocktails.
What’s up next for you?
I’m in London for a week, then I fly to New York for Halloween, then Day of the Dead in LA, then back to Europe for some more shows, then back to Oz for Stereosonic. Lots of travel coming up.
Kaz James’s single “Show Me All Your Love” is out now. He will be performing at Stereosonic later this year. Tickets on sale now.
