Hexstatic - Arigato Mr Roboto

Linking up in 1997 as members of Ninja Tune's multimedia collective, Hex, Robin Brunson and Stuart Warren Hill were among the architects of that label's legendary Zen TV tours, which raised the stakes considerably in terms of what could be achieved with a fusion of turntablism and multimedia visuals. Their new LP, When Robots Go Bad, features collaborations with several vocalists, including local heroes Profisee and Ema J from Great Ezcape. Robin Brunson took time away from playing with his collection of plastic Japanese robots to give us the lowdown on Hexstatic's new LP, and his time on one of the UK's most influential labels.

How has Ninja Tune changed since you got involved?

"Ninja Tune has definitely grown – I think that the way it started was that there were a group of artists whose work had a lot in common in terms of cut-and paste production. I think a lot of the artists that are signed to Ninja Tune now reflect that cut-and-paste idea – you've got The Cinematic Orchestra who are very jazz influenced, Big Dada has the hip-hop artists... but I think the artists are much more artists in their own right now – for instance the Cinematics play with a big band, as does Bonobo."

You sound like you had fun making When Robots Go Bad.

"It was something we'd been wanting to do for a long time. It was nice to do some songs, even though they are still dance tracks, it was nice to be writing great melodies and structures, and also having the opportunity to work with some vocalists. So yeah, we did have a lot of fun. We weren't too concerned about what hardcore Ninja fans were going to think about it. Also, we worked intensively on the audio-visual side of things for the last few albums, which can be quite restrictive in some ways."

How did you hook up with Profisee & Ema J?

"We did a gig in Edinburgh for the Science Festival at the Bongo Club. There was a thing on during the day for kids of all ages, and we were demonstrating some of the science behind electronic music and technology. Profisee was MCing and helping out, and there was a gig that evening where he performed with us. I really liked his style. He did a track called The Way which really caught my attention. I played it on a Solid Steel Radio show, and when it came time to do the new album we asked him to come down. We just did an album launch with Profisee and Ema J and the rest of the vocalists at Cargo, then in Paris the night after. We're also going to be doing the Big Chill Festival, and in a few months we'll be playing a big show in Mexico for the UNESCO Forum."

The Zen TV Tours really create the feeling of a big, spectacular show. Do you think the fusion of visuals and DJing is partially responsible for Ninja Tune's longevity?

"I think that those Ninja tours work really well, and we have been doing them for so long now. I mean, I remember when Stuart and I were basically just DJing at Stealth; it would always be a really big selection of Ninja artists – sometimes four on the decks at the same time. Strictly Kev, Ollie from the Herbaliser, Patrick or whatever. We'd be doing the visuals as well, and I think that was just something that carried on. That was how we got in with Ninja Tune – coming in and collaborating with Coldcut and working on those original audiovisual shows. We've been a part of that from the beginning. But we had always thought that, you know? It can be quite boring watching a couple of guys standing on stage twiddling knobs, so we always thought how can we make this bigger, so it will translate to larger venues and festivals? Using projections seemed like an obvious idea - I mean at festivals, they'd have projections, but it would just be like, the logo. So we thought, why not take the opportunity to use those things properly?"

So this album was inspired by robots?

"We've always been inspired by robots – we both have quite large collections of toy robots. Plastic, Japanese robots! We love all the new Sony technological stuff from Japan, but we have more of a connection with the old films like Forbidden Planet. And my nickname's actually Robot as well!"