Neil Templar: Diggin' the Dirt (PRINT VERSION)

We're in Amsterdam, taking in the sights, culture, and deep breaths past every coffee shop, to catch up with Edinburgh-born Dirt aka Neil Templar and Hwatsong. Neil is known for being a resident DJ for Dogma, and after many years DJing with Hwatsong, another Scottish techno club circuit regular and founder of the seminal Pillbox, the idea of "making layers and layers of techno" as a team came as a natural development. The Dirt project began over five years ago, making several appearances at Pillbox and Dogma, but the project became a long-distance relationship when Ash (Hwatsong) emigrated to Amsterdam and landed a technician job at the Boom Chicago theatre.

Neil then received an important call in 2004: "Ash phoned me up and said 'Do you want to move away from Edinburgh and work somewhere cool and do a great job?' There was only one answer I could respond with, which was 'Fucking yes man, let me at it!'" Like Neil Landstrumm and Dave Tarrida before them, they made the trek to Europe. A more nurturing environment can be found for electronic music abroad: the lockdown is being put on clubs and late-night events in the UK. With limited resources, venues, and support from outside the commercial world, emigrating to make a go of it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Did Dirt ever think about sticking around Edinburgh and trying to continue there? "No," says Neil, "Not because I don't love my hometown, there just didn't seem to be any opportunities that were going to shake me out of the cycle of self-abuse that was quite rife at that time!" Moving from Scotland to the Netherlands, home of Rotterdam hard techno, is a bit like a homecoming for a techno DJ/artist. The clubbing scene itself is closer to the UK scene than people might think, but "with less fighting, hassles and running around," says Neil.

Since moving over DJing has taken a back seat and the focus has switched to the new direction their music has taken, and their jobs as theatre technicians. In the last month they've been working on their new project, The Kill Jockeys, involving Vladimir Berkhemer, a resident musician at Boom Chicago. Neil explained: "It's the next logical step, to get a live musician involved, or even a number of them. Vlad is a classically trained musician – he plays drums, keyboards, guitar, everything! Our recent Halloween gig featured me and Ash on turntables and Vlad with a full drum set. We made tracks for him to play on top of, just minimal beats and basslines, then he'd add in movement with drums; that's the direction we're going in now, trying to work towards making a band, rather than just being DJs. Vlad also plays a lot of blues and jazz, so we were messing around with some quite quick electro beats. Vlad started playing this really funky, sleazy blues on top of it and it sounded amazing." The Kill Jockeys played their first gig to a delighted crowd, but the band is playing it cautiously; "It's great that they enjoyed it but it's not really feedback from people in the industry – it doesn't have much meaning," Templar says modestly.

So you would recommend Amsterdam for people looking to make a new start? "It's an easy place for English speakers to come and make a start – everyone speaks English here, they may not look too happy about it, but they do, whether they pretend they can't or not! It's a good place to come - I've never been happier myself, these have been the best two years of my life."