Finders keepers

>> Breakbeat DJ/producer Boy Lost in Music discovers more to get lost in

MONKEY BUSINESS: Gervase Cooke

by JACK OATMON

Twelve years deep into the world of drum & bass and breakbeats, England’s Gervase Cooke, aka Boy Lost in Music, is working on his second full-length album, Boy Meets Monkey, featuring slyly arranged grooves, organic instrumentation and cockeyed hip hop lyrics and singing by Cooke himself. The Mirror tracked Cooke down in San Francisco.

Mirror: What’s changed in the last 12 years for DJs like yourself?

Gervase Cooke: Well, the sound systems have gotten worse. That much I definitely know. They’re a lot quieter and lower quality.

M: What about people? Are there more people interested in what you’re doing?

GC: A lot more, actually. But I think crowds are a lot more complacent now and the naïveté and novelty have definitely worn off for people. I think that leads to a lack of enthusiasm in some respects.

M: What’s the way to go about inciting a little more enthusiasm?

GC: I just stick to music that I know. I used to party a long time ago in the ’90s but I don’t party so much anymore, so I play stuff that makes me feel the way I was feeling back then. I trust that if it does that to me, it will do that to the crowd. It’s really quite a subtle selection process.

M: Where are you at musically right now?

GC: I’ve really spent a large portion of my life being really narrow-minded about the music that I listen to. I was a drum & bass DJ so I only listened to drum & bass and then breakbeats, and now I’m trying to catch up with a whole past of music. I’m trying to get on top of music. At the minute, I’ve just read a book about the drummer from Pink Floyd. I was really into Pink Floyd as a teenager, but I haven’t listened to a lot of it since.

M: What can people expect from the upcoming album?

GC: A lot more varied than my first one. Less DJ-oriented and more live-influenced and melodic.

With D.A.V.E. the Drummer, Sean Kosa,
DJ Sarcastic, Rhys Taylor, Crizok and
Na at Saphir tonight, Thursday,
April 19, 10 p.m., $10