Love Tattoo - Still Bringing Sexy

As far as icons go for Australian dance music, Stephen Allkins aka Love Tattoo is definitely the most venerated. 3D’s Carlisle discovered that the heavily inked one has a new album on the way.

Stephen Allkins is the Mother Superior of electronic music in Australia. He was splintering the jams when I was putting batteries into my first Walkman. As a DJ, he has played everywhere, and his productions are memorable – which is rare in a genre as jaded as house. Following up on singles like Drop Some Drums and The Bass Has Got Me Moving from a few years back, he dropped an LP out on Fly Music last year, Bodywork.

Working on a new album now, Stephen says he is getting the ball rolling by starting work on the first track. “You know, you start a new album with the first song. This one is about 104bpm and it’s early eighties funk, with a nice girl vocal and we’re going to do a house version, like a really gospel house version, and then just keep moving from there.

“I’m going even slower with this than I was with Bodywork. But this time I’ll be doing my own mixes, which I didn’t do before, because I do have different concepts and when I’ve left it to a whole lot of other people it doesn’t come out the way I do it and so I don’t expect that from other people; but if I have that in my head then I should just get it out.”

Working on a mobile ProTools studio, Stephen says home is where the heart is, not the gear. “The only reason you should need to go into a studio is if you just want some sort of special tidy-up. At the moment we haven’t needed a studio and my apartment is really good acoustically, particularly because I have so many records, so the singer can do it in my living room and it’s quiet and I’ve got a good mic so it’s all very easy.”

Still signed to Fly music, the new album could be ready in six months or a year, says Mr Tattoo. “It just depends on whether I do 10 or 11 straight tracks, that would be more like six months, but if I do remixes and versions and varying things it is going to take longer because you’re redoing tracks from scratch, so you’re doing 20 or 30 tracks.”

Playing a score of gigs this summer, Stephen has a pretty good mix in his record bag, including a few surprises and a few of his own productions. “I’ve always been eclectic and have never stuck to just one style. I’m still playing good Latin, which is hard to find and there might only be five of them a year, but I just like anything that I hear that sounds good. On the Big Day Out tour I played a couple of breaks tracks even though I don’t really play breaks anymore, but if you hear a great bass line then what are you going to do? You just play it!

“Sexy can be uptempo or downtempo, as long as it moves your hips. Without the girls, the boys won’t dance, unless they are gay. You need the girls shaking their little tushies, then the boys will follow. They’ll do anything the girls say, anything for a root. You just give in to it and let the girls have their fun and you’ll get exactly what you need.”

WHO: Love Tattoo
WHAT: Playground Weekender
WHEN: Friday 9 - Sunday 11 March
MORE: www.playgroundweekender.com.au