CityLife

On me Harris son! Calvin returns in his own time

DISCO KING?: Calvin Harris

BY his own admission, he's just a tall, socially inept lad from a small town in Scotland, but Calvin Harris is having an extraordinary year.

"I've just come back from co-presenting Dave Pearce's Dance Anthems for Radio 1," he says. "It doesn't get any better than that."

As if sitting in with one of the country's most influential dance-music DJs wasn't enough of a thrill, Calvin's already moved onto finding his next high - albeit a simple one.

"Now I'm sitting in a well air-conditioned room, eating crisps. Life is good."

While the Dumfries native might be one of pop's most unlikely stars, he's also one of its most in-demand. He's basically been on tour all year and this summer has seen him flit from continent to continent, from one festival to another. Last year wasn't much quieter.

Somehow in the middle of this two-year-long madness, he's managed to release two No 1 singles - Dizzee Rascal collaboration Dance Wiv Me and I'm Not Alone, which hit the top spot in April of this year.

Not even a dodgy egg sandwich eaten before his iTunes Festival appearance in July - and the food poisoning that followed - could slow down his success.

"It has been very busy, but it's a nice kind of busy, plus I'm doing what I've wanted to do ever since I was a tiny little boy," says the 25-year-old, real name Adam Wiles.

"Being busy doing this sort of thing is not like being busy in a supermarket, having a big line of people at your till that you have to get through. It's very enjoyable, and all for the greater good of my life.

"I'm only too happy to be busy, to spend days speaking to journalists or promoting my music if the result is someone listening to my album and enjoying it, or even buying it, God forbid.

"I'm having a great time, although every day it's relentless, but relentless in a totally good way. I'm not exactly toiling away at the coalface."

His new album, Ready For The Weekend, the follow-up to his gold-selling 2007 debut I Created Disco, is out now.

If not for a bit of quick thinking from Calvin, we'd have seen new music from him about a year ago. His record label, Columbia, wanted a second album last summer, but, as he explains, that just wasn't an option.

I Created Disco

"I was still touring I Created Disco and they said I had two months to deliver my next record. How could I do that? I was flying out to Miami to play the day Heathrow's new Terminal 5 opened, so the opportunity to get out it presented itself, and I took it. I made up I'd lost my laptop with all my music on it," he says.

"To be fair, they did lose some of my bags, but I didn't check my laptop in, of course I didn't, any sensible person knows it stays in your hand luggage.

"Anyway, I said that, and it bought me time. It wasn't about deceiving anyone, I don't get pleasure from deception, and I wasn't trying to have a joke at anyone's expense, it was just a last ditch attempt to say, 'It's not going to happen, calm down, it'll be next year'."

What a shrewd move. Delivering an album in such a short space of time, almost completely unprepared, could have resulted in disaster for Calvin. The same record label who were pleading for the music would also have been the ones to drop him when it sold poorly. Welcome to the crazy world of record labels.

Unsecure place

"You just never know in this business, it's a very unsecure place," he says.

"It's good to sometimes take control yourself and say, 'It's not going to happen, and here's why'. Sometimes the reasons aren't good enough for the label to agree with you, so you have to make some up."

When asked about Ready For The Weekend now, though, any guilt he had at the time for lying has been displaced with glowing pride.

"Ah mate, it's the best thing I've ever done in my life," he says, becoming more animated than he has been all afternoon.

"I've never been happier with anything. It just makes me so happy that it's going to be in the shops and someone is going to have the chance to buy it. That fills me with happiness and unbridled joy," he continues, realising the phrase 'unbridled joy' comes across as disingenuous.

"Honestly, I'm being serious, it totally does. I think Ready For The Weekend is better than my first album in every way. The songs are better, the sounds are better, it's more interesting to listen to and there's more of it.

"I Created Disco was about compromise. Because I was working with a limited amount of sample space, I had to cut corners. If I wanted to put a long crash cymbal in a song, it might mean that I had to sacrifice the second verse and just repeat the first because I'd run out of space on my computer and things like that.

Brain

"I don't have to worry about things like that now. This time around, I was afforded the possibility to make exactly what was in my brain and exactly the record I liked."

His newfound freedom is partly down to his growing stature and ability as a solo artist. It's also due to his status as an in-demand producer and remixer of other artists' music.

Among the singers he's worked with are ex-Moloko frontwoman Roisin Murphy and antipodean pop pixie Kylie.

Being "the most socially awkward person I know", however, the collaboration with Kylie wasn't quite what Calvin expected. So just how does one go about addressing the pocket-sized singer?

"I just talked to her like I'd talk to anybody else - I tried not to offend her, but I tended to keep myself to myself. There's almost always another writer in the room with me. During a lot of the sessions I did with Kylie, and with Roisin too, I said very, very little and just nodded when I thought it was a good time to nod, or went to the toilet when I needed to and that was it.

"Although I had lots of ideas, I found it hard to articulate them and didn't like to ask if she'd mind trying them out. That was one of my first writing sessions, so it wasn't great. I didn't really know what to do. What do you do when you're in a room with Kylie? She says 'Shall I do this?' and I'd panic and say 'I don't know, ask him', pointing to the other writer.

"I ramble as well," he says, well aware he's now rambling about this subject too. "I remember on occasion seeing Kylie Minogue's eyes glaze over when I was talking to her. And that image fills me with regret."

Calvin Harris plays Academy 1 on Saturday, October 24. £14. Call 0871 2200 260. Ready For The Weekend is out now.