20 Questions With DJ Harvey: ‘Once My Rent’s Paid & I Can Eat Sushi, I Stop Working’

DJ Harvey has long been considered one of the best to ever do it, so when he claims the dance scene has never been better, one’s ear perks up.

That said, he’d also like you to know that he doesn’t really go to clubs — except when he’s playing them.

At 65, the English selector born Harvey Bassett has been elevating dancefloors for decades, and is as dexterous with disco as he is with house as he is with funk and techno and so on, equally at home at Berghain as he is at Coachella.

Often seen behind the decks shirtless and chain smoking, sunglasses on with a smile, there’s serious realness, or — in industry parlance — absolute authenticity to Harvey and his work, a track record he’s established while playing many of the world’s coolest parties for the last 40 years, all while remaining, as he puts it, not a paycheck-obsessed “zero collector.” Related 20 Questions With Fatboy Slim: What He’s Learned From David Byrne, a Lost Night Out With Cher & 25 Years of ‘You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby’ Ministry of Sound’s 35th Anniversary Lineup to Feature Kerri Chandler, Moodymann & More NCT 127 Bringing 'NCT 127 5th TOUR 'NEO CITY : SEOUL – THE REDLINE' in CINEMAS' to Screens Around the World This Saturday (Aug.

22), DJ Harvey plays his only U.K. show of the year, a one-night-only revival of Ministry of Sound’s early ’90s event Rulin, a party where he made his name.

He’ll play open to close in the club’s revered space The Box (“It might be slightly nostalgic,” he says, “but it’s not going to be a ’90s house tribute night”), with the lineup also including DJ Paulette, Don Letts, Heidi Lawden, Lovefingers and more.

Performances at New York’s Knockdown Center, Ocean Way Festival in Santa Monica, the new Goldenvoice SoCal dance fest Head Trip and Miami’s III Points fill out the rest of his fall schedule.

When we reach DJ Harvey, he’s at home on the Westside of Los Angeles, chatty, friendly, funny, leaving town soon to go play in Ibiza during the solar eclipse, which he advises “should be pretty damn epic, for people that enjoy such things.” Here, he talks about the English stiff upper lip and the advice from his mom that’s long guided his life.

1.

Where are you in the world right now, and what’s the setting like? I’m in sunny Southern California, laying on my bed with an oversized fan blowing cool air upon me as I look out of the window at the monstrosity of a Marriott hotel that was built right in the way of my view of the Pacific Ocean.

It actually looks like a prison toilet.

But let’s concentrate on the sunny Southern California bit, because it’s absolutely wonderfully gorgeous — and I could live anywhere in the world, and I choose to live here because it’s the best place in the whole world.