We look forward to welcoming DJ Sir Hubert Carpet (aka Paul Bickmore from The Art House) to Turner Sims this month as part of A Southampton Summer Night! We catch up with Sir Hubert ahead of his appearance with us on Friday 14 July…
LJ: How did you come up with the name, Sir Hubert Carpet?
SIR HUBERT: I learnt how to sound engineer in a friend’s music studio/shop in Chichester, where I grew up. While there, I was playing around with using sampling in live music when this was still quite a novel thing and Stuart invited me to join his band Holy Moses, formed from a variety of talented musicians (and me!) for only a month or so a year. In one rehearsal we came up an entire set of new songs all based around a variety of looped vocal samples I had laid out across a MIDI piano keyboard. One of those samples was from the The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band‘s “The Trouser Press” which mentions, on fade-out, “The other part of Old Bill was played by Sir Hubert Carpet who found a pair of swimming trunks up his head and was surprised to throw himself away from a lorry, part of a parcel…” The band decided I needed a stage name, and Sir Hubert Carpet seemed to appeal to them and so it stuck 🙂
LJ: How long have you been DJ’ing for?
SIR HUBERT: So, Holy Moses was happening around in the mid to late 1990s, and before we came on I would be DJ’ing (Beastie Boys, Propeller Heads etc.) so 30 years or so, on and off!
You’ve, having asked these questions, prompted me to go and see if I could find any of my old compositions on the web, and there they still are!
These were done on an Amiga ST, and a very early version of Fruity Loops
LJ: What kind of music can we expect to hear from your set with us?
SIR HUBERT: Expect everything from Jiggy, Sven Vath, Leftfield, Orbital, with even a bit of the Medieval Babes thrown in. There are South American grooves, Celtic roots, Indian and native American, dub, jungle.. pretty much anything I could fit in in 50 minutes!
LJ: As well as performing with us, you also guest curated our Southampton Summer Night as one of the founding directors of The Art House CIC! How has this experience been for you, and how did you choose which acts to feature in the event?
SIR HUBERT: We were really very chuffed to have been asked and entrusted with this project. I’ve always loved the Turner Sims and Jani and I even put a show on here pre-Art House while still working at the university, with an afternoon of world percussion; drummers from Ghana and taiko drummers (from Woking I think!)
Choosing a handful of acts from a 14-year back catalogue wasn’t easy because they’re all brilliant. I wanted music that would cover a swathe of genres, while each pushing at the musical boundaries. Spitdust have certainly been with us the longest. I knew Ros the singer from my university days. I also remember a bunch of us turning up to her singing exam at the Turner Sims.. probably quite off-putting (sorry Ros). The sound coming from her is astonishing.. as you will find out.
LJ: What are you most looking forward to about A Southampton Summer Night?
SIR HUBERT: Just watching people’s faces as they hear the music coming at them from brilliantly creative people that deserve to be heard.
Book your ticket to hear DJ Sir Hubert Carpet’s set live and experience a handful of acts from the last 14 years on Friday 14 July here
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