Ed Upton has kept impressively busy in the quarter century or so since he started putting out records. He’s averaged an album and multiple EPs a year just with the DMX Krew alias, and that’s before getting to releases as 101 Force, Asylum Seekers, Bass Potato, Computor Rockers and a dozen other aliases besides. Almost all his work has had a tendency towards retrofuturism, looking back to early house, 1980s funk and especially electro for inspiration in both sound and iconography. One thread in particular is a facility with electropop, which he has always delivered straightfaced and entirely devoid of irony – in contrast to much other 80s revivalism – and rather confusing the electronica fans of the late 90s who, noting his association with the Rephlex label, expected a degree of mischief. But the production and songcraft on these records, notably 1998’s Nu Romantix and 1999’s We Are DMX, have proven enduringly popular. On the occasion of an expanded reissue of We Are DMX released via Helsinki/London based label Cold Blow, this interview took place by phone, with Ed in his Gloucestershire garden watering strawberries (“settling nicely into middle class middle aged pursuits”) and spotting a slow worm pass by as we speak.

Joe Muggs: How are you feeling about this record? Did the reissue make you hear it differently? Had you listened to it much in the interim?

Ed DMX: Oh I don't listen to them generally. I suppose it's nice to discover that there's a lot of love for it – I never felt like it was popular, or that we sold a lot or anything. I always say to younger people who ask me for advice about making music, just make what you really like. You might never be flavour of the month but if you really love it, someone else will really love it. So I was really just doing my own funny little pretending to be an 80s popstar thing, and it turns out it made an impression on people. People still write to me about this album going "oh I love this song", "that inspired me", whatever. So it's nice to know people remember it and care about it, and listening to it, it's not as bad as I thought it would be… I like to think that in the intervening 25 years or whatever I've improved a lot technically as a producer or engineer, and to an extent I have, but mostly it sounds pretty good! Sort of wish I'd had Auto-Tune then but never mind, it is what it is. It's a document of who I was when I was that age, which is nice to hear.

Maybe Auto-Tune would have spoiled it! Some of the sounds you took influence from were quite naive in themselves, often done by untrained musicians and singers.

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. That's definitely part of it.

What is or was the fascination with that very early 80s electropop era for you?

Well as a whole the album is broader than that, there's funk and electro and techno and Aphex Twin in there too. But I was born in 1972, so I became aware of pop music around 1980 and it made a massive impression on me. And of course then, right up to when I started putting music out, was pre internet: you only knew the music that you knew, that someone's big brother showed you, or that someone's dad had in their record collection or something. It's not like now where you can hear of something and just know everything. Young people now know SO much about music compared to what we knew. But yeah the interest really kicked off when I made friends with all the Rephlex lot, especially Grant who used to run Rephlex was playing me all this music. By myself I'd got into old school electro, about 1994 or something, then I started buying all the early hiphop and Chicago and New York house. Then Grant started playing me other old electronic stuff; obviously I knew the hits like Human League and Visage, but then I'd be hearing lesser known or B sides by Ultravox and John Foxx. Discovering Yellow Magic Orchestra was a huge influence at that time too. There was that guy K-Rock on Rephlex too, he had stuff by Shock, "RERB" and "Dream Games": it's the same guys as Tik & Tok, Rusty Egan and Richard James Burgess who produced Colonel Abrams "Trapped" and millions of other great records, he's a really interesting guy to check out. So Kelly, K-Rock, he played me these really cool, cold electronic new wave records... So ultimately, it's a depiction of my journey of buying records at the Record & Tape Exchange – you didn't have YouTube and Discogs to just find everything, so you have your own personal trip through it by buying records, and that's what I got into. The first song on the album is pretty much a direct rip-off of a Visage song…

K-Rock is a name that doesn't get mentioned much when people talk about Rephlex, braindance type stuff – his tracks were pretty ahead of their time in some ways.

Mmm… he's an interesting guy. He was an amazing dancer, and he was a head for music, he knew a lot of stuff – he knew all the northern soul that we didn't know anything about, all kinds of stuff. He didn't know anything about how to make music, but then I did a couple of records with him on my label, basically with him going "Can you sample this... now make it go du-du-du-du-du" and so on, then we chipped in to get him some gear, and he made his album by himself. I think it stands up quite well, at the time I thought it was a bit amateurish, but actually that's part of its charm looking back – it doesn't sound like anyone else. He's still around, we kind of fell out a bit, I don't think he's made any music for a long time but he does this radio station Thames FM with the old Thames Television logo of the London skyline – I was glad to find out he's still OK and doing alright.

You say the album is direct tribute to your 80s influences. Was there a reason that you play it quite straight in that regard? After all a lot of the Rephlex axis were really mangling the things they sampled or were influenced by...

Well copying's part of learning. When you first learn to do something you copy someone who's better than you, then you find your own way. In a way I'm lucky I wasn't that good at copying so everything came out a bit twisted and with a bit of me in it; as I've got older I've nurtured that side to make it more personal. So I'd definitely try and make things sound like what I already liked, but they'd always come out different, it wasn't that faithful! Everyone copies a bit, you'd be strange not to: if you grow up in a culture, then you're gonna get influenced by whatever you hear. I was having a little fantasy of being an 80s pop star, and also – and I've said this a lot before – I was aware I was never going to compete with Robert Hood and Jeff Mills doing techno, much as I love doing it. I still make loads of techno, I just don't put much out because it's been done so much better already. But, I dunno, I dispute that I copy directly you know…

I didn't mean imitating, more just remaining faithful to the techniques, not being glitchy or whatever…

I wasn't as futuristic as other people on Rephlex for sure. But at the time, the gear I had was the gear 80s people would've had. You couldn't do a whole record in a computer yet, I was recording on multitrack tape, using old analogue gear… I guess Pro Tools was available if you were rich, but it wasn't the sort of thing you'd have in your bedroom! But I dunno, really it's just, I do what I like, and that's what I liked that year. I was listening to loads of YMO and Visage and Human League and Kraftwerk and Aphex Twin so that's what you hear. I was getting into Prince at that point – and Devo, hence the title, it's a little "We are Devo" tribute...

Obviously the songwriting sets it apart from electronica of the time you were working too, there's a nice film noir, sleazy kind of vibe; is there any personal element to the songs, or was it again about trying to 'do' 80s pop in a formal sense?

I'm not really aware of that vibe, it's interesting that you say it. I've always loved music and never cared about lyrics. I loved house music and hated The Smiths at school, I've never listened to the words of songs, I like Kraftwerk singing in French or German and that's fine for me. Even when I was really into hiphop it was the sound of the person's voice I liked, what they were saying was almost always nonsense. Even Chuck D, he's going "soap on a rope" or whatever, you think it's political then you listen and go "Wait a minute, what the fuck's he actually going on about?" For me I just tried to write words that rhymed and sounded cool, I could really tell you what any of the songs are about. "20 Minute Affair" is kind of obvious, that one's inspired by "The Rain" by Oran 'Juice' Jones, which is about a guy who discovers he's been cheated on. But really it's just about the sound for me, because I want a voice in there, not because I want to say anything. If it does, it's subconscious. I guess "The Glass Room" is kind of a miserable, almost suicidal feeling – like listening to Depeche Mode! I didn't want to just write "Baby baby I love you", generally when I've got a song that needs words, I'll have it playing, pen and paper, get something down, that's it. Whatever comes, if it rhymes, that's it – try and sing in tune.

Conscious or otherwise, that 80s moodiness you channeled in it – which evokes Thatcherism, threatening technology, looming Cold War, everything that rave was a reaction against – seems to be eternally current. I wonder if people still like it because those moods apply to the current era?

Maybe it is, yeah. I dunno man! I'm aware this is The Wire, I'd love to have a brainy answer for you but honestly? I love pop music, I love synthesizers and dance music, and I just try and make it sound cool and be fun to listen to. It's definitely not any heartrending emotions I have to get out to the world, certainly as far as that album is concerned.

That record came out just as electroclash was kicking off. Was there anyone else you felt kinship with at the time?

No. I really felt like I wasn't polished or modern enough to be a real pop artist, but all the people who were into Rephlex and Warp and that side of things looked down on me for being too frivolous, I definitely felt quite on my own musically. The whole electroclash thing, I had that feeling which I'm sure you understand where if you've grown up listening to electro like Afrika Bambaataa and Cybotron, then you see four guys with skinny ties playing guitars and they're calling it electro, where it's "How are they calling this electro? This is just for people who were into indie last year, now they're into this, and they'll be into something else next year…" I got a couple of gigs out of it, but I wasn't in that at all. It seemed like the kids who were into The Smiths at school when I was into Tyree, I'd put on Derrick May in the school common room and they'd be "What's this shit?" and put their rock music back on. I guess I've got an adversarial nature, or I like to feel like the underdog even if I'm not – I like to put myself against whatever's happening at the time.

Did this album set the pace for what you've done up to now? You've broadly stuck with electro and electropop...

I don't know, I mean I don't think there's any electro in this album. Again, I just do what I like. I've got an album coming out this year which is all songs, and that's the first time I've done that for years. Over the past ten, 15 years I've been doing very few vocals and trying to do deeper stuff, be more considered…

Was that a reaction to being called frivolous, do you think?

Well, the first thing I did after a load of pop albums in a row was The Collapse Of The Wave Function [on Rephlex] which was two 45s that were basically dancehall instrumentals. We deliberately didn't put my name on it, because I thought anyone who saw my name would be disappointed, and anyone who might actually like it wouldn't even listen in the first place because they'd see my name. I've always liked doing a load of different things. In a way I really admire people who choose a style of music, focus in on it and have a tunnel vision, and that's certainly the way to have a career because people are mentally lazy, they want to look at you and go "oh yeah, him, he's the guy that does that." Like, Tiga did "Sunglasses At Night" and he worked that for like four years, he didn't put out any other records, he went around promoting it and it went top ten. If you can have that sort of focus then awesome, but I'm just like a butterfly flittering around, "Right I've done a pop song, now I'm going to do some banging techno, and now I want to do something nobody's done, now I'm gonna mix ragga with the Sisters Of Mercy..." or whatever it is. It's my hobby, this is what I love doing with my life, so I just keep it interesting for me, if anyone wants to come along then brilliant.

Do you think looking back to the old stuff for the reissues has had an influence on you going back to songs?

I dunno. I like pop music. I'm not a very confident singer, so it's hard for me to do vocals, it's a lot of work, I can't just sing it and sound great. I always want to do it but put it off and put it off, but finally I thought "I should finish some of these" and then someone wanted to put them out. I think I'm a better songwriter now, they're more interesting musically, better produced and this and that. I don't know if anyone will agree. But I flit around doing different things all the time, and if labels ask me for a release I'll send them a load of different stuff to choose from and their choice defines it. This time Permanent Vacation chose songs, so we're going to do a songs record. Really I'm interested in most kinds of stuff, so I do it all, then let the labels do A&R in the old fashioned sense and make something that fits together. Well, saying that, that label did the reissue of Nu Romantix, which was the album before We Are DMX so I knew they were into songy ones, so I guess when I had some new songs I sent them to them. They're on that kind of, dare I say, Balearic sort of tip: stuff you could play to dance to but it's more songy. We'll see if anyone likes it...

We Are DMX is released by Cold Blow. It is reviewed in The Wire 449, available now in print or online via a digital subscription.