House music. Good old fashioned house music. With a groovy bassline, some catchy hooks and maybe a vocal knocking about. Fads and trends come and go, but classic house music prevails through it all. Two chaps who are pretty damn hot on this side of things are the Italian-born, Belgian-based duo of Vito Lucente and Nicolas Scaravalli - commonly known to y'all as Junior Jack & Kid Creme. Between them they count huge, anthemic cuts of house music history like 'Thrill Me', 'Stupid Disco', 'My Feeling', 'The Game', 'E Samba', 'Hypnotising', and that massive remix of Shakedown's 'At Night', with careers spanning over a decade in the game.

In the first of our 2 part interview with 2 of the biggest producer/DJs in the house music scene - Junior Jack & Kid Creme - we get Jack on the blower over in Australia to talk about their NYE headline set at PUSH @ KOKO in London, back pains in Venezuela, getting flooded, and then some....

Most of us first heard of you with your massive anthem on Defected, ‘My Feeling’ back in 2000.....how long had you been “in the game” before this point?

A few years...maybe 4 or 5 years before?

And was that track your first major success?

Yes because you know there was a long story behind it....I had an accident, I went back to the studio and I wanted to do something....it was just some kind of release and relief for me.

What music was big for you when you were growing up? Who influenced you the most?

Actually I grew up, strangely, with rock, new wave, and dark punk music, ‘cos my brother who is 7 years older than me, he was listening to that kind of music, so it was always that kind of music around home.

And from there to dance music?

Just you know naturally when I started programming, I was enjoying more electronic music strangely more than rock...maybe because I was alone and with rock you need to have a band or other musicians around you, and I just had the bug of house music the first time I went to New York...maybe 18 years old. I went there, I bought a lot of records and it just blew me away. I decided “that’s the music I like, that’s what I want to do.”

What are your feelings currently on the whole funky house sound?

In general at the moment, the wave is more electro you know? Which is not my big pleasure ha ha! But I think that now we are in the moment where everything is possible – there is not one genre in particular. Of course, everybody likes more electro, the young generation...a lot of DJs play electro...but if you do a very Latin track or a very nice funky track, it can work. So there is no rules really. I’m not very in that mentality that I have to do electro to make the people enjoy themselves...I don’t care really.

And which producers at the moment are exciting you?

That’s the sad point because nobody at the moment for me ha ha! Everybody knows the people I was enjoying before, they went for a very commercial sound, or some others went for very dark electro which is not my cup of tea. Maybe it’s just a matter of time... I don’t know!

The minimal sound has been huge over the past couple of years. Have you been influenced by it in any way?

Some...like all kind of music, there is always nice records in all the genres of music...also in minimal and electro I like some stuff, but not the whole movement. I mean listening in a club to minimal for 3 hours is just boring for me, but like all music, listening to the same style for a whole set is boring. Listening to vocal house for a whole set is also too much. So you know, just pick and choose the best in all the genres to make a good set.

Your home country Italy seems to have returned to the forefront of electronic music over the last few years. Would you agree with this? Was it ever away from the forefront?

You teach me something ‘cos I don’t know any Italian producers that I really love. Probably, but maybe it’s too underground at the moment, or the ones we know are too commercial for me.

Aside from Italy, which country do you think has the most beautiful women?

Without doubt, Venezuela. I didn’t play, we didn’t do South America yet but we will play there soon. I went on holiday and yes man, you cannot walk in the street...you get back pain ‘cos you just turn your head every three seconds!

What have you got planned so far for 2008?

At the moment I’m in Australia like you know, after that on the 24th I’m back to Italy to celebrate the Christmas, 26th we play Switzerland, 31st London for PUSH like you know...after I think we will be a little bit at home, working in the studio to finish the material. Enough airplane and hotel and room service!

You are playing for PUSH at their huge NYE party at KOKO in London, one of the country’s most famous venues. Do you like playing in London?

Of course, like always! I love to play in England

Where do you go in London if you have any free time?

I stay in the hotel room. I don’t go nowhere. Just ‘cos when we arrive in London or any city in Europe, we arrive always the same day we’re gonna play, so we arrive in the middle of the afternoon, and just have time to go to the hotel. And most of the time we didn’t sleep the night before ‘cos we were in the studio, so we are always fucked up....we go to the hotel, have a shower, room service, play, sleep, go back...so we don’t see that much!

Check out full details of PUSH NYE here...