We`d been trying to track down legendary DJ / Remixer / Producer Bruce Forest for a while. Primarily to get his blessing to include him in our “Producers Series”, but also to ask him about his experiences at NYC institution Better Days and later working with Boy George in London in the grip of that “Second Summer Of Love”. We`ve finally managed to make contact, but for now the past will have to wait as tomorrow night Bruce reactivates Better Days after a thirty year hiatus as “Better Days 2.0”. We asked him a few obvious questions and got some really nice answers.

Where / when will the parties be held?

Well, the first one is at Flash Factory on April 2. It’s an amazing space, and very similar to what Better Days was like, at least in size. It has that same no-chrome, laid back feel, though Flash Factory is stunningly decorated, and Better Days was a tad grittier. We’ll look for spaces that are of similar size, but must have exceptional sound. I’m under no misconception that the magic of Better Days was simply due to my programming: we built a sound system there, a hybrid Alex Rosner/Richard Long system that was absolutely stunning. Just like Zookie (Larry Levan’s name for the Garage sound system) was a major factor in the appeal of the Garage, our sound was our secret weapon. It’s a lot easier to fuck with people’s heads if you do it with 110dba of crystal clear sound with four Bertha subwoofers on a 75 foot circular dance floor. So, people have come to expect Better Days to sound good, and we’re going to make sure it always does.

Will it be just yourself DJing?

Nope. Dave Morales will play the first night with me, along with a great young deep house DJ named Rich Chwastiak. We’ve always tried to do more than just play records, and Rich uses a drumKAT midi controller to play live percussion over tracks, so fits in well with our philosophy of creating a tapestry of music throughout a night. We’ll bring back all the old Better Days DJs like Kenny Carpenter, Robert Clivilles, Andre Collins, John Hall and JonJon Hernandez to do nights with me, perhaps guests like Francois Kevorkian, Shep Pettibone, and Steve Thompson and we’ll also bring in younger guys like Rich that have the same passion for creativity that all the Better Days DJs have in common. My daughter, Bliss Forest is actually a DJ as well. She used to play that hideous EDC hippie EDM. But through a slow process I have brought her to the DarkSide™ and she’s now seriously into techno. It’s an unusual feeling to have your child stand next to you in a full club as you show her how a crossover works and how the crowd goes “AHHH!” when you play with it. Dad is not supposed to be cool.

I’ve tried to be a mentor throughout both my music and tech careers, and if we can take the experience and skills of veterans like Kenny and Andre and add that to the passion of young, creative selectors, maybe we can move the needle a bit away from arm pumping between endless, droning drops and more towards the real love of music creativity that people felt at the Garage, the Saint the Loft and Better Days.

Will Better Days be a party and a label?

Maybe. I spent the past twenty years in the tech world, doing some very large, albeit fascinating, projects for companies that required detailed business plans, complex team organization/reporting, design approvals on minutiae, endless quality assurance and a very structured way of getting from Point A to Point B. While I consider Better Days a startup, we are innovators first and foremost, and if we were to release content, we would not simply put tracks on Beatport, but would probably be more like an app with a music theme, such as Fantom. I was an innovative DJ and producer because I’m a sadistic geek at heart – using technology and music to mess with people’s minds, make them think, make them remember. Will we be a label? Well, we’ll issue content, that’s for sure. How it’s labeled will be up to the market I guess.

If it will be a label, what artists are signed up, would you like to sign?

Bryce Harper to the Yankees for $400 million, 13 years. Oh shit, sorry baseball on the brain. That’s a real TBD. No idea really as yet.

Why now for a relaunch?

Why not? People have been after me to do a “Better Days reunion” for years but the thought of a night of the same fifty records played at every 80s classic night sounded tiresome at best. There are plenty of 70s/80s/90s classic nights at great parties around New York. But over the past six years I’ve really gotten into deep house, techno, ambient, dubstep and picked up Traktor pretty fast. I already had experience with Ableton, Logic, ProTools and Reason so learning rather simple software like Traktor was easy, and over the years, I started to really enjoy it. I did a few very private gigs, then Francois asked me to do Deep Space in January. In preparing for it, I saw that we could now incorporate MUCH more studio tech into live sets, and do things digitally that were impossible back in the day. Eventually I saw a space for a club/party that didn’t just play classics frozen in time, but to simulate what would have happened if Better Days had been open the past 30 years. What amazing stuff would we have been doing with current music, stems and technology?

I did Deep Space and realized what was needed was not a reunion, but “Better Days 2.0”, so to speak. So,we’re going to try it. Kevin and Paul (Raffaele, Most Excellent Unlimited) have done an incredible job both obtaining the PERFECT space for Better Days to relaunch, and publicising it thoroughly, plus managing my expectations and some of my more eccentric ideas. I could not possibly have a better team.

The first Better Days 2.0 takes place at Flash Factory tomorrow, April 2nd. You can purchase tickets here, and if you want a taste of what you might hear at the party check out Bruce`s “Better Days 2.0.1” mix over on Soundcloud.