Hello again, world! A quick word first of all about recent times. Profuse apologies for the radio silence over the past few days – we’ve had a few matters which needed resolving behind the scenes. It’s complicated, but Ears To The House is back on the road again.

Now, whilst we were away, an interview appeared with Mladen Solomun in the New Yorker, of all places. The article itself was an extended one – really, really extended, coming up to something like 9000 words in the end. Normally, few of us at Ears To The House would have the time or patience to read such a lengthy tomb – but given the subject matter, we thought we’d make an exception.

And we’re genuinely not sure how reflective of the real Solomun this interview is. At times, it frankly feels like we’re being trolled. There are dubious claims about the man himself supposedly drinking over 30 shots of tequila during each set – quite how he would be able to stand up, let alone concentrate on his mixing after gulping down so much alcohol is a mystery to us.

Or there is, of course, a section about his Catholic upbringing. Now, we’ve nothing against Catholics around here – we naturally welcome readers of all religions and none – but the description of him as “the priest” who presides “over the ceremony” raised quite a few collective eyebrows.

As for this picture, we can’t help but wonder if this is seriously how Solomun sees himself, or whether he displays more understanding of the modern media game than he lets on…

Casting aside some of the more amusing claims in the article, however, we think this provides a huge amount of insight into Solomun’s background. We also think it’s telling that this piece appeared in the high-minded New Yorker – isn’t this testament to how utterly useless and irrelevant the dance music press is?

Solomun isn’t a new name on the scene. He’s been around for over a decade. Why have none of the dance music publications ever asked him these questions? This is a common trend in this sector’s press world – they’re more than ready to regurgitate press releases sent by PR companies and such, but they show no interest whatsoever in finding out about the person behind the DJ.

Why does Resident Advisor, led by an editor who believes in “raising the calibre of music journalism”, never run articles like this? The cover feature artists for the likes of Mixmag don’t go into much detail about their backgrounds either. Why not? Isn’t assuming that readers simply won’t be interested in finding out more about how their favourite DJs and producers tick rather insulting?

Yes, parts of this long article are seemingly beyond parody. But everyone at Ears To The House HQ is going to remember reading this for a long time into the future – because it tells us a lot about Solomun that we didn’t previously know, and it’s managed to be interesting in the process, if not rather long-winded. The readers are the final ones to cast judgement on what they read – and some high-minded types could do with remembering the reader is by far the most important group…