James Curd on Pixar, GTA and the Long Game of House Music

There are certain names in house music that carry a particular kind of weight. Not the loudest in the room, not the ones plastered across festival headliners with the regularity of a bus timetable, but the ones whose records keep turning up in the bags of the DJs you actually trust. James Curd is one of those names.

Chicago-born and now, somewhat improbably, calling South Australia home, Curd has spent the better part of three decades building a body of work that refuses to sit still. As one half of Greenskeepers he helped shape a strain of house that was witty, song-driven and deeply musical at a time when a lot of the genre was happily disappearing up its own minimal backside. Solo, and through his label PRONTO, he has continued to push the same instinct further out, with releases on Classic, DFA, Rekids, Get Physical, Shall Not Fade and a long list of others that read like a quiet history of the deeper end of the form.

The remix credits tell their own story. Flight Facilities, Rufus Du Sol, Poolside, Hercules & Love Affair, Groove Armada, Sting, Jamie Principle, Paul Johnson, Kaskade. The list of artists who have in turn handed his own records over for reinterpretation is just as serious, with Honey Dijon, The Blessed Madonna, Claude VonStroke, Derrick Carter, Fred P, Osunlade, Harvey Sutherland, Luke Solomon and CamelPhat all stepping in at one point or another. A hundred million streams later, with three hundred odd releases under his belt and somewhere north of a thousand shows played at the kind of rooms that matter, including Fabric, Rex Club and Lollapalooza, he is one of the genuine workhorses of modern house music.

What sets Curd apart, though, is the second life his music has had outside the club. His work has been syncs into The Incredibles, Grey’s Anatomy, and across more than twenty pieces of music for the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which is a body of work most composers would happily build an entire career around. It is the mark of a producer whose instincts as a songwriter sit just as comfortably under a Pixar opening sequence as they do at four in the morning on a sweaty dancefloor.

For this edition of Decoded he has also recorded an exclusive mix, and it is exactly the kind of considered, deeply musical hour that you would expect from a man with his record bag. We sat down with him to talk about all of it. The move from Chicago to Adelaide and what life looks like on the other side of it, the studio setup that keeps the wheels turning, the syncs, the remixes, the labels, the producers currently catching his ear, and his thoughts on AI as it pushes its way further into the room.

Pour yourself something good, press play on the mix, and settle in.

You grew up in Chicago, the city where house music was born and shaped. How much of that early exposure still feeds into the records you’re making in 2026?

Big time! The love I developed going to underground loft parties and raves when I was 15 years old hasn’t changed at all. I fell in love with house music, and specifically the way Chicago made it. I was out every weekend listening to some of the best DJs in the world, many of whom are still a huge influence on me today.

The process I use now is a little different, but the ideas and inspiration are still the same. Back then I’d start and finish a song entirely in an MPC 2000. These days I still do a lot of my drums and sample chops in the MPC, but then finish everything in Logic. At the end of the day, I’m still making songs that I think will work at Smartbar.

Chicago to South Australia is a serious relocation, particularly for someone whose career was built across the American and European club circuits. What were the conversations and circumstances that led to making the move?

At the time I was touring non-stop as a DJ and with my band project Greenskeepers. I met my future wife in Melbourne when I came over for a tour. She was friends with a crew I’d become close with over the years of playing in Australia, and we hit it off.

I took her to gigs all over the world, then she moved to Chicago and lived with me for about a year and a half. In the long run, I felt the quality of life in Australia was too good to pass up. I love Chicago and it’s still home to me. I try to get back as often as I can. But between the daily grind, the weather, healthcare, gun control and politics, I was ready for a change. I was also getting a little burnt out from touring and had already started moving more into film scoring. I felt like I could do my job from anywhere and would just have to sit on a plane a lot longer when touring came up.

I still love living here.

South Australia is not the most obvious landing point for an internationally touring house producer. What was it about this part of the world specifically that pulled you in?

I love being able to focus completely on my family and my work. I’m never sitting in traffic. The weather is great most of the year. Winters in Chicago were tough, but I’m grateful I grew up with them. The whole reason I learned how to make music was because there was a blizzard outside and I couldn’t leave the house for like ten days. I’d try to learn the MPC, get frustrated and quit, but an hour later I’d have nothing else to do and would jump back into it. Looking back, that blizzard was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Now I’ve built a studio in my backyard. I walk my kids two minutes to school. I got my doctor’s personal phone number and we’ve become friends. I don’t have to worry about whether healthcare is available or what insurance will or won’t cover. I think I’ve been lucky enough to live in the best possible place in the world when my priorities were all about DJing and making music. Now I live in the best possible place in the world for my family and the priorities I have today. Because I’ve travelled so much and spent time living in places like Paris and Los Angeles, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what actually makes me happy.

The Australian pace of life can take some getting used to, particularly the relationship with weekends, weather, and how social time tends to play out. How long did it take you to settle into the rhythm of it, and what tripped you up along the way?

I don’t think I ever got used to it, and honestly I’m happy I never will. It’s just not the way I’m wired or the way people from Chicago are brought up. With that being said, I hope my kids enjoy the Australian pace when they’re older. There is no hustle like Chicago, and I couldn’t get rid of it if I tried. Sometimes I’m in the studio at 3am and genuinely feel like I’m the only person awake and working in Adelaide.

I’m switched on all the time. I’ll answer calls or texts at any hour and reply to emails within minutes. Australians tend to punch in and punch out. Work stays at work. They’re not constantly worried about keeping the lights on. Life is almost too good here. For me, pressure has always been a motivator. It’s frustrating at times, but it’s probably a more peaceful way to live. I can appreciate both sides of it.

Adelaide has quietly become one of the better food cities in the country. Where are you eating when you want to feel at home, and where do you take visiting friends who don’t know the city?

I have zero complaints about food in Adelaide. It’s fantastic. I love Fugazzi, Mensa, Arkhé and KINN. There are so many great places now. When I first moved here, my biggest complaint was that there weren’t any great cheeseburgers. Honestly, McDonald’s was probably the best burger in town for the first eight years I lived here. Thankfully that’s changed.

The only things I still think we’re missing are proper Mexican food and authentic American BBQ, so I make sure to load up on both whenever I’m travelling.

The bar culture here is a different beast to Chicago or London. What are the spots you’ve found yourself going back to, whether for a proper drink or just somewhere to sit and think?

I do a weekly rock party at Cry Baby that’s a lot of fun. No frills, just a proper dive bar that goes off. 2KW is an amazing rooftop venue and I handle all the music programming there. I also love the vibe at Maybe Mae and Honeydripper. There’s a spot called Wax that’s been doing proper vinyl-only house parties on Thursday nights, and I try to support those whenever I can.

There’s also a lot happening in Adelaide now. Company, InsideOut and Front Room are putting on one-off events and activations that bring something cool to the city. They’re helping keep Adelaide on the map when it comes to international DJs and interesting events.

Your records have always had a sense of arrangement that feels considered rather than functional. Can you walk us through how a track typically starts for you, and how you know when it’s actually finished?

For me, songs tend to write themselves. I’ll usually start by digging for samples and looking for inspiration. Most of the time it’s a bassline or chord progression that grabs me. I’ll change the key, change the tempo and try to turn it into my own version of something.

From there I just keep adding ideas. If you picture a kid’s drawing of a fish, that’s usually my song structure. Build it up until it reaches its highest point, pull everything back into a breakdown, then build it back up and finish strong. I know it’s done when I’ve stopped thinking about what else it needs and I’m excited to test it in a DJ set.

Studios are deeply personal spaces and tell you a lot about a producer. What does yours look like at the moment, and which pieces of gear are doing the heaviest lifting on current sessions?

I’ve built my dream studio in my backyard, which makes being creative incredibly easy. Whenever inspiration strikes, I’m in the studio within a minute. I still use my MPC 4000 a lot. My favourites are probably the MiniKorg, Sequential Circuits Six-Trak and Juno-106.

The answer changes depending on what project I’m working on, which is what makes it fun. I end up using a lot of different gear and it keeps things fresh when collaborators come through the studio. For my project with Osunlade, we use a lot of Rhodes and sample chopping. When Marcellus Pittman was here, we leaned heavily on the Juno-106 and Moog Voyager. Filip from Poolside introduced me to the MiniKorg and the music we made together features that synth all over it.

When I’m scoring films I use a lot of Omnisphere and my Oberheim Matrix 1000. For Modern Living, my project with Mark Share, I’ve been using the Mono/Poly and Prophet-10 a bunch. I like having a bed of sounds that defines a project. My house productions are different though. There are no rules. I just start hitting everything and see what sounds good!.

You’ve had music placed in The Incredibles, which is a slightly surreal credit for an underground house producer. How did that come about, and what was it like hearing your work sit inside a Pixar film?

At the time our Greenskeepers song Should I Sing Like This? was blowing up in clubs. A PR company in New York working on the film reached out. It was crazy. I was going to get the opportunity to remix Michael Giacchino’s score.

Back then I was still making music entirely on an MPC 2000. They sent me three CDs full of stems. The problem was my MPC only had around 250MB of memory, so I was chopping everything into tiny half-second and one-second samples. That project ended up being one of the main reasons Mark Share became fully involved in Greenskeepers. Mark was way ahead of the game and already working in Logic. I asked him to help me finish the remix and we had such a great time working together that it cemented our partnership and opened a whole new level of production for me.

I learned a lot from watching Mark work. Having something connected to Pixar is one of those credits people instantly recognize. It helps make it look like I have a real job when someone asks what I’ve done.

You’ve contributed more than twenty pieces of music to the Grand Theft Auto series, which is a substantial body of work in itself. What’s the brief like when you’re writing for that world, and how much creative latitude do you actually get?

This is another situation where hustling always pays off. I never know exactly what GTA is going to need, so I write a lot of music and see what connects. When we landed the theme song for GTA IV, I turned in a bunch of material. Then when I submitted my Favored Nations track The Set Up, which became the finale song for GTA V, it was a home run on the first try. There was usually some sort of brief for the online stories, but GTA sits perfectly between what I do as a film composer and what I do as an artist. It’s a mix of both worlds.

I don’t just try to write a song. I try to put myself inside the game and think about the emotions you’re feeling as that character. Then I apply those feelings to the songwriting process. The music ends up having a unique energy that doesn’t really show up in my other projects. It’s like a switch goes off in my head. I start making choices that are grittier, tougher and a little darker. It’s always fun to get into that mindset and see what comes out.

Writing for screen and writing for the club are very different disciplines, even when the sonic palette overlaps. How do you mentally shift between the two, and does one end up feeding the other?

I think that’s one of the reasons I feel so lucky. It’s amazing to spend a few weeks completely focused on a film score. You get into a groove and everything starts to become more cohesive. Then I get to switch gears and make music for a dark, sweaty club.

The biggest crossover is speed. Spending so much time in the studio has made me faster and more efficient. I’ve spent years learning how to get what I want out of my gear, so there are fewer speed bumps between having an idea and getting it into the speakers. The more fluid that process becomes, the easier it is for me to stay creative.

Your remix list reads like a who’s who, with Flight Facilities, RÜFÜS DU SOL, Poolside, Hercules & Love Affair and Groove Armada all in there. What’s your starting point when you’re handed a stems folder, and how do you decide what to keep and what to discard?

Sometimes it’s actually harder when the original song is great.

In fact, it’s easier to make a great remix of an average song than it is to make a great remix of a great song. When the original already works perfectly, I don’t want to mess with it.

Most of the time I’ll keep the vocal and throw almost everything else away. I want the remix to stand on its own as a completely different piece of music.

If the original is amazing, I’d rather stay well away from it and create something that feels more at home on the dance floor or in a film scene than simply make a slightly different version of what already exists.

There’s a particular skill in remixing a band that already has a strong identity of its own. Was there one of those jobs that pushed you somewhere new, or forced you to rethink your usual approach?

Our Modern Living remix of DRAMA’s Oblivion is a great recent example.

The original sits firmly in their indie-dance world, but we took it somewhere completely different. We stripped it back, built it around piano and strings, and tried to create something nostalgic and cinematic that could hopefully live inside a film scene.

I think that’s part of the remixer’s job. Give a song a completely different life and show people a side of it they didn’t know was there.

Greenskeepers built you a global audience, and PRONTO has become the home for a lot of your more personal work. How do you see the label sitting in the current landscape, and what are you trying to build with it over the next few years?

Over the years I’ve worked really hard to release on labels I genuinely love. Having a respected label co-sign your music was always a huge motivation for me. I’ve released on DFA, Defected, Dirtybird, Classic, Rekids, Shall Not Fade, Desert Hearts, Get Physical, King Street, Future Classic and a lot of other labels that were genuine bucket-list moments. But eventually I realised I was spending my life building someone else’s catalogue.

The reality is that a lot of labels either don’t account properly or don’t account at all. You’re often giving away music in exchange for exposure. I’m at a point in my career where I’m no longer interested in chasing that. That’s why I started PRONTO with Prime in London. We release digitally and on vinyl, and now I’m building my own catalogue instead.

The idea is simple. I make a song, then invite some of my favourite artists to remix it. Most releases are one original track surrounded by three remixes. For me it’s the purest way to make and release music. I do zero promotion. I love the idea of putting 500 records into the world and leaving it at that. If you’re a fan, collector or digger and you happen to discover a PRONTO release, then great. You’re one of the few people on the planet who found it.

There’s no pressure to chase charts or social media moments. I just hope the music is doing damage on some dark dance floor somewhere in the world while building a catalogue that I can also draw from when I’m supervising films.

The deeper, more song-driven end of house is in a healthy place right now, with a lot of strong voices coming through. Whose records are landing on your platter most often at the moment?

I’m loving Dam Swindle, Session Victim, Kai Alce, Chez Damier, JT Donaldson, Ron Basejam, Herbert, NWN, Frits Wentink, Ralph Session, Demuir, Tour-Maubourg, Makes, Musclecars, Harry Romero, Deetron, Make A Dance, Glenn Underground, Introbeatz, FOUK, Mr. G and Jimpster.

I’ve also been playing a lot more vinyl-only sets lately, which has led me back to so many incredible records from my collection and artists I’d forgotten about over the years.

If a studio door was open to you tomorrow and you could spend a week working with any producer in the world, living or otherwise, who is at the top of that list and why?

What a fun question.

There are a lot of people I’d love to spend a week with in the studio. Chez Damier would be one of them because he’s responsible for some of my all-time favourite records. I’d love to learn how he approaches things. His sound is unmistakable. It’s raw, simple, unique and pretty perfect for me.

I’d also love to spend more time working with James Murphy. I released a song called We Just Won’t Stop through DFA and James invited me to New York to spend a weekend mixing it with him. It was super fun and inspiring. One minute he’d be using a cheap Electrix Filter Factory to fine-tune the low end of my track, the next he’d be pulling out a sketchpad to talk about ideas for a music video. Then we’d take a cookie break and jump right back into it.

He’s like a little kid in the studio, completely fascinated by sound and always experimenting until something catches him and his eyebrows jump up. I’d love to hear what we’d make together. The older I get, the more I realise the most valuable thing isn’t just learning techniques. It’s being around someone’s energy, mindset and creative process. That’s a priceless education.

There’s a generation of producers coming through now who’ve never known a world without DAWs, streaming, and social media as part of the job. What’s the most useful piece of advice you’d give someone trying to build a career in this from the ground up?

I wish I had some magic advice because I’d probably listen to myself. I understand that social media is part of the job now, but it’s never been the thing that interests me at all. Hopefully we eventually get back to a place where being a great DJ matters more than having the biggest follower count.

My thought is that if I keep making the best music I can and keep collaborating with great artists, the music will ultimately win. So, I guess my advice would be to really learn the craft. Learn how to DJ properly. Learn how to mix by ear. Make music that is unique, honest and genuinely comes from you. Develop your own style.  And if you’re also great at social media and have amazing dance routines, that’s great. At least this way the DJing and music won’t be shit. 

AI has moved from a curiosity to a serious presence in music production, with everything from generative tools to vocal cloning now firmly on the table. Where do you stand on it, and where do you think the line should sit for producers who care about the integrity of what they make?

It’s pretty amazing technology, and for now I still feel like I can usually tell when AI has been involved.

For me, though, the bigger issue is quality control in general. We’ve already become comfortable with DJs performing to pre-recorded sets that are perfectly synced to visuals. AI is just another step in that direction. Soon we’ll probably reach a point where AI can create a never-ending stream of music tailored specifically to each individual listener. Everyone will have their own personalized soundtrack. No need for artist. 

I don’t use AI in my music. For me, the challenge and the process are the whole point. That’s where the satisfaction comes from. The struggle, the mistakes, the experimentation and the happy accidents are what make creating music fun and rewarding. Maybe that’s part of the reason I’ve gone back to making music with hardware and releasing records on vinyl. There’s something special about connecting with people who still appreciate the human side of the process. If that’s the only audience I end up with, I’m perfectly happy.

The mix you’ve put together for Decoded sits in a really considered space, drawing on the deeper, more spiritual end of house without losing its swing. Talk us through your thinking when you sat down to record it, and what you wanted listeners to take away.

I’m really excited to hit the road and play more shows again.

I’ve recently signed with an amazing agent and she’s lit a fire under me. This mix includes vinyl from my collection, music from new artists I’m loving and a few forthcoming releases from PRONTO. I’ve missed playing more regularly because being in a club and amongst a crowd is such an important source of inspiration when I sit down to make music.

My goal is to show up, play some records and offer something a little different. Something authentic and unique to my journey though Chicago and music. For me it’s about connection and storytelling. I’m not chasing big drops. I’m chasing a constant connection between me and the crowd. A real-time experience that exists only in that moment and can never be repeated exactly the same way again.

Lastly, what news can you share regarding new releases and tours?

I’ve got some great releases coming up on PRONTO. There’s a track called I Know, which I’ve done with Karizma, featuring remixes from Rocco Rodamaal and Ralph Session. There’s also Them Freaks, with remixes by Kai Alce, Demuir and MMH.

Osunlade and I have a new project called Nomadics. We’ve finished fourteen songs and are releasing them one at a time across both PRONTO and Yoruba Soul. The next release is Rockin’ My Soul, featuring remixes from Session Victim, Ron Basejam and Tom Trago.

I also recently finished scoring a film starring Ron Perlman and Theo Rossi called Come With Me, which should be in theaters soon. At the same time, I’m music supervising a film out of Chicago that’s essentially a love letter to the city’s musical history. I also did an official remix of Joe Smooth’s Promised Land for DJ International. And my old Greenskeepers track Lotion is featured in the new Jackass film, which comes out this month.

I’m hoping to do a run of shows across the United States before the end of the year. I’ll be back doing what started me on this journey almost 35 years ago.

Tracklisting

1 Amaury Trevino – Circular

2 Mustafa – Bom Demais (MJ Cole Remix)

3 James Curd & Karizma – I Know (Ralph Session Remix)

4 Di Saronno – Out Of Control 

5 J.T. Donaldson – I’m A Stranger

6 Big Mix – Wanna Get Down

7 Leyo & Thierry Ganz – Dance Dance

8 Ralph Session & Brandon Markell Holmes – Everything 

9 H.K. The Girl Of Your Dreams

10 Leyo & Native – Your Energy

11 6th Borough Project – The Deal 

12 Boogie Vice & N-You-Up – Working Like Dat

13 Declan McDermott – Why Don’t You Believe Me (I-Cube Pourquoir Remix)

14 Nomadics – Rockin My Soul – Ron Basejam Remix

15 Nomadics – Rockin My Soul

by Damion Pell

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