"I'm not worried about the downside of the music business because I know that a lot of useless people will get out and they'll be enough room left for people that are good. My approach is this; stuck to what you know, then always take a chance on something that can be the next step for you."

Applying his philosophy directly to his latest project-Bucci Bag's More Lemonade- Italian expat Londoner Dino Lenny is right to be optimistic, as his latest single shapes up to be one of the biggest (and best) club records of the year. Featuring the unforgettable hook line 'No-one is allowed to touch you in your bathing suit area', the thumping disco monster has also been spiced up with the addition of two remixes by men-of-the-moment The Scissor Sisters, whose falsetto vocals light up an already sizzlingly hot club track of genuine raw power.

Despite partially welcoming the cull currently decimating the music business, he's also keen to express his sympathies for the many talented people also slipping through the cracks, as the internet and changing fashions, begin to rewire the system.

"I'm seeing a lot of my friends who were in the music business, are no longer remaining in it and it's difficult to come back in once you're out," he points out.

"To survive, you need to have autonomy, so you can show that you can deliver and be productive in the good days as well as during the bad times. You also need to be prepared to maybe earn less if the market keeps on going down. But having said that, once it's cleaned of all those people who shouldn't have been there in the first place, I think it will be even better. If the market had stayed as it was when dance music was really popular three years ago, then today I'd be laughing, but as it is I'm still smiling."

Ever since releasing Ibiza Balearic anthem Cocaine in the summer of 1989, Lenny has been one of house culture's most prolific and successful producers remixing the likes of INXS and Underworld, while releasing scores of tunes under numerous aliases including The Heartist, Adam Dived, White Trash and B.O.D. He even collaborated a couple of years back with New York hip hop crew the Wu Tang Clan though it's his latest project Bucci Bag which is the current focus of his attention.

"Bucci Bag originally came out last year, though then it was the title of the record, released by Andrea Doria," he explains.

"Whereas now it's the name of the act, and More Lemonade is the follow up record. We kept it because we liked the name so much."


Skrufff (Jonty Skruff) The press release says the name Bucci Bag is inspired by 'today's culture of fakeness', what's that about?

Dino Lenny: ""Actually, some people said to me I should call it Gucci Bag, to try and make money out of Gucci and I basically said 'it's not about getting money like that, it's about taking the piss out of those kind of people'. We kept the Bucci theme and also made some of our own bags and gave them away to some girls in the dance business. We only made ten though, they were very expensive."

Skrufff: Did you hear the sample 'No-one is allowed to touch you in your bathing suit area' first or make it some other way?

Dino Lenny: "No, we came up with the idea of the sample ourselves, though I initially recorded it for another record last year. We recorded the vocal but it was too long for that track so we took a piece of the remaining part and used it for this record. The line goes 'No-one is allowed to touch you in your bathing suit area' and you don't hear that kind of phrase very often in a record. Good or bad, we like to be different, it doesn't matter if some people don't like it."

Skrufff: The music industry seems broadly split between optimists and pessimists right now, where do you stand?

Dino Lenny: "I'm basically going back to my roots, making the best records I can and not even thinking about the market any more. I don't think there's a formula for selling a million records, you've got to work at it and maybe you get lucky in making one of those records that can change your life. I'm not complaining, though, at the moment I'm making a living out of my records, I'm also working on my own project which involves me singing and writing and also hopefully writing for somebody else."

Skrufff: Gary from Future Sound of London told us he's recently accepted he's going to make less money from making music, though is happy to concentrate on making music from his heart . . .

Dino Lenny: "That's what I'm doing too. I never started working in music because I wanted to make money out of it. I have to be, how do you say it, 'un-modest' with you; I know I can make more money doing something else. My family are quite a sharp family in business and I know that if I put the effort I put into music, into something else, I could make a lot more money. But I don't want to do that because I love music. Music gives me something different. The high from having your track played on TV, for example, is something else. The key is to work hard and stick to your ideas and if you do that then your conscience is clear. I don't want to end up reaching 60 thinking I could have done this or that. There's always time to do another job."

Skrufff: What do you think is causing the problems right now?

Dino Lenny: "Firstly, there have been too many people putting out the wrong kind of records, the quality of the music hasn't been great, partly because it's so easy to make records nowadays. Anybody can make a record these days whereas in the early days it wasn't like that. Recording a record was very expensive whereas now you just need a PC. The other day I was looking at all the equipment I've got in my studio and thinking it's ridiculous, it's worth nothing now. I appreciate the fact that if someone has a good idea, they should be allowed to produce it, so that's a good side of the fact that anybody can make a record, but it's also made the market go down. Secondly there's the internet, which needs more regulation. We've got to wait to see what happens; maybe we'll sell more records on the internet? But the problem is that until now we haven't done a great deal with the internet."

Skrufff: Do you buy much music these days?

Dino Lenny: "People send me a lot of music, I only buy old 80s stuff though I've also recently bought Kings Of Leon and some other stuff, just to check out what the new trends are. The 80s stuff I'm buying is the music I don't already have in my collection, for example, I've just bought a Stranglers Greatest Hits collection, because I wanted to listen carefully again to Golden Brown. The Stranglers had some great sounds and I'd really like to do something with their stuff. I think the future is in the past."

Skrufff: Every dance DJ and producer nowadays claims a punk rock past, how about you?

Dino Lenny: "I used to be heavy metal actually, I liked bands like Iron Maiden and Saxon, and before them bands like Queen, who were considered hard rock at one point, then AC/DC, Motorhead, and a little bit of Kiss. Then I got into Van Halen with their album 1984 and one of my favourite tracks, though I know it sounds cheesy, was Jump. Then I realised that Van Halen wasn't heavy metal."

Skrufff: What was it about Van Halen you liked?

Dino Lenny: "They had some great synths on that album 1984, though I think when synths started coming into heavy metal that was when it started dying. I was also into bands like Duran Duran, I loved some of their tracks, for example Reflex and Save a Prayer. I look back on that era as having some great music. A lot of people say the 80s were shit, but they said that before the 90s came along, I think the 90s were shit. Apart from the evolution from house and techno, the 90s were crap for music. House came from the 80s too. If you listen to a record like Dead Or Alive's You Spin Me Round, that's a great record. Those kind of records had real energy, take Frankie Goes to Hollywood; wow! Or Propaganda.

Propaganda's Duel is probably my favourite record ever. It was great music back then and it was exciting."

Bucci Bag's More Lemonade is out on Southern Fried Records on March 15.

http://www.southernfriedrecords.com