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The Thrillseekers * Matt Darey * Rank 1 * New Year's 12/31/06 * S.f. (pg. 7)
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| koroma |
| (lol) humm convert the waterwall into a shower......(lol) nahhh. |
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| DJ Taj |
| THERE ARE A LIMITED AMOUNT OF $50 G.A. TICKETS & $100 VIP TICKETS AVAILABLE NOW ONLINE...GET THEM WHILE YOU CAN AS THE PRICE WILL GO UP!!! |
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| sexyhousegirl |
| OMG I cannot believe this line-up and the presale tixs are only $50 damn that's f_cking awesome. Usually I hate going out on NYE cause every where over charges that's why I am so happy I can get my tixs before hand and a reasonable rate. I've seen all these DJs except Rank 1 so I am really excited for that. Last time I saw matt Darey I was blown away and the Thrillseekers he was off the hook, counting down the days:D |
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| lex400sc |
| thanks for the sets, sexy flyer btw :tongue3 |
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| DJ Taj |
MATT DAREY INTERVIEW
Interview conducted by Chris Friesen; edited by ChrisFly.
We caught up with Matt Darey at his hotel in Winnipeg where he was scheduled to play at a Halloween rave put on by Soundwave Entertainment. He talked to us about how he got started, the progression of his career and its ups and downs, the evolution of the trance scene in the UK, his Nocturnal radio show, and his recent showing in the DJ Mag polls. A veteran in the trance scene, Matt Darey is one of the pioneers of today's dance scene, has sold well over a million albums and had numerous top 10 & top 20 chart hits including Li Kwan - Point Zero and Binary Finary - 1998.
So, let's begin with the history of it all.
The trance thing all started for me in 1993. That was 13 years ago when I made my first trance record which was Li Kwan - Point Zero which I've released a few times since. Before that I used to make drum n bass and just before that was happy hardcore stuff. I got a major record deal when I was at school finishing my course. Everyone at the university where I was at was well into the scene and that's what we used to do every weekend. We actually narrowed our timetable down to two days a week so we had Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays off. I got into that whole scene around 1992.
So did you start by making productions for yourself and friends?
Well actually it goes back before that when I was a singer in a rock band and we toured the colleges and student unions. There's a big circuit in the U.K and there were the Brit bands and that's where I first started. Then when I got to Munich it was all dance music. The first record I made was called Overdose and it was just crazy. I had been listening to music quite carefully and then got into the production side. I produced a rock band and we made some recordings. We made a record that gave me enough cash that I could say, "I don't need a job... I'm going to do this." So I made the next one. We have these Brit awards in the UK and I was there with my demo tape. I went down to London the day before and I met a guy who knew Seymour Stein who is the guy who signed Madonna and the Talking Heads to Sire Records and I actually got him to listen to my tape and he said, "It's a hit."
Is it like in TV shows when you have these bands that play for two seconds and they know right away?
Well the guy that I met was actually his cousin or something and he took me into his offices which had loads of art deco all over the walls, really kind of wow you know, really cool. I went in there and I had three tracks and they were like classical music with rave beats and hardcore rapping. At the time it was the thing, you're talking 15 years ago. He just said it's a hit and I want to sign you to 6 albums now and I'll give you $120,000. To someone who had been surviving on $1000 for a whole term to suddenly go to that was one of the best days, it was like winning the lottery. I spent all the money and never put out a record, but had a great time though. I ended up owing a lot of money after that. Then I had to get serious. For about 18 months I was working on and off with this guy Neil McClennan who's the guy who produced The Prodigy and I got the best producer. He was producing the album for me. He was the man to me. I learned a lot of stuff from him and with the last bit of cash I had I bought my own computer, sampler, and stuff like that. I did a few records and one of them was Li Kwan. That was one of the many tracks I was doing along with a house track, some goa trance, and some happy electro kind of things. I got most of them signed and it was all kind of underground for a few years. But actually the first record, the Li Kwan record, blew up in London and that helped me pay off my debts and gain some confidence to make club music. The whole club scene in the U.K was absolutely just exploding.
And it seemed to just get bigger...
It was a good time. It got bigger and bigger until it exploded in 1999-2000 and then the bottom dropped out of it shortly after.
That was with all the superclubs shutting down, right?
Yeah. There was a new generation of kids, taking pills was what your parents did. They went back to the bars and house music, that kind of thing. So the dance music went back underground. But back around '94 I made Lost Tribe - Gamemaster. That was just an underground track and I made lots of similar stuff. I was one of the first people making that kind of music and then in the end of 1997 or beginning of 1998 it just exploded and the club scene was just amazing. I used to go out clubbing like 5 nights a week and you can imagine how wrecked I was and that's why I had to take a few years off. It was great.
Were you doing that while producing?
Yeah, that was the whole thing! I would go out to a club and usually a bunch of strangers would come back. We would sit in my studio on the sofas and I would be like, 'Alright. This is a remix I have to do.' It would be like making a track in a club because you got loads of people just sitting there smoking and stuff. I would do a track like Binary Finary and I would go down one road and I would be there like, "No..." Then I would go down another road and it really worked. For about a year it really worked. There was this night called Freedom at this big club in London. I used to go there, we would always come back to my house, and I would do a remix. But because your mind is kind of messed up I would listen to it again on Tuesday and Wednesday and rationalize it. On the down side you burn yourself out. Eventually I was like, "I have to take a month off," and I checked into not quite a rehab place but more of a spa with my girlfriend. Then we went off traveling and one month turned into two and eventually a few years. I'd come back to make a track or a remix but at the time I just wanted to get away from the music. Not a great career move to take a few years off at the peak of your success but it was something I had to do.
Was that time for Matt to discover Matt?
I was taking time off traveling and still clubbing a lot. With work the kind of schedule that I had there were a couple remixes a week that I just could not refuse but it would only be for a week here or a couple weeks there. Then to come back a few years later you have to start from scratch again but I gradually got back into it. For a while I came back and did trance and was comfortable doing that but now it has got to the point where I have to do something different and I have been working on an album that is more rock influenced.
How is the new album coming along?
I have made about half the album and it's going to be out in June 07, the artist album. I have a release more my new DJ style which is more electro based like my radio show. It is kind of like I am in two worlds at the moment. I will go to one gig and I will play banging hard trance like a techno remix of Animal which is one of my forthcoming singles but the remix has been out for 6 months. But then I will go to another gig and play electro-house. It makes life more interesting for me as I am not just going around and playing the same records. I'm now moving into different areas which are interesting but it makes it a bit harder because you have to keep your eyes on loads of different styles of music. Lots of DJs are specialists playing one sound and when you go hear them you know exactly what you're going to get.
Do you tend to experiment in your sets or do you just go with the vibe?
It depends. You have to look at people all the time. Generally I ask a warm-up DJ to play grooves, progressive, house, or something that I can build from. So conventionally you want to go up and up and up. You keep looking at people's faces and if they are into it then you keep going and if not then you have to bring it down.
If you're in the moment are there too many songs that you want to play?
There's a danger in that because I have one and a half thousand tracks with me on the road. So I'm thinking of putting everything on a laptop. You can search for names because there are so many times I'm like, "Oh , that record, that record," and I'm flipping through and sometimes I miss it. I try and know them all but it's so hard to remember the names because I have like 10 tracks on each CD and then I am like, "Oh ," and will just put something on. It's so hard to remember the names especially with DJs changing names every 5 minutes. So the laptop would definitely make it easy.
Do you get upset with being dubbed a certain sound, say as hard trance and that's it?
Not really because that must have been what people heard. It is difficult sometimes because if I play electro-house in the set there are still going to be people there expecting me to play something else. But I am sometimes between worlds.
Do you find it easier to go between genres or different styles being the headliner or was it harder when you were first starting out?
I actually started DJing when I was already a producer and it was because of that I got so many requests to DJ. So I tried it and it was great but for many years. I didn't want to DJ because I thought I didn't want to spend all night behind the decks. I would rather spend it out there on the podium or the dance floor. Obviously after those three years and burning out and stuff it's actually a great way to keep your head straight in a night club. Otherwise you're not doing your job properly and I've seen a lot of mashed up DJs who think their playing a great set but if they could only listen to it. What makes me happy is when people are up to date with what I'm playing and now with the sets being streamed from my website from my shows they know what style I am playing. They're already accustomed to it and then I can play exactly what I want to play. At the end of the day you are here to give these people a good night and that's what it's about.
How has the radio show been going and was that your brain child?
Oh, it's been going really great, a bit of a surprise really. I did some progressive shows for Ministry about 4 years ago, just a few. They went to FM in London and I had an FM broadcast for a month, just a month. We did a months' worth of shows with many guest DJs and the only music I liked at the time was like progressive kind of groove. I quite enjoyed it but never did anything of it. Then I was asked to do a show Euphoria. I did it and had good fun doing it you know. I had a laugh but I found myself wanting to play what I wanted to play and so I quit the show and started a new one called Nocturnal because I didn't want it to particularly do with trance because I listen to anything really. I listen to electro, house, breaks, drum and bass, rock house, all sorts. What I really wanted to do was play music I like whatever the style. At the end of the day with a radio show you're not in a night club as a lot of radio shows are like club sets. They are almost like promotional tools for club DJs whereas more and more I'm trying to grab music from different genres because there's so much interesting stuff to listen to. I was listening to all the shows and they were pretty much playing the same songs in a different order. I think that's why the show has been successful. We had a few requests from radio stations as it started off as internet-based and I now have my mate on the case to see who else wants it and we've got like 43 stations. It's not totally like mainstream radio. It's music that I like to listen to, just good music. It takes a lot of time doing a radio show, especially when it's cross-genre because I'm always meeting new artists all the time and it takes a lot of research. It's not like I can just email other trancesters and ask, "What's your latest tune," you know. You have to look around for what's new. There's a lot of hard work there.
Do you get satisfaction from having your work picked up all the time?
When something is successful then you know you must be doing something right. It's a good feeling from that point of view. But it's like with my new album I don't know if anyone will like it and it's such a risk because I'm at risk of alienating everyone who has been a fan of my music before. Also I haven't really played it for that many people. I've only really played it for my manager. I've got a manager now for North America. And all his acts have been rocky and more eclectic and I've been listening to the music he's been listening to. I just hope someone likes it because then it means I can carry on doing it. But if they don't, well it's something I've always wanted to do. It's actually something I started to do back in 1995 and then the whole trance thing took over. I formed this electronica kind of rock band back then and we made a few records. We were on the verge of getting a major deal and then the whole trance thing came along and sucked me up and with the 5 day partying all I was listening to was trance music so it took a back seat for like 10 years. I have always thought that rock music can be raunchy, sexy, and dirty.
And it's starting to get remixed too.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was appropriate then with Prodigy - Firestarter with all that kind of stuff. And now it's coming around again. I have a feeling there might be a scene around it and there already is one growing. There's a lot of people doing it for the love of it at the moment. There is no big explosion of major record labels lapping it up. It's sort of bubbling underground.
Congratulations on the move in the DJ Mag polls.
Thanks! I've been trying to tour as much as possible and I actually think a lot of that is due to the radio show. We've got free media player on the website to listen to the radio show and we just upgraded in bandwidth to cope with the demand from when we started only 6 months ago when we were at 5 gigs a month. Now we've added a couple of zeros to that which is amazing. It is being broadcast on di.fm and Ministry of sound radio so I think a lot of it is due to that. And I think, "Great!" When everyone has got accustomed to the fact that I play all this electro that means I can go in and play all those tunes that I want to.
Do you pay much attention to all those polls?
I've never been much into the DJ polls before but there ars so many talented DJs that aren't in the poll and there are some where you are thinking, "What the are they doing there?" And I don't know what's going on sometimes. But it's nice if it's real.
Well, thanks for meeting with us and best of luck on your continued success.
Thanks!
For more info on Matt Darey visit - www.mattdarey.com
For more info on Nocturnal Radio visit - www.nocturnalradio.net |
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| koroma |
Wow these mixes are good!!.. still very hyped to see all three of these guys play in the same room..
auuhh on the mixes just(right-click & save target as) seems to be a faster download.. |
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| koroma |
With all that action upstairs don't forget about your local heroes...
Myself (Koroma) Cyber Joe, Dirtyhertz, John Beaver, & Mystre will be bangin the Cirque Lounge all night, and I mean all night!!!:crazy:
Make it sure to stop by and show some love!!!
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| cyberjoe |
COME DOWN AND JOIN US FOR THE COUNT DOWN...There will be Champagne provided..:)
:disbelief :tongue2 :haha:
myspace.com/cyberjoe |
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| DJ Mystre |
| awww yeah............:tongue3 |
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