Mark Breeze - Phase One

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    Thu, Jul 3, 2003, 05:36
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  • Mark Breeze has been one of the hard dance producers that have shown exactly how much talent the scene can produce. Having shone through with work in both hard trance circles as well as the hardcore contingency, Mark Breeze alongside fellow producer Darren Styles have proved that things are looking bright in 2003. Known across Sydney mostly for their tunes ‘Black Magic Bad Magic’ as well as ‘Your Shining’ the two have caused for their upcoming visit to Sydney for GODSPEED at the Superdome. Powerhouse caught up with Mark Breeze before he arrived. You have been involved with the entire DJ and production thing for a while… give us a little insight as to how it started… I started back in 85 when I used to do mobile DJ gigs with friend of mine then I landed a resident spot at a club in Beckenham, Kent, UK. At the time I got this spot it was around 87 / 88 and the whole acid house thing was blowing up, I could just get away with dropping a few tracks in and saw what underground dance music can really do to people on the dance floor. The whole vibe got me hooked and I began buying over £100 a week worth of records, there were all kinds about at this time, and I was buying from a well known store (MI-Price Records, Croydon) to acid house jocks at the time. The guy serving me week in week out was Jazzy M, who really knew his tunes. You have kept an approach of being versatile in your sound … enabling you to have pull in both the hardcore and hard trance scenes. How do you keep the balance between the two? Both Darren and I have the same love for a similar sound, so when we tried a few trance tracks we just used our hardcore way of things and same with hardcore, we have taken the trancey feel to that. although we know have had stronger influences from the Germany scene, which has a bit more edge and grit. How do you keep yourself in touch with what's going on music wise in both hardcore and trance? Watching dance floors is where its at for me, I listen to all kinds of music, and I like watching to see what makes the crowd move, and what really makes the tune good, plus its not good to be narrow minded with music. If you are your just going to sound like someone else to all kinds of things need to be in the mix when you go into the studio. Tell us about your work with NUKLEUZ. How did this come about? It came about after we did a hardcore track called "Black Magic", we had done it, and we both said, "this could be a great hard dance track, could give a good feel on the dance floor", so we did a 142 bpm mix but still kept with our hardcore style of uplifting but not cheesy riff patterns. After we did it, we were racking our brains to where or who we should send it to, and knew that Vinylgroover was running his own hard dance label, so we sent it to him. Scott heard the track and said "hey, look this is a big track, I’ll take it into Nukleuz and see what they think", he did, and Peter Pritchard called us to say he was amazed by the production and wanted to sign it, we were chuffed to say the least, and they put it out and it did well. You have played at an abundance of club nights over the years, and I read that you knew the Godskitchen promoter leading to a number of places you have played… tell us where you have ventured out to… The Godskitchen thing was something I was doing at the very start of when they started; I was resident for them at a club called "The Vault", in Northampton, UK, until they moved on to Birmingham. just before this time had to make a choice between following that path or the hardcore path, as I was already working with Dougal on Essential Platinum and dreamed of making more tracks and running my own label I went with the hardcore sound. A number of factors have led to the change of hardcore over the years, give us your interpretation? Every music scene must evolve and move on, hardcore lost its way a little in 97/98 just simply as none the producers saw a way of changing things. When you stop putting the effort in you simply become stale. With the use of new studio kit and productions techniques it breathed some life back into making music for all. The hardcore scene has returned from a decline in popularity to being as strong as ever right now. What do you think has helped contribute to its growth? I think the production of it now has come on leaps and bounds, like what force and styles did to it in 96, by using real drum sounds and live music and vocals, its now progressed even further, when me and Darren teamed up we wanted the production to be the best we could possibly get it, still now we look to getting our tracks as good as we can. hardcore ravers wanted what the other music ravers had, which was good clean tracks, something to be proud of, rather then looked at as kids music. The sound of hardcore now has shown its popularity through the trance elements… how has this been a positive direction of late? The trance sound will always have a big element to tracks, its a massive thing, you normal pop tracks now all carry some kind of trance feel or sound, its just now, same as the sound of a live guitar or drums were to people in the 70's or the electronic sound of the 80's with bands like Kraftwerk and ELO. Is the word ‘intelligent’ one you would use to describe hardcore today? What is "intelligent hardcore"?, does that mean I read the manual before I used the kit to make it?, I think not. I wouldn’t say it's intelligent, I’d just say it’s produced like other styles of more popular music, with a big degree of making it sound big and clean. What do you consider influences yourself in regards to your own production? It’s hard to say your not influenced by anyone, but we do try to just do our own thing, most of the time when we do a new track we will try to just go in with a blank canvas from the start, this is the way we came up with tracks like "Sonic", "2 Da Dance Floor" and "Electric" to name but a few. Do you find it surprising that you revolve around something that once was? just a passion or a dream, to now being what your life is run by? From being a raver myself from 86-93, and then on to making music and dj'ing has always seemed like a hobby, although it’s now a full time thing. But when I look back at what i've done it’s a hell of a lot, but I still feel there’s a lot more to come and that we haven’t even scraped the surface. How did ‘Infinity Recordings’ begin? It came about after Essential Platinum had a release schedule the length of you arm, and Dougal couldn’t get the tracks out quick enough for demand, much the same as the record market on hardcore is getting back to today. I had "Driving Me Crazy" ready to go and Dougal couldn’t see it being out for a good few months and we decided to start a new label, I came up with infinity and Dougal put his name to it, to help the fist release. trouble was at this time we had put the release through a new distributor in the UK named "Futurevinyl", which we thought we would test the water with, and low and behold the went bust, after selling out of the units and we never saw a penny. After this I took the infinity brand over to Alphamagic and they took care of it from there. You have released on labels such as your own, as well as Essential Platinum and the more recent work you have done with Raver Baby… does each different label affect what you produce or release? No, we don’t make tunes to suit labels, just make them the way we want them. I have now passed the Infinity Catalogue on to a company in Japan, as from the start of 2003, called Hurricane, and they will now deal with the artists and begin to remix the back cat and release more new material, i'm assured that the label will be back on track soon with the guidance of its new owner, DJ Silver from Japan. The Raverbaby imprint is now my full time concern as with Darren too, and with the likes of Hixxy, ourselves, UFO, Storm, Whizzkid, and the others behind it, we are looking to make a strong label with a constant flow of releases. You have just released the current HARDCORE HEAVEN compilation you have mixed with Dougal… what’s on this? How is this going at the moment? It’s a 2 CD affair with a bonus DVD documentary on myself and Dougal on a normal day running up to their hardcore heaven event at the Sanctuary, Milton Keynes, from making a track to playing it out. the full tracking listing can be found at ww.hardcoreheaven.net, but its going well from the feed back that Hardcore Heaven have had, its still earlier days but the second release is on its way already mixed by Darren Styles and DJ SY. You have released some awesome material with Darren Styles of late… how is the working relationship between you two? Great, couldn’t ask from anyone better to work with, Darren has a awesome music mind, and with that and our studio production we have done some tracks that we are really proud of. You tend to learn a lot from who you work with, Darren has taught me a lot and its reflected in our music. Is there any sort of aim or goal that you guys have in terms of your production together? Just to keep our music dance floor orientated, yet well produced. How does it feel to have some of the biggest selling hardcore releases? It feels great, but we got long way to go yet. "Your Shining" has been a big track for us, and after over year of playing it I still get the goosebumps, that’s when we know the tracks done what we set out with it. What current projects have you got under your belt at the moment? We have done a fair few remixes of late, on both sides of the coin, on the hardcore side, I believe we are the first to get a remix of a Ministry Of Sound release, we have done "The Way", by Devine Inspiration, and have done a mix of "Sunlight" by DJ Sammy, and have been told we have a few more to do for them, and on the trance side of things, under our various guises of "Infextious", "Darren Styles & Mark Breeze" and "Futureworld", we have remixed the likes of Takio, Matt Darey, Tomahawk, Alpha Zone, etc. Anything else planned for the future? We have a lot of tracks to do for a few albums we have in the pipe line, one being an artist one and the other being a compilation one for Nukleuz, so were really knuckling down to work in studio at the moment. In regards to other producers, who tickles your fancy? Who gets you all hot and bothered? There’s a lot of great producers out there, I mainly listen to as much as possible but I do like BT, Chicane, Scott Project, Andy C, Fabio, Scott Brown & Hixxy, as these kinds of guys stand out for their own thing. What about new talent? Are there guys that are getting material released that you can see being one of the best in the near future? yeah there’s a few bright sparks out there that I do see having a good future, Stargazer is one and I’ve just had a track in on CD that Raverbaby have signed that DJ Storm and Euphoria have done and if these guys carry on with this style they will have some big tracks this year. In terms of the international scene, you get to travel a lot. Where else are things happening for you? Canada has a great scene for hardcore , been there several times and haven’t had a bad night, USA used to be good to, if you played for the right promoter but as their new laws came into effect the scene has lowered a lot. What are your ideas about Australia's scene? I’ve heard its great, I have done NZ back in 98, and they really throw a good party, so I’m hoping I’m in for the same with the Aussie crowd, I know Hixxy and UFO love it there and Styles had great time last time he was there, so I'm really looking forward to it.
RA