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Krafty Kuts
BORN
The actual date? I`m going to keep my birth date a mystery but I was actually born on April the 1st, which is a good day because everyone remembers your birthday being an April fool. I`m not going to say how old I am but I was born in Kingston Upon Thames, which was a really nice area. I`ve got fond memories of when I was a kid around there. I used to play soccer and I was actually a marathon runner when I was younger.
BORN
The actual date? I`m going to keep my birth date a mystery but I was actually born on April the 1st, which is a good day because everyone remembers your birthday being an April fool. I`m not going to say how old I am but I was born in Kingston Upon Thames, which was a really nice area. I`ve got fond memories of when I was a kid around there. I used to play soccer and I was actually a marathon runner when I was younger.
FAMILY
The strangest thing about my family is we`re all very close, good friends, stuff like that. I`ve got two brothers, I looked after my brothers after my Dad left and I became quite. Still got a good bond - me and my Dad go fishing a lot. My Mum gets very emotional and really proud of me, but there`s no musical connection in the family what so ever. That really came from me being, it sounds quite bizarre, but I was bullied at school - to get away from the bullying I would become the class entertainer, so that way I became quite talkative and confident in doing things in front of quite a lot of people. So I was always known as the funny guy. It wasn`t bad bullying, just the odd bullying here and there until I eventually stood up for myself, but it really helped me with my ideas in life and wanting to do something special with my life. I either wanted to be an actor or a soccer coach because all I did was play football and swimming and bike riding when I was a kid.
MUSICAL ROOTS
Basically I used to play about with different loads of peoples` music, like Wham, The Specials and Jam. I used to go on the beach with my stereo and do pause button tape mixing. I just started to learn how to mix Disney records and fuck about with acapellas and instrumentals over funk and disco. I`m just kind of an obsessive record collector, I always read about rare records. Actually for a while I made a living from car boot sales by buying rare records, then selling and using them at record stores to get the records I actually wanted. So it was like buy and sell, it was kind of like I was a dealer. It was brilliant! I picked up incredible bongo band albums, I picked up Kool and the Gang albums, James Brown albums, I picked up everything. I`ve got an amazing record collection.
FIRST PROJECTS
One day when I found myself wondering around Worthing, there was an empty shop and I thought, `Shit, I could start a record store there with my interest in records and all these records that I`ve got.` So I gave up my job and borrowed some money from the bank and set up a record shop in Worthing called Instant Vibes. Then later set up another store in Brighton called Happy Vibe records - and that`s where it happened from there. I set up my club night in Brighton, I met all the big DJs, I met loads of musicians like Paul Weller and Fatboy Slim, and I started my club night. Everything just accumulated from there. I set up my record labels and my DJing, and I started getting in the studio. It`s been about 10 years ago and it all just started from there really.
Lloyd, who is my business partner, came into my shop School of Thought one day and said, `Do you want to start up a night?` I had just got a club called the Funky Buddha Lounge, and that is where we set up Super Charged. Then I thought, `Why not run the labels Super Charged and Against the Grain?` Against the Grain is slightly more funkier, more commercial side of breaks and Supercharged is the more bassline, harder side of breaks. We just thought to ourselves `This is perfect,` and the club night`s been going for 8 years every Wednesday. It`s now moved to Audio from Funky Buddha and it`s getting bigger and better. We`ve had every DJ in the world, on the breaks and hip hop tip, play - from Plump DJs and Stanton Warriors to Scratch Perverts and IC, and pretty much everyone Marky mixed it up with some Drum and bass. So that`s all really good and the labels doing really well.
LABELS & PRODUCTION
I first started releasing tunes on Finger Lickin` before I set up my labels and then I had to eventually swing towards my own labels. I`ve done Trickatechnology and done a couple of remixes and released a couple of singles but eventually found room to get stuff out on my own labelsm, which was a must. I finally managed to get my first album out, `Freakshow,` which I was really happy about. Two years of hard work, travelling around the world, working with different musicians, producers, vocalists, rappers - it was all worth it. I travelled to Washington DC, went to New York, all around the country. It was a hard, hard effort and two extreme years of keeping my fingers on the pulse and making sure my music was up to scratch. I had to get the balance right, using all my musical influences, and make an album that would stand the test of time. You can listen to Freakshow at any time - in the morning, at night, on your iPod, it`s got flavours for everyone.
I made my first record in` 96 and it came out on Ministry of Sound. They set up a label called FS UK they released five 12`s. It was very successful at the time, as no one else was doing anything like that at the time, other than Wall of Sound and the Dub Pistols` label Concrete. It was more of that sort of big beat era, it all got in the magazines, and when Fatboy Slim signed one of my records to Southern Fried, it all blew up really quickly. I had set up a good platform for myself. I had done a few remixes for major labels and then I done a big remix of `Stackyhumanoid,` which was a big tune, and `Sandwiches` by the Detroit Grand Pubhas. It just helped my career blossom immediately and I had residencies at various nightclubs around the world and it all started really kicking off. In Australia, I was headlining tours in front of 20-30 thousand people. My success in Australia is massive compared to anywhere else - it was ridiculous! I was headlining festivals above Coldcut, Tim Deluxe, Mix Master Mike, Jurassic 5, Cut Chemist.
I love working with people who have a good energy and a good vibe about them like Dynamite, so professional. Such a good MC, so underrated. Tim Deluxe is really humble, down to earth, and one of my best mates, he`s brilliant. Adam A Skills is an immensely talented young man, very professional, very good fun to work with. Ashley Slater from Freakpower is an immensely talented Jazz saxophonist and trombone player - he`s got a real cool swagger about him that I just admire. Doctor Luke, who I went to America to work with through the tracks on this album and three on the last album, he`s one of the hottest hip hop producers in the world. There are only three people ahead of him on the production tip - the Neptunes, Dre and Timbaland.
DJING
I entered an Under-18`s DJing competition, and I got to the final but my best mate beat me, he already had decks. So after that, my 21st birthday came along and I thought, `Fuck it I`m obsessed with this DJing, I`ve got to get into it.` I bought one turntable - that`s all I could afford. It just went on from there and eventually when I was 23 and I could save up, I got another deck and shortly after that I got the shop and it all just came together. I just kept practising and practising with my turntables and got the finals of some DMC competitions on occasions.
I like to go through music that has inspired a nation, or a tune that I`ve dug out, and do something clever with it. So generally speaking throughout my hour/two hour set I throw in everything from hip hop, breakbeat, drum and bass with lots of scratching, clever mixing, lots of loops and edits - kind of like throwing everything into the cooking pot and mixing it around a little bit. I give something different, I just like to entertain. If I see people not dancing, then I immediately like to switch it up and give a good energy. If you put too much attitude into your music, then you tend to have people chin stroking or just standing around. So my emphasis is all about the party - making everyone smile and happy, everyone having a good time and going home going thinking they had an amazing night.
I`ve won about 5 awards from Breakspoll. It is a great moment to win an award. Last year I won best DJ award in Ibiza and it`s good to get those things, because it makes you think you`re actually achieving something with your skills or your profession. It`s like in the premiership when a team wins the league - it`s like what they`re proud of, you want to do the best you can in your profession. I just don`t want to be someone who does his thing and comes home, I want to go forward all the time and push myself to the maximum I can go, without sounding commercial. I just want to push good, good music that people are going to appreciate. And I want to pass on my knowledge and wisdom to other people so it can help them and give them direction, because I had no direction. It took me a few years to get my direction; when you`re a DJ or musician, you need direction. If you haven`t got that at the beginning, you can lose interest. I`m always pushing myself to make better music and be a better DJ and I`ll never be satisfied to the point where I retire.
FABRIC
I`d always thought that fabric was the sort of club where my style would fit, where people were all about the music and the depth of what the DJ had to offer. I wanted to establish myself as a resident that people would look forward to seeing every month. I always change my set up; I`ve played in all three rooms. I love playing here and I`ve had some of my most memorable nights in fabric. My album launch was just a crazy night; it was rammed to the rafters and I had to play for five hours in Room One: my live show, a 2 hour DJ set on my own, and then back to back with A Skillz on four decks. It was a really good experience for me and it went down amazingly. All the rehearsals that I had put into it had paid off. I`ve had some really good nights here in Room Two, the energy in fabric is amazing. I`ve got the ultimate respect for fabric, that it`s held its cornice and it`s still the place to be week-in, week-out. The names that they put on the line-up are inspiring, the artwork is bizarre but it`s very clever in a way that it is not like anything else. fabric isn`t an experience like anything else, it`s an experience that you have to take in. Everyone knows fabric around the world, it`s the coolest club, it`s got the best DJs in the world, and it has been from day one. I`m very proud to be part of that family. I`ve always worked really hard to work my DJing into the fabric niche. And the good thing is I`ve kept myself exclusive to fabric, I haven`t really done any other dates in London like Ministry or The End or SeOne - and it`s worked well. I`ve built up a really good repertoire for playing in London through my residency at fabric.
THE MIX
Obviously I want it to be a CD which is going to last in your collection, it`s going to stay there in twenty years time. There`s lots of clever ideas, there`s lots of edits, lots of acapellas, lots of scratching, lots of DJing, technical abilities but also through the way the mix starts and where it goes - like a wave in the ocean, it goes up and down, so you can flow with it. You hear it and you get drawn in. With every part of the mix, I want to keep something interesting going on - but not overdo it, not over work it so there`s not too much scratching or too many loud records or banging heavy club tunes. It`s all about the depth, the musical range, taking all my influences from Latin to a little bit of hip hop, to funk, keep it pumping through and keeping it groovy. I work really hard to put my own exclusive tracks on there to make it interesting. There`s a couple of mixes on there that are insane, there`s a Freestylers `In Love With You,` an acapella off my album, and there`s just like a bootleg that`s just fucking ridiculous. I`ve been spending some quality time on the mix so hopefully people will think, `Fucking hell, he`s really thought about that!` It`s really important to me – it`s been two years now since I first acknowledged I was going to do a fabric mix, and it`s taken that long, but it`s been worth the wait well, fingers crossed.
THE FUTURE
I`m doing less travelling so that it`s more appreciated and there are more big one-off events. So that, say, in 5 years` time I want to get myself in a position that I`m doing one gig in London, one gig in Leeds a year, one gig in Liverpool, one gig in Brighton a year or two gigs in Brighton a year I`m probably going to move over to Australia and emigrate out there in 5 years` time, maybe 6, and work with the government out in Australia teaching kids how to write music or mix CD's you know, just kind of educate and give something back.Show less
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