Submitted By: dico

Genre: Techno

Date of Set: Jan 13th, 2007

Filesize: 78.76 MB

Total Downloads: 6

I can't remember a time without the strains of soul music drifting through our house. With both parents coming from Barbados I was brought up very much in tune with a natural party ethos that went hand in hand with a love of good music. My earliest musical memories are of Booker T and the MGs, Aretha Franklin and, of course the great Elvis, and I used to hijack my parents collection of 70's soul 45's and get the whole family grooving round the lounge! I guess the early signs were there - my passion for music combined with an over-whelming desire to entertain as many people as possible.

By 10 I had well and truly caught the bug and was spending every bit of my pocket money on soul and funk records. I got my first pair of decks (just the 2!) by the age of 15 and I started to play as many parties as I could, discovering that I could buzz off a crowd whilst funding my habit at the same time. As the 70's became the 80's I followed the musical trend from soul to disco to hip-hop but it wasn't really until I moved to Brighton in 1986 that I discovered, along with so many others, the pure thrill of acid house.

The 'Summer Of Love' was special for me in more ways than one. It was at the Sunrise rave on the outskirts of London in 1988 that I had had my biggest breakthrough yet. I was already something of a regular on the infamous M1/Orbital rave circuit but it was at Sunrise that I had the idea to hook up a third deck. At 10.30am on a hazy Sunday morning I managed to tempt 15,000 partied out ravers back onto their weary feet and kick the party back into action - it was an amazing experience- and since then my phone has not stopped ringing with offers for 'The 3 Deck Wizard'. I was fortunate enough to participate in many of the events that have gone down in history as defining moments in the history of UK club culture, such as playing the opening night at Rampling's legendary Shoom, running The Project with Oakie as well as holding a residency at Brighton's ZAP club.

With my reputation as a DJ well and truly secured I was able to turn my attentions towards producing. Initially signing to Perfecto I had my first hit in 1992 with 'I Want You' and, believe me, no one was more surprised than me when I found myself performing on Top Of The Pops when my record peaked at number 23 in the UK charts!!

Despite the fact that the follow up 'Does It Feel Good To You' also charted in the top 40, commercial success was never what I had been aiming for, it was all somewhat too far removed from the reality and buzz of setting a dance floor alight. Whilst fellow spinners such as Grooverider and Fabio moved from raves into Jungle, choosing to focus on a very UK and London orientated sound, I couldn't escape the American and European influences that had always been there whilst I was growing up. I have always been very globally minded which comes across in my choice of music, which I use to cross physical and cultural boundaries to bring people together. Essentially my heart lies with house and techno and it was for this reason that I chose to take a back seat from my impending career as a pop star and be true to myself by going underground and re-discovering my roots.

I started by setting up my first imprint, MMR, for Techno productions. I found that my popularity as a DJ gave me an opportunity to take techno to the masses and my first album FACT (Future Alliance of Communication and Technology) has to this day sold 250,000 copies. I spent 5 years under my own Ultimate Music Management which spawned club nights and tours alike and set up the forward-looking Worldwide Ultimatum to encourage the creative talents of more DJ's such as Josh Abraham's, Trevor Rockcliffe, Earl Gray and DJ Dan. In 1996 Nicky Holloway approached me to start a new night based on the style of music I was playing at the time and Ultimate Base was born at Velvet Underground along with the help of Jim Masters. Over the last 5 years Ultimate Base has showcased some of the world's finest techno DJ's, steered by a futuristic ideal, which very much reflects my own way of thinking.

The last several years have been absolutely mind blowing. In between jet-setting between gigs as far afield as South Africa, Israel, Tasmania and Asia I kick-started my acting career in the classic UK clubbing film 'Human Traffic' and somewhere along the way I found time to start new labels Ultimatum Breaks and Intec to focus on providing quality purist house and techno. I have regularly contributed Essential mixes for Radio One and I followed up the success of FACT (1&2) with several more mix albums including 'Phuture 2000'. My career has been marked by a number of awards - I was awarded IDA 'DJ Of The Year' 2 years in a row, Muzik named me as the Best British DJ and I've had more honours from NME, Dancestar and countless other organisations all over the world.

Out of so many highs it is difficult to pin-point the peak for me - it is a close call between The Love Parade and the dawn of the millennium. Playing for a crowd of 1,500,00 up-for-it clubbers in Berlin was the ultimate DJing experience in terms of seeing how wide reaching music can be but then being lucky enough to see in the millennium not once but twice - first on Bondi pavilion, then hopping on a jet over the timeline to Honolulu, Hawaii, was also pretty special.

More recently I have given up my residency at Base in order to concentrate on spreading myself even further afield. But don't worry, in between producing, writing, remixing, presenting, TV appearances, managing, not forgetting DJing I will still be making regular appearances at Base and hanging with the very people who got me where I am today.

Submitted By: dico

Genre: Techno

Date of Set: Jan 13th, 2007

Filesize: 78.76 MB

Total Downloads: 6

'Forget The Sex Pistols. The bands that came before and after – Bauhaus, The Ruts, The Damned and UK Subs – made timeless music. It came from the heart.' Dave Clarke

Techno pioneer Dave Clarke has always mined the edges of the mainstream for his explorations into speaker-bustin’ dance music. The one-time hip hop and soul DJ spun hip hop deep into the mix of his 1996 debut Archive One, but on his second album Devils Advocate, he’s digging even deeper.

'The heart and soul of my record, and the heart and soul of all the music I’ve ever loved is darkness and attitude,' he says. Hence the flinty hip hop, filthy electro and bass-heavy post-punk that is wound around techno and house throughout the new record – released on Brighton’s Skint Records. 'I was about nine years old when The Ruts and The Damned were about and I got the records. They’re still references for me now. ‘Machine Gun Etiquette’ by The Damned is still one of my favourite albums of all time. And I loved the way Bauhaus was gothy cool, not over-goth. I was very into that.'

The ‘gothy cool’ of Bauhaus’s ‘She’s In Parties’ has been resurrected on a stand-out album track with some vocal assistance from Berlin’s favourite daughters, Chicks On Speed. 'It’s a new song, written around the hook ‘she’s in parties’' says Dave. 'And we had a great time recording it.' Clarke first met the Chicks seven years ago at the infamous Ultraschall club. 'I was pretending to be the doorman, people’d be coming up to me saying (mock German accent) 'Ven is Dave Clarke on?' We had a few drunken nights out with DJ Hell and Upstart, drinking Cognac and bourbon, going to 80’s soul clubs and playing chess. It sounds terribly communistic, doesn’t it?'

His connection with the art-edge of electro doesn’t stop there. In 2001, Clarke released the World Service compilation, featuring a still unbeaten new-school electro tracklisting. Hacker, Fischerspooner and Adult. were all present and correct, some time before Trendy London caught on. 'There were loads of compilations that came out, six, twelve, even eighteen months later, all with a very similar tracklisting. It pissed me off. At that time, there was so much exciting music coming out and it wasn’t being serviced by DJs or radio or the press.' Obviously, the record-buying public agreed and they sold 70,000 copies.

So will we be seeing Dave Clarke behind the decks at art-fashion electro clubs like Nag Nag Nag soon? 'I’ve got nothing to do with that scene,' says Clarke. 'I find it really funny that I was one of the first DJs to bring attention to this music and I’ve never been asked to play in those clubs. I prefer League of Gentlemen clubs anyway, local clubs for local people.' Although he will be taking the heavy sounds of Devil’s Advocate live, debuting his set at Creamfields. 'It’ll be me doing my thing, but in a punky live way.

Devil’s Advocate is an adrenalised album, cherry-picking the best of the last three decades and hammering it into a record laden with funk, groove and attitude. Take highlight ‘Dirtbox’ a totally rudeboy, death-disco moment with a narcotic bassline to knock your socks off. He’s also pulled Chicago house lynchpin DJ Rush into the record, on the jack-track blastin‘ opener ‘Way Of Life’. It’s a tune that Clarke has roadtested over the last twelve months, at clubs worldwide, from Portugal to Sao Paulo.

'It’s a statement of intent,' he says. 'I’d got so fucked off with people ripping of my Red (Clarke’s Red 1, 2 and 3 provided three of dance musics most recognisable anthems) stabs that I thought I’d rip myself off one last time. Rush came over, gave me two hours of vocals which I cut and pasted into a single song.' He also coralled politicised indie hip hop head Mr Lif onto the record. 'I saw him at the ICA and thought he was great. He comes from the heart.' Lif’s track, a screeching, slo-motion story of death and resurrection titled ‘Blue On Blue’ highlight’s Clarke’s hip hop roots and moves the record further away from the house and techno that Dave Clarke is best known for. 'That’s another reason I called it Devil’s Advocate' explains Clarke. 'The music will challenge people’s preconceptions about me. If you’re unaware of my first album or my remixes then you might think that my wholelife revolves around techno. It doesn’t.'

Clarke is indeed a man of many sounds but he’s undeniably an international techno ambassador of the highest degree. He’s been criss-crossing the globe every weekend for the last fifteen years playing the best in funky electronic music. 'Funny enough I’ve shied away from electro in my sets at the moment,' he says. 'There just aren’t the records right now. I still play a lot of ghetto booty electro though. I like it. It’s filthy, it’s got a charm and it’s got the funk.'

Having the funk matters. Whether it’s funk shaped like a jacking Chicago house party, or funk shaped like a post-punk b-line (Clarke’s favourite new band, incidentally, are Radio Four) it’s here. There’s even a reggae track, hidden away at the end, which was inspired by a fortuitous meeting in London’s equipment mecca, Funky Junk. 'I was talking to the guy behind the counter, saying that the only reggae I could relate to was Mad Professor because it’s so precise but really laid-back. He was like ‘Have you met him? He’s standing right behind you.’

But what about the cliched version of Dave Clarke, the opinionated, cigar-chomping gourmet speeding around in fast cars? He’s still there, in the background, and, currently driving a double-glazed Mercedes S500, 'for hacking up and down on motorways' which makes PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea sound 'amazing' plus a brightly coloured Honda NSX. 'I do smoke cigars, I do like fast cars and I do wear black, but there’s more to me than that.' You want to see past the cartoon? Just take one listen to Devils Advocate and it’ll all become crystal.

Not available

Not available