1.Growing Up
A large part of my childhood was based around playing the piano. I started taking lessons at age four and carried them on right through school, taking in as much as I could about classical and jazz piano. The only issue was I hated playing to people; my piano teacher was about the only person who could get away with it. My parents would ask me to play and I’d wait for them to leave the house before I’d let loose. That’s probably the craziest thing about what I do now: standing up in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands of people by the weekend and performing. I thought fears were supposed to get worse as you clock up the years.
2.Inspirations
In life, Stevie Wonder is my biggest inspiration. I saw him perform at Glastonbury’s 40th birthday for the first time and it was around the time when life was a little on the stressful side; I was struggling to come to terms with a rare eye disease I’d been diagnosed with two years previously and he blew my mind so much, so it gave me determination and courage I never knew existed inside. I can’t obviously say whether I’d still have got to where I have if I hadn’t been there to witness it that day, but I can make a safe guess.
3.Your Crew
I’ve been releasing on Visionquest and Leftroom since starting out producing – they’re a great bunch and I’m eternally grateful for the support they’ve shown me since the start. When we do get the opportunity to all do label showcases together it’s great. We hosted Room One at Fabric all night long recently, which was perfect, and there’s a ten years of Leftroom tour upcoming so it will be great to be back behind the controls with Tolfrey again.
4.The Music You Make
The music I’ve produced or remixed and released so far has been a mix of deep, melodic and musical house and hypnotic deep techno, occasionally spliced with my own vocals. I’m very excited about my forthcoming EP on Visionquest – it’s a two-track original with a remix from one of my favourite producers of the moment, Och. It displays a harder, more clubbier side to what I do and is more in the vein of what I play in my DJ sets.
5.Music, Right Here, Right Now
I’m often loving a whole heap of stuff at any given time so questions like this are never the easiest. Currently I am loving Joey Anderson, Och, Brooks Mosher, Ryan Elliott, Stephen Brown, Redshape, the list goes on… The latest releases from Och on Autoreply, Brooks Mosher on Steffi’s label Dolly and Stephen Brown on Artless are incredible.
