What is your musical background and what brought you into dance music?
Started when I was a teenager, with metal, Metallica, Guns n Roses, then I got a copy of the Slayer album on tape, on the other side there was a copy of the first Prodigy album. I ended up finding myself listening to Prodigy more than Slayer. I got interested in how that music was made and I found out about sampling, and where that all comes from. In the mid 90s I became interested in jump up and jungle.
How did you evolve from your musical influences in the mid 90s to now?
It was always a hobby in the past and it was fun, in the early 2000's when electroclash came around, reminded me of electro 80s stuff I listened to in the past. Since 2001 I've been concentrating on that area and how it's involved. Moving from electroclash to Justice and Ed Banger.
What's your take on the French electro scene with Justice, Ed Banger?
I'm very impressed with how self contained it is. They really have that image and the design element. It's not so much what I play anymore but I love it and it's influenced so much in such a small amount of time.
When you play do you play your own tracks/other peoples tracks?
I enjoy both. They both go hand in hand. Production is a hobby to me, it's never a chore. I try to play a mixture of my own stuff and stuff I'm into. A dj should be presenting new stuff and their own taste to a crowd. It can be kind of difficult because a lot of people want to hear the older stuff, but I try to move it along and keep it fresh.
You have to evolve otherwise it will become stale. I stand by everything I've ever made, and I try to drop some old stuff, but I can't keep playing the same stuff.
There is a very distorted view of what is old. Tracks are leaked and released and within a month they are old. It doesn't give record a chance to grow, a lot miss out on the hype. They should be given time to breathe. I don't really like having tracks of my own stuff done because I want to tracks to grow on their own.
How do you feel about remixing music that wasn't originally dance music vs. remixing existing dance tracks? Is one of these more valid or respectable to you?
I definitely think there are dance tracks that can be improved, my outlook is that if you do a good job of it, then why not. I think there are a lot of dance tracks that can be improved and changed and presented to a different part of the scene I think it's totally valid.
What makes you choose a particular band or song to remix?
It generally comes down to you looking at the song and thinking, can I make that work? Has that got an element I can use as a hook. I'll go through the song and pick phrases that I like, I'll chop them up and start messing with pitch and just listen over and over to things. The mood of a song might dictate where you're going to go. If there's a bit of a lyric you like, even if it's not the main lyric of the song, you can use that to reflect the mood that you want.
Pete Tong featured you as the "Essential New Tune" on his show, and many artists are remixing and sampling your tracks on their essential mixes. How does this recognition and publicity affect you?
It's great when people are supporting the records and are playing them and into them. The Essential New Tune thing was crazy, brilliant. The effect was pretty subtle, but it definitely had an effect. I think it got the song across to a lot of people who might not have necessarily heard it. There is definitely a specific audience for that show and they might not 100% be into what I do, The way he summed it up, he said it didn't initially seem like a big room tune, but by playing it he noticed that it was working and people were into it, and that's what I wanted with that record. To get the kind of professional recognition was nice, it's not just any hype. I've just got to do it again now.
With your dj name, Boy 8-Bit, there was some talk in your background about being influenced by video games, does that really play much of an influence or is it more of a past influence?
It might not be so much of a direct influence, it is definitely the music I grew up on. I am old enough to have grown up with a Commodore 64. I remember all this super melodic music, quite bliss-y, and obviously a lot of the stuff I've done, and still do has that element because at the end of the day, I love melodic music and I love the simplicity of those sounds. I don't go out of my way to make 8-bit music, which I get some comments for sometimes.
What are you up to next, what are you looking forward to doing?
I've got a new single coming out, this track called "The Keep" which is a much more stripped back kind of banger, a club tune. I've got an EP coming out for Tiga's label Turbo Records. I'm just going to keep putting out music. I'm doing an essential mix for Radio One. Just carrying on. I want to maybe start producing for other people and branching out into that area. It's a hobby to me, so I just want to keep doing it.
http://www.myspace.com/boy8bit
