What's currently going on with Hardcore Underground? What's all planned for the rest of 2015?
This year is about doing what we *should* have done the second half of last year, and that's concentrating on pushing the boundaries of our own operation as a store and a label. The web store itself is already being re-developed in terms of what it can offer, and coupled with the various projects we have planned we're hoping to be able to take a further step away from being a label that just puts out CDs. We got preoccupied with our 'Live At Rehab' event for a large chunk of last year, mainly because we didn't want to just continue doing the same thing with the albums, but it was a massively time consuming project. We don't mind admitting it was an emotionally draining experience too, one that brought us to our knees on a couple of occasions to the point where we were absolutely ready to say "f**k this, lets go do something else". We've worked damn hard to dig ourselves out of the financial and emotional hangover it caused us and to get back on track, and that's why so far this year there haven't been any actual releases on the HU label itself. That will have changed drastically however over the coming months.
Your sister label HU Breaks- will that continue? What's going to be happening with that?
It'll definitely be continuing, and indeed expanding over the coming twelve months. A second album is being refined as we speak, and we really would like to give the Breakbeat Hardcore sound a much needed reboot. We had some real momentum with it after the first HU Breaks CD came out in 2013 and we were supporting the music a lot at our events, but no other brands really joined in by putting their money where their mouth was, and the movement slowed. There are some hugely talented new comers pushing the style though, and a core of others (including ourselves) who will still always want to write it. For that reason HU Breaks will always be an active part of our output as a label I think.
You guys seem to have become a distributor in hardcore along with being a label- any albums you guys will be distributing that people should be looking forward to?
We've tried to keep the two things (the store and the label) as separate as possible really, as there's a lot of music available in store that isn't necessarily the same style you'd hear on the label itself. We don't really have any editorial control over what the third party labels we distribute release, beyond trying to keep the benchmark of overall quality as high as possible, but there's already a wide variety of stuff to look forward to no matter what peoples tastes are within Hardcore . It's going to continue to be a busy year for both the HU label itself and the other labels we work with.
When will the the 4th Fracus & Darwin album be happening? How will it be distributed? Will we see it also through HMV/Amazon? Will it just be a CD? Any other formats planned?
It'll be available everywhere again I think; releasing artist albums is what we like doing best of all really so we kind of want the reach to be as wide as possible. It'll almost certainly see a limited edition vinyl release too. It's something we wanted to do with 'Filth And Dumb Hatred' to be honest, but we ran out of time. It's slated for October release and ties in with some other stuff we're doing this year, so we're also filling the diary up with as many DJ dates as we can cope with to tour the new music, as we think it's still the best way to sell records. More info soon.
What is the main difference between playing in various parts of the UK? What about the UK compared to the rest of the world?
Everywhere is different, even within one country, so it's hard to answer that without over generalising a bit. Visiting places you play less frequently always adds an extra zing to the atmosphere I think, but generally audiences globally seem pretty open minded to good music in all its forms these days. We've certainly never found it easier to experiment with what we play and still continue to hold the floor. People seem far less spoon fed than they used to, and the days of having to conform to some generic ideal, here or abroad, are fading. Really, the only major difference comes down to the actual line-ups themselves, and things like set times, the attitude of some promoters towards artists, stuff like that. Because people outside the UK don't necessarily have to endure years and years of seeing the same names in neon-lights at the top of every single flier, things are judged on a far more level playing field, like on the actual quality of an artists performances and their musical output.
Fortunately they're few and far between these days, but there are still some UK promoters who seem to base everything they do on what happened in 2005, and that's kind of frustrating for the likes of us, especially when they're perplexed by their falling numbers. A large proportion of the limelight is still sometimes reserved for people who were instrumental in the stagnation of the Hardcore sound (and have contributed very little to it since) whilst more relevant and active acts are side-lined. I think that's why the international scene has grown so much quicker than the UK being honest. It is changing here too though, and people are starting to realise that they should be looking forward to grow the genre rather than back.
What has been your favorite gig you have played?
Honestly, it'd be impossible to pick one. There are too many.
How did you Darwin & you start working together?
Through CDJay, with whom I co-run HU. He can be pretty abrasive and tactless at times, and that's earned him a few detractors over the years, but I don't think anyone has ever really done more for Hardcore in a truly selfless way than he has. He really does just love the music and the culture, and through his old RFU label, he tried to tether those of us kind of flapping in the breeze with regular production work and a platform to release more free-thinking music on. He encouraged Nick and I to write together some time in 2006, and from that point on really we never lost touch or a common interest in what we wanted to do musically. At the end of 2009, we deliberately paired ourselves as a DJ act with a view to not 'splitting the HU vote' and winning the 'Best Breakthrough DJ' category at the 2010 Hardcore Heaven Awards which we duly did. We were a bit naïve about the impact of such things even as recently as then, as it still made little difference to some of the promoters we were hoping would be a bit more supportive, but it was a great experience and one we'll never forget. By then anyway we'd travelled thousands of miles together, written an artist album together, and established quite an artistically positive way of working. Whether we're in the studio or on the road, we do just seem to manage to encourage and motivate each other into wanting to do stuff, Nick's one of the few people I find I'm actually happier to be around lol. We've never said we wouldn't ever go back to doing stuff on our own, and we do both still do things alone occasionally, it's just not something I enjoy as much any more and F&D is our main focus.
How did you get into production? What did you use(plugins/software etc)?
I was a DJ when I still at school and on pirate radio before I left college, so making music just seemed like the next logical step to take. In the early noughties there was a real drought of good quality new Hardcore records, so making the sort of things I wanted to play was the only way to do it really. Me and some mates acquired bits of kit as a consortium first of all, and slowly taught ourselves the process of making the music. Then I went on to study Music Technology at University, so that helped immensely with a lot of theory, and I spent most of my student loan on things like a Yamaha o1v digital desk, an Access Virus C, Cubase, V Station, Recycle, stuff like that. Initially I used engineers to take 'sketches' of tracks I'd / we'd written to for final production and that's where my first releases came from. Devastate, UFO and Force (of Force & Styles) were all people who engineered for us back when we first started, and we picked up as much as we could from them. People like Oli G who I met at Uni were also just getting into production and releasing music too, so he was also very helpful. I jacked it all in for nearly a year somewhere in the middle due to final year studies and wanting to spend every waking moment with my then GF, and that set me back a little bit too. I don't think I had an entirely self produced / engineered / mastered track released until about 2005 when I finally got back into it and decided it was still very much what I wanted to do.
