Elite Force Interviewed by Ross truscott

 

Elite Force is one of the World’s most talented and professional DJ and Producers that I have ever met. He lives on a farm, he can cook, is a father to a three year old and is realeasing a track for charity, this guy has got it right!! He has  been writing, recording, releasing now for 16 years or so under aliases such as Elite Force, Lunatic Calm, Zodiac Cartel, Dustbowl, Flicker Noise and others and currently single-handedly run award-winning multi-genre label, U&A Recordings . He was also voted Best Producer at the 2011 Breakspoll Awards.

 

His music's been in used in around 40 movies over years (including the original Matrix), many TV shows (including CSI, Buffy and Match of the Day. He has also involved in multiple Playstation games (including 5 consecutive years on the FIFA Soccer games). Elite Force recently wrote half of the Soundtrack for the Motorstorm Apocalypse game for PS3.

 

• Hi I would start by thanking you for doing this interview, you are by far one of my favourite DJ’s loving your work mate and a pleasure to do this interview.

Thank you my friend, glad to be involved.

• I would like to start by asking how long you have been DJing and producing?

I've been DJing for 20 years now, producing releasable material for 17 - was a lot harder back then than it is now to produce releasable material!

 

 

• What kind of music did you first start producing?

I was always interested in musical hybrids rather than pure forms & my passion was for the music rather than for belonging to a 'scene' as such, so the initial experiments revolved around a blend of programmed keyboards and live instrumentation. The first thing I released was a techno EP on a London-based techno label, but they were real sticklers for what sounds could & couldn't be used on a track, and that sheep-like mentality didn't really interest me much. Around the same time I did a white label of a breaks track that was picked up by Wall of Sound for a compilation and shortly after than I released a couple of singles as Flicker Noise (a band I was part of) before launching into Lunatic Calm and Elite Force.

 

 

• Do you remember what your first decks were?

I'd been Djaying for years before I ever had my own decks, just learnt on the fly in front of a crowd. I bought a comedy pair of home-made decks that didn't work when I moved up to London ... carried this huge coffin for miles, on buses, tubes, got it home & it was useless. So I just waited until I could afford some 1210s and got them.

 

• What kind of dance music did you first start listening to?

Acid house was the 'clincher' for me. Before that I'd been casually interested in bits & pieces and was quite into Belgium New Beat and some of the early hardcore & gabba tracks that were coming out around 1990 as well as liking the Madchester stuff where guitar bands & hooligans were first getting pilled up & learning to dance. It was an exciting time because it was a time of sociological change, and if you were a raver, the government politicised you by chasing you around the countryside ... in the 80s dance music hadn't interested me at all - it was pretty tame, unchallenging, but with acid house a whole generation became co-opted onto the dancefloor and it was a life-changer for many of us.

 

 

• What did you first start DJing?

I played 5-hour sets every Friday to 1000 people or so, and it ranged from the baggy indie-dance stuff through to rave anthems and all points in between - was quite a juggling act, but it taught me about building stories through the music and finding ways to draw people into those unexpected shifts in style.

 

 

• Who were your musical influences when you were growing up?

I was into rock, metal, hip hop, skate punk & thrash - music really got interesting for me around '85 when I first started going to shows and saw some real early Metallica gigs. I actually used to go clubbing a fair bit in the late 80s too, but the clubs tended to be properly weird psychedelic nights playing the likes of Spacemen 3, Loop, Suicide, Can, that kind of stuff. I was also into a lot of New York No Wave stuff like Swans, Big Black, Sonic Youth, and still am to be honest.

 

• Who would you say was your biggest non musical influence on your life?

Creatively I read a lot of Beat writings and was pretty big into poetry & art back in the day but I was very interested in movements with concepts behind them, such as Futurism, Surrealism and Dadaism, where some great creative thinkers drove their ideas forward on waves of idealism. I was also pretty interested in musical characters like Stockhausen & Webern, extreme thinkers that looked to push the parameters of their artforms. I studied music history academically at college and it was always a fascination to dig into the background behind the artists.

 

• Do you remember your first Dance event, what was it?

I can't say I do off the top of my head - it was probably an acid house party out on Dartmoor somewhere.

 

• What are you preferred events are you guys in to festivals or prefer something more intimate?

They both have their positives, but Burning Man is the ultimate for me because it somehow manages to combine both of those aspects in one epic 'event'.

 

• What is the weirdest gig you have ever played?

That's a very subjective definition, 'weird'. Lots of places I've been to have been pretty alien to my own experiences and my own lifestyle, but I like to embrace whatever comes my way & try to enjoy in in the best way possible. Sometimes though you can't help but look up from the decks and just think 'holy shit, I'm playing HERE' - I'll never forget my first DJ show in the US where I played in Las Vegas in the Speedway place up the road, overlooking the lights of Vegas. I was completed in the zone Djaying & my manager tapped me on the shoulder & just said 'look'. My jaw hit the floor right there.

• Have you ever played a gig out of it?

No. That's not my thing. I always think people who do are doing a disservice to the people who are there to see them.

 

 

• Have you ever been arrested if so what for?

LOL. What, are you police or summit? The answer's no. I'm a good lad.

 

• Have you ever done internet dating?

Jesus Christ. Next question.

 

• Apart from social networking sites and e-mail accounts what web site do you love?

I honestly don't have much time to 'browse' for content. Most of my internet usage is work-related.

 

 

• Are you a tech kind of guy having loads of gadgets in the house  or do you like to keep it simple?

I probably have more than I need, but they are largely pointless as I rarely have any free time to use any of them and they end up being used & abused by my 3-year old daughter anyhow.

 

• What is your biggest fashion disaster?

Every day's a fashion disaster in my world.

 

• How do you fill your time when you’re not doing your music? Have you got a train set or addicted to antiques?

I live on a farm with a few acres of land, so that absorbs most of my time outside of doing music. We have sheep, chickens & grow a lot of our own vegetables. Great for the soul. I'm also pretty keen on photography although I don't really have the time to do much more than photograph around home.

 

• What was the last film you watched?

The last film I can remember watching was True Grit. Big fan of the Coen's and this certainly didn't disappoint, unlike most of the in-flight movies I see.

 

• Can you cook? If so what’s your best dish?

Yeah I cook pretty much every night when I'm at home - there's something very calming about creating in the kitchen.

 

• Did you have a nick name when you were growing up?

Shack. It stuck.

 

• What in your life are you most proud of?

I'm proud that I set out to make a living out of making music, and 20 years on I am still managing to do that even though sometime you feel like you're going nowhere. Outside of that I guess I'm most proud of my family's achievements and that we manage to keep the farm going every year without it turning into a rampant jungle.

 

• Are there any up and coming DJs and producers that you think we should look out for?

I don't really get a chance to check out DJs that often other than those who are warming up for me, and the best ones are the (very few out there) who understand how to build a crowd and set the scene for the night ahead, like Fine Cut Bodies and Metha (in Hungary) and Resistance in the UK. In terms of production The Loops of Fury are no longer a 'new' name I guess, but they are doing some huge things for me on U&A at the moment on the production front.

 

 

• What’s playing on your mp3 player or computer at the minute?

A bouncedown of a work-in-progress I've been at work on for a few days on this trip to New Zealand. It's a Zodiac Cartel remix of 'Non-Believer' for release on U&A as part of the 'United & Anarchic' compilation in a few months time.

 

• What is your guilty pleasure?

If I told you it would unburden me of any guilt I might feel and thereby just become a pleasure.

 

• What are you most excited about in the dance scene at the minute?

I think it's a golden age right now. I love the fact that a lot of the old guard hate on dubstep - it's a new, fresh genre that the younger kids getting into dance music for the first time feel some real ownership over, and whilst I respect people's right to their own opinions, when I hear people moaning and whining about it, it's no different from my parents whining and moaning about me playing Napalm Death or Public Enemy turned up to 11 when I was a kid. What dubstep is doing is re-invigorating the whole scene and it's influence is being felt far & wide. It's also challenging the horrible, dreary notion that the only people who are 'viable' to headline big events and top the charts at Beatport are those same purveyors of proggy-techno-house stodge who have been ruling the roost for decades now. It feels like a golden age because 'Bass Music' for want of a better word is an exciting place to be working in right now, with broad & rangy channels of experimentation and cross-fertlization happening at every turn.

 

• What do you see yourself doing in twenty years time?

I have no game plan that takes me that far forward. If I did, I would be working for 'The Man'.

 

• Can you tell the readers one interesting thing about you that they won’t already know?

My mother was a pterodactyl.

 

• What does the rest of 2011 have in store for you?

I have wall-to-wall shows until the beginning of September, including at least 6 weekends of shows in the US  (much the same as last year) … some are Festivals, some are ‘Massives’ and some plain club shows. After that I'll be off to finish the summer up at Kazantip in Ukraine and then Burning Man, which is the highlight of the year, so after that I'm planning on taking 6 weeks off from DJaying altogether to recharge, assess and put in some serious hours in the studio.
I also just released a new single 'We Are Distrikt' which is a fundraiser for the Distrikt camp at Burning Man and I would love your readers' support on it. You can only get it directly from my Bandcamp page and any purchases are a MASSIVE help > http://eliteforce.bandcamp.com/releases
I have an album coming out in June called ‘Shockland’ which features extended mixes of tracks written alongside with Oscar-winning composer, Klaus Badelt, for the Playstation game ‘Motorstorm Apocalypse’. Then my label U&A releases two compilations under the banner ‘United & Anarchic’ later in the summer featuring excluives from many of my friends and artists on the label. The plan beyond that is to work on some collaborations directly with Klaus Badelt, and to properly immerse myself in a new artist album for release in 2012, when I’m also contemplating putting together more of a live show.

 

• What events have you got coming up that the readers could look out for?

The best bet for Events is to check out the Diary here  http://artistdata.sonicbids.com/elite-force/shows/ although probably the biggest deal of all for me personally this summer will be my second Boat Party that I'm hosting on the Thames in London on 16th July. Last year was a sellout and this one is fast doing the same (it was a really special evening to be honest!) so I'd urge anyone who wants to come to get their skates on & grab a ticket sooner rather than later http://www.eliteforcemusic.com/boatparty2011.htm

Also it would be worth saying that I have an entire PAGE full of free downloads for people to grab (9 tracks) here  http://www.eliteforcemusic.com/downloads.htm

 

 

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