Hybrid Interview

Hybrid Interview image

OK you’ve literally just finished the live performance for Brighton’s Big Beat Boutique @ the Concorde 2, how was it for you?
Chris : "It was pukka, it was really really good, every single gig that you do there’s always something’s that’s not quite right, but it was good, it was really really good, it was lots of fun lets put it that way and the crowd were right up for it. I didn’t know if they were gonna be because we’ve DJ’ed down her before a coupe of times and it’s been alright - I think it might have had something to do with Krafty Kuts just playing old-skool classics before we went on last time, but tonight was really good." Mike : "We’ve had some wicked gigs down here, I really like Brighton... It was way too hot, if someone had said 3 tracks in we had to pull the plug, thank god for that, I’d of gone and laid down, knackered way too hot - playing live is the only thing that keeps us fit… nothing else does!"

How did you both first get involved in dance music?
Chris : "I started as a DJ, playing small nights in Swansea and just basically DJ'ing wherever I could for anybody that I could DJ for. I was DJing in the club called ‘Strictly groovy’ at Marthas in Swansea (it was like the underground night that went for 5 years before Escape opened - BASTARDS!) ... and Mike came in about two years in to it with a DAT of 'Another Brick In The Wall', a bootleg mix that he done and he was like 'do ya fancy playing this?' and we were like 'Yeah, yeah go on' and so we played it and we were like 'fucking hell that's a bit all right'. 'Have you got a studio'? 'Yeah I got a studio' - ‘Right!"

"So we went up there and the next 3 or 4 years of the club life that we were at, we kind of just made tunes for Saturday nights, we just took tunes that we didn't think we doing the right thing in the right place and just you know, made new stuff out of them and that's how we learnt basically."

Mike : "Before I met Chris, I'd just been doing tunes in the house, and I moved up to Manchester for about a year and did some work for this little tiny record label doing rave tracks, like proper old Hardcode tracks, and I sent a tape in and they wanted me to actually come up so I moved up to Manchester for a year and did that."

You were both in to Hardcore?
"Yeah, oh yeah - in a big way!" He enthuses, Chris jumps in with "Happy Hardcore, then Darkcore, then Garage went really sparse (Strictly Rhythm sort of Garage like hardly anything going on) then Hip-Hop Swing and House."

Mike : "I started with Hip Hop and then went to Hardcore, then got introduced to House with this lot. I produced a few, they never did an awful lot but just like little 1000 white labels, I listen back to a couple of them now and very early, still learning the ropes, they weren’t too bad. I started doing that, got the arse with the people in Manchester came back down to Swansea and then met this lot and that’s how we kicked off."

What was your first big break? (excuse the pun)
Chris : "We did a boot leg mix of Alianis Morisette, off her ‘Jagged Little Pill’ album, the track was ‘Forgive Me’ it was just like an acapella at the end of the album. So we took that and did like this breaks mix with it, and then a couple of people got it Lee Burridge and Sasha and started playing it. Mike actually went to Creamfields one year with a load of friends, went down to see Sasha he was at the front and there he was, dropped Alanis Morisette. Symphony was another big break for us, we actually released Symphony first off and it sold 67 copies and then Burridge got a copy, gave it to Sasha, Sasha put it on his Northern Exposure. And after that, that was it really we started playing with Jon and Sasha and it just went from there."

Digweed’s from my home town Hastings!
Chris : "That was one of the first gigs we ever did was Hastings with Sasha & Jon, it was a Bedrock on Hastings Pier, 7 years ago. I tell you what looking back at our live gig then it was horrifying, it wasn’t that live!" Mike takes over "that was the second one, the first was in Southampton University and that was also a Bedrock night. Jon helped us out loads - really got us started off, we ended up doing things like Nottinghill Carnival with Sasha and we just worked with them loads, doing loads of different gigs with them. They really helped kick start us."

"If you get that arm round the shoulder, it gives you a good little leg up, a lot of people took us a lot more seriously, it was really good, we do actually owe them quite a lot for kick starting us."

What would you describe as your best achievement to date?
Chris : "Putting our new live show together/maybe doing Maida Vale, we did Radio 1 Maida Vale last week - there was us live on stage, Peter Hook, Kirsty Hawkshaw and then there was a 12 piece string section. That took a lot of work to put together but that was the best thing I think I’ve heard us do live, it sounds awesome as well. We’re actually gonna release it as well."

Your based in the lovely pretty, shitty, city, Swansea in South Wales, but how come?
Mike : "My parents moved there about 27/26 years ago. He's from Stoke, I'm from Kent and we both ended up in the middle! He picked up the accent and I didn't?"

Chris : "I've lived in Cardiff and Newport if you’re gonna lose the accent they’re the places to go... Living there through my Mum and Dad moving and ending up there. Swansea is actually a really nice place, even though it is a pretty shity city - the outskirts of Swansea are really nice, the studio is in the valleys basically, it’s in the middle of nowhere, we can turn it up as loud as we like, it’s a lovely 18^th century little cottage, it’s Mike’s mum’s old house where we recorded Symphony 8 years ago, and then his mum went away and he bought the house, so we’ve got this lovely place we record music in - it’s just a nice place to be. It’s a bit like Brighton, lots of surf, lots of beaches, nice countryside - maybe not quite as cosmopolitan!"

Mike : "It's a good little place, we lived in London a couple of times, I lived up there twice, the 2^nd time we all moved up there to do the album, lived in Camden and just hated it, your going in the tube down in Soho where the studio was, wear a white T-Shirt and wipe your hand across the front and er, there’s black everywhere and horrible smog, it was nice to move out. I think we're country boys at heart, which makes life a lot easier. The music probably reflects that as well, it’s not as hard and as angry as it would be living in the city. It’s a very nice place. BT's been down, Kirtsy Hawkshaw, Darren Emerson, people like that. They’ve all really loved it when they come down, it’s the perfect place to work, get out to the country and go and relax, Peter Hook enjoyed it as well when he came down to the studio."

On your next single ‘True To Form’ you collaborated with New Order’s Peter Hook, what was that like and how did that come about?
Chris : "Well it was due to Richard Ford, our Manager. He was at the Muso's and Peter Hook was there and Peter Hook was complaining how when they New Order remixes done, the remixes never use his baselines, they just use the vocal. "I’m sure my lads would love to use your bassline!" So he told us and we were like ‘Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah’...

So we sent him ‘True To Form’ which is the first single, he really liked it, he wanted to co-producing thing on it, he came down and done two bass-lines, but he done True To Form and ‘High As A Skyscraper’, he’s a really cool guy, because he’s doing it for fun, he’s basically just helping us out because he likes what we’re doing. He's done Fabric with us, he’s done Glastonbury with us, he did Radio 1 with us, we’ve got like Peter Hook, this 42 year old rock legend coming on tour with us, it’s absolutely bizarre, telling us all these stories. In fact last time we were in Fabric, two weeks ago, well last weekend we done live - adopts northern accent ‘have you been in that fucking Speed Garage room (the Drum & Bass room) it's like the Hacienda, it's the future I tell ya, it’s fucking superb!’ So there’s him and my mate Steve from Swansea, in the Jungle room these two old guys properly going for it."

Mike : "He’s actually the self-proclaimed honorary Hybrid dad, he’s like 'Listen whatever you do I've done it ten times worse, now if you need any advice come to me"...

Hybrid interviewed continued