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Features
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| Introducing NEM3SI$’s new label Infinite Resistance! | | Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! | | Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! | | Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! | | Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. | | Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! | | Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! | | NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! | | Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! | | Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! | | Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! | | SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! | | The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! | | NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! | | Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project | | The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! | | A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden | | Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma | | Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino | | New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! | | PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! | | Psibindi talks all things music including her new collaborative EP 'Sentient Rays' on Aphid Records, her band Sentience Machine and 10 years of Psy-Sisters! | | N-Kore talks Jean-Michel Jarre, unfinished tracks and fatherhood! | | Celebrating International Women’s Day and Ten Years of Psy-Sisters with Amaluna | | A Catch Up with John Phantasm ahead of his upcoming set at the Tribal Village 4 Day Outdoor Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! | | 'The Maestro that is Tristan talks barn owls, Shazamming and keeping it Psychedelic ahead of his upcoming performance at the Tribal Village 4 Day Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! |
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Interview with Matt Williams of The Edison Factor
Reported by Cassandra
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Submitted 11-07-03 10:21
You’ve seen him play at Bar Riot and at Heat, heard him at Hard House Academy and Frantic, and probably wet your pants to his tunes at Timeless but you could be forgiven for getting confused as to what exactly master of disguise Matt Williams actually does. Ignition Crew/Edison factor/ Hard House DJ/House DJ/Producer?? So, as the hard dance fraternity applaud the long awaited release of Fixation (on Nukleuz), HarderFaster caught up with Matt to ask him to explain himself and his many guises.
HF: Firstly Matt, to set the record straight – how would you describe yourself musically?
MW: Like a box of Miniature Heroes; you never know quite what you will get next, but you know it will be delicious ;o)
Now for the more serious answer, I am a house head and a hard house head, including everything that exists in between.
HF: So talk us through a typical week in the life of Matt then…
MW: Generally I take it easy on a Monday to recover from the weekend ;o) Then on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I work for a specialist dance promotions company called PRO. They look after all the promo for most of the top house labels in the country. It’s good fun and it means that I get my mits on loads of lovely house 12’s ages before anyone else does! Thursdays and Fridays are spent in the studio, sometimes at home working on hard dance projects and sometimes elsewhere working on house projects. Friday nights is Ignition, a weekly house night that takes place in Clapham, South London hosted by The Ignition DJ’s (myself, Tom Real, Tom Neville and Hawk Dawson), with regular trips up to Godskitchen where I play in the Futurefunk room on a six week rotation. Then Saturday and Sunday are taken up with DJing at events like Riot!, Heat and Frantic, general partying and chilling out!
HF: Sounds quite hectic! What are you working on in the studio at the moment?
MW: I have just completed a remix for Y2K of Steve Morley’s ‘Reincarnations’, a special track that sits up there with Dreams and For An Angel as one of the greatest trance tunes of all time. On a much harder tip I have recently remixed a track with Justin Bourne and Mark Kavanaugh called ‘Guarantee’, coming soon on Short Circuit. Along side this I have some original productions on the go and collaborations with Spencer Freeland and John Rundell.
In addition to that I have been working on house projects with Martin (Hawk) Dawson (one of the Ignition Crew), we have just completed a latino-vibed track that is going down very nicely.
HF: Having had experience of producing and playing so many different styles, what would you say is the key element to making a good house record vs a hard house tune and do you have a preference?
MW: That’s a tricky question to answer without getting all technical and boring! In terms of the overall tune, the fundamentals remain the same; a thumping beat, fat base and strong hook. However when it comes to making the tracks, hard house is about as far as you can get from house. I honestly don’t have a preference, I adore the big room euphoria of hard house, but I love the groove of a house record.
HF: Seems a bit hard to imagine for those who have seen you spinning at Riot, but word on the street is that a young Matt Williams was more regularly seen carrying a trombone rather than messing around with decks and vinyl. Can you shed some light on these allegations?!
MW: Yes it’s true! In lower school at the age of eight I started learning violin, but jumped at the chance to learn the trombone in middle school aged ten. It was soon apparent that I had a talent for the instrument and when I was fourteen I was awarded a scholarship to The Guildhall School of Music junior department, so off I went to music college in London every Saturday to study trombone along with some of the best young musicians in the country. It was great fun and had a real ‘centre of excellence’ vibe, and I got to play in some amazing concert venues, including The Royal Albert Hall, the Barbican and The Royal Festival Hall.
HF: So at what point did you give up the concert halls for the clubs?
MW: During this time I had also discovered the delights of dance music and was going out to huge illegal raves most weekends. It was then that I knew that I wanted to start writing dance music. I also wanted to carry on the trombone, so when it came to choosing University courses I opted for a music degree but majoring in electronic music, which I did at the University of Huddersfield. It was in Huddersfield that I also took up DJing seriously and regularly played at the union’s club, Eden which was a large venue holding about 1500 people. The sound up north at the time was handbag house, with clubs like Cream in Liverpool, Love 2 Be in Sheffield and The Hacienda in Manchester leading the way. The club nights at the union were absolutely amazing and played host to big club tours from Cream, Sasha and Digweed’s Northern Exposure and Hard Times, so I got to play at some pretty good parties.
HF: We find it hard to picture how a DJ moves from playing handbag house up North to making stomping hard house tunes and frequenting the murky underworld of Camden Palace! How did this transition come about?
MW: Along side my coursework at Huddersfield I was spending loads of time in the studios making house music, or at least trying to learn how to! One evening in the students union late into the final year I got chatting to some dude called James Lawson who was also keen to get into writing dance music, and we decided to do a track together. The rest as they say is history! We got on so well and gelled musically so decided to hook up in London and invest in a studio together. James was into a much harder sound than me as at that point I was firmly into house and PVD style trance. It was he who took me to my first Frantic at Bagleys and introduced me to the world of hard dance. This translated into the stuff we were making in the studio as it was hard edged with a strong trancey element. Around this time Nervous Breakdown was signed to Freezing Point and so The Edison Factor was born.
HF: And what a great day that was for hard house with the all time classic ‘The Beginning’ being you follow up release! How did you feel about the reaction of the dance floors to your music?
MW: What can I say? It was a dream come true to see the tracks blow up. The first time I heard Nervous Breakdown was in Camden Palace and it was emotional to say the least! For the previous four years I had been dreaming of this moment, to see Camden Palace go off to a track I had made and it was actually happening.
HF: So with all this going on, how did you come to join the Ignition Crew?
MW: When I first heard The Ignition Crew they blew me away. Here I was in London, going to hard house clubs and no one seemed interested in the slightest in house music. In fact, a lot of the clubbers I knew actually openly slated it! So when I saw the first ever Riot flyer I was over the moon. Finally someone was putting on a full-on hard house do, with a house room, and to top it all off, it’s at one of the most famous clubs in the world, The End!!! Wow, I was hooked already. When I actually heard the guys play I was amazed, they were playing exactly the sort of dirty underground house that I loved. The guys knew that I used to DJ house up north, and after about a year of knowing them they asked me to join the crew. It was amazing for me as I never thought I would be able to pursue hard dance producing but then be a house DJ as well.
HF: We were treated to a few Edison Factor B2B sets a few years back – why did you not continue this or pursue as a Hard House DJ?
MW: It was around the same time when we were working on the Edison Factor back 2 back sets that I was asked to join The Ignition Crew, or ‘Ignition DJ’s’ (as we are now known), so suddenly my DJ diary was filling up with house gigs. At this time also James’s hard house gigs were picking up, so it got kind of put on ice. However this year since I have been producing a lot of solo material I am starting to DJ hard again and I have just begun a residency for Milk on Saturday mornings @ 414.
HF: So any chance of Edison Factor live?
MW: One day! One day definately. It is something that both myself and James have always wanted to do. However these days with so many live shows around you have to come at it from a completely original angle, so it is not as easy as it used to be.
HF: It must be quite daunting to be following James’ meteoric rise to solo production fame. How do you feel that your solo production differs from the Edison Factor sound and how do you keep your sounds fresh?
MW: Watching James break as a solo producer over the last year has been probably the main inspiration behind me taking the plunge and producing full time. It inspired me to make the transition from producing music as a hobby to it being my full time occupation, which is a daunting step to make. My solo sound has a lot of similarities to The Edison Factor but is developing in two ways. One is on a slightly slower hard trance tip and the other is on a more underground hard house tip. This is how I would like to establish myself this year as having two styles as they are both sounds that I love.
HF: Any chance of an Edison Funkter house release?
MW: Maybe in about ten years time when we do our ‘greatest hits’ collection!
HF: So what do the next 12 months hold in store?
MW: The next twelve months holds a lot more productions and development of my sound plus my first steps into the hard house DJ arena and the Ignition DJ’s continuing to take over the world! I am hoping to get remixes or productions on all of the scenes’ top labels. So far I have done Nukleuz, Y2K, Short Circuit and Freezing point. The next ones I want to work for are Tidy, Vicious Circle and Recover.
HF: So with house, hard house and world domination all covered, all that remains is the obligatory top 3’s…..ah yes, that old chestnut!
House Tunes of all time
JD ‘Plastic Dreams’
Leftfield ‘Not Forgotten’
Chemical Brothers ‘Hey Boy Hey Girl’
Hard House Tunes of all time
Dreams (Paul Glazby remix)
Time To Burn (Nick Sentience remix)
Kemical Imbalance
Club nights out
Colours @ The Arches, Glasgow
Homelands 2001
Riot @ The End
HF: And your tip for the top:
MW: My tip for the top has to be Ollie P and Ashley Sinclair. Their track ‘The Venue’ has got to be one of the best original hard trance tunes written in the last two years. When you hear something like that you know it’s pure talent. Also Rowland and Wright are smashing it at the moment, another very talented pair.
Many thanks to Matt Williams for his time and keep an eye/ear out for the Reincarnations remixes coming out in August on Y2K.
Matt plays next at Milk on Saturday 19th July - for full details click here.
To view Matt's DJ page click here.
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Other Features By Cassandra:
Interview with Rowland & Wright aka Phatt Bloke & Slim
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Comments:
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From: carl nicholson on 11th Jul 2003 10:27.36
Absolute Legend of a musician, and an all round nice bloke! Well Done Matt!!!!
From: Olly Perris on 11th Jul 2003 11:17.42
Thanks for the mention matt  - Good luck with the new collaborations too matey!
From: Stevi D on 11th Jul 2003 11:48.45
Fuck im impressed!!"
From: James Nardi on 11th Jul 2003 13:30.47
Nice one Matt, see you down Inigo sometime i`m sure.......
I tend to live down there at the weekends.
From: Jon Rundell on 11th Jul 2003 13:33.32
WILLIAMS YOUR A DIRTY DIRTY DAAAWG
From: Matt Smallwood on 11th Jul 2003 16:15.36
Williams you little legend! Nice one mate!
From: Camden Nurse on 13th Jul 2003 12:46.01
Well done Dude!
From: Lizzie.Wiggle on 14th Jul 2003 12:38.56
Talk about GTFRI!! See you soon Williams!
From: Lizzie Curious on 15th Jul 2003 10:46.32
A producer I really admire, producing wicked tracks and totally clued up on two totally different genres... I like!
From: Basildo on 19th Jul 2003 12:16.22
Fookin quality...see him n Hawk sleazin it up with some dirty grooves at the Cheshire Street party last weekend...HORROR !!!
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