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A Trance Masterclass, Adam White Style Reported by SunnyAli / Submitted 03-06-08 18:12 It has been said that it is not possible to be all things to all men, but Adam White, DJ, producer, label manager and pioneer of some of trance’s newest and most experimental noises, is certainly giving it a go. He’s making, remixing, promoting and supporting new artists and sounds with unstoppable energy – but then, what else would you expect of a protégé of Paul Oakenfold’s? He describes his distinctive trance sound as “melodic” and packs his music with weird and wonderful influences that range from rock to breakbeat and drum and bass to create an intriguing blend he fits skilfully to the crowd and dancefloor he’s playing to. It’s an approach he’s learned from his mentor, and has taken across the world to sets for Godskitchen in Shanghai, Ministry of Sound in Singapore, the Rush trance radio show in Australia as well as Ibiza and many of London’s biggest clubs. He’s also recently added South Africa’s leading trance club ESP to the list. Despite loving his DJing, Adam’s also in serious demand as a producer and remixer, and since his first track Ballerina hit clubs in 2004 he’s developed an impressive catalogue of DMC chart-topping tracks and remixes for labels like Armada and Vandit. Last year his remix of Nat Monday’s Break and Fall caught Oakenfold’s ear and as well as snapping up the track, he signed Adam to his Perfecto label. Typically unfazed, Adam hasn’t stopped at this, and launched his own digital label, Emalodic, in 2007. He’s scouting new talent as well as releasing his own tracks and has most recently signed singles from three South African producers – James G, Eric M and DJ L – as well as local UK names Robert Vadney and Rozza. Feeling exhausted yet? I’ve not mentioned his stint as A & R man compiling the Euphoria series of CDs, nor the radio shows on Van Dyk’s VONYC.com and Ministry of Sound Radio, nor his awesomely original decision to find and release a new EP, Music Travel, around his recent visit to Johannesburg. I haven’t even touched on his latest project masterminding remixes for the launch of Perfecto Digital. It all adds up to a juggling act of colossal proportions, yet in the flesh he’s superbly unstressed and only too keen to play down the many fingers he has in musical pies across the world. I grabbed the chance to sit with Adam on a sunny Sunday afternoon following his ceiling-lifting set at ESP’s Slippery n Wet party, and asked for the inside story on how to run a trance empire without apparently giving oneself a coronary. Adam – it seems you never stop! How on earth do you keep all these projects going? Because I love it! I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t a musician and a DJ. I find my weekly two hour radio show for Ministry of Sound about the most challenging of all the stuff I’m working on – the hardest part is just finding new music to play each week, to keep the show fresh. My girlfriend Emma is such a huge support – I don’t think I’d be doing what I do now if it wasn’t for her. She pulls me up when I get down and there’s nobody else I turn to – I don’t have an agent, so I do all my own bookings, I do all my own A & R, I run my label myself. I do all my own press, I work in the studio on my own and I travel on my own, I don’t have a tour manager or anything. I need her as my rock. Sometimes I really do wonder what on earth I’m doing – you know, there’s not much money to be made from music these days, but one hand feeds the other, so if you’re not producing, and not getting your tracks heard on a global scale, it’s very hard to go to a new country when people don’t know who you are. The first time I play somewhere, people know my music and my remixes, so they have an idea of what to expect. It’s very important. So, yes, it is a lot of hard work, but I love it and I’m fortunate to be able to get up in the morning and spend the day doing something I love – and doing something for me! Do you feel you’re still evolving your sound? I think you’ve got to always evolve your sound – if you stop evolving as a DJ and producer, you’re going to become stale. Any type of artist has to constantly evolve to keep their creative skills moving, stay fresh, set new challenges and goals, especially because there are so many people doing it now. How would you describe the music you make and play, then? The formula with dance music boils down to having to play music that will work well on the dancefloor. But, I try to involve different sounds and genres within dance music. My music doesn’t really fall into a genre – it isn’t trance, it isn’t house, it could probably best be called melodic. It has rock, house, breakbeat in it, so although I’m essentially a trance DJ, that’s pigeonholing me a bit much. Your set at ESP did just that: it moved between a wide range of sounds and genres – so, you do this consciously then? Oh yes, totally consciously – I have always mixed in key, ever since I started. I think it’s the musician side of me coming out, I was very particular about keys and harmonies. I’ve done it for the last ten years, on projects like mixing the Euphoria compilations. For me it is all about having a good listenable set without any key clashes. When you’re mixing in key you can mix up your set a lot more, musically, because you can get a flow of tracks and mix something that’s bass-heavy with something quite melodic. If they’re both in the same key, you can really get the transition between one track and another so well. I think it gives you a lot more scope to be experimental and inventive while you’re playing. What about your new EP Music Travel, produced for this visit to South Africa’s trance club ESP? Why launch it, and why collaborate with South African artists in this way? Well, I came and played at ESP for the second time in December 2007, we agreed then I’d be called ESP’s international resident. I thought that was great, I like the ethos behind ESP, I like the DJs and I came up with this idea of doing more than just coming out and DJing there again. I got this idea of doing this EP and began sourcing tracks from South African artists. They’re very good, but often the producers just didn’t have the technical ability or technical know-how to get it up to the kind of release-able level. James G did a track called Struggle for Power, which I helped finish, just getting the arrangement right, and stuff, and then Eric M, who’s a very established artist within South Africa but has never really got onto that global stage. The tracks have done really, really well – the title track, Music Travel produced by Alessandro Mariola, who’s DJ L has reached number 5 in the World DMC Trance Charts, while Eric M’s track Woven has hit number 29. It’s a great result! You work with quite a few new and first time producers – what advice do you give them to get it right? I tell people to try and be original – it doesn’t work all the time though! It took me ten years to put my first track out, even thought I was producing bands from the age of 14 and I had my first studio when I was 11. It took me a long time to get started – I was DJing a long time before I started producing dance music. Some DJs have no real musical knowledge and they have to work with a musician and an engineer that can transfer those ideas onto the computer for them. I’m lucky in that I’m a Grade 8 piano player, so I’m fortunate to have the technical knowledge, combined with my experience as a DJ, to be able to put that into practice in the studio. What about producers that are getting more and more in demand as DJs? I think more and more you’re seeing pretty inexperienced producers, some of whom have just had one or two big tracks, stuck up as a headline DJ playing in clubs. For me, the problem with that is often these producers really don’t think how a DJ thinks. I find I can hear when a producer is playing a DJ set, because sometimes it really is horrendous! Every time you play a track on the dancefloor you learn more about what works and what doesn’t and for that element of surprise in a tune. If the floor is starting to lag, you have to think on your toes, you can’t just play the next track. That’s the experience of a really good DJ – what to play and when to play it. And unfortunately the only way to learn that is experience. Tell me about your remixes – why do people ask you to remix their tunes? Do they want a particular style or sound? Yes, you know I think they do – I haven’t really changed my sound in a huge way over the years. I never follow a fashion, like produce with an electro sound just because everyone else is, so my sound sort of goes in and out of fashion. It’s quite an individual trancey sound, a very melodic sound – and people always say they know when it’s one of my tracks and I think that’s important today when it’s getting harder and harder to develop an identity and so many people sound so similar. Some of my remixes are banging, some quite quiet, some chilled, some uplifting, some even quite dark, but it all has this identity to it. You have your own label – Emalodic. What does running a label now involve? I’ve done a fair bit of A & R, for a record company called Inferno and also Euphoria, so I’ve always had an ear for a track, but I run my own label by the same principles that I learned back in the late nineties to run any label. It’s a formula that works – you get a track, you get it finished, you get it mastered, you release it. A lot of digital labels don’t master their tracks these days – they just finish a track, press it and send it out, and that’s where you get a difference in sound quality, as some tracks don’t sound good. They sound tinny, they sound empty. Just because you’re producing something digitally, you still have to go through the processes of getting it mastered, to add that warmth, the punch and the body. The main difference with running a label now is you have to move a lot quicker these days, because of piracy. Yes, what about file sharing and illegal download sites? Are you seeing the impact of this on your label and your releases? Oh very much so – with the first couple of releases on Emalodic, I promo’d them and then released them about a month later, but by the time I released them they were all over the illegal download sites. It’s a chicken and egg situation – you want to get the music out to the DJs, it needs to be played on the radio all over the world and in clubs all over the world, so people know the track and then go and buy it. But the turnaround now is very, very quick – I literally promo a track on the Tuesday and release it on the Thursday or Friday. Music downloaded illegally is like a cancer – it spreads so fast. One of my singles had had 13,000 (illegal) downloads, and that’s money I’m not getting! But what can you do? You’re never going to beat piracy. It’s not expensive to buy a track – it’s just that if you can get something for free people will. You were signed to Oakenfold’s elite label Perfecto last year – how did that happen? Paul heard my version of my mate Nat Monday’s track called Break And Fall and asked to sign it as a single. It was great news – Nat has been waiting for years for Paul to sign a single from him, so he was delighted when Paul said this was the one. I then got a call from Oakenfold’s PA to say he thought I could really bring a great new sound to Perfecto, the sound the label used to have. That’s the sound I grew up on – from 1995 that was the sound I’d go to listen to. I remember going to see Oakenfold at Heaven in London and it just blew me away, what he was doing. He was mixing in all these different genres – rock music, Happy Mondays records and Goa trance and film soundtracks – I was just gobsmacked, I’d never seen anything like it. So yes, he approached me, he liked my sound and I joined Perfecto. I remixed his single Not Over and he loved it, then he asked me to look at some other projects and so it has gone on. I’m still keeping hold of my own platform Emalodic though and I made that very clear – I’ve always said that I don’t want my work for Perfecto to compromise this. Paul has always backed this, he’s been very supportive of Emalodic. It’s a close relationship with him then! How does it feel to be so close with someone who effectively created the trance scene? I didn’t really have a plan, when it came to being a DJ or producer. I never envisaged being on the terms I am on now with heroes I used to go and see at clubs like Gatecrasher back in the late 90s, you know? I used to go up to Liverpool to go and see Paul Oakenfold at Cream, and now – well, he texted me over Christmas to wish me Happy Christmas! I never dreamed that would happen. He’s a great guy to work with, a great mentor to have. Most of the big names now – Armin, Tiesto – at some stage they all looked to what Paul was doing. He’s a really nice guy too: he’s at the end of the phone any time I need advice, and don’t get me wrong, if I’m doing a project and he’s not happy about it, he’ll tell me so! He is the ultimate professional. There are some big plans happening for Perfecto and Paul over the next 12 months but I am most excited about flying out to Las Vegas in August to play the opening of his new Perfecto residency there. For more information on Adam visit www.djadamwhite.com. To buy Adam’s latest releases and the Music Travel EP visit www.emalodic.com. The EP includes Eric M feat Thalia: “Woven”; James G: "Struggle For Power"; and DJ L: "Music Travel". Photos courtesy of the HarderFaster archive. Not to be reproduced without permsission. Share this :: : : : Follow HarderFaster :: Other Features By SunnyAli: Darude's whirlwind decade No sleep for Rachel Auburn In the Presence of Carl Nicholson Frantic Timeless 8 – totally worth ruining Valentine's Day for... It's like Origami, but with power tools..... One Awsum Xmas Party reviewed 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. Comments: From: SleeplessAndy on 4th Jun 2008 02:39.29 Great interview! Love your work Adam From: ~deleted7155 on 4th Jun 2008 09:31.47 Nice one mate!!!!! From: Menthol Taz on 4th Jun 2008 13:05.32 One of the nicest & most hard working guys on the scene. Well done matey & all the best. xx From: Pathfinder on 4th Jun 2008 19:18.43 What a lovely guy he is too. All the best Adam From: minimoo on 4th Jun 2008 21:20.22 From: Nomi Sunrider on 5th Jun 2008 07:01.43 The short guys are always the best From: sexyminx on 5th Jun 2008 08:46.10 Nice one Adam, keep up the good work and happy birthday From: Alan-Banks on 5th Jun 2008 08:57.32 Keep on rocking Whitey!!! From: Ehren Stowers on 5th Jun 2008 12:29.48 keep up the good work adam- your tracks were sounding fantastic when Oakey played them the other night! From: Matt on 5th Jun 2008 13:15.17 Nice one, Little Man Great to see a DJ offering so much time to help and support others Mostly lovely From: HouseGuy on 5th Jun 2008 16:40.27 Fantastic interview, well done Ali. Adam top notch as always, cant wait to meet up again when you visit us in SA again. keep those tracks coming and happy birthday. From: houseCHICK on 5th Jun 2008 18:21.50 Adam, it's great that someone of your calibre (and with such passion) has recognised the talent that the SA djs have to offer and are making it happen. Look forward to your next visit. PS: Have a kick-ass birthday! From: houseCHICK on 5th Jun 2008 18:22.13 Ali, loved the interview babes ;-) From: Captain Nick on 9th Jun 2008 08:21.52 Keep up the good work mate! From: STACE on 9th Jun 2008 15:39.58 RA! One of the most talented and dedicated people in the industry. Nice one bruvvaaaaa! From: PonyBoy. on 11th Jun 2008 08:27.00 Great interview. From: mofodee on 11th Jun 2008 15:27.43 Good on you Adam, you'll be head honcho at Perfecto before you know it. From: minimoo on 12th Jun 2008 21:19.45 Ponyboy, why the gap? From: PonyBoy. on 16th Jun 2008 10:54.48 From: pablo on 18th Jun 2008 16:21.33 Oh yes One of the great talents of the music world, and a great friend too. Luv ya bruv From: Lizzie Curious on 23rd Jun 2008 16:29.11 Great to hear everything is going so well, Las Vegas sounds amazing too! Hopefully I will get a chance to catch one of your sets again soon :-)

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