
March 17th, 2009
After the success of Street Bangerz Vol.1, which is still holding down the first 20 spots at beatport’s top 100 Chill Out chart since it got out in december, probably looking at a nomination end of the year for the beatport awards going on at this rate, the album is also currently holding down 6th place at the official german Chill Out chart , we (his personal friends) decided to gather a few questions and sit down with the man himself to talk about him and his plans for the near/distant future, exclusively for varjanta.com
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So, we heard a rumor you’re working on a new album…is it SB Vol.2?
yes, i am actually and it’s not SB Vol.2, altho the tracks for Vol.2 are already selected, but right now i’m working on an acid jazz/trip-hop project entitled Water 4 The Soul. it will be mostly live stuff, i’m trying to avoid sampling as much as possible on this one, even tho it’s hard…:) i’ll have a lot of my musician friends on it, they are really dope and i have such a good time working with them, because we know how to have fun while working and still do a great job. i’m half way through it at the moment so i really can’t give any dates yet but it will be this year 4 sure.
Did you expect SB Vol.1 to be this successful on beatport?
not at all man! it wasn’t even my idea to release it…those were just a few of my hip-hop beatz i had just sitting in my flash player on myspace for 2-3 years doing nothing…and one day Derrick(DJ Vitamin D) who owns all the labels i release on asked me about them and said he would like to release them. before that i was putting out just House stuff on his labels, so i said…well why not, better to release them than to let them sit on my hard drive collecting dust! So Derrick opened up Cold Busted because of it since he never released this type of music before. At the time i thought i won’t sell more than 10 tracks of the album…’cause they are just raw hip-hop beatz and the label was fresh new…but i ended up selling 15000 tracks from december 3d till this day and still selling, so i guess i was wrong.
You produce and release a wide variety of genres…how come and how does that work?
well, for me it’s like this….i tend not to limit my self with the barrier called ”genre”. I have a specific taste for music of course, but i don’t look at it the classic way, i just see it all as music that i feel at the moment because music as an art form is bigger than a genre name for me, so basically i do whatever i feel in my soul that day or period. For example i have like periods when i do mostly house or electronic stuff ’cause that is what i feel the most at that moment, then i switch it to hip-hop for a month, then after that maybe Breakbeat for 2 weeks and so on. The important thing is i don’t decide which stuff i’m gonna do by thinking about it but i let my soul and my mood decide for me and i just go with the flow.
What’s your drive, your fuel in life?
uhh…we can be here all day talking about that…haha:) nah, i’ll make it really simple…my drive is knowing i’m doing something i love to do the most at this point in my life and being good at it. i haven’t yet experienced a feeling better than that! So that’s my fuel.
Well an interview wouldn’t be an interview without a typical cliche question so here it is…where did you get your name from?
heh…yeah, about that…well…i was (and i still am) always correcting friends for their english(or our native) grammar, not just them but myself also, i always keep checking the online dictionary if i’m not sure about how to spell a certain word…i guess you can call it a mile obsession of mine
so that’s how i got that name, but with an ironical twist, a K instead of a C.
What advice would you give young people like yourself that want to step their game up to the next level, from ”PC production” for fun at home to actually getting signed to a label and start making money with their music?
struggle till you drop! that’s all i know man! i’m still a nobody and i still struggle 24/7 to make something out of my life, you have to sacrifice a ton to do this shit right and if you are not willing to take that step and give it all up to succed in whatever you want to do in your life, then you better step aside and let people that really believe in their dreams take a shot! Coming from nothing, i really ain’t got shit to loose, so i just exclude every single thing from my life that’s holding me back from achieving my goal and just focus on the work and the craft. it’s the only logical way for me to go about it and at the end of the day when i think about life and the meaning of it, i always come to the conclusion that i’d rather die trying than die wondering.
What would you do if you were not a producer/musician?
Stand Up Comedy! it’s definitely my second love! besides making music, there is nothing more entertaining than documenting real life comical events that you’ve experienced throughout your life and then interpret them on stage in a hilariously entertaining fashion!
i find it quite genius!
Do you still remember how and where it all started for you?
oh maan…i sure do!
it all started around 1992 when i started taking piano lessons in the elementary music school downtown when i was in 2nd grade. when i got to the 4th grade, me and few of my class mates formed a band since we were all attending the elementary music school, each of us playing a different instrument and while our peers were at home playing video games or playing outside, we were constantly begging our parents to drive us to one of our band members house since he was the only one that had like a spare room inside the house where we could practice and try to sound like a band while being 9 years old.
we played rhythm & blues/rock’n'roll, mostly cover stuff but also made a few silly songs of our own of which we were very proud of course.
we were the youngest band in the history of our elementary school and were playing at our school shows twice a year.
by the time we got to 8th grade i was already listening to hip-hop on a daily bases and started getting more and more interested in to writing, so i wrote my first rap and that’s when i really fell in love with music because all of a sudden i comprehended the unlimited power of it. after a while my class mate showed me the first music making software(cubase 2.3 i think) i ever saw on the computer of his older brother and right there in that very moment my life started to make sense.
the rest is history.
Give us a contradicting, one sentence description/fact about yourself if there is one?
i’m a perfectionist who is always late!
What inspires you the most when it comes to your creativity now days?
Haters!
it’s simple actually…when someone is hating on you, you just know you’re doing something right and something good…nobody hates a nobody you dig…
once haters begin to emerge around you, you just know you are on the right path and the further you walk on it the more they hate you so they are like the best measurement system for your efficiency and success. it’s strange but i came to find out that being recognized in that way inspires me the most.
And for the last question we wanted your opinion on the home page we…or more precisely pinkflozd set up for you…do you like it?
oh yeah i love it, it’s simple, user friendly, easy to navigate and as for the design, i just love the ”crash test dummy” feel to it, really cool idea!
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Tags: Electronic, Gramatik, House, Interview, Producer
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