Interview with new Addiction Residents MDA & Spherical Posted by Addiction on Aug 2, 2006 - 8:22:00 AM

Having burst onto the scene just under two years ago, MDA & Spherical are now well on their way to becoming modern Hard Dance household names. With their immense productions and remixes featuring on almost every major label including Tidy Trax, Masif, Tranzlation & Oblivion Recordings and having just debuted their exciting new LIVE PA, featuring a live bass guitar, a live vocalist and other on stage shenanigans, Addiction promoter Andy T caught up with his new residents to talk about the past, present, future and all things MDA & Spherical.

The Green Shirt Brigade AKA Shaf De Bass, Lawrence BUcknell, Richard Launch & Trevor McLachlan, The Addiction Back to Back Boat Party 05, taken by Chris Cee

AT: Afternoon lads! First of all allow me to take this opportunity to welcome you as the latest addition to the Addiction stables. You’ve featured at plenty of our events in the past and have rocked Addiction dance floors to their very foundations more often than most. What’s your favourite memory from any Addiction event?

Well thanks for giving us the opportunity! Having both been to many of the Thursday night Addictions there have been loads of great memories from most of them. Aside from the Thursdays, one thing that particularly stands out is the first boat party. All the DJs played great sets and the sun was shining making it a fantastic day all round. The ‘green shirt brigade’ made us chuckle.

AT: You’ve known each other for over 5 years now, and also live together whilst studying at University. Tell us a bit about each other. Who’s the worst to live with? Which one of you wears the trousers in the studio? And what makes you such a good partnership?

Yeah we live together. We’re in the lucky position to have a big house with two other guys from our Uni course. This means we’re all into music and can all have a laugh. As for worst to live with - Mark has a suspect aversion to washing up; stuff tends to stay dirty for ages. Matt on the other hand, has a horrid habit of munching dry pasta – the crunching drives you mad!

We’d have to say one of the things that make us a good partnership is that neither of us really wears the trousers. We both have different opinions on things a lot of the time, but are good at compromising creating the best outcome.

AT: Do either of you have any secret Addiction’s of your own?

No, but one of our housemates is addicted to a real-time computer game. Often having 30 hour playing stints, he only stops to order take-away or power-nap ready for the next 20 hour stint. Quite sad really. ;)

MDA & Spherical @ The Addiction Boat Party Pt1, 06, Taken by Saqib

AT: You’ve gone from remixing tracks in your bedrooms for your own pleasure to being dubbed as one the brightest new production duo’s in Hard Dance history, all in less than 2 years!! What do you think has been the main contributing factor to your success? Is it simply just about making good music? Or is there more to it?

Well, thanks for your compliments. We do think the music is the key, and we are in the fortunate position that people like what we do. Although it’s also about having fun, not taking anything too seriously – can’t stand arrogant DJs.

AT: Where or who do you think your main musical influences and inspiration have come from?

Our influences come from all over, not just hard dance. Obviously there are people we look up to in the scene such as Nick Sentience, The Edison Factor and Greg Brookman but a lot of inspiration for our tracks come from other genres – house, breaks, electro, tech-trance and hardcore alongside dance artists such as Chemical Brothers, Prodigy and Daft Punk - all things that we’ve been listening to recently between us.

AT: I think it would be fair to say that no modern Hard Dance event would be complete without hearing at least several MDA & Spherical anthems unleashed on the Dance Floor throughout the night. With such an immense back catalogue now behind you, which tracks or remixes of your own are your personal favourites and why?

Matt: I think my favourite of all the tracks that we’ve produced together is probably one of our new ones, ‘Dutch Courage’. It’s quite different and innovative and has seen some great reactions on the dance-floor already. It’s due out very soon on Tranzlation.

Mark: I’d have to say out of everything we’ve ever done, it’s got to be our remix of Phil York’s ‘Drop The Beatz Out’ on Tranzlation Whites. Funky, chunky and always goes off when played. Simply a feel-good party tune.

AT: Having spent the last year wetting ourselves over tracks like ‘Illusion’, and the massive remixes of ‘Back to the Program’ and ‘Drop The Beatz Out’ what new awesome productions of yours can we look forward to hearing in the near future?

There’s quite a lot of exciting stuff coming up actually. On the remixes front we have a couple of bits in the pipeline with Phil York’s various labels. There’s ‘Crank it Up’ by Technikal & JK on Tranzlation Whites, along with a remix of Nick Rowland’s huge trancer ‘Communicate’ on Nukearpuppy. We’re also still waiting for the release of our debut remix on Masif records – ‘Weekend’ by the legends Steve Hill & Technikal. Soon we’ll be doing a huge remix of the current anthem ‘U Got 2 Be There’ by new boys Adrenaline Dept. amongst many other projects.

As for original productions there’s the aforementioned ‘Dutch Courage’ on Tranzlation, ‘Infiltrate Your Mind’ on Nu Religion and our Collaborations EP on Oblivion Recordings, featuring ‘Tekamine’ and ‘Phantasm’ done with Chrysus & Technikal.

AT: As well as the more serious production you’ve also been known to have a bit of fun, bootlegging house tracks like ‘Call on Me’ and ‘Out of Touch’ under your Beastie Snax alias. Have you any other production guises or pseudonyms? And do either of you produce music that falls into other genres?

Its always good fun knocking out the odd bootleg, and doing them under the Beastie Snax guise means it doesn’t matter how shamelessly cheesy they are, just plain good fun! That’s it for aliases at the moment, although we are both producing tracks in different genres separately. Matt’s started to do a few hardcore tracks, with a debut release due on Relentless Vinyl shortly. Mark’s delving into the tech-trance/tech-house/electro side of things with a couple of debut remixes on Magnetic records shortly.

AT: More and more artist’s such as The Edison Factor and Technikal have been working on their own artist albums featuring both mixed and DJ friendly material. Have you any plans to work on something like this in the future?

Maybe in the distant future you never know, although at the moment we haven’t physically got the time. Trying to fit in production along with the PA and DJing around Uni is quite a challenge as it is. It is definitely something we would like to do, and we’re currently considering releasing a live album of the PA show at some point.

Vocalist Jennie Rix live on stage @ Logic, taken by Tomasz Ziobro

AT: You’ve just debuted your new LIVE PA, ‘Welcome 2 The Future’ for Logic’s 7^th Birthday @ The Fridge and of course will be showcasing yet again at Addiction’s 2^nd Birthday in Sept. Featuring a live bass guitar & Jennie Rix on vocals this is no ordinary performance and must have taken a lot of planning and practise. How did things go on the night, and what new tricks will you have up your sleeve for the next instalment?

We’re both over the moon with how it went and the reactions we received! Being the first time we’ve done it we didn’t quite know what to expect. Luckily everything worked and Jennie did a fantastic job on vocals to polish it all off – the crowd loved her! It’s basically given us a great platform to work from. The PA is all about evolution – we kept the first one quite simple but the possibilities are endless, only being limited by our imagination and our wallets. No two PA’s will ever be the same and with more elements added it’s just going to get bigger and better each performance.

MDA & Spherical LIVE PA @ Logic, taken by Tomasz Ziobro

AT: How does the PA differ to a normal DJ set? i.e. what are the pro’s and con’s ? And will you now feel restricted by the standard set up of CDJs, turntables and a mixer?

I think to a certain extent we will yes. There’s just not as much you can do with them. The main downside to the PA is it takes a lot longer to set up, both at home and arriving at the club. However Logic proved that it’s defiantly all worth it once you get up there on stage.

AT: You’ve been studying music degrees at University for the last two years. Now about to start your 3^rd and final years have you given any thought to what the future may bring when you both finish next summer?

Hopefully lots more making music, more DJing and more PA’s. Basically lots more of everything! Hopefully we will get the chance to get more involved with the industry and really push things forward.

MDA & Spherical LIVE PA @ Logic, taken by Tomasz Ziobro

AT: Apart from your beloved new residency ;) what do you feel your biggest accomplishment to date has been ?

I think the biggest achievement to date (not forgetting the residency of course heh) has been organising and pulling off the PA, it was a lot of hard work so really meant something when it came together. Other than that having a release on Tidy was quite a big achievement for us.

AT: Who are you both tipping for the top? Be it Producers, DJs, Promotions or labels?

On the production front Michael Dow is making some splendid tech-trance, consistently impressed by his material. Edwin Van Cleef is another name that’s soon to be on everyone’s lips. The Dutch-ninja-pirate’s productions have improved ten-fold in the last 12 months.

Labels-wise we’d have to say Oblivion Recordings; even though we may be slightly biased their release schedule is looking rather impressive.

AT: And finally guys what do you have to say to people that think Hard Dance and UK Hard Trance are on their way out?

Everything has its ups’n’downs and at the end of the day it all goes round in circles (no pun intended). Even if Hard Dance does see a downturn in popularity in a couple of years it will be the new big thing again. It’s going through resurgence. Some of the big names will leave or retire, and the artists that stay committed to the scene will end up being at the top.

Take a look at the Hardcore genre for example – 5 years ago ‘hardcore’ was a dirty word and the scene practically died. Now it’s huge!

AT: Thanks very much for taking the time to answer these questions guys ! On behalf of the other residents and myself welcome to Addiction and we’ll see you on Stage in September for the mother of all birthday parties!

Watch this space for more info on Addiction's 2nd Birthday coming very soon !!