MORE preview with the Dark Lord Proteus Posted by Benz on Nov 23, 2005 - 2:49:00 PM

So….you are now a firm favourite with the UK Hard Dance crowd. Did you think that you would ever reach such a status in this country when you first played here?

I would have never thought that I could reach this far when I had my first gig at Logic Summer 2000! I have to say that I’m really touched and grateful about how great the crowd, promoters and other artists have been with me in UK! It is really hard work for Finnish DJ to reach status in UK and I definitely wouldn’t be here without your amazing support.

Who is responsible for helping you to achieve this level of success in the UK?

There is a lot of great people who have helped me during these great years and without the amazing support from UK hard dance crowd I would never be here, but I will always remember and respect Rubec, Nadya and David from Logic who took the risk to book me first time to UK and it was like a dream come true when they asked me five years ago to be their resident DJ for Logic!

My biggest paragons in music; Adam and Les from legendary Lab-4 have given me so much support many years and without their music I would have never started to play hard dance music 10 years ago. The biggest responsible and credit goes to my lovely manager Kym Newman from Queen Of Clubs management and she is definitely the strongest and most hard working queen in the universe!

The last two years have been the most important ones and there are promoters like Will Patterson from Frantic who have trusted in me and given me a chance to work hard for getting this far. My gigs at Frantic Hard House Academy have had enormous pushing impact in my career!

Also continued support from my friends in Nu Energy Collective, Electronica Exposed, Tidy and all other organisations I have been working with have made everything possible and my dreams come true!

Have you producing any tracks lately?

I just released my third vinyl single “Proteus EP” from Finnish Teflon Bullet label and at the moment I’m working with remixes for Finnish Industrial/Metal bands. The first remix for band called Turmion Katilot (Finnish name) is already done and it’s like a crossover between industrial and hard NRG/dance! I’m really excited about it and I have already played it few times and it has worked really well with the crowd. I have also been in studio together with Carbon Based and we will release few collaboration tracks in start of next year.

We hear you had a bit of a nightmare trying to get to your last gig for Frantic at Hard House Academy’s 5^th Birthday….what happened?

Yes it was unforgettable night with unbelievable bad luck! HHA 5^th Birthday would have been one of the highlights in my career and I was really looking forward to the gig and being part of the Frantic and Laboratory spectacle!

I had a support gig for The Prodigy in their Finland part of the world tour at a massive concert/sport hall on the same night here in Helsinki. It was a huge respect to do the support gig for Prodigy. My flight to the UK for HHA was after the gig at Prodigy concert. After the gig when I arrived to the airport in Finland there was a nightmare in front of my face; my flight to UK was cancelled because the bad weather and some kind of airline problems and worst of all because it was the last flight to UK there was nothing to do! I felt really bad and sad and I still do because it would have been one of the greatest nights in my life to be there with all of you!

Well at least you have a chance to make up for it! November 26^th sees you playing at SeOne London for Frantic Brings U More. How were your previous experiences playing in this venue? Did it seem like a club which is very different to most others?

SeOne is very unique venue! I really love the underground kind of atmosphere there and it’s great with all its different rooms and halls! It provides a really good opportunity to offer different kind of music styles and I have had some of my greatest gigs and nights in UK there. My roots are very deeply in underground because I use to run a lot of underground warehouse parties with my friends in Finland many many years ago. SeOne reminds me and gives me the same great pure rave and clubbing feelings that we all have of course still nowadays but what we all experienced first time when we were young!

What has impressed you most about Frantic events?

The pure professional and firm touch in this very unsteady music scene! Frantic is one of the most reliable brands and event organisers in the whole world. Always when you go to play to their events you can be 100% sure that everything is state of art technically and the crowd is the best you can get in whole world.  I think UK should be very proud of Frantic!

Is there anything on a similar scale to Frantic where you are from in Finland? A regular, large-scale event?

No, unfortunately not. Finland and Helsinki where I’m from is still pretty much in stone age comparing to UK even we have good parties occasionally.  The scene in Finland is very small comparing to UK and there are only 5 million people in whole country. Hopefully some day the dance scene will rise bigger in Finland. 

Are there generally many multi-arena events in Finland or are the events generally scaled down?

The events in Finland are generally scaled down but we have few good multi-arena events like Laserpoint, Pacificue, Labyrinth and Scandinavian’s biggest dance music festival Koneisto. These kind of events only appears about two times a year. Well.. I have to say Koneisto festival ain’t as good as it used to be anymore because it’s nowadays more about jazz and a..J

What’s the best thing about the UK?

I think the best thing about UK is your great and very rich music culture generally! People and artists are very open eyed and always up for new things! …And of course you have the best and biggest hard dance scene in the world. There is no other scene like in UK!  

And the worst?

English breakfast is very strong. I can’t eat so much on the mornings…J