Monthly newspaper and online publication targeting 18 to 35 year olds. The ultimate guide to the hottest parties, going out and having fun. Music, fashion, film, travel, festivals, technology, comedy, and parties! London, Barcelona, Miami and Ibiza.
Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/744351
7 2016 / ISSUE 92 DRUM & BASS 41 Hey, how are you? Have we got both of you or just one? Not bad, thank you. You have one half, Luke at the minute. Nice one Luke, what was your first thought this morning? Kittens! Currently fostering four kittens with my wife for a month. They're quite the handful, but insanely cute. Cool, so apart from looking after kittens, what else have you been up to recently? Been busy writing and gigging of late. Had some awesome shows all over the world, including Let It Roll which was SO good! All of them have been really awesome to be fair. We're lucky to get to play so many cool places, always remind- ing ourselves of this. Sounds like a good summer then! Where are you guys based? I'm based between Cheltenham, UK & Seattle. Mark is based in Chipping Norton. Neither Chel- tenham or Chipping Norton have much going on in terms of nights per se, but there are a lot of guys in the scene who are from Cheltenham/Gloucestershire area: Annix, Callide, Donovan Smith, etc. Seattle has a wicked scene by all accounts. So how did you both start Mob Tactics? We met in 2010. I worked at Chem- ical Records from 1997 through until late 2011, so I have a huge love for drum & bass. Mark was writing material under the name The Funktion at the time and I was interested in his music. Outside of work I've always been massively into metal & hip-hop. I like to try and keep my musical palette as varied as possible. Mark has similar tastes to me. He was very into metal growing up and we have the same influences as far as drum & bass is concerned. It's cool cos there's no arguing in the car over what to listen to on the way to gigs! We decided to link up and write a tune together in one another's studios and the rest is history as they say! How did things go down at the start? Our early releases got a lot of support which was pleasantly sur- prising to us both. DJ Hype picked up on our first ever few tracks and caned the life out of them. He definitely helped get our sound to the masses, along with Crissy Criss, Andy C & Friction. There have been many highlights over the years, but a few that stick out would be - 1. First release on Playaz. 2. 1st Radio 1 guest mix. 3. Tracks getting picked up for Ram. 4. Chase & Status releasing The Answer EP. 5. Signing with Viper! You had a lot of tracks on big labels until 2015 when you signed to Viper. Why did you decide to permanently join Viper? We'd been working closely with labels such as Ram and MTA but never really had anywhere to call 'home'. We'd always wanted to do something for Viper and we'd just finished a new batch. It was actu- ally Prolix that said "I bet Viper would love these" and me & Mark both agreed that it was the right time to try and approach them. We sent them to Brendan and he got back to us saying he wanted to sign all of them. We were over the moon! A few weeks later they asked for a meeting and offered us the chance to sign exclusively with them and we signed on the dotted line. It's the best move we've made career-wise. Such a great team of people and artist's – real family vibes, and they run a tight ship. You've just dropped an EP on Viper 'Body Check', how's that gone down? The tracks all came together relatively quickly, but the mixdown process obviously took a lot longer – as it always does. I'm personally very proud of 'Body Check' and Mark changes his mind from 'Dot Matrix' and 'Now Is The Time'. On the whole though we're super- happy with this project, although we're STILL hearing things now we would change/tweak. It's tortur- ous, haha! You feature a fair bit of food & drinks on your Instagram, fancy a quickfire? Favourite beer: Little Creatures Wine or beer: Wine Best breakfast: Full English Is pineapple a topping on pizza: Most definitely. Which country has the best food: tough one… probably America for me. What food fuels our studio ses- sions: Pizza, Peri Peri chicken, curry. If you could play anywhere in the world, where would that be? Itching to play Womb in Tokyo! Heard so many good things about that place and I've always wanted to visit Japan. So yeah, that would be top of the list. What's the worst job you've ever done? When I was a kid I signed up for an employment agency one summer. The type of place that call you early in the morning with a job for the day/week. Anyways, I got a call one morning to be told I had a job with the 'Environmental Cleansing Agency'… Needless to say those words didn't register with me at 05:30am and yeah, it was a day working on the bins. It was MUR- DER! That was my last job on any kind of agency… What's the most trouble you've ever been in? Ask my wife, each day I manage to surpass previous efforts! " DJ Hype picked up on our first ever few tracks and caned the life out of them. " Arren Haynes | Guestlist INTERVIEW: MOB TACTICS follow @Mob_Tactics Mob Tactics exploded onto the scene and quickly established themselves as a serious force. They specialise in big room, dancefloor trashers, making that shit seem easy. No surprises then that support for them comes from across the board with Andy C, DJ Hype and Friction all fans.