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Features Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! Psibindi talks all things music including her new collaborative EP 'Sentient Rays' on Aphid Records, her band Sentience Machine and 10 years of Psy-Sisters! N-Kore talks Jean-Michel Jarre, unfinished tracks and fatherhood! Celebrating International Women’s Day and Ten Years of Psy-Sisters with Amaluna A Catch Up with John Phantasm ahead of his upcoming set at the Tribal Village 4 Day Outdoor Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! 'The Maestro that is Tristan talks barn owls, Shazamming and keeping it Psychedelic ahead of his upcoming performance at the Tribal Village 4 Day Event in Kent 6-9 May 2022! DJ talk with Psyrenzo ahead of his debut set at Tribal Village, the Steelyard this Friday 14th January 2022! TENZO aka Overdrive talks freely about launching his new act which will be showcased at Tribal Village, Steelyard on 14 January 2022! A long overdue catch up with JourneyOM ahead of his next Tribal Village party this Friday 14th January 2022 at the Steelyard, London! Goa based party animal and artist extraordinaire Nirmal talks punk concerts, metal sculptures, flying and rippin' it up on a High Tide! DJ Wired talks to us about the Rise of the Hope and parties, ahead of his upcoming set at Tribal Village on 14th January 2022!

Interview with Lab4 Reported by Hugh Mouser / Submitted 05-03-02 12:45 Lab4 are Adam Newman and Lez Elston. Formed in 1994, they are the pioneers of hard dance music, fusing dark techno with hard trance and hard house. Due to support the Prodigy in Japan two weeks ago, their status as one of the biggest names on the underground dance scene is set to skyrocket even more as they prepare to break the market with the imminent release of their new album, Virus 1. Hugh Mouser caught up with them after one of their storming live sets at Sundissential North… Hugh Mouser: What have you been up to recently? Lez: We’ve been doing a lot of work for our new releases, touring, and we’re due to make some music for an ad this week. HM: Do you do a lot of work for advertisements? We have done in the past, yeah. A couple of years ago we did an ad for Reebok, with the athlete Florence Griffith-Joyner (Flo-Jo) in it. They went to Underworld and Nine Inch Nails first for the music, but they both messed it up. They wanted fluffy trance, but Nine Inch Nails’ track just sounded like a pneumatic drill drilling into a fucking wall! Reebok were going to pay the other two £750,000 for it, but because we were less known they’d only give us £50,000, but still, that would buy us like a whole new studio, you know, so it was great. HM: On the Fragile website your first album, Neurocide, is described as one of the best techno albums ever. There’s definitely a hard techno side to your sound still – how do you describe your music? Lez: Yeah, I mean that term gets a bit bandied around and watered down. It’s not traditional techno in the sense of Jeff Mills. There are actually 2 techno tracks we’ve recently done. One of them is very dark and a little bit like Jeff Mills, and the other one was a dark one that came out on Fragile 7, I think, called Bitch, and that was around 140 bpm. We want to put them both on the next two albums. HM: You have a new album due out called Virus. How has your sound progressed from the last album, Evilution, and when is the new CD due to be released? Lez: That’s right. We’ve got shitloads of tracks, but not all of them will fit on one CD. What we’re going to do is in 2 months time release Virus 1, then about 3 months after that release Virus 2, and then we’re going to release Virus Mutations at the end of the year. Virus Mutations is going to be remixes of our favourite tracks from the two Virus albums, but not done as four-on-the-floor stuff – it’s going to be more like Aphex Twin, maybe a bit more experimental. We’d like to make it more electronic than trance or hard house; and maybe add a really big cinematic ambient remix just to see what sort of avenues we end up in. Also we have some long-term plans about releasing Devilution 2, which will be another collection of back catalogue stuff. HM: How will the albums be packaged? Lez: Virus 1 will be a double album because we’ve got a live CD, like on the previous releases, this time at the Liquid Room. Virus 2 will be a single album, but they will probably be about 60 or 70 minutes long. I think we’ve got about 2 hours of music to pick through but we love every track. We don’t want to drop anything so we thought fuck it, we’ll just do Virus 1 and Virus 2, or Strain 1 and Strain 2. HM: What’s been the highpoint of your career so far? Lez: That’s a difficult one. Gigwise, I think the most people we played to was at Dance Valley in Holland. It was on the hard house and trance main stage. We played to more than 25,000 in broad daylight, so that was a bit scary. They had about 100,000 people there and the last DJ was Carl Cox, and he played a fucking wicked set, then Orbital finished off and they were so shit, they got booed off because it was so crap. It was really slow and everyone was expecting at least 140bpm stuff, and they come on with spooky “oooo” stuff for ten minutes! We supported them at the Eclipse festival a few years ago down in Cornwall. It was a pretty cool experience; I was chatting to Orbital and they’re loaded. They charge 25 grand a gig, but I mean for that you get the full two tour buses, all the road crew and lighting show. I mean they were good there actually. We stayed there for the first half-hour of the set but at Dance Valley they fucking blew it. I don’t think they knew what to expect – they kind of programmed up the wrong sort of set! (Laughs) HM: What music do you listen to in your spare time? Adam: Everything, really. We listen to a lot of metal, like Marilyn Manson, all sorts. We listen to the production values and stuff like that on all kinds of records, even shit like Britney Spears! HM: Is there anyone you would still like to work with? Lez: Yeah, we’d like to go to completely the opposite end of the spectrum - for example we’ve done remixes for bands on Suede’s record label, like The Fifth Amendment. They’re kind of an indie-hip-hop-punk outfit, but also a bit like Sneaker Pimps. They’re quite dubby. We did a remix for them and we didn’t know what to do, we just kept all the elements of the track and made it sound bigger and fuller, and put lots of techno bits in there; and rather than live drums in there it’s all programmed breakbeat stuff. Adam: We’d even like to work with someone like Marilyn Manson, just for a laugh, to see what happens. HM: In fact you have a metal background; what sort of music did you start out making and how did you end up as Lab4? Lez: We listen to a lot of metal in our spare time; we were an industrial band called M.A.D.. It was a four-piece band with drums, guitars, bass and vocals but we had live samples and sequence stuff going as well. Adam was playing drums and a metronome thing, and so live, we were a bit like Utah Saints, Eskimos in Egypt, or even Prodigy. And when you stripped all the guitars and vocals back from the track you were basically left with a banging hard techno track underneath. But the singer and the bass player were the biggest pains in the arse on the planet. They would turn up to rehearsal without their rehearsal money - they just weren’t putting in any effort at all. In the late 80s I started going out to a few places like Club U.K. in Wandsworth, Universe, and I used to know Alan who runs Torture Garden. I saw a live P.A. at Universe, with just one guy, just with keyboards and stuff and I thought ‘Hang on, we can do that, and it’d be so much easier doing it on its own than with guitars, drums and vocals!’. So the first four gigs we had were at Ministry of Sound and Club UK. We were supporting Carl Cox, Josh Wink, and Laurent Garnier on our first gig! We couldn’t believe it, these guys were veterans, they’d been around for years! HM: How did it go? Was there a positive response straight away? Lez: It was wicked. We knew that was it, the right choice, and the right avenue to go down. HM: Going back to Prodigy, they’re due to bring out a new album this year. Do you admire their work? Lez: Yeah, totally. We were meant to be supporting them in Japan two weeks ago. Adam: They wanted us to do a DJ set, and we didn’t want do that because you can’t do the same thing with records that you can do with our live set. Liam Howlett would know that because he DJs as well. The Prodigy crowd would be a very new crowd for us in Japan, because they’re not just clubbers, they’re into indie and stuff like that, so we didn’t want to go up in front of a crowd like that and not do the business. HM: What do you think about how they’ve complained about young kids liking their music, about it becoming part of the mainstream charts in the U.K.? Adam: It’s silly really. Liam Howlett has even criticised the rave scene, and it’s fair enough that he’s moved on from that now in terms of the music he’s making but that’s no excuse to forget and criticise your roots! I mean, ‘Charly’ was one of the biggest rave tunes ever! HM: You’ve been touring a lot recently. What’s your favourite crowd to play out to? Lez: English crowds rock the most. Japan’s wicked. Australia’s wicked too, but that’s because a lot of them have been over and lived in England for a year or two. Then they’re educated once they’ve gone back because they know what they want and what to expect. We played Frantic out there on New Year’s Eve, and we played another event there called Hard Candy, in Melbourne in January. We had four Lab4 gigs, and we’re going back in September because we’ve got an album release there on Stomp records on 27th January. That’s a wicked crowd. Adam: But at the end of the day when you come back to England, they just cane it the most and know what they want, so it’s the best crowd. HM: Have you been trying to crack the market in Japan? Lez: Yeah actually, we’ve been working with a guy out there called Yoji Biomehanika, and he’s done a mix CD of all our tracks and it was released on Avex over there, and it got to number 2 in the dance charts there, below Aphex Twin. Because of that, they’ve now signed all the other releases, like Evilution, and they’ll release them all in one go in March. The Japanese crowd is an insane crowd as well. HM: Is there anything left that you’d still really like to do? Lez: Yeah, we’ve got some plans with the guys from Sundissential for maybe Halloween time in the States, to go over with Lisa Lashes and Andy Farley and put on some really serious parties; we’ve also got Godskitchen Global Gathering in the U.K. coming up, on 27th July – Sundissential are doing an arena there. Adam: Getting that’s quite cool. Godskitchen’s one of those really big mainstream superclubs and I think it’ll be good for us if we start playing places like that, because we haven’t had an awful lot of press, as we’re not really labelled as hard house or trance, it’s a mixture. Lez: We don’t do stuff on major labels or anything. HM: Do you think you’ve been treated unfairly because of your openness about the MP3 debate or your other views? Adam: I think we’ve got a bit of a bone to pick with Club UK, because we should’ve utterly been on the line-up of the last Tribal Gathering, in 1996. We played there on their 2nd birthday; we were alongside Carl Cox and people like that. That should pretty much guarantee a set at Tribal Gathering but we pissed a few people off just by getting the crowd up too much… Lez: And having a certain big name DJ removed, like a premier league DJ! Adam: Yeah, because we’re actually on stage and they’re doing this to us (does throat-cutting signal) while we’re playing, and like we didn’t know what they were talking about, and this guy went on after we had finished at like 180bpm in the back room of Club UK which was hardcore, with a 42,000 watt sound system, no lights, just concrete, it was raving, really. But you know, between stuff like us, and Jeff Mills, Luke Slater, Laurent Garnier, and all those guys there, and this other guy who we won’t get bitchy about, he came on and just played “boop be doop beep boop” at 3 o’clock in the morning, and everyone went (mouths “fuck off!”)! But it didn’t make us any friends because this guy had a single in the charts at the time. It would be good for us to do a festival. Oh, and fucking Glastonbury while I’m on a roll… HM: Is Glastonbury back on this year? Are you playing it? Lez: I hope not, because we’ll fucking burn it! (Laughs) Adam: What happened was someone phoned us or sent us an e-mail about a feature of the Glastonbury website where people get to vote for who they want to play, saying “Look, do you guys realise you’ve got more votes to play than Prodigy, Leftfield, Underworld, and Nine Inch Nails!?” This wasn’t just our mates voting, so we were really surprised! We figured that as we do all our own bookings and don’t have an agent, maybe we should phone them and talk to them about it. HM: So you don’t have an agent? Adam: No, we do it ourselves, that way if a gig’s booked, it’s booked with us and we know it’s booked. That way there’s no messing around - I need to talk to the sound engineer before we get here, and so on. If you put an agent in the middle it causes so much trouble. So I phoned Glastonbury and said “Look, you know, we’ve seen this on your website. If you wanted to book us you’ve got to phone us directly,” and they said something like: “Yeah, well, we don’t pay any attention to that website, so just send us a tape or something.” So I said “Well, I can send you an album. But if you’re not interested I won’t waste my time. I was just phoning because of the voting on your website.” But we just got a standard reply back saying “We have received your CD. Don’t contact us, we’ll contact you”. For a festival that’s supposed to be promoting for the people, and on their website they’re asking the public who they want, and it’s nothing to do with that, it’s pathetic. It’s all run by big agents. Say for example they wanted David Bowie as a headline act, David Bowie’s agent whoever they might be would say that they have to take his other ten top acts on the roster as well. That’s how it’s all controlled. That’s in our opinion, from what we’ve observed, just in case we try and get sued! Interview courtesy of Hugh Mouser The official Lab4 website is at www.lab4.com Share this :: : : : Follow HarderFaster :: 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: Kaptain Kaner on 5th Mar 2002 19:31.17 Lab-4 seriously kick ass and eveyone knows it! Even if you prefer more bouncy fluffy stuff you just cant help but lose it to the pure energy that is LAB-4! I just had a question about Lab-4 at SS - When I have heard you guys play there its seems a lot less hard then in London? Is this true or is just me imagining it? From: Harriet on 11th Mar 2002 16:06.49 Add your own comments about this feature here ! From: Harriet on 11th Mar 2002 16:07.48 oh dear, not very computer literate... I love Lab4, I love Lab4, they're great! Yaaaaay! From: acidjunkie on 13th Mar 2002 16:44.32 Lab4 at Dance Valley, ahhh, that was great cept I had my arm in a cast for the whole holiday :-( (it was a multicoloured cast though :-) and where's the album pleeeaasseee!

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