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Features Introducing NEM3SI$’s new label Infinite Resistance! Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! NEM3SI$ - 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!

Interview with Sterling Moss Reported by bunny / Submitted 21-01-03 21:16 James Moss AKA Sterling Moss has residencies with HQ and the DanceValley crew in Holland along with Tribal in London, which he co-promotes. HarderFaster popped a few questions to James as he prepares for his upcoming gig at Fevah's Cyberdance this Friday night... HarderFaster: You’re currently touring the UK as part of the Cyberdog tour to promote the new album, The Acceleration Generation. How did you become involved and how’s everything going? Sterling Moss: It’s going very well! We’ve got about 15 dates I think. Initial sales [of the album] have been good over Christmas and the New Year, we had the launch in December at the Cyberdog store in Camden and there are upcoming dates at Cyberdance at Fevah, Wales and Storm the week after that. Yeah, it’s doing pretty good! I got involved initially through Kim at Cyberdog who I met through Torture Gardens when I played down there which was an interesting experience! She was looking after the release of the album and asked me to do it… it’s a good organisation, Cyberdog, and as they’re at the forefront and cutting edge of clubwear and I thought it’d be good to get involved and do something a little different. HF: What can we expect from your set at Cyberdance? SM: My set at Cyberdance will be tough, cutting edge, pumping and comprise of many different elements, mixing in many of the latest developments in the Hard Dance scene ranging from the Harder House side of things through the Harder Trance side of things, Techno and Energy, not keeping to any particular style. It’ll definitely be a mish-mash. HF: You’re busy in the studio at the moment working on new material. What can we expect from you production-wise in 2003 and how’re things with your record company, Raceway Records? SM: Raceway firstly is on a backburner at the moment. My distributor, Infectious, has gone into liquidation meaning myself and many others have lost a lot of money so I’m just biding my time with that and waiting to see which is the best distributor to go with and work out a plan of attack to get that back on the road again. The production is going very well, I’m in the studio everyday, there’s a few things on Nukleuz coming out at the end of January and Nick Lunn and myself have done a cover of an Aretha Franklin track, Respect, which is on part one of that series and should be quite well received, hopefully. We’ve already got plays from Judge Jules, Fergie and Andy Farley so hopefully we should see some good things happen with that! As well as that I’ve got tracks upcoming on One Inch Records; myself, Fallen Angel and Lee Animated have got Powertrip coming out which is on the Cyberdog album. As well as that I’ve got a variety of projects on the go ranging from Hard Dance through to Techno and the trancier stuff – right across the board really. HF: What’s your favourite style of music to work in? SM: I like music that’s innovative, emotive, powerful and energetic and that’s right across the board really. It’s hard for me to say I like one genre more than another because I don’t really see each genre as specific, I pick out my sound from all the genres and blend them into my sets and I can’t really say one style is preferential over another because they’ve all got their merits. If people come and see me and I’m playing more of one particular style one month and more of another particular style the next month, that might just be because the productivity of that particular scene is particularly good at that moment, but I believe in focusing on good music and things independently don’t always produce the best elements at one moment. So you might find a pocket of good sounds in the Hard Dance scene one month, then a pocket of great sounds in the Techno scene the next month and without jumping around genres to be on what’s hot at the moment I do believe that good music is good music and you can find that wherever you look, whether it be blues or classical, or Hard Dance or Hard Trance you can find it anywhere if you look hard enough. HF: You’ve DJ-ed all around the world, from South America to South Africa to Eastern Europe. Have you found that any particular country has stuck out and left an impression on you and have you found the clubbers of any one country to be particularly up for it? SM: Every country has its aspects and I’m particularly thankful to be involved in a business where the people that you’re dealing with are all good people and up for it, as it were. Particularly crazy... I’ve played for a long time in Holland, for six or seven years I’ve worked in Holland and the Dutch are very uninhibited, very open-minded and for the first time I played there you got that feeling of ecstasy on the dance floor and that was before anyone had even taken their drugs! It’s a very pure dance scene. Japan is amazing as well, just because it’s such a different culture. No one speaks English but you could be there for a week and not speak to anyone but at the end of the week you can get up on stage in front of a couple of thousand people and speak to everyone at the same time. They really understand as from what I’ve heard there wasn’t too many drugs in the clubs over there yet they were possibly one of the craziest crowds I’ve ever played to, so that was an interesting experience! Each country’s got its own merits but the Dutch, the Japanese, the South Africans, the South Americans, some areas of North America, I’ve had some really good experiences in all those places, they’re all great places. HF: You’ve played regularly at the Impulz festivals in Holland in front of 25,000 people and more. How do you compare that to the smaller, more intimate gigs over here such as at the Soundshaft, and do you find you have to change your DJ style at all? SM: First of all the bigger events are very different to the smaller events. Small parties are great when you can see the whites of peoples eyes, you’re that close to them that you can touch them, people come up and speak to you, it’s a different type of relationship between the clubber and the DJ at those events. Obviously at a larger event you’re talking to more people and in that sense you’re spreading a wider message but I don’t think you can really say one’s better than the other. Even up to the largest event you could say they’re impersonal but I don’t think so because if you’re good enough to weave everyone in that room into what you’re doing, which is very difficult in a space that big – I think the biggest gig I’ve played was the Argentinian Love Parade which was quarter of a million people and to appeal to that many people is going to be very difficult, because you can go into a club full of two hundred people and you know everyone’s going to be into Hard Dance there but when you’re playing in front of quarter of a million people, half the crowd can be into rock and half can be into this or that so you’ve got a harder job on your hands but if you can pull it off and get that energy of the crowd together it can be very powerful. That’s not saying that the smaller clubs aren’t as great on a good night because you can share an amazing time with a couple of friends just playing to them a personal set. You’ve just got to find the magic, wherever it lies. HF: What inspired you to get into DJing and why did you choose the Hard Dance scene in particular? SM: My inspiration probably lies in my upbringing in the scene, my earlier work with Glen Hall and his attachment to Universe; he used to promote Final Frontier and Tribal Gathering. I was exposed to a lot of great music at that time, working regularly with him. The music was at a very developmental stage then, you’d go to a club and hear elements of what would become the Hard House sounds developing from Hi-NRG, the Belgium sounds, German Trance sounds and Techno sounds, all these elements being played together, non-catergorised at a time that was really seen as Techno. You’d get DJ’s like Carl Cox playing all of these different styles mixed together, the scene hadn’t broken off into as many factions as it has now so there was much more freedom within each genre to play what was available. So being exposed to all these different styles blended together, I guess, was where I got the idea to go and do what I do now and play such a wide range of sounds. I don’t know if I chose the Hard Dance scene more than the Hard Dance scene chose me because when I first started it wasn’t actually the Hard Dance scene, I was just playing what I loved and that was a combination of many things, German Trance, the Chicago sound, European Techno, Detroit Techno, European Trance. At the forefront of that sound there was the energetic aspects to it and the way I was putting it together was trying to be as energetic as possible, without necessarily playing typical energy music but trying to create the energy from the blend of music more than playing a typical style that denotes energy or Hard Dance. As the scene progressed because I was playing those more energetic sounds I think I kind of slipped into the bracket of the Hard Dance scene but I’ll still play everything around Hard Dance as well as Hard Dance. I think the challenge for me is to create the Hard House sound in the mix from two different tracks, you know, if you get a House track and a Hard track and put them together in a constant playing mix, do you make Hard House and that was the angle that I was always trying to go for. HF: And finally, when you make your appearances you’re often credited with using ‘three decks, an FX machine and a .909’. For our less technically-minded clubbers can you explain what that adds to your sets? SM: Well, the third deck enables me to keep two records constantly in the mix. Obviously, when you’re on two decks when one record’s finished you have to take it off and there’ll only be one record playing. By having three decks you can have two records constantly in the mix and then add a third record into the mix and take one away so there’ll still be two playing and two constantly in the mix, which is harder with Hard Dance as there are breakouts, but I use group tracks in between the tracks to bridge them, so there is room for three-deck mixing in Hard Dance. Along with that aspect you can also use the third decks for acapellas or scratching or sound effects layered over the top of the other two records in the mix. The FX processors are a range of delays and ring-modulators that I can use over the top of records to alter them slightly; the momentary remixes live adds different elements into the tracks that are already playing so you’ll see me playing out and you’ll hear something in the track that’s not usually there that might well be the FX processor messing with the track. The drum machine, the 909, is, was and has always been the backbone of modern dance music, one of the backbones definitely. The drum patterns are heard in many, many tracks that you hear today, so if I bring the 909 with me I can do live drum programs and because the sound is so familiar from the regular use of the 909 in other tracks I can seamlessly blend the live drum program in over the top of the records already playing, and so adding another angle to what I’m doing. HF: Sterling Moss, thank you for your time. SM: Thank you. Sterling Moss plays Cyberdance at Heaven on Friday 24th January - for full details click here. Share this :: : : : Follow HarderFaster :: Other Features By bunny: It's about music - interview with Alex Parsons Monkey business as usual: interview with Shaf De Bass Twistathon – Twist’s 12 Hour 1st Birthday Bonanza Zoology's 2nd Birthday - Review! becomeone: Unified in Sound - Review 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: Absolutely Fabulous on 22nd Jan 2003 02:01.47 Top interview, Mr Moss definitely wants to talk to a lot of people! and great questions too, managed to learn a lot!! From: V.J. FX on 22nd Jan 2003 17:37.14 Yep top man am proud to call him my friend is not at all into it for the ego he is a true artist!!!!

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