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DJ and production duo Atomic Hooligan sit at the forefront of the breaks scene. Their debut album ‘You Are Here’ picked up mountains of praise from across the music press, and now, three years later, the follow-up ‘Sex, Drugs And Blah, Blah, Blah’ is doing the same.
One half of the team, Matt Welch answered the Qs for us. |
Q1 How did you start out making music?
After a stint of playing guitar in a few local bands, when I was about 14 years old, my life changed when I was about 16. Me and my mates used to blag our way into old Raves, like Zen and Yikes, in Slough - massive old warehouse parties with DJs like Colin Favour and Colin Dale, playing really early Rave tunes. After a few very memorable nights, I bought an Amiga computer and an old, very simple bit of sampling software, and didn’t look back from there.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
All sorts! Sex, drugs, love, hip hop, blind dates, paranoid vocalists, fucked up nights at Glastonbury, The Secret Garden Party, new sneakers and old jeans, club fights, hang overs, hotel rooms, 90's pop... The list goes on.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
It varies every time, to be honest. To start with, maybe making some beats,
strumming some chords, digging for samples. Just looking for inspiration! After that, once we've hit a vibe, or got a nice groove going, we get a vocalist in, start writing some lyrics, turning it into a song, arranging it out, and looking for that killer hook line.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
A cross range of artists, ranging from The Chems, Flaming lips, Groove Armada,
A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Don't have any preconceptions. Listen to it for what it is, and don't judge it before you have heard it from beginning to end (the album that is). When people hear the name Atomic Hooligan, they think of breaks, but I urge people to enter into our listening experience with an open mind. And we would like people to understand the transition from our fist album 'You Are Here', to now. No artist worth their stripes doesn’t evolve. And we have evolved, I think. Wow, getting a bit deep there. Most of all, just fucking enjoy it!
Q6 What are your ambitions for your new album, and for the future?
Sell loads! Hahaha! And then just keep surviving, doing something we love doing.
published june 2008
