Marcus Intalex

MARCUS INTALEX

The last thing I want to hear when I’m not working is drum & bass. There are so many good forms of music out there. I think it’s just ignorant. I know it’s like in the car, on the stereo, on my iPod, whatever. The last thing in there is drum & bass, because there are so many good forms of music. I need to get away from it. I live drum & bass permanently, so when I’m not doing drum & bass, I like to be doing other things. There are so many other influences you can take from other forms of music. The last thing I need to be doing is to just permanently listen to drum & bass. It just does your head in.

HEINZ REICH

Most of the people here are very open to the other people’s styles, but when it comes to the club scene, drum & bass and house are more or less like cat and mouse. [laughter] Do you agree?

MARCUS INTALEX

No, personally no. In an ideal world as a DJ you should be able to go out and basically play a bit of everything. But because over time the entire scene has gotten so fragmented into different sections, it’s like a million types of house music. There’s three or four types of drum & bass now, and I know for a fact I can’t go and play half an hour of house music in the middle of my set if it’s a drum & bass set.

So, I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, but it’s a shame because I like to play all kinds of music and I like all kinds of music. But for me, if I’m getting booked, I’m getting booked as a drum & bass DJ. So, usually the crowd wants to hear me play drum & bass which I don’t mind doing because I love it, but the second point is where I’d love to say, “Let’s drop tempo for half an hour, and let’s go doing something different.”

I’ve been doing it now a little bit quite recently. In fact, on Saturday I played for nearly six hours at this club in, um, where was I? Slovenia. And half an hour, an hour, I just played some random stuff, and it was wicked. I don’t like to separate, personally, with my job. I have to, but it is not something that I like doing. Definitely not.

HEINZ REICH

You might already have come to a point in your life where you have a more mature perspective on music. But now, maybe it’s even impossible or we should not even try to settle those fights, because in a way fights between different styles of youth culture have always been a strong engine and a fuel. You had this historically between the mods and the rockers, between punks and the hippies, between the hip-hop guys and the rest of the world. So maybe we need those fights. What do you think about this?

MARCUS INTALEX

Yes and no, again. I think it’s really personal, to be honest with you. My favorite types of DJs are the DJs that are music-related, not necessary like the greatest mixers or the greatest technicians but play good music. So, I like to go out and hear somebody. I like Gilles Peterson or whatever, who would play a good cross selection of music from whatever style to whatever. So for me, no. But when I was 20, I wanted to go out and hear Grooverider. I didn’t want to hear anything else. I wanted to hear Carl Cox. I didn’t want to hear anything else. I think as you get older, maybe that changes.

HEINZ REICH

You have probably already reached a status as a DJ, where you can allow yourself to play diverse styles in one DJ set. But I think that’s a status that you have to fight for, isn’t it?

MARCUS INTALEX

Yes. I only just started doing it just because I feel like I want to. I just liked to push myself, to challenge myself. But at the same time, I’ve got a need to play this music. I think it’s good music. So, I want more people to hear it. I know in certain gigs I can’t do it. You can tell about crowd reactions or just general vibes that you’re just not able out to do it. But when I see the opportunity to do it, it might be three hours into a set, I’ll have a go. Even if it doesn’t work, fine.

My perspective on DJing is, if you feel like you can take a challenge, then take it. Because you should know, in your record box somewhere there will be two or three tunes that, if you are in trouble, you can quite easily pull out and will get your dance floor full again. As long as you know that, why not take a chance? People give you more respect for that, I think.

As a DJ, it is two main things: It’s pleasing the crowd and pleasing yourself. And it’s trying to find a happy medium. It’s not the hardest thing in the world to go into a club and say, “Right, OK, we gonna rinse this one out,” and just play every big track. You’re obviously going to get a reaction. But I can’t do that because I just feel like I've sold my soul too cheap. There are so many good types of music out there, there are so many good tunes out there. I try to fit them in so I can walk out happy and the crowd can walk out happy.

HEINZ REICH

One of your partners is living in Vienna, the city where I come from, D Kay, who had recently a big hit with Barcelona and he is hosting this radio show that I’m in charge of once a month. And there again you have these reactions from the people that on the last Friday of the month, when it’s drum & bass, they are screaming with joy, and then the next week, when we would play deep house, they will all insult us, sending letters like, “Hey, why do you play this whack shit now, why can’t you play drum & bass again?” It’s still a long way to go. Maybe we will never be there, that people accept different styles from an earlier age. Maybe that’s really just about growing older.

MARCUS INTALEX

I think it is.

HEINZ REICH

But then you have the other problem. Once they get older, they don’t dance anymore.

MARCUS INTALEX

Yes, that’s a good point. We did a party in London, a specific party for our label, and it was 60% guest list and journalists and industry types. Basically it was really hard to DJ there to try to get a vibe because everybody just stood around talking. They’re enjoying themselves, it was a wicked night at the end of the night, but it was basically just no reaction all night on the dance floor. Because they just stood there, having a drink and talking. It was a hard concept for me to get my head around.

I still enjoyed it, but I think that’s what happens. The older you get, the less you get on the dance floor. I mean, I’m the same. I go out, you very rarely see me on the dance floor. But I will certainly be really into the music, I just get into the corner and nod my head.

HEINZ REICH

Easy to understand, that musicians are always very unhappy when journalists or people from outside come along with definitions of that specific genre. Like, lately they referred to your type of music as “liquid” drum & bass.

MARCUS INTALEX

Liquid funk. I hate that word. I don’t know. People refer to the music that I make just because it’s got a little bit of musical content as liquid funk. “Marcus Intalex is a liquid funk DJ.” What is liquid funk? I don’t understand.

HEINZ REICH

Back in the days, when jungle originated, there was also this very unhappy term of “intelligent jungle” for the work of people like LTJ Bukem, Alex Reece, the Wax Doctor, as opposed to the wild rave-style drum & bass.

MARCUS INTALEX

Yeah, which I know really upset a lot of producers that didn’t make “intelligent” drum & bass. It’s like, “What are we? Stupid?” It’s just the way that people just quick to jump on something and try and give it a name. Just for what reason? Maybe for marketing reasons. It’s not like the person who invents intelligent drum & bass is at home, has just read his dictionary and has gone into his studio, like, “Alright, let’s make the most intelligent music I’ve ever made.” What was I doing? Was I in the bath and decided to make liquid?

HEINZ REICH

OK, but then there is the need, of course, of people to communicate about music and then you need words and terms. When I went to London and tried to find out where the drum & bass scene was happening, of course, I went to the Blue Note, and it was a mind-blowing experience. Because you didn’t need your ears to hear the music, you could feel it with your legs. If you would put a big glass of beer on one of the speakers. [makes buzzing noise and motions his hand around]

MARCUS INTALEX

It would fall off, basically.

HEINZ REICH

And the trousers would move in the wind of the speakers. Lovely. But, I mean, it was a very small place in the center of London, and it was frequented by the brains of the scene.

MARCUS INTALEX

Yes, it was a real industry place, where everybody from the [music] industry would go down because they wanted to hear the new music.

HEINZ REICH

At the same time, though, you had this huge pirate radio scene and these big rave parties where you would have like 3,000 people.

MARCUS INTALEX

Yeah, the whole thing was massive.

HEINZ REICH

But that was a different scene, those rave parties.

MARCUS INTALEX

It always has been. You’ve probably got the same DJs that would play at both events. But for me, it was a personal thing. I had to be where the latest music was. The main thing that excited me about drum & bass is the next thing. Going to hear DJs play music that the tracks have just been made literally in the same couple of days. I wanted to be blinded by science, basically. At the time, that’s what it was doing. It was like, “Wow, how the hell has he done that? What’s he done?” Just to get excited by something. You can’t even work it out, like, “What the hell? Where has that come from?” It was just really exciting.

That was possibly drum & bass’ most exciting moment, I would say. That club was ridiculous. It’s not Metalheadz’ fault that you’ve gone to other clubs and tried other clubs. I just think it was just a specific moment in time where it could not be bettered by Metalheadz. That was just perfect for Metalheadz.

HEINZ REICH

The brilliant thing about the Blue Note was also that apparently they understood how a sound system should look like to perform that kind of music. That was the problem when the same DJs were playing out on the continent, they came to clubs in, let’s say Germany or Denmark or wherever, the sound engineers and the sound design was just not made to play those records. And they would kill your ears with the treble and the midrange and there wasn’t enough bass.

MARCUS INTALEX

Yeah, when I was promoting [parties] in Manchester, it was just like trying to find a club that had a good enough sound system. It was basically impossible. At the time, it was so difficult to get people to understand that, “It's got to be this loud, it’s got to be this clear, it’s got to be this precise.” And we tried hiring things in and getting people to do things, and it was never right. I was never satisfied.

The time we brought Metalheadz up to Manchester and they brought their sound guys up, it was just like, “This is perfect. It’s ridiculous.” And I don’t think that we even had the sound on like 40%. We could turn the level a lot louder if we wanted to, and you could hear it down the street. It was ridiculous, it was so loud, but it was crystal clear. It’s one of the most important things, especially as a DJ. If you know you got a good sound and a good setup, playing is so much easier. It’s a lot less stressful. You know exactly where you stand. Whereas, on a [weak] sound system, you’ve got to keep tweaking, and it’s not powerful, it’s not clear. It makes your job a lot harder. So to put the environment for the DJ, to get that right, you're going to get a better night out of it. And the night was ridiculous. It was off the hook. It was amazing.

HEINZ REICH

When you were participating in these magic moments, what was your first wish – to become a DJ, to play this music or to produce that kind of music?

MARCUS INTALEX

I was a DJ at the time, but for reasons I’ll probably go into it later when we talk about what I was doing. I wasn’t too busy as a DJ. So yes, to be out to play at the Blue Note was amazing. But at the time, I was just getting into production, and there were certain DJs. There was Grooverider, there was Doc Scott and there was Fabio.

And these three DJs, my biggest wish was to have a tune that I made in their record box and maybe go to Blue Note and hear it out. That was basically what I wanted to do. That’s why I was down there all the time, studying it, getting experience, getting just influenced, and then taking it back home and going to the studio and failing miserably. I don’t think we ever actually got a track played at Blue Note, which is a bit of a shame, but it was bad a few years for us in the studio, basically.

HEINZ REICH

When we talk about drum & bass in that time, as you said, the kick was to come along with new noises, new forms of beats, there was always this element of something completely new and unheard before.

MARCUS INTALEX

That was the exciting thing about it.

HEINZ REICH

Does this still exist today? The possibility of creating things that have never been heard before?

MARCUS INTALEX

It’s not as exciting as it was. It’s obviously going to go through cycles, and you can’t keep inventing and being at the forefront all the time. You can’t be that good all the time. And I’ve always known that it goes up and down. You have months, especially because I’m DJing so much now, you have months where you probably get eight tunes in one month that are just like, “Wow.” And then, a month later, you get nothing. And then a month later, you get two, and one of the tunes are just so different that it will start to create a new sound. It just goes up and down.

HEINZ REICH

Now, when you produce a track, aren’t you in this split position where you have to decide if it’s more for the dance floor or more for the listening people? Like, if the track has to be very functional, needs certain rave signals, or if you put more melody in it? Is it like a compromise for you or how do you deal with that?

MARCUS INTALEX

Any successful drum & bass tune will have to come from the dance floor. It will not get heard if certain DJs aren’t playing it. People would not know what it is because nobody is playing it. So the first and foremost thing is arranging it and making it appeal to the dance floor. For me, it’s mainly creating the beats and the bassline. That’s the dancefloor element. If you get that right to an extent, you can then put whatever you want on the top of it.

That’s what we choose to do. We choose to look for a dancefloor element with the drums and the bass and get that as tough and as dance floor-friendly as possible without being cheesy or anything – just getting it right. And then we do a more musical thing on the top.

Other people would do a harder thing on the top, but you still have the element of where the beats and the bass have got to have the impact. The arrangement has got to be arranged in a way that it will have an impact on the dancefloor for DJs to play it, for people to hear it, for them to then want to buy it or whatever. If it doesn’t really get played out, then it’s hard to create a vibe on a tune. Because of the way the industry works, it's involved around certain DJs being the DJs the people want to go and hear and talk about it on the internet and listen to mixes on the internet. And if they’re the DJs who are playing that music, and they’re playing your music, then your music stands a better chance of being successful. And I’m quite sure that 99% of the producers have got that in mind. I think you need to have that in mind.

Sometimes it’s a shame because it all limits the different directions that music can go in. But that’s drum & bass. It’s still a form of rave music, it’s still attracting a lot of younger people than myself. And I’m always aware of that. It’s a dancefloor music, it’s an energy music, you can’t really take that away from that.

HEINZ REICH

You obviously start with the beats and the bassline and then the melody and the sweet things come on top. It’s like the cream on a cake, then?

MARCUS INTALEX

Yeah. I mean, if I’ve got a sample, I hear a sample that just maybe gives me an idea for a tune. So I love this sample, but I probably put it to one side and try to create some beats first. I think it’s easier to put sounds to beats than beats to sounds. I really do. That’s the way we work, we find it easier to do that. So we’ll experiment with beats first and give them a rhythm that we like, and then I start playing the sounds on the top adding a few samples, and then maybe after that the bassline comes.

HEINZ REICH

You are certainly right that it’s surely easier to have the beats and then put a voice on top. But, for example, our Austrian producers Kruder & Dorfmeister, they had their biggest successes with remixes where they had thrown away everything. They had just the vocal and then tried to recreate a whole new sound structure around the vocal.

MARCUS INTALEX

It is really difficult. We’ve tried to do that, basically. I mean, I’m not at all musical, I’ve got no music knowledge of how to play. The ability to be able to make music these days is that you don’t need any musical ability to do it. It’s just over years learning what goes with what and what key sounds good with whatever. As you get more and more into it, you can learn how to tune samples in and stuff.

When I first started [I showed my production and somebody would say], “That’s out of key.” “Well, I know it’s out of key, but what do I do?” I know what to do now, it’s just an experience thing. We work in the way it’s going to work better for us, you know? Sometimes I can sit and write a nice string pattern and feed samples in and out before I do the beats. And then I come to the beats, and the beats are spoiling it. Them kind of tracks for us, they never get finished.

When we know we’re going to make something, we sit down and work on the beats first, get the vibe with the beats. And then, if there are a couple of samples we got in mind, we fit them in. We’ll place samples over the top of them, and if they work all around, we’re sitting on the keys and play some keys over the top and see what happens. And then the last thing, basically, is the bassline. Basically, you’ve got the groove there, that 8-bar loop that you need. And basically, drum & bass is very much like an 8-bar loop thing where it is repeated. It’s a case of just keeping it interesting.

HEINZ REICH

Maybe let’s listen to another track that takes no musical ability to create. [laughter]

(music: M.I.S.T. & High Contrast – “3 AM”)

MARCUS INTALEX

What happened to me first when I did a track with this guy High Contrast – if you know drum & bass, you know who he is. He is an avid record collector, has millions of samples. And what he’s done this time, he just brought us a collection of samples, played them to us and I’ve just gone, "Yep, yep, yep." And we’ll probably get like 20, 30 samples. And when we know what samples we might want to use, we’ll try a few like maybe at Recycle, like what are the loops or just look for little sounds. Then we’ll do some beats, and then we’ll try to get all these sounds to fit. It’s like with this (Recycle on the Academy screen). This is the main disco kind of riff. It comes from this.

(music: Plays original sample)

What we did with that is just basically sort what we thought sounds interesting, we recycled it and we actually had it playing back the way it was. But then we just thought it sounds a little bit too cheesy, so we just found certain keys from where we recycled it and just created a whole new loop, which is exactly what we did with “3 AM”

What I’m trying to do with the music we make is to encompass the sound of these samples with actual synths and keyboards. Just give it a mix of old and new, and that’s basically what we are trying to do with the music we make. It’s like cover the old, just use the old samples with new sounding synths and just trying to create something new out of it basically.

These samples will just give us ideas, getting down over the beats and it’s like “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” We try this, we try that. Get some new synths in there and different bass sounds and just try to mix it up together.

HEINZ REICH

Where does the name Soul:r come from? It suggests that you got the soul:ution.

MARCUS INTALEX

[Laughs] I was looking for a name. I always wanted to go on a record label, and I’d thought of a name but somebody used it already. I’m not saying our music was soulful but it had elements of samples from soul music in there. I wanted it to be separated. I didn’t want it to look like the usual drum & bass futuristic spaceship kind of techno name. I wanted it to be more thoughtful, just a little bit more mature-sounding because the music we are trying to do is a little bit more mature-sounding. So I wanted to encompass the word soul, and I wanted it to still have that little drum & bass angle, so there was a case of putting the colon in the middle, an “r.” Does it stand for records? I don’t know, maybe it does. It just looked good.

HEINZ REICH

It definitely looks good.

MARCUS INTALEX

It did the job.

HEINZ REICH

So, you suggest that the way you produce music can be done in a very healthy way. You don’t need any special chemical substances or…

MARCUS INTALEX

I’ve never tried it in the studio. Music is the one for me. I can hear something that’s an influence to go on make this track. And actually, I’ve got a track, it’s an old tune from years ago by a guy called Bobby Konders. This is like a classic acid house record from a club called The Hacienda. It used to get played at Hacienda every week, and it was like, "Wow, what the hell is this tune?" And I’m amazed to find it a good number of years ago. And I went out to a club in Manchester called Sankeys Soap Bar about six months ago and saw a DJ called Buggy. He played this track and I haven't heard it in between eight years and it just gave me an idea to make a tune. I play the tune that I made after you hear this.

(music: Bobby Konders – unknown)

That’s quite a simple track in a way. But it just struck a profound memory at a certain place at a certain time that I’d not even thought about for a long time. And the whole thing, just hearing that tune coming in the middle of a normal house/techno set, I just heard this track and I was like, "Wow, I’ve not heard this for years." More than anything it was that drumroll I remember from way back in the Hacienda. It was a track that was played quite a lot and the whole crowd hearing that drumroll went absolutely mental.

Drumrolls at the time were quite big in drum & bass, but it was just that particular style of drumroll that gave me an idea for a tune, and in this one exactly, it sounds nothing like Bobby Konders. It was just the idea of the drumroll, which gave me an idea to make a tune and this is what came out of it.

(music: Marcus Intalex – unknown)

The whole thing, basically from hearing the Bobby Konders thing on a Friday night, getting into the studio on Monday, and that thing was on DAT by about 7 o’clock on Tuesday evening. It just had an influence, it just woke something up inside me to want to do a track like that that was like the Bobby Konders track.

And I just remembered back to certain nights at Hacienda and certain types of music, and one of the biggest influences in my entire life has been the Detroit techno scene. And one particular producer, Kevin Saunderson, just used to use a lot of portamento on his bass patterns. I was like, "Alright, we’re doing a bit of a portamento thing," and it was just all because I was hearing this one tune. We had written that in basically 12 hours, it was really very simple. And I know for a fact, that the previous six weeks until I did that, we had done nothing. We had come up with literally nothing. It’s just one thing can just spark something off, create this thing inside you. We did it. It was just easy. That tune was one of the easiest tunes we’ve ever made.

HEINZ REICH

When we look at the well-known successful DJs, they also might have their moments of real depression.

MARCUS INTALEX

It’s like anything. What goes up at some point, it’s going to be down. Just the amount of time I spent traveling, having a good time and being at these gigs that are amazing. There’s got to be lows. You can’t be great all the time. It’s good most of the times but at the same time, I know why I am here. I am here because I make music that people think is good. So I know that to keep myself in that same position and if not get better, then I need to still be producing good music.

When it gets hard because you are really tired, and when you didn’t make anything with your life for a few months, it changes your persona. You don’t feel as confident or whatever because you’ve not made any good music for a while. It really gets to me. I kinda like it that way because it keeps me fighting. I keep striving to be better all the time. And I know that’s the most important thing is the music we make. Because that’s the reason why I am here now is because of that.

HEINZ REICH

OK, maybe that’s a good point to come to the practical advice from a successful DJ to people who will be successful DJs one day. Up to you to ask Marcus Intalex what you would like to know? The dos and don’ts of the business.

AUDIENCE MEMBER

I want to know how long did it take you from when you started producing until you made a tune that you were happy with. Also, what do you wish that you had known then that you know now about producing?

MARCUS INTALEX

We were really lucky. To be honest, with the first tune we ever made, which we made in two nights with L Double, is the first time that I’d ever been into the studio. Basically, what L Double, who’ve had a lot of previous studio experience, said to us was, “Bring some samples.” We worked in a record shop, so we had an abundance of samples. And the latest Mary J. Blige 12" just came out with an acapella on it. That’s a major sample. Let’s take it right there. And we recorded a track in two nights based upon this sample, based upon a little keyboard thing he had with some wicked little sounds on it. And just managed to play this pattern in, the one with the vocal. And we made this track, that my hero Grooverider said is the best tune he has heard in two years. And that’s the first tune we’ve ever made.

It kinda put us on the map, but at the same time, it then put pressure on us to deliver. We set our own studio up, and we found it very difficult. At the beginning, it was kind of easy because we had loads of ideas. We were just in there, and we knew a little bit about it, so we produced a couple of tracks that we were reasonably happy with and did okay. But as the music progressed and became more difficult to make, more technologically advanced, or more technical, for three years we struggled to get a sound that we were happy with. And just to learn, you got so much to learn, and one of the most important things about music, about making dance floor music, is the production has got to be pretty good. It has got to be of a good standard, especially more so these days because a lot of it is of a really good standard.