As one of the Superstar DJs responsible for many instalments in the Global Underground compilation series and one half of Way Out West, Nick Warren has embraced the global clubbing village, extending the boundaries of prog house by incorporating a diverse range of styles into his music.

The Prog House scene over here has been a bit quieter recently since the breaks genre really took off in early 2000. Now we’re seeing more crossover styles, with for example breaks and drum n bass, and more melodic themes being woven into the prog house. Is this a worldwide trend?
Yes I think it is, and for this year especially. Prog has gotten interesting again, it sort of went through a couple of years of being quite bland and boring with that whole dark tribal sound. It wasn’t very exciting to listen to and I think the breaks stuff and the prog stuff has really come together now, both are starting to become very musical now, very uplifting again.

Well they do work very well together, especially if you look at artists like Hybrid.
Yeah I like to play a mixture. I’ve always sort of liked to play some breaks and some prog, and I think at the moment the best of both is being made. But some of the Australian artists are making the best stuff, artists like Luke Chable and Phil K are making some of the great records at the moment.

Phil K released a new compilation, Retro Future about six months ago. Have you done much work with him?
Phil’s great. I did a mix album a couple of years ago for Renaissance, I did one CD and Danny Howell did the other and I actually mixed that in Melbourne with Phil, I was out there for a while so I know Phil really well now. Him and Luke Chable have started a project called Lo-Step and the signed (?) a track called Burma to Global Underground’s record label and that’s an amazing record.

And when is that due for release?
I’ve had a CD from the guys for a while, and I think its all going to come out around December or January.

I see. And MuthaF**ka, your new album with Way out West, when is that due for release?
It’s not finished yet. I had all these ideas of it being finished by around two months ago so it would come out in February but time is running out really. I leave for Australia straight after Christmas so really I’m not going to finish it this year. I think it’s going to be sort of, get back from Australia and finish it then. It’s going to come out in May or June now, I think.

So your tour is going to be the first priority then?
Well, not really. You know what I should do is cancel the tour and then just stay and finish it, but it’s a bit hard to do that.

Well you have to prioritise, you have to come to Australia. We wouldn’t just let you not come. We’d punish you by not buying your album, or something!
I’ll be playing a lot of new stuff on the tour, so It’ll be good fun to stick it on, and see what the response is.

And if you had to put a track in your record box that will really wow us, what would you be including?
At the moment there’s this guy from Greece, who’s making this music that’s among the best that I’ve heard all year. It’s very musical, it’s quite sort of breaky, quite electro-ey but it’s like this cascading sound and this stuff is really really exciting. It’s by a guy called Kosmas Epsilon and the track name is “Feed Me Acid”.

Lovely… And on the new album, are there any interesting remixes or collaborations?
There are no remixes but one of the tracks on the album we did with a german producer called Ulrich Schnauss, he’s been one of my favourite producers for about a year now. He does really lush sort of down-tempo stuff. It’s like the Coppertone Twins meets DJ Shadow. We’ve just done the new track with him and for the vocals we had a girl called Omi and she’s done some really amazing vocals for us. I think our new album is really more reflective of our early stuff, such as Ajare and those sort of tracks.

Speaking of which, a lot of people have been saying recently that Prog is dead, that it was just an early ‘90’s ‘hands in the air’ kind of thing. Now we’ve just touched on the crossover potential for the genre; what future do you see for prog?
It’s strange really, because people have been telling me it’s dead for the past eight years, yet it’s still the most popular sound around the world. If you think of other DJs who truly play in every territory, from South America to Canada to Russia such as Sasha, John Digweed and myself, we’re always busy, always travelling and the clubs are always full. I think there’s an element of prog that’s always been boring but then we’ve not really played much of that stuff and because it’s a fairly faceless style of music it’s not the kind of music that spawns stars as far as the media is concerned. The media almost want it not to be popular, but when it’s made properly by people like Kosheen, Hybrid, Sasha and the stuff that Bedrock make it’s really uplifting exciting music.

Catch Nick Warren touring the country on the following dates:

Thu Jan 1st, Sounds on NYD – Sydney (SOLD OUT)
Fri Jan 9th, C-Moog – Byron Bay
Sat Jan 10th, Room680 – Melbourne
Sun Jan 11th, Summadayze – Perth (BUY TICKETS)

All photos courtesy Melinda Elton.