If you didn’t see Krafty Kuts playing this summer you can’t say you didn’t have the opportunity (unless perhaps you live in the far north). A month in Australia over summer saw him hip hopping his way across the country countless times playing festivals and club gigs, both solo and with pal A-Skilz. Krafty’s become a firm favourite with Australian audiences. In 2002 he received the DMA for most popular international DJ and his tours continue to sell out no matter how much larger the venues get or how many extra dates are added to the tour. Depending on the event, venue, crowd and time of day a Krafty set can range from party hip hop to drum’n’bass to deep and driving breaks (or as more often is the case a bit of everything). Above all else Krafty loves to have a good time and is every bit the master of ensuring those who come to see him play do so to.

With him having spent so long in Australia this time around and having played so many gigs in so many cities ITM were curious as to what it is that keeps Krafty Kuts coming back to Australia. Given that so many ITMers are likely to have seen him at some stage over the summer break we wanted to find out from the man himself what have been the highlights and what have been the more difficult moments. When phoning him at his Sydney base it seems he’s been enjoying every moment with the initial fear that my call was from an angry boyfriend of a girl he’d just tried calling that he’d met on tour. But get him talking about Australia and all that is left behind as he talks of a five year plan to eventually own his own house down under and of Australian audiences being the best in the world to play to. And what advice did he give to A-Skilz, for whom this was his first foray down under? “I sat him down before we left and said “be prepared, these are the best crowds in the world you’ll ever play to. You’ll get loads of people wanting autographs in the strangest of places”. That is the phenomena that is Australia, especially this time of year. You’ve seen how many festivals there are it’s just countless.”

The tour de Oz began on Boxing Day with a double banger on the two extremes of the country. An afternoon set at the Bondi Pavillion for Summer Break in Sydney before jetting across the country to Perth to play the closing set at Breakfest. Seem like a tight squeeze? Even in retrospect Krafty seems a little surprised he lived to tell the tale. “I don’t know how we managed; I think vodka and redbulls saw me through that. The Bondi gig was awesome – at 2pm there were 3500 people packed in to the place and it was going off. We had to rush out and we were about two minutes from missing our plane. Our luggage went through and literally as we were going down the escalator our names were being called out. We honestly didn’t think we were going to make it.”

Usually being one quite happy to mill around for a chat after playing, Krafty describes one of the hardest things about the gig as having to say NO as they were leaving the gig just so they could make the plane. “We were trying to get out through the crowd and everyone wanted to talk to us cause we played really well. Everyone was like “that was great, can I get a picture with you?” and we had to say no to so many people. I felt really rude and that’s not what I’m about, I’ll usually stop to talk to anyone and everyone. That was a difficult thing playing a phenomenal gig like that then sitting in a car and plane for four to five hours saying to ourselves “we’ve got to get up and do that again”. “

But made it they did for what Krafty would describe as “probably the hardest gig of my life”. It seems a miscommunication meant the gear wasn ‘t what Krafty and A-Skilz were used to using for their decks and effects show. However it was the uninvited Perth locals that made things so difficult. “The bugs were absolutely insane! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I got there and Dominic (Dom B from Stanton Warriors) was there and I was like “oh my god”. He had all these bits around his neck. I said to him “what’s that shit?” and suddenly I got on stage and was just being hit by bugs. We’re not just talking flies and mozzies. I’m talking every earthly bug and creepy crawley you can think of. It was like a scene out of a creepy crawley movie. Then they started getting in the turntables and slowing them down so the decks got funny. They got inside the CDJ’s and the cross fader on the mixer. They were all round the back of your neck, in your eyes, in your mouth, it was the hardest gig I’ve ever done. It was fun and I really enjoyed it but I’d say from a technical point of view we played better at the Cottesloe Hotel (also Perth – having criss crossed the country in between) on NYE. But everyone got into it at Breakfest and it was a brilliant gig and a wonderful venue. You can’t knock the venue as it’s just amazing.” And this is all without going into details of an incident in which a bottle from the crowd was thrown on stage and got water all over A-Skilz decks, effectively neutralising him for the rest of the show.

But rest assure Perthites as the Krafty still has plenty of reason to come back to these shores. ” (Breakfest) It’s really special and different to anything I’ve ever done. The venue is very unusual, really beautiful. Perth is a wonderful place – it’s got some of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, it’s got some of the best food I’ve ever had and some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I’m talking extremely nice, they just treat you like a king and you’re always welcome. Liam and Mercedes who do Breakfest are just awesome and their place Ambar is a really good venue. You feel really welcome. It reminds me of Sydney but with a difference. A lot more earthy, not everyone’s trying to be cool, more laidback but the crowds still go wild.”

The tour has been a combination of solo gigs and combined gigs playing alongside A-Skilz. With most of the A-Skilz gigs being at the larger festivals I was curious as to the approach in preparing for such a set. “We have a set that’s worked out in terms that the first hour is a really professional party hip hop style mix that we do. It’s a combination of really elite tunes that we’ve put together especially for the set that no one else has. We loop loads of stuff up, we do loads of trickery, scratching, play records for thirty seconds then in with the next. There’s a lot of clever material going on and the feedback from the Melbourne and Gold Coast big festivals has been unreal. There were some of the biggest DJs in the world there like Roger Sanchez and Tiesto and from what I read on the forums they reckon we were the highlight. And for me that’s an achievement.

A-Skilz had never been here before, I’ve obviously built up a bit of rep and am really proud how things have progressed for me. But to come over here and impress even more. Melbourne was off the hook, we turned up and there were 20,000 people ready to go off at Summadayze. Summer Fielddayze on the Gold Coast was the same. It struck me that people are really into what I’m doing. The thing I do with A-Skilz I found more fun because I had someone to bounce off. It was really entertaining and I felt so confident when I was playing with him. When you’re djing on your own your thought processes are different and you have to think to yourself what can you do to work and turn the crowd. When djing on your own it’s like you don’t have enough time and everything just flies by you’re so busy.”

Whilst A-Skilz has been proposing and holidaying with his girlfriend, Krafty’s been getting up to his own fair share of booty shaking and at the time of the interview is still very excited about a recent gig in Hobart. “This whole tour has been phenomenal for me. Like Hobart on Saturday was unbelievable. I played a four-hour set there and every single record I dropped they went crazy too. With the big snare rolls and the big tunes they went even more crazy. Basically it was like I was god for four hours it was unbelievable and the people were so great. You get treated so well, so professionally yet so messy, it’s weird. You walk into the club and it’s piping hot and mad.”

So how does he compare the longer four sets to the shorter festival sets? “I love doing those (longer) sets because it gives me more of a chance to explore and be more creative. A chance to go deeper, go harder, go funkier, go on a little journey up and down. One bag of records I can play for five hours along with my CDs. I’ve got so many good tunes and I want to play every track that I’ve got. So that nearly allows me to do that and I really get into my groove then.” It’s not many times I’ve said this but damn you lucky Tasmanians!

It’s certainly been a tour of experiences for Krafty and one that he’ll treasure is finishing Field Day in Sydney on New Years Day where Kurtis Blow made a special unannounced (to the crowd) appearance for a first ever live rendition of their song Gimme the Breaks in front of 23,00 mad for it fans. “It was just a phenomenal experience and that’s something that’s going to stay with me for life. He was a special guest that no one knew about. He flew in at 7pm from Melbourne and we were on at 10. We rehearsed it for about two hours to get the sound right and then he just tore it up live, he was cool as a cucumber. It was the end of the night and it was announced that we’d be coming on and finishing up for twenty minutes. We dropped the bootleg of House of Pain (crowd went mad), then Trickatechnology (crowd went mad), then Gimme the Breaks and everyone was like “what’s this, sounds a bit different”. A Skilz rewound it and then someone got back on the mic and made the announcement of “just in from the USA….” He came on with the “clap your hands everybody” line and everybody went off.”

With another successful tour of Australia under his belt Krafty seems all that closer to being able to call here his home away from home. An ever-increasing fan base and, more importantly, close friends leaves him hanging up with the promise that he’ll be back soon.