“I’m an obsessive compulsive that needs to work seven days a week. It’s just one of those things that happens; the more you get immersed in music, writing about it, playing it and being interested in it, the more it takes over and that’s what a DJ is essentially.”

Given that over the last six years he founded and turned compilation label Hed Kandi into one of the strongest music brands in the world, it’s no surprise that Mark Doyle remains as passionate about music as he is about working, though DJing remains the cornerstone of all he does. “A DJ isn’t just someone who goes out and plays records,” he continues, “A DJ is a person who has a genuine interest in music and that genuine interest at some point transfers from being someone who’s happy to play the occasional album at a dinner party, to wanting to play music to people all the time.”

Making his name initially in the late 80s west London acid house era alongside contemporaries including Brandon Block and X Press 2, his career really got going when he joined Jazz FM in 1999, broadcasting a radio show and soon after setting up Hed Kandi, to put out some low budget compilation CDs of the music he was spinning. Immediately successful, his series went on to sell over five million compilation CDs with numerous Hed Kandi nights launching around the world though several months ago, he announced his departure to set up a new company Tokyo Project.

Chatting this week, Mark stresses he’s keen to look forwards rather than back, seeing the change as an opportunity rather than set-back. “I feel it’s time to strike out on my own with a new company I am wholly responsible for and try and build it into the same success story as Hed Kandi,” said Mark. “I think we can take all our great experience and put it into a new project under the name Tokyo. Obviously the music policy has always followed my own personal taste and I’m not about to change direction on the music I know and love. Ultimately I want to take responsibility for and build a label we can all be proud of,” he said.

Skrufff (Jonty Skrufff): Did you ever consider jacking the whole business side in and just concentrating on being a DJ?

Mark Doyle: “No, because I wouldn’t ever be happy only DJing, for me it’s about music in general- all aspects of it. DJing is about playing great music to people in a room, and I think making albums is almost about transferring that process to a home environment over a much longer period of time. So the two roles go hand in hand and complement each other.  I get incredible amounts of pleasure when people come up to us when we are doing gigs and tell me they love tracks we’ve featured on the compilations and it’s the same kind of feeling as playing a really good track in a club environment.  I felt that the easier option was to go back and just DJ, but I think your value as a DJ and what you can achieve as a DJ can be helped along the way with all these other things you do. And likewise, your value to a record label can be helped by being a good DJ.”

Skrufff: Chatting about your recent resignation you said ‘everyone’s perception was that I owned Hed Kandi or had a share in it’, reading between the lines on that, I guess you didn’t make a fortune?

Mark Doyle: “Certainly during the first two years of Hed Kandi, I actually spent an awful lot of my own money. I remember when we received our very first two mix CDs, I went into the office and said ‘I think it would be a really good idea for me to go out to Ibiza with a couple of hundred copies of each of these albums and give them to all the bars and all the people there’. The company said ‘No, we don’t see the point of that’ because obviously it was a very new concept for them. So I paid for my own holiday, went to Ibiza, took the CDs with me and gave them out at my own expense. We didn’t really start doing many gigs until the second year of Hed Kandi and at those I basically DJed for free too; we did fourteen weeks of gigs in Ibiza in the second year and I never took a penny for it or charged the company.”

Skrufff: Was the radio show more lucrative?

Mark Doyle: “We did move onto Galaxy and it was extremely successful for the label but my stance was always that I’d rather take no money and see us sell more albums. And also from a selfish point of view it’s an incredible profile raiser. One of the main things I’ll miss in the short term is my radio show on Galaxy- my show on that station and their support helped Hed Kandi immensely. Where I benefited the most though was through DJing, almost as a completely separate job. I was getting decent fees and not doing too badly out of it, but it was when I was renegotiating my contract with the Guardian (who bought Hed Kandi as part of Jazz FM two years ag) that I took independent advice from a music lawyer and he me ‘You are massively underpaid’. We went back with what he thought was a reasonable offer based on what the company was physically turning over and everything else, and they said ‘No, absolutely no way’, which was when it all really started to fall apart. Having said that, I’ve got to look at what Hed Kandi’s actually given me beyond financial return, which is two independent investors who are willing to invest over a million and a half of their money into a new business, Toyko Project, giving me the majority share holding in it. So I think looking at the longer term I’ll take that over being given loads of money in my bank account.”

Skrufff: How did you go about getting your old Hed Kandi people to join you in the move?

Mark Doyle: “We looked at a number of different options and they key factor determining what we do is finance. On the one hand, if I wanted to start something on my own, just as myself, and start it as a very small label and just do it very much organically all over again, there was only a certain level of finance that that would need. But I preferred to set up Toyko Project as a bigger scale project. And our investors initially made offers to all the key staff because they felt that Hed Kandi was more than just me and they were right. But I felt with Hed Kandi that the company (Jazz FM) had been very wary of spending more money than they had to on it, it was a very new business for them and they possibly didn’t want to risk any more than they had to. For the first few years myself and a staff of one other person were really killing ourselves working and not really moving things forward. When GMG purchased Jazz FM we saw a lot of investment into the label and it really was noticeable how the company could step up a gear. If I learnt anything from that it was that a businesses potential needs to be estimated and possibly overstaffed for the first few months so you aren’t playing catch up when the opportunities arise. Also you need to keep that expectation in check so you aren’t forcing the business to deliver certain numbers year on year. I want the new company to be structured more like a business like Apple, the way people working there are rewarded for the job they do. They are intensely passionate about the company they work for and the product that it produces and they are looked after. I’ve gained a great perspective from six years at Hed Kandi and how you should treat people. I never want any of my staff coming in asking me for a raise, I’d rather pre-empt them. I think in this sort of business especially in the market that it’s in now, creativity and actual love for doing something should actually be valued.”

Skrufff: Anything else to add?

Mark Doyle: “I know it all seems very business like and serious but the bottom line is that I took the decision to do this because I love my job, I love music and I love what I achieved at Hed Kandi. I think with all that satisfaction the only way to make it better is to fill in the missing part and that was ownership. It’s a hell of a lot more responsibility but I am amazingly lucky to have a team of staff with me that share the same dream. There’s no way I could do it without them and whatever problems there might be I know we’ll all be dealing with them as a family. Plus starting a new office from scratch has been an eye opener. We’ve got a great space on  Berwick Street and the whole team has mucked in to gut it and paint it over the last few days, which has turned out to be a far better bonding exercise than any over priced  weekend away with one of those motivational speakers. Today, in true budget style, we hired a van and raided IKEA for our desks, chairs, lamps, shelves and sofas. There’s more news on events … the official launch will be around the first week in October (probably on a Sunday in Newcastle) After that there will be a host of events and I’m pleased to say that after a swift round Britain trip this week we will be hosting regular events in Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Leeds, Cardiff, London, Oldham, Huddersfield, Hull and Glasgow; with more to be confirmed.”