“It’s now the era of the Hard Disk Jockey! I’m going to coin that one. Spread the word, ‘Hard Disk Jockey’. I think traditionalists will have to get over it, because that’s where we’re all heading!” Danny pauses and laughs. “I mean, in a hundred years from now it’s going to be completely somewhere else altogether, I just always want to be in the front of that!”
Danny Bonnici is perhaps better known for his part in the legendary Australian breakbeat outfit Nubreed, but of late he’s been quite a busy boy in his own right. “I’ve been busy as! I’ve been doing DJ mixes for radio. I just did a mix for Digweed’s KissFM, a mix for Nova, and today I’ve been working on doing a Triple J Mix-Up set. So I’ve been busy doing sets, which is cool, cause it’s a good way to get out all your tunes and listen to them and see what’s going on. I’ve been having fun today!”
There’s a catch for Nubreed aficionados, however, as Danny’s sound has been evolving away from the dnb cross breaks style that the group has become famous for – even having showcased some of their favourite tracks, including their own productions, on the Y4K series complilation released last earlier this year. It would seem, however, that the passion for the broken beat has slowly been infiltrated by the four-four for Danny…
“Electro, and tech house kinda stuff,” is what he’s up to at the moment. “Like the Digweed set I did is kind of pretty minimal and laid back for the first half, and then I smash it at the end. I’ve kind of been playing all sorts of different house music actually. This Triple J one is a bit different, it’s pretty glitchy kind of electro house, but not your obvious onelove tunes, you know what I mean?”
Actually this lil reporter had to, well, guess exactly what he was imparting via the term, but I got the general gist; like much of his other production and performance of late, it’s pushing pidgeonhole barriers aside. “Yeah, well I mean I did that (breakbeat) for so long, which is cool, but it’s time to do something else for now! Until I get over it, and then I’ll probably do something else again soon!
“I’ve actually been getting into a lot of minimal stuff lately, minimal deep glitchy stuff. I’ve been making a lot of those kind of tunes, one actually came out this week, a tune that I did with Andy Page called ‘Know what I mean?’ That came out on EQ on September 11th. I’ve got another track coming out on Hidden Form as well, called ‘Break the House’, which is on the compilation that I did with Luke Chable. On the B-side is this techy-breaks thing called Freejacked. Which I think I’ve got up on my myspace page (www.myspace.com/dannybonnici – and it is indeed there among a couple of other tracks to check out), it’s a bit of a blippy kind of number.”
“When I write records, I like the B-side to be totally different. Like, there might be a prog A-side and then the B-side might be glitchy lost stuff, whatever. It’s like my release, being able to do whatever I want. I released another track called ‘Return to Saturn’, a pretty proggy, old style kind of prog number. But the B-side was a real glitchy, completely different tune, and people were buying it for that.”
On top of his production and related commitments, Danny’s been playing plenty of sets around Melbourne, as well as a bit further abroad. “I’m trying to get back to China next month! I was there a couple of weeks ago, and another guy said ‘Do you want to come over?’ so I thought ‘wicked!’ I like going over there, so that’s cool. The club scene in Shanghai is big, it’s massive, but it’s not like they’re clued into what they’re listening to, as long as it’s making them dance, they’re happy. It kind of keeps you from going too deep, or too lost, or too self indulgent into your own thing; you can’t be too lost with them, you’ve just got to give them what they want. And they want to dance!”
Not that home’s been treating him badly at all. On top of his own shows, he’s been managing to get out and about and actually be a punter, rather than provider of music. “We just had the opening of our new club, Famous on the weekend.” Danny pauses and adds with a wry grin in his voice, “it’s really, really big. It’s a pretty cool place, so I think all the heavy internationals will probably go there. But I went to a party on the weekend where Martinez and Thomas Shumacher played – at a party called Sunny, and that was awesome. Really, really awesome. Shumacher killed me, he was a legend. I was well into what he was playing – not really electro, more like a new prog sound really. Techy house; real tech house stuff. But cool, groovy stuff, mellow, minimal, deep, but still kept you dancing. Wasn’t too boring, there was always something about the tracks that he was playing that kept you wanting to dance, which was cool ‘cause I danced for the whole set.” Sounds a lot like what he had described to me as some of his own direction, maybe there’s a collaboration in the making?
Speaking of collaborations, in honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th, I had to throw one final doozy of a question at poor Danny – Ninjas or Pirates? “Ninjas, definitely ninjas. I was into ninjas when I was little, I had a full ninja suit. And ninja shoes.” He stops, and we both laugh. Ninja shoes are pretty rad, in anyone’s books. “And I used to climb up trees like a ninja, so definitely a ninja!”
Keep your eyes peeled for Danny Bonnici solo DJ dates across the country over the coming months, and don’t forget to check out Nubreed’s latest mix CD ‘Electric_02’, which was done alongside King Unique and is out now on EQ/Stomp. If you’re in Melbourne you can catch Danny at 161 this Friday September 29th.
