The name Mark Knight is everywhere in house music. The Brit DJ has emerged as one of the scene’s most copious producers, scoring a hit with Insatiable and circulating countless remixes. And then, of course, he runs a viable label, Toolroom, out of Maidstone in South East England.
Needless to say, the gregarious Knight is impressing his peers, attracting the accolades of Pete Tong, still the No. 1 tastemaker in dance. Mark has taken a break from the studio for a spate of interviews ahead of summer’s Australian tour. “It’s flat out!,” he trumpets of his schedule, sounding amped, not stressed. The tireless Knight rattles off a list of current projects (“Wow, where should I start?”), including a remix of Atrium’s I’m In Love With You for Positiva. “I’m well chuffed with it,” he says.
Part of Mark’s success lies in his openness to collaboration. While of late he’s been recording with Mike Gray, his most famous partnership is with Dutch expat Martijn Ten Velden, who just toured here. The pair remixed the Ferrer & Sydenham INC classic Sandcastles. So what has Knight brought to house? “I was just trying to do my own thing, really,” he proffers. “We were just trotting along doing what we do and trying to make as good a music as possible for people to enjoy. That’s the key to it and, if people are loving it, then brilliant.”
However, Martijn has stated that he’s now eager to establish himself as a solo entity. Meanwhile, Knight hopes to finish an ‘artist’ album. It won’t be a straight-up house album, by any stretch. “Basically what I’m trying to do is to tell a story of what I’m about musically, not just about house music,” he reveals. “I wanna do an album with a lot of my musical influences on it – being hip hop, boogie, funk, soul – but I wanna make tracks that stand up within their own genre. “I don’t wanna sound like a house producer trying to make a hip hop record and it sounds blatantly like that – it sounds wooden. I wanna make a record where you go, ‘OK, that’s a good hip hop record,’ not ‘Mark Knight’s gonna make a hip hop record.’
“I don’t feel like I’m under any pressure to nail the album, like, yesterday. I wanna get it 100 percent right.” Indeed, when Knight isn’t working, he listens to neo-soul artists like Erykah Badu, Floetry or Sleepy Brown on his iPod. “As soon as I’m out of the studio, house [music] is off – it’s not in the car, it’s not at home, I don’t have any decks at home.”
Nevertheless, Mark has no intention of abandoning the music for which he’s known – or compromising his career. He’s laboured too hard for that. “If you take your foot off the pedal and disappear for two years, you go and make an album and it doesn’t work, then there’s a lot of reinventing to do to get back to where you were prior to that.”
Knight has used remixes to consolidate his presence in clubland. He even turned his hand to Soul Central’s ubiquitous Strings Of Life. (Defected’s Simon Dunmore originally suggested Mark do it with Nic Fanciulli, but Nic was unsure, so Mark hooked up with Martijn.)
King Unique recently indicated that they’re pulling back from remixes because of poor remuneration – there’s little incentive. Mark appreciates their stance. “You can remix ‘til you’re blue in the face, and it’s like being on the pay roll – there’s no endgame, there’s no publishing. You’re only making other people look good – ‘cause most of the time people go, ‘Oh, wow, that’s a great record,’ but they don’t realise that the original’s shit and the remix is someone else’s work.”
For Knight a remix is either a “trade-off” – that is, “a means to an end” – or it’s a track he loves and desperately wants to mix, such as Sandcastles. “Sometimes you need to do it ‘cause you need the cash and whatever to fund bigger projects – like, if you’re writing something for an album and you need to get a string section or brass section, which is very expensive, you go, Hang on, I’ll bang out a remix, get the money for that, and that’ll fund something I’m trying to do in the bigger picture.”
Mark founded Toolroom in 2004 with his brother Stuart, followed by the underground offshoot Toolroom Trax, at a difficult time in dance. But today, along with CR2, Toolroom is beginning to rival the mighty Defected. Knight attributes its growth to devising “a good business model.” Having launched Toolroom Knights at London’s Ministry of Sound, Mark is entering the realm of compilations in addition to tours. (Look for a Toolroom Knights EP to celebrate.)
With his productions generating heat, it’d be easy to forget Knight’s primary skill as a DJ. On his forthcoming Australian trek he promises to spin funky house, electro-house, tribal – everything. Mark thrives on extended sets of five hours, where he can “paint a picture.” Dropping solely “big records” is easy. “You could do that with your eyes shut – I could teach my Mum to do that in a few weeks.” Mark prefers a “challenge”.
And the DJ is into a range of producers, citing Booka Shade in the same sentence as Dennis Ferrer. “It’s a really good time to be in music now,” he proclaims. “I think we’ve had a weed out of the old garden, of some of the older producers, and there’s a lot of new talent coming through keeping the scene very fresh and very exciting.”
As for his prediction for house? Now that punters are tuning into deeper music with the minimal explosion, Knight envisages a surge of soul in electronica – he considers Jimpster a prime example. “I think that it’s gonna go a bit more soulful again,” he speculates. “I don’t think it’s ever gonna go back to garage, but I think you’ll see more soulful influences in music. That’s my prediction.”
Mark Knight tour dates:
Fri 15/12 – Perth, The Harbourside
Sat 16/12 – Melbourne, Famous
Sun 17/12 – Gold Coast, The Bedroom
Thu 21/12 – Brisbane, Monastery
Fri 22/12 – Newcastle, King Street Hotel
Sat 23/12 – Sydney, Kink
Sun 24/12 – Cairns, Velvet Underground
