Vlad Sokolov isn’t a name that is instantly recognisable in breaks in Australia, but a scratch below the surface and you’ll find he’s a producer who has been instrumental in shaping the sound. He runs the highly successful label Sokolov Sounds, which is famous – amongst other things – for bringing the production duo Diverted to the world. His sound is as “phat” as it gets, making a claim for the king of sub destroying breakbeat. ITM’s SignalDrivers chats with Vlad before his trip to Oz.

So is this your first trip to Australia? What are you expecting?

Yes, it is my first time, and I expect to be treated as an ultimate celebrity.

Tell us a bit about your musical background. How did you stumble into DJing and production?
I stumbled into DJing at the age of 5. I was terribly bored with my oversized toy collection and to shut me up my mum gave me her record player and her 7 inch collection. I was particularly attracted to Tom Jones and Pat Boon singles. Later on at school, I almost won our class dance competition by impersonating John Travolta. Finally years later, this girl got annoyed with my utter disrespect for dance music and decided to force me into this new club in town where people drank only juices and water, yet managed to euphorically dance and be happy all night for some reason. The name of the club was Ministry of Sound. On a more serious note, and thanks to the experiences of catching live sets of Todd Terry, Billy Nasty, Justin Robertson, CJ Macintosh, Derrick May, Justin Berkman, Tony Humphries, Masters At Work, I was soon totally hooked on techno, US house and garage. By ’94 I had my first paying gig. As my musical expression grew and evolved, production then came as a natural progression not few years later.

You’ve put out an EP recently on your label Sokolov Sounds, can you spill any label gossip for us?

Well, since you are a man of gossip, then I shall indulge you with one or two. The EP was released a few months ago and followed up with my mix compilation album ‘Perestroika’. As for real gossip, there are few projects on the go involving your country man Daniel Walker, aka NineLives The Cat, a collab with Swedish breaks extraordinaire Peo De Pitte, and of course 30HZ and myself are due back in the studio after the success of ‘Get Low’.

Do you have any embarrassing stories from your time touring?

I do, but they were embarrassing enough when they happened not to be mentioned again. As an ultimate celebrity I must make sure that Britney or Paris don’t get hold of any bad info on me, you see, recently I have been gaining on them…

What have been your musical influences in the past?

In no particular order; Osmonds, Bay City Rollers, Meat Loaf, Andy Williams and Englbert Humperdinck… nah sorry for trying to be funny in every answer, but it is really a toss up between this or spending another day writing a list of all the brilliant music I have listened to and grown up with, and I really want to get to the beach today, while the sun is out…

One of your more recent tracks, ‘Get Low’, which you did with 30hz, is killer. How would you describe your sound at the moment?

I am really glad ‘Get Low’ has done so well, and I want to thank all who supported it. The sound I am into at the moment is quite techy. The fact is I have always had that subtle house undertone in my music, mostly because house was my original background. It mostly comes to the fore in my mixing and set compiling. I am more of a “story teller” then “full-on hit after hit” kind of a DJ. However, in my history I have been known to get into harder ends of breakbeat too.

I had the pleasure of meeting Tamsin recently on tour, what’s it like collaborating with her? Who else would you like to collaborate with?

I wouldn’t call work with Tamsin a collaboration really. It was much bigger than that, since we had a production band Breakneck together with Pete Voyager as well. We were original TCR artists and we worked almost a decade together. Later we even had the label together – LondonBreakz. As for future collabs, I tent not to have my wish list of people I’d like to work with, simply because the best collabs happen spontaneously and usually are the least expected ones.

When you’re not DJing, producing or running your label, what are you up to?

I like to dress as MR Darcy and force my girlfriend to act as Jane Ayre, and then we have a turn about the room feeling giddy. Alternatively when she is not in the mood I like to act as “60 Gittaness a day French film noir detective” as one of my promotional photos suggests.

What does the future hold for Vlad Sokolov?

Plenty of bacon and eggs and some nice videos would be nice.

Vlad Sokolov continues his tour of Australia throughout May and early June:

25th May – Darkbeat @ Brown Alley, Melbourne
1st June – Break Inn @ Chinese Laundry, Sydney
4th June – Loaded Dice @ The Deen, Perth