Can you believe that it’s been five years of Darkbeat? The Melbourne series of parties has easily become the city’s most consistent and reliable sources of techno, house and progressive since firing up in 2003 and they’ve hosted names as revered as Anthony Pappa, Hernan Cattaneo, James Zabiela, Hybrid, Ben Watt and many, many more. And behind it are DJ/producer duo of Darius Bassiray and Daniel Banko, otherwise known as Rollin’ Connection. And Easter weekend they’ll be throwing a massive party to celebrates five years in the Melbourne dance music community, with a monster 24-hour party featuring one of the biggest lineups they’ve ever hosted with Layo & Bushwacka!, Nic Fanciulli, Dave Seaman and Lexicon Avenue all onboard for the event. ITM chats with the Rollin’ Connection crew about what we can expect.
How have the last 12 months been for you? Is 2008 going to be the biggest year for you yet?
The last twelve months have been fantastic for us. Darkbeat has come a long way since we first started the party 5 years ago, to a point where we both now devote 100per cent of our time to it and we don’t have ‘regular’ day jobs anymore, which is great because I guess that was always a goal for us. As DJs we have matured quite a bit I think , and we have achieved all our goals we have set out to do with that in Melbourne , so in that respect we are very happy with the respect we are getting.
What sort of musical backgrounds do you two come from? How did you both get into electronic music? And when did you meet each other?
We met each other in high school, and we have been close friends ever since then. We really do not have musical backgrounds at all – after we got into the sound we self-taught everything from DJing to production and learnt a lot of other people as well. We basically got into the type of electronic music we push today through going to Sunny about 8 years ago, when we were 18 and fell in love with the deeper sound and we decided to start our own party soon after that which snowballed into what it is today after a lot of hard work, and deciding to do it at the right time – I guess if we held off with Darkbeat for a few years we would not have achieved the success we have, so we were a bit lucky with that too.
How long have you two been Djing together for? And how did you come up with the name Rollin Connection?
We have been DJing together for hour years now – we decided to do it after playing together in Thailand in 2003. With duos you really need to make a conscious decision that its what you really want to do – if you play solo sometimes and as a duo at other times, it really wont work and you will have no flow to your sound. We chose to play together, and if we didn’t want to do it we would not do it – we would be individual DJ’s. The name came from an idea called ‘Rollin Project’ one of our friends had to write a tune and give it out to be remixed, each making with the goal of making it more ‘rollin’-– to describe what is rollin is a bit difficult in words, but think fluent snappy clean sounds that are well placed in relation to the snare in a track – that gives it a boompty boom feel and that is what we like to call rollin. Our interpretation of it is more on a deep tech house tip – but we have heard it used in relation to even drum n’ bass music as well – it has a lot to do with percussion and I guess we push it a bit deep at times too.
Whats new’s with the tour of America? Where are you playing at?
Unfortunately we had to cancel the tour of America due to Darkbeat commitments and work commitments in Melbourne for a party – but all of the offers are still there, so it’s just about finding a month spare to go when we don’t have a party to run – which seems to be quite difficult at the moment!
How’s everything on the production side? Will there be more Bassiray and Banko releases or some actual Rollin Connection tunes?
Production is going great, it’s just solo tracks as myself, or collaborations with other producers at the moment. In terms of new tunes, I have written a tune called Jeebuzz Champ with Paul Neynon which has been signed to Dieb Audio. We are just waiting for the remixes from Peace Division and Audio Soul Project to come back, which I believe are nearly done. Also I have had a new one Julies Piano signed to Kriece’s label Arabica and another remix of Dave Basek and Kriece for Spinefex nearly finished that I can’t wait to see the end of, as it’s been one of those tracks that has taken a lot out of me. Sometimes they click and you can nut a tune out very quickly, other times it takes more to get them to the ‘finalised’ stage – but its all good fun. Me and Dan will be doing a follow up to Drive By together soon – so we cant wait for that.
The Darkbeat 5th birthday is going to be the biggest party yet. What is it about Darkbeat that has seen it become such a big party?
We are really looking forward to the Darkbeat 5th Birthday. We guess the reason it has become so popular is a focus on a good crowd, good music, a good venue with a great sound system and the key a good ‘vibe’. Which is something you can’t necessarily pinpoint with one thing or you cannot buy it with all the money in the world – either it’s present or it is not. We like to be friendly in our approach to it all – we are all in it for the same reasons and that’s to have a good time.
Hopefully, when people come to Darkbeat they know the DJs can play for 6 hours sometimes, the crowd is totally on it – its sounds good and there is no agenda behind it all. Musically – we are not really pingeonholed as such our guests can play tech-house, minimal, techno, progressive etc. and get away with it all on the floor – in addition our locals have a key sound they push and we incorporate that around which guest we have on the night. This format has proven really popular with the punters and it has an almost family atmosphere – everybody knows everybody and it just works. That element is only really present at very few parties – so we are really happy with that.
And any news on what other events there are to look forward to this year?
We have the Darkbeat 5th Birthday on March 21 – with Layo and Bushwacka, Nic Fanciulli, Chris Fortier, Dave Seaman, Lexicon Avenue, and 16 locals for a 24 hour party at Brown Alley, La Di Da and a boat cruise in between. We have plenty plenty more in store, but we can’t reveal them as yet. Sorry!
What do you consider the most important aspect of your DJing repotoire? What is it that makes you guys so unique?
It’s a little bit hard to talk your self up about what makes you ‘unique’ – we guess we choose records that we believe in and really try and make sure those records are aligned with the sound we are known for and that we enjoy. And just try and keep it all as tight as possible: we discuss programming a lot, even while we are playing and each try and bring something new to the set each time: hopefully people like it! We are really fussy with the records we choose, but there is so much good stuff around at the moment, it’s really enjoyable. The key at the end of the day is to play entertaining records, even if they are left of centre – keep it entertaining.
Come and help Darkbeat celebrate it’s 5th Birthday on Saturday 21st March! Tickets on sale now on ITM.
Spiro says...
lol
m1kest4r says...
darkbeat parties are awesome! keep it up :)