Mike Koglin: Making friends and making Noys

If you’re a trance producer looking to make it to the top of the pile, you’d better get busy. You’ll need to have all the top jocks caning your records. You’d better have the dance music press sewn up too – maybe have Above & Beyond confess in print to playing every record you’ve made, or at least get UK-based Mixmag to say that you’re “on fire”, or point out that your label is one of the hottest trance labels in the country. You’ll want to have lobbed a few records into the UK top 20 charts and be working your way up DJ Magazine’s Top 100, of course, and hey, a Grammy nomination will help too. In both the records that you make and the gigs that you play, you’d better nail it particularly well, every single time. Of course, if you’re Mike Koglin, you’ll already have sorted out all this and more.

Mike is at the airport in Singapore by the time ITM caught up with him, half-way to Australia en route from Hong Kong. “To be honest, I haven’t got a clue what day or what time of the day it is anymore,” Mike begins. “I’ve been on the road now for over three weeks, and it’s slowly starting to turn into something like the movie Groundhog Day. Every day it’s off the plane, check into hotel, check out of hotel, back to the airport, repeat. But I don’t want to complain, I actually love touring around and seeing all these new places!”

Mike’s ongoing world tour started just before Christmas, with three gigs in India, three in Australia, a New Years Eve party in Auckland, and a pair of gigs in China. “The second gig in China on Jan 10th was meant to be in Beijing, but the club there had some problems with the council and wasn’t allowed to open,” Mike explains. “So, I just did a repeat performance in the same club in Guangzhou where I had played the night before! That was definitely a first – the people there were much more of a house crowd so I played a two hour electro-house set, which made a nice change.”

The first Australian leg of Mike’s tour has gone very well, and preparations are underway for equally large gigs this coming weekend. “I was well impressed with the crowd in Brisbane when I played there at Family,” Mike says, “but I’m sure the best is yet to come. I’m told Melbourne is the party capital of Australia, and I can’t wait to play at Gatecrasher in Perth also.” Despite being new to both cities, Mike’s experience with Aussies abroad has given him some idea of what to expect. ”Let’s just say,” he says with a smile,” that judging from all the Aussies I know in London, they can drink and party like no other nation on this planet!”

In recent weeks Mike has turned his ear to some of Australia’s local dance music talent, including Australian trance sensation tyDi. “He’s just sent me a couple of his forthcoming releases and they sound absolutely massive,” says Mike. “He’d be a great guy to work with should there be a chance in future.”

Of course, Mike Koglin is known to most not just as a DJ, but as a world-class producer of driving, melodic trance. His next single Find Me will soon be out on Intuition Recordings, featuring the vocals of Tania Laila, and with remixes from Genix and Orjan Nilsen. “The first time I met Tania, she came to the studio to do some backing vocals on a different track and I instantly thought she had a great voice,” Mike recalls. “I had Find Me ready as an instrumental track, so we started writing some lyrics and melodies together in the studio. She is great to work with!” Once the tour wraps up, Mike will be back in the studio in London, working on more tracks with Tania.

For gearheads and budding producers, Mike is quick to share the details of his studio setup and touring rig – not the least of which is his appreciation for a proper analogue mixing console as the centerpiece of his studio. “It was around two years ago that all the producers started to realize that their Mackie digital eight-bus mixers didn’t sound as good as their previous analog desks did,” Mike recalls. “Soon enough, pretty much everyone I know sold their digital desks, with a fat loss, and went back to analog. These days I tend to use the UAD plug-ins quite a lot. With them, you get the best of both worlds between analog and digital. Unfortunately they can’t really be used with laptops, but that’s cool, I just use my laptop to put some really quick demos together, and then develop them further in my studio in London on the G5.”

As far as what he brings with him on tour, Mike believes in traveling lightly. “My Sony MDR V700 headphones come with me everywhere I go,” he says. “I really love their sound. I also recently bought a Korg nanoKEY, a super slim mini-keyboard exactly the same width as my MacBook that’s perfect when on the road.”

Mike’s label Noys has over five years and twenty-five releases steadily built a name as a source of quality driving tech trance tunes. “I sometimes describe the sound of Noys as cheese-free trance, trance that isn’t generic arpeggiated uplifting riffs, but something with a bit of an edge to it,” Mike explains. “Our latest release Acute Autodirt EP is a good example – there’s three great tech-trance tunes there.” Of note to any budding producers: Mike’s ears are open for new talent. “We’re always looking for new tracks,” he says, “so keep those demos coming!”

Mike Koglin plays the following shows this weekend…

23rd Jan – Gatecrasher, Perth
24th Jan – Metro City, Bunbury

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kanni says...

on January 20th, 2009

can't wait to see Mr Koglin in action at Gatecrasher this Fri ^-^

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