In the World of Hard Dance it’s a safe assumption to make that Cally & Juice have quickly become the most wanted duo at the top of any Promoters checklist worth his or her salt. Not ones to play it safe or stick to the rule book, these two Welsh pioneers alongside their trusted friend and host MC Shocker continue to consistently re-write the rules at each and every event quite literally taking the rule book, tearing it up and starting their own. Fuck the rules, you see for these two genre defining heroes of Hardstyle, it’s more than about playing out tracks and it’s certainly more than about sticking to one genre – for them it’s all about diversity, pushing the limits and more importantly… entertaining a crowd. In any one given set you’ll notice shards of scratching up Hardstyle with Drum & Bass, Hip-Hop, Rock, simply put - if it works then anything goes, not to mention some of the chaos of their live performances – highlights of which including handstands on decks and blindfolded mash-ups, all of course solidifying their place as the leaders of their game.

They continue this wayward originality in the studio with their label, the aptly named ‘Ourstyle’ in which Cally & Juice themselves describe the material as “…our own fusion of Hard Trance and Hardstyle with elements of Drum & Bass, Old Skool, Hip Hop, and any other genre that influence us thrown in for good measure”. This sets the scene for a string of roof raising productions and remixes which have placed them as firm favourite at the front of many a DJ’s wallet or record box; collating acclaim from not only the DJ’s and Promoters that work with them, but also the very people they aim to please first and foremost – their fans; the hundreds and thousands of clubbers that stretch from Scotland to Southsea that flock to see the boys in large numbers.

Proving that there truly ‘ain’t no harder, harder style…”, we - with the help of the users of Don’t Stay In; caught up with the hedonistic rock star duo to talk about production, touring, the Hard Dance scene as it is today, Human Traffic, fruit juice and their appearance at this Friday’s Resonate…

Alright lads firstly got to say that we're looking forward to having you back down in Bournemouth again for Resonate. You rocked it for us in 2007 and I've been inundated with requests to get you back again ever since!

That’s great to hear, we can’t wait to come back and play to your crowd again. They made us feel so welcome last time.

Your diary is looking very busy this year, with appearances at some of the UK's biggest events and festivals. What's been the highlight for you this year so far and what are you most looking forward to? (Apart from Resonate of course!)

The highlight for us so far this year was probably playing the main room at the last Tidy Weekender. Because the Weekender is more Hard House orientated we’ve only played there twice before and not on the main stage, so we were really excited at being given the privilege of playing the main room closing set on the Saturday night.

The only thing we were concerned about is whether people would be in the arena for us or in their chalets partying as many do throughout the weekend. But, we had nothing to worry about the room was packed, so it seemed like everyone made the effort to come and watch us play which made it that bit extra special for us. As for highlights to come, not including Resonate obviously (winks and smiles), there’s quite a few big events we can’t wait for this year, on our home turf we have Wales’ biggest dance festival, Escape Into The Park - this one’s very special to us as 20,000+ descend on Swansea’s Singleton Park. The arena we play usually holds around 5,000 and while we’re on probably has about 6,000 in it, (laughs)! We know so many of the faces that go there it really is an emotional experience, sorry if that sounds a bit cheesy but it’s such a buzz to be welcomed into that arena every year with deafening cheers from our home crowd; it’s difficult to hold back the tears.

On top of that, this year we also have a week of gigs in Ibiza and then Slammin’ Vinyl’s Sanctuary Festival, Q Dance’s world renowned Q Base event (at a disused military base on the Dutch/German border) and Slammin Vinyl’s now legendary WestFest where Bionic will also be hosting arena’s at all three.

Oh, and we’ve got our first Australian tour happening in the autumn too so we can’t wait for that bad boy!

Your last gig for Resonate was back at the Old Firestation, their home for the past two years (although Juice did come down in February with his girlfriend Frisky). How did you think the event had changed since your last visit?

JUICE: The atmosphere was absolutely spot on at both events there – that’s why I came along to keep Frisky company, because I enjoyed it so much the first time I was there. I thought the décor the second time was even better than the first, the cool white sheeting and projector images looked wicked. We’re both really looking forward to bangin’ it out at Crank though, the place sounds like the dogs bollocks!

Crank boasts a 60kw sound system (the biggest on the South Coast!); we’re very excited about this as are most of our loyal fans. What’s the loudest system you’ve played on and with this in mind, what’s the worst?

60KW? Bloody hell that’s loud for an indoor event!!! We’re not sure what the loudest system is actually but it’s probably at a festival in Amsterdam called Impulz. We were playing in an outdoor arena in a forest, next to a man made beach. It was a 30,000 capacity gig and there were about 5,000 of these people dancing like nutters in this forest while we banged out Hardstyle, you could hear that arena from miles away so that’s probably the loudest.

As for worst, there are a couple of smaller gigs that stick in the mind but the most disappointed we’ve ever been with a system was at Code (or Air) in Birmingham. They boast about their amazing DJ set up with all these decks and FX, etc but when we turned up there for a HTID only one of the three 1210 decks worked, only one of the three Pioneer CD players worked, the cross fader didn’t cut out the sound properly and the monitor kept switching on and off. We managed to get two decks working and all three CD decks working ourselves, frantically re-wiring things whilst still trying to entertain the crowd, but that was by far the worst system we’ve ever played on. As a foot note to that, we played there again a few months ago and it was all working fine (smiles).

The order of the night at Resonate is to play a set through the ages, starting from where you first started playing to the present day (shall we say) ‘demons’. What classic track do you expect to really smash it up at the first Resonate event at Crank?

We’ve always found that going back too far through your collection doesn’t always work on the dance floor. A lot of clubbers are new to the scene, so the memories of all the old tunes don’t connect with them like the older clubbers. Also, we were playing a very different style when we started out and I’m not sure exactly what tunes we’ll play but rather than delve through all our old records, we’ll probably replace them for more up to date bootlegs we’ve done of those tunes. This should keep everyone happy as the old tunes will still get remembered, but the quality and production of the bootlegs will be a lot tougher than if we played those exact old tunes. You have been warned, this will be like going back in a time warp with bells on ...SUPER, TURBO, MEGA BELLS!!! (Winks and laughs).

Being two of the original pioneers of the European Sound as well as your own, how do you feel about the explosion of Hardstyle into the UK Hard Dance scene?

We were always very excited of this new sound coming into the UK and were among the first DJ’s / Promoters to support it and have pushed it ever since. In fact our events are among the best known in the UK for this sound. However, over the past couple of years the original Hardstyle sound, much loved by many, has diminished in favour of Dutch Jumpstyle. This sound is very specialist and has never taken off in the UK and neither of us have ever been into it and rather than jump on a bandwagon as many would do, we’re just doing our own thing. Of course this makes it easier as we produce ourselves, but with the complete lack of good tunes out there it now means over 90% of our set is our own material, be it original productions, bootlegs, remixes or edits.

However recently many producers have started putting the ‘bassline’ back into their tracks and they’ve all been very successful, so fingers crossed it will start to go back in this direction.

Where do you see the sound in a year’s time?

As we’ve just mentioned, hopefully away from the Jumpstyle and back to proper Hardstyle.

On that note, where do you see yourselves in a year’s time?

Well when we started back at producing, we had great success with Nukleuz which really catapulted our careers. We then started our own label which really caught everyone’s attention, but then last year we only had the one release out, so we’re really achieving what we have done on the merits of our DJing only. However in that year we produced a lot, just didn’t release it so this year we have a lot of tunes all ready to release so… in a years time I think we’ll be more recognized as producers which should open up more doors to people who maybe haven’t had the chance to hear us DJ.

Where do you see yourselves in 10 years time?

CALLY: Wow this is a tough one, but with our ambition, and the fact we really like to push boundaries with our music, then I’d like to think by then we’d be top of our game and playing all over the world on line-ups with a big cross section of DJs.

JUICE: And when we get too old to wear make-up and bondage trousers, we’ll do like Daft Punk do and hide under some kind of cool android costume (laughs).

Are there any more compilations in the pipeline?

Funny you should mention that, we’ve just finished our disc to feature on a compilation titled ‘Masif Hard Dance Anthems – International Edition’ for Steve Hill. It features mostly our own productions this time so we’re very excited to launch it and get the feedback off the street. It should be in the shops over here in June/July.

What producers and DJ’s are really doing it for you at the moment? Do you have any tipped to be the next Cally & Juice?

We’d like to think there won’t be a next Cally & Juice, just as there’d never be another Mark EG! That’s the one thing about making it, you need to be original, there’s no use trying to do what someone else has already done. As for producers, we tend to play mostly our own material, but at the moment the producers that are delivering the goods for us are Francesco Zeta, Headhunterz, Activator and of course Pendulum.

Can Gav have a pay rise? (Just in case anyone doesn’t know Sat Nav Gav, he’s a good friend of the boys who helps us out big time on things like DSI, My Space, etc)

I wonder who suggested that question? Well, as it happens we were going to give him a pay rise next week but now that he’s been cheeky enough to push for it on a public interview, the pay rise is revoked – it’s for his own good, he’s got to learn. Firm but fair, that’s us (laughs).

Word on the street is that your highly successful label ‘Ourstyle’ is about to go digital, what are the first releases to go out there?

The first three will be the same releases we’ve had out on vinyl, ‘Do It Like That’, ‘Serotonin Rush’ and ‘Jam Master’, then we’ve an exclusive release which won’t be appearing on vinyl - a double ‘A’ side, ‘We’re Dangerous’/’Maximum Power’, two tunes which we’re hammering out now in our set which both go down a storm. Plus, we’ve already finished the next of five or six releases; so we hope to be releasing something new every four to six weeks from now on. We’re very excited about it and hope they’re well received out there in club land.

Let’s get behind the scenes a bit and find out about Cally & Juice, what kind of stuff do you like to do in your spare time? Tell us something about yourselves that nobody will know until now…

As we work flat out in the week, producing in the studio, promoting our events and taking care of the business side of it all, then on the weekends we’re out and about DJ’ing- we get very little free time. Not so long ago we’d finish the week off by going back to some crazy house party and getting worse for wear. However now things have got so hectic for us, we can’t burn the candle at both ends without it seriously affecting our future career. Now, the few hours we get free we both kick back at home with our girlfriends and a fridge full of booze!

As for something not many will know:

CALLY: I previously worked on the set of the movie ‘Human Traffic’ as a technical advisor.

JUICE: Cally’s always shy about his “Human Traffic” fact so I’ll elaborate because I think it’s really cool…Do you remember the scene where Koop (the guy with the dreads) is pretending to scratch over a tune while the camera revolves around the room as he laps up the adulation of the imaginary crowd? Well Cally, was the scratching coach on that scene and is actually ducked down just under the camera to make sure the scratching looked realistic. How cool is that? (Smiles).

As for me, well I’ve got two moderately interesting facts for ya. Firstly I used to be a professional swimmer and represented my country at various levels for about 6 years and secondly, believe it or not but I’ve got an I.Q. of 137, (although I disguise it very well) (laughs).

And I know that this one always gets chucked in there but…. for those who don’t know, why are you called Cally & Juice?

CALLY: Several weeks after my first play on a set of decks, I was asked if I wanted to play an illegal warehouse rave, they asked for my name for the flyer so I told them my name. They told me I needed a ‘proper’ DJ name, I told them to put anything down. At that point it never entered my head about becoming a DJ; I just wanted to take the opportunity to share some of my records with a big crowd. That’s (Cally) what they came up with and I never asked them why (though I guess it was after the pills by the same name). 500 people turned up and everyone was asking who I was, so the name stuck immediately.

JUICE: When I started DJ’ing I kept coming up with crappy names for myself, and then my girlfriend at the time came up with Juice. It didn’t sound too cheesy and had a nice ring to it so I kept it. When I asked her later where the idea came from she said it came from a carton of Just Juice in her fridge.

Legends.

Boys thank you very much for your time and whilst we’re on the subject of time if you’re reading this it means it’s nearly time for Resonate Presents UK Legends: Classics Showcase at Crank, this Friday – Crank Club, Bournemouth; catch the boys in all their glory, all the details and full links are below but all you need to know for now is that it’s going to be absolutely massive, Cally, Juice, Shocker, Resonate, Crank… buds in.

Interview By: Jon-Brown & SLDJ

Questions By SLDJ and the regular users of the Resonate Forum on DSI! With thanks to Cally & Juice!

Photo Credits: Photo 1: dontstayin.com Photo 2:- dontstayin.com Photo 3:- dontstayin.com Photo 4:- dontstayin.com Photo 5:- dontstayin.com Photo 6:- dontstayin.com Photo 7:- dontstayin.com Photo 8:- dontstayin.com Photo 9:- dontstayin.com Photo 10: - BKs

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