Henry Smithson's career in dance music began in 1990s dance culture and the long trips to the Renaissance raves prompting him to launch his own promotions closer to his home in Newcastle. The success of the club spawned the Switch record label, whose releases eventually made the record bag of Manchester hip-hop patriarch Mark Rae, who subsequently offered Smithson a job at his Fat City record shop in Manchester and an outlet for his solo material as Riton (French slang for Henry) to Rae's accomplished Grand Central imprint. Although at first glance the brew of soul, R&B, and house of the resultant debut long-player Beats du Jour seemed some distant from his contemporaries at the label, Smithson's consistently growling low end and Funkadelic keys provided the all-important link to hip-hop. We caught up with Riton ahead of his performance for The Mixmag UK Tour to get the low down on his world……

Hi mate how are you?

Amazing

You started out in the Hip Hop scene, what made you leap to electronic music?

I always liked electronic music but in the late 90s house music was really boring to me so looked for something else to stimulate me and that was hiphop

What is your main influence when writing new music?

David guetta


How do you find working with others in the studio?

I love it it can be a bit lonely up in the roof of my flat all alone... I've had some nice colabs recently working with Soulwax guys Mehdi and Seiji not to mention my boy primary 1

How would you describe your sound?

Ive said it before but its true,I jack to the sound of the underground

For the Technical heads reading this can you tell us your studio set up and any tricks you have picked up along the way?

Lots of synths some old compressors and distortion things then put them in a computer and make wm sound posher

What other releases and/or remixes should we be expecting from you in the near future?

More stuff with the artists I've mentioned above

Having travelled the globe performing where has been your most memorable moment?
Way to many great memories but Last week was the best gig ever... I closed the Saturday night at a festival on Belgium, it's always amazing there..

Is there anywhere u haven’t played but would like to?

Japan was the dream place to play and this year I got to go twice... Amazing synth shops there btw

Do you have any unreleased material we can expect to hear at your performance for the Mixmag Tour @ Kerbcrawler?

Yeah new thing on turbo called computer Juice... Kind of like big beat which is weird cos I hated that stuff... It just came out that way and sounds mental so I went with it

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