Storm Catch up with Andy Whitby ahead of the massively popular Classics night @ The Emporium

This article is about Storm Summer Classics - All Tickets just £10. @ The Emporium in Coalville in Leicester (UK), Sat 27 Jun

Hello Andy! How are you doing today? What's going down in Whitby-World?

Hello dude! I’m very well thanks, I’ve just got back from Egypt which was absolutely incredible and am now currently writing this in my office at home while trying to pack things as I fly to Spain on Friday before returning for shows at Escape into the Park in Swansea and Tougher Times in Doncaster.

You’ve been a fixture of Storm’s NYE celebrations over the past few years. How does it feel to get up in the booth at the Emporium?

I’ve been fortunate to play both the main and the back room @ The Emporium over the last 4 years. Both rooms offer something different, I remember 2 New Years ago I had the back room as one-in-one-out for my early morning set at 6a.m, which was a great feeling as the atmosphere was unreal!

The Emporium has a lot of history; I remember sticking the page adverts out of Mixmag on my bedroom wall at home, dreaming of the days I’d play in clubs, so to now be headlining the Summer Classics event is a great achievement.

You’ve made your name playing the very best of uplifting and bouncy hard dance. Over the last couple of months you’ve played a couple of filth sets - first at Twist and then at AWsum remixed. Is this just to keep things fresh and new, or does it represent the kind of tuneage that’s tickling your fancy at the mo?

It’s a combination of both. I am known for playing the more euphoric and fun side of Hard-dance but a good DJ should be able to play any style, at any time, to any crowd.

Some of the harder material coming out now is really grabbing my attention. Tracks like the recent ‘Phaserblade’ are really exciting, plus its great to see so many new remixes of big classics like ‘Hoovertime’, ‘R U All Ready?’ and the absolutely HUGE remix of ‘Give Me A Reason’ by Tony De Vit which I’m playing every set.

I’ve always liked certain harder tunes; ‘Kick It’, ‘Crazy Pills’, ‘Tension’, ‘Dreams (Paul Glazby remix) are all tracks I bought on vinyl years ago, so now to bring them back into my sets are getting some great reactions.

You have a huge range of websites, tell us about those.

I do have a lot of sites, but each one is part of an ever-growing list essential to ensuring people are aware of what I am up to.

Obviously Twitter is the ‘in’ thing right now and the amount of people who say they don’t understand is crazy! It is for updating on the move; ideally for phones…you either install a twitter app onto your iPhone or Blackberry, or log in through a mobile browser and keep the World updated with what you are doing. It is basically the status updates of Facebook but a little more in-depth.

Here’s a little list of where you can catch me online:

MAIN PORTAL – andywhitby.com
AWSUM SITE – awsum.co.uk
TWITTER – twitter.com
MYSPACE – myspace.com
YOUTUBE – awsum.tv

What’s the most bizarre email, facebook or myspace message you’ve ever received from a fan?

I get a lot of emails and PMs from fans each day, most are from amazing passionate people who want to share their thoughts on sets, tracks or moments from weeks gone by. Now and then there’s a completely random one which gets through, asking me to play at their son’s birthday party, if I’ll marry them and yesterday a guy asked if I’d be his dad.

The most random and possibly scary one recently has been a woman who told me each morning she points at a photo of me on her wall and tells her son ‘that’s your father’…there’s not a lot you can say to that, you just have to smile and back away slowly…

The downturn in the economy is now starting to bite across the globe. Have you noticed the effects of the recession either with your AWsum events or with the label?

Label-wise AWsum posted record numbers in Q1. Although the economy going through troubling times, some things always remain the same; people need to eat, people need to relax and people need to be entertained. Music sales in shops are down, but digitally if a track is big enough people always manage to find £1.49 – a great track is a great track at the end of the day, regardless of financial worries.

Event attendance figures are strong also. We did great numbers for both AWsum Remixed and AWsumsexual and although you can tell people are being more careful with their money it isn’t effecting us as a company too badly.

Gig-wise it’s the same. A lot of promoters are putting on less expensive line-ups and shows in other countries are being cancelled due to their economies being unable to support flying acts over, putting them up in hotels, paying for drivers etc.

When you’re not spinning, ripping up the studio or catching up on your admin – what do you like to do to entertain yourself after a full day of work?

A typical day for me is getting up around 10a.m, having a shower, then breakfast and going through post. After that I spend the day going through emails, running the label, having phone meetings, listening to music, sorting upcoming AWsum event issues and speaking with the AWsum artists about future plans and tracks currently being worked on.

I travel to London a lot for meetings with my agents and management, and although I’ve been a million times to London it never gets any easier – it’s absolutely mental on the London roads!

Studio-wise I usually like to write for week-long periods. If I’m working with Klubfiller I’ll travel to him up near Liverpool, and we’ll spend the week working on a range of projects from AWsum or Defiance material, remixes for AATW or special tracks for our future sets.

In the evenings I work until quite late (2, 3 or 4a.m) and then unwind for a couple of hours playing videos games. I treated myself to all 3 consoles; 360, PS3 and Wii, so if anyone fancies a game feel free to add me on 360 & PS3 – my gamertag for both is saviourwhitby.

You’ve achieved unrivalled success over a very short space of time. However, there’s always been a hardcore, vocal group of people on message boards etc who have been highly critical of your music style. Have these comments affected you over the years, and has your outlook to them or their comments changed?

A few years ago I would have probably answered this question a lot differently. Back then I think part of my believed they had some relevance on what I do and the music I play. They do not.

As I’ve matured and seen the popularity of the music I play grow I’ve realised that you can never please everyone, no matter how hard you try. Some people love to criticize everything in life; it’s just the way they are. I believe if you have a million people who love you and a million people who don’t, concentrate all your time and effort into the million that do and you’ll be fine.

I haven’t had time to go on messages boards for years, so if people are being critical of the music I play I haven’t seen it and would be much easier if they took time out to come and chat face-to-face with me about it.

I’m lucky enough, even in these times of economic depression to be busier than ever, playing all over the UK and the rest of the World each weekend. I’ll worry when this stops.

The heat of summer will be soon upon us. What are your plans for the coming months?

This summer there’s lots going on. Internationally, I’ll be heading to Phoenix, Egypt, Spain, Calgary, Saskatoon and Australia. In the UK I will literally be everywhere; North, East, South, and West – the Whitby is coming to your city!

I’ll also be working hard on the forthcoming AWsum events later in the year as we’ve got some really exciting things in the pipe-line. There is lots of original material coming out on the label spanning the whole spectrum of hard-dance, and some very special remix E.Ps revisiting some of the back catalogues earlier releases.

The first AWsum Album will finally hits stores later this year so I’ll be focusing a lot of time over the coming months putting that together, more on that below!

How about longer term? You’ve set a fair few benchmarks with your DJing, production, label work and events - what are your aims for the future?

My long-term plans are to build AWsum into a global brand, musically and event-based. We have a unique view of the direction we want to take our music and parties and a team of very passionate artists and performers.

After the success of the first ‘One AWsum Tour’ we have been asked to host our own Arenas at Westfest and Atomik Weekender, something unheard of for such a young brand.

After the success of the NUsum DJs room @ AWsumsexual a few weeks ago, this will also become a key part of the brands growth as there are always so many news and exciting DJs coming through whom never get a chance to be heard. I know it’ll be a success as it’s how I found most of the current AWsum producers – young, talented people like Klubfiller and MDA & Spherical who although are having moderate success but need that extra push and guidance so the World can hear how incredible they are.

As mentioned earlier in the following months I’ll start work on the first AWsum C.D which will be available to buy online and through various stores. It’ll be a snap-shot of what music has been released through the label in the past year, plus an insight into some of the bigger tracks forthcoming.

How do you see our Industry in say 5 years time?

In 2009 I feel we’re in an extremely exciting and positive position, with the next 5 years looking to be the strongest yet in the scenes history.

3 years ago I felt it took a dip and everyone was wondering what direction we were going in. After the Hardhouse ‘boom’ in 1999 – 2001 everyone wondered why numbers started going down and why people were losing interest in the scene.

Musically, the producers were to blame. Trying to make things too serious and forgetting what had created the huge global interest in our music to begin with. Although I appreciate pushing things forward and evolving is essential in today’s market, those trusted to do this by writing new and exciting material missed the point entirely and it’s taken a few years and a lot of big ‘names’ leaving the scene to get us back on track.

Hard-dance is now many things. Bounce, Filth, Trance, Electro, Hardcore, Hardstyle…it has little bits of several genres fusing together to create this incredible music style which I’m as passionate and as excited about now as I was when I first heard Fergie’s Mixmag C.D ‘Let Their Be Hardhouse’ in 2000.

Thanks for your time Andy!

No problem dude, see you at Storm! Can’t wait!!