Who is this mohawked man...? We try to shed some light on DJ D4RK, currently prepping for Squelcher's 3rd Birthday celebration at Deep Blue. It promises to be a underground mash-up of sheer Squelching brilliance!

How long have you been producing and DJing?

I started DJ’ing in September 2003 on a pair of belt drive turntables, they were sooo awful, almost bad enough to put me off!! My friend loaned me one of these £100 DJ in a box kits, which included 2 turntables, a 2 channel mixer, headphones and a smiley face bandana!! You can imagine the quality of them, the decks used to speed up and slow down on their own!!
Anyway, I soon invested in some Mk5’s and strangely enough my experience improved tenfold!
On the production side, I was being nagged from 2 angles, my good friend Ian “the veteran” Rushmore was trying to persuade me to get into the studio and so was UglyDave from Scum Records. I’d been making myself a few little weird intro’s for my demo CD’s and the starts of my Club / Radio sets. I had loads of ideas and just needed to know how to get started.
I finally made it up to the Scum Studio around June last year and came away with a completed track, a huge smile on my face and even more ideas going round my head for the next few tracks!! The first track was naturally called “Squ3lcher”!!
Since then we’ve produced 11 completed solo and collaboration tracks and 2 forthcoming pretty big remixes!
Hat’s off the Scum guys, they are seriously talented and we have built a fantastic friendship and working relationship, and I think that is reflected in everything we do together.

Where did the name ‘Squelcher’ come from?

The name Squelcher came from two ideas. Firstly from the old acid 303 sound effect, the really dirty liquid electric sound that has featured in so many of my favourite old tracks. Secondly it was based around the sound your clothes and trainers would make after a good nights clubbing!! When you’re all wet and sweaty from a hard nights clubbing and you’re making that “squelch.. squelch.. squelch” sound as you’re walking to try and find the car!! Haha!

When and where was your first night out as a clubber - did it have any influence on your decision to become a Producer/DJ?

I first got into dance music in 1990, purely through listening to Colin Favor and Colin Dale on Kiss FM. Prior to that I was listening to The Cure and Quiet Riot and blasting around everywhere on my skateboard!!
My friend and I almost stumbled into a party in Bournemouth at that same time, where we saw Jumping Jack Frost and GrooveRider on the lineup. We were so naïve we thought they were hip hop DJ’s and never went in!!
After realising my mistake, my first rave was Evolution in a sports hall in Farnborough, I just remember walking through the doors, just like the scene in Human Traffic, the music and heat and atmosphere, wow! I was hooked! I don’t think I’d ever seen a laser before that day!!
I think I always fancied being the other side of the decks, but I was having so much fun on the dance floor and didn’t really have much money to invest in decks nor the ability to finance what I knew would be a serious vinyl habit once I got started! I could only hold it off for so long though!

Squelcher artwork seems to encapsulate a cyborg/fetish theme, why is this and how does it relate to the music?

You may or may not know that I do all the Squelcher artwork myself. Prior to DJ’ing and doing the Squelcher parties, I would spend hours and hours creating 3D artwork and animations for my website www.darkart.co.uk In 2 years I received over 50,000 unique visitors and through this I was know as the DarkArtist. This naturally progressed into my DJ name “D4rK”. I don’t actively target the artwork towards a cyborg or fetish theme, I think that just comes from the darker side of my imagination!
If you go through the flyers for previous years, where we’ve had a theme for the event, I’ve tried to reflect this in the Squelcher characters outfit on the flyer, such as Pirates, beachwear, Masquerade ball for example.
It has given a few people the wrong impression of our night, I’ve been told before that people thought the event was a gay version of Torture Garden simply based on the Squelcher Flyers they had seen!!!
Squelcher has absolutely no prejudices, it is simply about having fun and coming as you are! Whatever walk of life you are from, if you’re looking for the best house party vibe in London, with some amazing people and awesome DJ’s, then Squelcher is the place to be!

Squelcher is obviously celebrating 3 years on the hard dance scene. How did it come about and was it a great success from the off-set?

Our first Squelcher event was at the Walrus bar in London in March 2004. At the time there were four of us running the event, including myself and DJ Loki. We didn’t have any flyers and it was simply word of mouth (and email) amongst friends. It was much more successful than we could have imagined, and prompted us to try and make the parties a regular ocurance.
Unfortunately the Walrus bar lost it’s late licenses straight after our event, so we went in search of a new venue. Due to being complete novices at event organisation, It took a further 4-5 months to find the perfect venue, and this was where we would be spending much quality time over the next couple of years … Deep Blue, seOne!
All in all the parties have become more and more successful with each passing event. We’ve had some set backs, we’ve lost money, but it’s never been about making a profit for us.
As long as the same great friendly crowds continue to attend our events and we’re covering our costs, then I’ll continue to do the parties.

Clubbers going to Squelcher match the hard dance atmosphere with extraordinary outfits. What is it about hard dance that entices people to dress this way?

We’ve done some great themed events for the Squelcher parties, and the feedback we’ve received is that many Squelchers love them! That’s not to say everyone has to dress up and I’d say it’s a 50/50 split between crazy outfits and normal club/street wear. It’s not just for people’s outfits, we try and base the décor and the flyers etc around it too. In addition those magical guys from Mirror Images also incorporate the theme into their graphical laser images and animations.
Clubbing, especially Hard Dance, is a step outside of normality for many people, to come along and lose themselves in the music and atmosphere of the party. Dressing up is an extension of that, to get away from your 9 to 5 job, perhaps suited and booted, and then having the opportunity to wear something crazy and wacky that you’d never get to wear in a normal day or night out.
This time round, the theme is Super Heroes and Super Villains, and myself and the lovely NeonPink have been working hard on creating some cool new décor especially for this event.
We’ve also got the Twisted Bliss Dance crew on the lineup this time and I’m assured they’ve got some crazy costumes for their stage show!

How would you define hedonism?

Hmmm, I can just about spell it!! Seriously though, as above, to me it’s spending quality time with some beautiful friends old and new. Losing yourself in the music and atmosphere. Forgetting your worries, your day job, your mortgage and escaping into a land of hard beats, flashing lights and hypnotising lasers!

What was your best memory from 2006 and what are you looking forward to in 2007?

Hmmmm, 2006 was a pretty mixed bag of good and bad things to be honest!
Highlights for Squelcher included the 2005/06 New Years Eve Party at Deep Blue which was our most successful event to date. We also launched Red Planet at Hidden, which from a Squelcher perspective was pretty successful; however as an overall event it was not successful enough!
DJ wise, highlights for me included playing to a crowd of 500+ people at Contact in Portsmouth, other great parties including Polysexual, Hard Trancelation, Generation X, Terminal, Tasty and Byte to name a few.
Finally on the production side, it was wonderful to finally get in the Scum Studio and get some of my ideas into tracks I could play out. This includes seeing the collaboration track D4rK & Rory McCart “League of Shadows” getting to number 3 in the Tidy Digital charts.
As for 2007, it’s already kicked of really well on both the DJ’ing and productions.
The follow up track D4rK and Rory McCart track “Ghost in the Machine” hit number 2 in the Tidy digital charts and I’ve got some to serious belters going through the motions at the moment.
I’ve already played for Frantic vs Moondance, Poison, Insekt, and HappyNation, and am really looking forward to touring South Africa from Feb 15th > 25th, as well as forthcoming gigs at Raindance, Nailed and Hard Attaxx.
Of course we’ve got the Squelcher 3rd birthday to look forward to on March 16th and erm…my 35th!!

What is your all time career highlight?

Hmmm that’s a tough one; it’s a tough choice between 2 events. From a capacity point of view it would be playing at Contact in March last year, and for overall achievement I would say playing to a packed Red Room @ Hidden, back to back with Rory at the Frantic vs Moondance event in January! This was topped off by the fact that 90% of my set was D4rK productions. I had so much fun and was head banging so much that night that I woke up on the Sunday afternoon with what can only be described as whiplash!!! Haha!
Also the D4rK and Rory McCart tracks getting where they did in the Tidy charts really was fantastic, initially we would have been overwhelmed if they just got into the top 20, so to get to number 2 and 3 was fantastic.

Who was the last DJ you saw that really blew you away? What was it about them that made them so good?

That would have to be Alex Kidd at Polysexual @ Air in December! His set can only be described as thrash HardDance/HardStyle! It was absolute mayhem of the hardest variety and the crowd just went crazy!! That following morning myself and Rory were booked for the Scum Studio in Coventry, and following a very uncomfortable few hours kip in the car outside, his set truly inspired our “Ghost in the Machine” track and the crazy beats involved!

Have you played at any international events, if so are there anymore on the cards?

My only international gigs so far have been Ibiza in 2005. I was more than a little disappointed that many of the gigs I had been promised failed to come through, especially after paying an additional £200 for my records to get on the plane!
Moving swiftly on, that’s all due to change this year as I am now signed up to ScumGlobal DJ Agency with forthcoming dates in Canada, Asia, Greece and USA.
I’m also very pleased to be touring South Africa 15th > 25th February, with gigs in 2 Johannesburg clubs and interviews on UJFM 95.4FM Radio.
More details can be found here http://www.dontstayin.com/parties/squelch-hard-dance/chat/k-1238702
A huge thank you to the Grim Bros and the lovely Funky for arranging this for me x

You’ve been to Deep Blue at seOne before, what keeps you coming back?
We’ve been coming to Deep Blue for over 2 ½ years now and they’ve really looked after us from day one. We’ve maintained a great professional and fun relationship with Cedric, Marcus, Gavin and the rest of the guys involved and the feedback from many of our Squelchers is that they love the intimate feel of the seOne arches. The staff are very friendly and when we’ve got a themed event, they also get dressed up and can be seen dancing along with the rest of us towards the end of the night!

Friday 16th March 2007

10pm - 6am

@ Deep Blue, seOne

Room One
Hard Dance / Hard Trance / Hard NRG / Hard Style / Acid Techno
Ugly Dave
DJ GRH
D4RK
Grim Bros
Rory Mc Cart
Opeum
Steve Mills
Moggy

Room Two
Hard Electro / Breaks / Tough House / Techno
Audio Surgeonz
Chris Rayner
D4RK
Grim Bros
Rory McCart
N-Slay
Ben Gomori
Benji


Tickets £10 in advance / £13 on the door / www.ticketweb.co.uk

More info: 07801 678445 / 07763 669547 / www.squelcher.co.uk
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