We caught up with Alf Banford, aka Technikal, ahead of his upcoming back to back live show debut with Greg Brookman at the Magnificent Midnight Beach Ball to talk about tunes, bikinis and baby dear! You can catch the show on Friday June 15th at Hidden Night Club, Vauxhall.

1) You're going to be performing alongside Greg Brookman in his A.L.I.V.E PA show. How is this going to work exactly?

Hi there! Myself and Greg have been working hard on some new bits and pieces ourselves and with others to come up with an exciting new PA for the MMBB. We've done an exciting intro with one of my better known productions from the past year, and I’ll be debuting a new track I've engineered with Jason Cortez. I've heard some of Greg's upcoming material for it too and it's pretty damn boshty. We'll be running Abelton Live with several MIDI controllers and dropping bits and pieces into the mix all over the place! And Greg's got a fantastic costume lined up!

2) What sort of tunes can we expect to hear from you?

Tough, driving, and euphoric... some of my bigger tracks and remixes over the last year and some of my 'just baked' new productions, with an exciting live twist.

3) The Magnificent Midnight Beach Ball. That seems like a pretty grand title! How is this event going to be different from others?

Well what can I say! It's a themed beach party and the promoters are building an outdoor beach especially at Hidden for the event. People will be showing up in beachwear and bikinis, the DJs playing are some of the best from within hard dance, trance and house... the music's going to be really upfront and fresh. Not to mention that the (extremely affordable fee) of 7 pounds is going to a fantastic cause, helping to send a girl overseas to receive treatment for a disability.

4) You seem to be one of the most consistent producers in Hard Dance with all your tunes having bundles of energy, euphoric riffs and clean, crisp production. What is it that makes you tick in the studio and what do you think has been your best work to date?

I find I have to be careful when writing music these days as I pretty much spend every workday doing 9-5 in my studio, and it's very easy to fall into a pattern and rehash the same track with a different hook. Over the last few years I've found my music tastes getting a lot broader, encompassing anything from Hard Dance to Hardcore, Electro, Psytrance and Ambient... this has given me so many more ideas in the studio and has 'refreshed' my sound so to speak. I no longer feel like I'm going in circles with my Technikal sound and I'm really enjoying writing hard dance music right now. I feel the best way to keep fresh is to get up when my girlfriend does at 6:00AM (like I have a choice!), and work through to 5:00PM... basically to have a routine and stick to it. I've recently moved house and things are great, I've never felt more focused than I have in the last month or so! Big up!

It's always hard to say what I think is my best work to date as I'm writing so much music now... I never say a track is finished until I'm 100% happy with it - so I suppose I'd always say my most recent track ... which is my first original in a long time called "Energise" which is being vocalled by the one and only Stace! Favourite older productions are "Summassault", "Global Panic" and the remix of Stu Allan's "A Feeling".

5) This Friday will see your first venture into the live arena. Is playing live something we can expect to see more from you in the future?

This Friday will be a fun initial venture for me for LIVE, as I've never dabbled in it before. Greg has prepped me on the basics but I must stress that Greg must take 60% credit for this show as he's done a most of the prep and organization. I will definitely be exploring LIVE in the future but probably not for a little while yet, as I feel I have a lot longer left in my DJing and building on that. I really enjoy DJing and it is a real nice break from the studio and I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. So yes, it is coming, but it's not around the corner just yet - I have a lot more to realise before I can comfortably be committing myself to regular live shows. For the meantime I'll be boshing away in the studio writing more and more music for mine and others DJ sets!

6) As well as hard dance what other styles do you produce and DJ?

My most active foreign project is TECHNIKORE - which is the name I use for my hardcore production. I really love the direct energy and passion behind the music of artists such as Gammer and Styles, and have found my own sound now in this genre ... it's immense fun to write! I've written a couple of trancey-housey pieces under the alias DIGITAL INTERFERANCE, and I also do commercial remixes and projects for All Around The World as ELEMENTAL. And I've had some trance releases as SOLAR SCAPE... I think they are the main aliases I use now ... I'm trying to come up with an alias for my psy trance project as I don't want to write it under the Technikal name ... as that's all about the riff!! Any ideas anyone?

7) What's the funniest thing you've done when you've DJ'ed out?

Several things! The biggest scale was probably dropping the Frosties theme tune to a rammed arena at Creamfields last year, the front row were putting their middle fingers up at me ... I swear I was about to be shot ... then watching the middle fingers turn into 'aving it fists as the kick dropped and Tony the Tiger got hard danced up! Then I tried a similar trick the following week at the Fridge and nearly cleared the main room hahahaha! Most bizarre was when I played my remix of "Banana Phone" at the Captain Cook in Acton, London - and threw Bananas into the crowd as it played... good times!

8) And finally what's the bravest thing you have ever done?

We were driving up the M1 to a gig one Saturday evening, and me and my driver saw a baby deer hit in the middle of the road. It was only as we went past that I saw it was still alive... I asked my driver to pull over and I jumped out of the car, astonished to see that a heavy goods vehicle was headed right towards it. I had a matter of seconds before the deer was scattered into a million pieces. My mind told me to save it, but my heart said "Save yourself!"... before I had even contemplated what to do, I had leaped in front of the HGV and barrel rolled, deer in arms to the middle intersection of the motorway. I then comforted the deer in the drivers seat and we drove to the nearest Veterinary (god bless the Sat Nav!). We arrived ten minutes before the gig, but it was the most rewarding evening of my life! I wonder how he's getting on.

Cheers!

Alf