Amadeus Mozart has always been at the forefront of the Tidy brand. When you think of Tidy, you think of the Tidy Boys and their sets that could only be described as magical for the clever blend of fun (sometimes leading to his bum making an appearance), entertainment and the best in hard edged dance music. The weekender's that were attached to the boys seemed, a few months ago, to be nothing but a distant dream of a hedonistic and excitable club scene that once was. Now though, it is a full throttle reality driven by unthinkable public demand, and now set to take place in the Prestatyn Pontins at the end of March. With the Tidy Boys firmly in the driving seat, the foot is down in carving a new image for hard house and possibly the entire scene's direction in terms of it's music and influence.

We spoke to Amo at length about the way that social media paved the way to making the weekender possible, the follow up to shadows, the other things that he and DJ partner Andy Pickles have been doing whilst away from the scene, and also what made for the decision to give clubbers a hradstyle free weekender which has been driving so much discussion on the clubbing network.

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It's been a long time since the last Tidy Weekender Amo. What have you lads been up to these last couple of years?

We sort of semi retired, as me and Andy have separate companies. I also work with his company and we supply software for 14 to 19 year olds called ‘U-Explore’. Andy went of and did this as we could both sense that it was a struggle to be DJ’s, and so we wanted to run two races. Lucky enough, Andy’s project has taken off so well that now we employ 40 staff, have new offices and the company is doing very well. Andy is the CEO of the company, and I’m the Creative Director so we’re solidly hooked into that.

Alongside this I have another internet project called ‘Be Addictive’ which is a social network which has been around before Facebook, but it’s just starting to develop. So I’m developing bits for that as I’m also a graphic designer with my graphics design company called ‘Motel Red’. So we have our fingers in a lot of pies and I suppose we have been a bit off the ball at being DJ’s and producers, so we’ve had to do this as we had to have long term stability as we both have families, mortgages and all the usual stuff, so we wanted to do this as well as being producers and promoters. So that’s what I’d say we’ve been doing since 2006, I suppose you could say ‘other stuff’.

However, music is our passion, DJing, producing and Tidy, which we gave birth to in 1995 and is still in our heart and at the back of our minds. Over the last six months we decided that we agree that Hard House has taken a bit of a knock, there hasn’t been much development or focus, and there hasn’t really been any big events come along. Tidy Weekender sort of peaked it out because of the current climate. So we decided wouldn’t it be good to get the band back together and do this. We particularly want to draw a line under the weekender’s and there’s really two things going on here. We want to round off the weekenders on this particular phase and go out with a bang which is one aspect. We also then want to use the weekender as a launch pad for other things, so coming to an end, but also a new beginning.

In 2011, we’re getting the team together for one last weekender, getting back in the studio and coming back out of retirement I think is the main thing.

So will this be the last weekender?

We’ve go that written down; because that’s what we strongly believe. I would always say never say 'never', but our goal is to make this a one off event. There are also other factors such as Prestatyn, Pontins being taken over by new owners, so it would be safe to say that this is the last weekender in this current form, but then we are always looking for new events and exciting projects.

Is 'U-Explore' a music focussed project?

No, it’s careers education. We wanted to make some software where kids could input what they think they’re good at. Then the software takes them down a few different career paths and they may think ‘Oh, I never thought I could be a graphic designer.’ Then it shows you opportunities within you area in that field, so for example there may be 6 placements for a graphic designer in Sheffield with great graphic design companies.

The businesses also get involved almost like a Manchester United scouting business. So when you get a talented young graphic designer, they are actually nurtured by the businesses. So it’s about businesses tagging into schools, and 14 – 19 year olds knowing where they would like to go. It’s a vocational, job careers software that’s installed in the schools. Anyone interested can have a look at www.u-explore.com

Going back to what you asked about involvement ion music though. Our angle on this was ‘Isn’t education dull and boring? Let’s take everything that we’ve learned from Tidy and let’s inject it into this.’ A fourteen year old would far rather interact with something that had TV and video, some pounding music and something that was visually eye-catching rather than just some dull and boring PowerPoint presentation that they’ve been given before. Originally we were going to call it Tidy Education, but we stopped in our tracks, because if you’ve got a campsite full of people for a whole weekend of drunken recreational fun, then you can’t really have the two things associated.

What did you do for Christmas and New Year this year, gigging or family?

We were with the family. It sounds dull, but we’ve done this now for about 3 or 4 years. We did the Tidy Christmas party and were surprised how good it was. However New Years Eve was always the first gig of the year that we always said we would drop. We know that the money is good and that other DJs like to work it, but New Years Eve sometimes we find can be little bit of a damp squid. I find that before midnight there’s a huge build up and hype, but then after that there’s a bit of an anti climax. You let yourself go for about 3 records and then look at your watch and think ‘Well that’s it!’

We’ve heard of a follow up to your infamous track ‘Shadows’. Can you shed any light on the new track and when is it due for a release?

Yeah sure, I’ll let you in to a little secret here. What we’re doing with Ben (BK) is trying to create a classical suite where you have 4 parts to it. I suppose you could call it 4 remixes, but we prefer to call it four different interpretations of the same track. We’ve finished the first one, which I think will probably be number four by the end of the project because it’s 150bpm, it’s being inspired by Trade and Tony De Vit. Lots of producers go into the studio and try to be clever, but with this one we just thought to make a track that the clubbers would really like and tick all the boxes of a good hard house track. If you love the hard Beat stuff that BK did, then you’re probably going to like this.

And when will this track be released?

Well, Surprise, surprise, we’ll be releasing this in March. We’ll be releasing about 30 seconds of the track before the main release, and sort of getting our old marketing heads back on. We want to do this because we’re not really liking the lack of hype that’s out there on tracks recently because vinyl’s dead. Artists come out of the studio and the track can be everywhere within about 30 minutes and there’s just no hype out there. So just time again to get the marketing right really.

In getting the chance to play across the globe, what is the true international hard dance sound right now?

Without sounding old, I think it’s going to take a lot of inspiration from the past. Everything comes from inspiration of what’s gone before, even bands. Nobody goes into the studio with an open mind to make a new sound. They go in there and put records on the deck from when they were a kid and other things that they like.

As a producer, I know that we have to look back to go forward. What I like about what I’m hearing is that we’re pulling all the good parts from hard house of the last ten years together. I sense a bit of melody, and bit more of a hypnotic groove, and a bit more of a one level groove that becomes almost a little bit more hypnotic. Recently it seems that people go into the studio all the time now to try to create this big anthem and do everything within about six minutes and it’s really fast flying. I think we need to go back to a track that builds and perhaps you might not love it the first time you play it, but it grows on you. We’re all being a bit too insolent and everybody that’s producing seems to have the impression that if you don’t like a track within thirty seconds, then it’s shit. I think we’re going back to making more mature records and where there’s a melody, it’s one that grows rather than using instant hooks.

Who do you now think is leading the scene by a forward thinking hard house sound? Are there any rising stars that should be getting more attention?

Well I’m secretly a big fan of Jon BW who’s gone through the ranks at Tidy, Sam and Deano who have held things together recently at Tidy and JP and Jukesy. I think all these artists have stayed really close to the true sound of hard house and haven’t deviated off the path to say hardstyle or looking around other places to keep up with the kids. I think that those people will come through next year, and the people that have hopped on any other bandwagons may fall foul of not being in the right gear when it all comes back.

Are there any DJ’s that you think hard house clubbers should be looking at as a future influence and getting more attention if you cut away all the PR and DJ agencies?

Yes, there’s a guy called Robbie Muir who we just signed a track called ‘Body Rock’ to Tidy, and it was one of those tracks that I heard and couldn’t wait to play out. He’s a pretty big DJ already, but has only really just come up on my radar. So much so that we’ve booked him for the weekender because things seem to all be coming right for him recently, and if he’s got any more tracks up his sleeve like this one and this is anything to go by, then I think he’ll be a really big DJ and also producer by next year.

Now this weekender came around a little differently to the others… How did it happen?

I’d always planned in my head secretly to do a reunion one day, and I remember saying at number 8 that we’d take it up to number 12 and then we’d go away for five years, only jokingly though. However, because me and Andy went away and did our own thing after splitting from Tidy, it sort of got overlooked. It was sugg4ested to me by clubbers about when we were going to bring Tidy back, and I eventually got so fed up of that question that I thought that maybe it was the right time to do a reunion as there seemed to be the demand. So that was when I decided to set up a group on Facebook called ‘I would love to go tot Tidy Weekender Reunion’ and within literally three days we had over three and a half thousand people in the group.

And that was when the phone was picked up to Pontins wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was after that that we did it because in the build up to it and with everyone saying ‘Do it, do it’ I honestly thought that they were going say ‘Do it’ and then not book up a ticket. Obviously in this game to do a Pontins you got to put a lot of money on the table, so it’s risky. I had to be convinced that it would work and I said if we got the group to three thousand then we’d do it, but we honestly didn’t expect to get there in three days.

The type buzz around the next Tidy Weekender is unrivalled to anything the UK hard dance scene has had in a long time. 85% sold without the release of a line up. Obviously now you've just released the final part, but that’s truly some feat to be proud of. In your opinion, what makes this Tidy Weekender so different from other Weekenders?

It was always more than music and the label. Without sounding cheesy, it is a community, and Tidy has always had that community and a brand ethos that people like. People just like being there with their friends. We had something that was almost secretive that never got to Radio 1 or anything like that. 3,500 people just turned up to Prestatyn and no one talked about it publicly, and that was what is so successful about it. It is an underground community about friendships, old and new. People have been to a weekender and met each other, got engaged at the next weekender, been married, and now even a few of them tell me they would love to bring their kids! It is a family affair, and it’s a bit of fun. We never took ourselves too seriously which has been a key to our success. Some other labels do take themselves seriously, but we have always been a little bit tongue in cheek.

I’m also a big believer of playing the game of suspense and surprise. Some of the things that we’re going to do at the weekender, we’re not even going to talk about, and a big part of the Tidy ethos was always to undersell and over deliver. Too many events these days over promise and then don’t manage to deliver because they panic in order to sell the tickets. We’ve just decided to do it like we used to, we’ve got our eyes closed and pretending it’s still 1999!

Many activities will be back along with the Tidy diary room, and casting your memory back, what’s been your greatest memory of the ‘Tidy Diary Room’?

Well I can look back at the footage, and most of it we couldn’t show. I’ve got tonnes and tonnes of girls getting their breast out, but apart from that there was one guy that came in at Tidy Weekender 7 and this one guy came in and his friend was supposed to come and unfortunately passed away about 2 weeks before the event. And he came in for about five minutes and told everyone how much Tidy had influenced his friends life and how much he’d wanted him to be there. It still brings a lump to my throat when I watch it now. It’s things like that that really put things into perspective and you really do see that Tidy has influenced many people, and they genuinely love it.

We’re loving the Tidileaks website and see you’re adopting a ‘No hardstyle’ stance. It’s often been a very interesting talking point for many clubbers. Do you see hard dance and hardstyle music fans being different crowds?

It’s fragmentation within the scene. When I was playing house back in ’86, that was it, it was just house music. Now if you think just how many spin offs there are that have come from that one genre of house music. What hard house and hard style have done is just gone off on different tangents.

Me and Andy actually prefer to play at a hard house event rather than one that has gone towards hardstyle. Because no offense to anyone that has done it, but if we turn up at something like a Goodgreef event for example and you have the Tidy Boys wedged in between Mark EG and Alex Kidd, then it becomes two completely different genres of music and it’s quite literally the same as puttying hardcore next to funky house. There’s no real comparison, and therefore we believe that for hardstyle to grow, then it needs to grow it’s own scene here as opposed to piggy backing on to hard house.

Maybe it would be nice for Atomik to supply the hardstyle stuff, and then for Tidy to really stick to the hard house roots.

You’ve mentioned the new sound of hard house for 2011. What direction do you feel hard house needs to go in to captivate a new audience. Is it going to be more of what you’re doing with the follow up to Shadows track?

Yeah, as I said the track will be in four parts, and I’d like to think that these four parts cover all the elements of hard house. It used to be fun and it used to be aggressive at times and sometimes even hypnotic. If we can get this right then we can use it as a launch pad and invite people to listen to this track and these four parts and understand that this is what hard house is a bout, and let’s all put it back on the map.