Wednesday 14th April 2004, a high grading student at Peter Symonds College in Winchester receives a call to his mobile. The tutor is non-too-impressed to discover that one of his students not only has his mobile phone on in the class room, but also has the highly irritating Sony Ericsson generic ring tone. To make matters worse, it’s the cocky little lad that the tutor didn’t like, the one who thinks he can be some kind of dance music producer. The student tells the tutor “this might be the important call that I’ve been waiting for”. The tutor throws the student an ultimatum; “if you answer that call I’ll kick you out of sixth form”. It’s a gamble that Alf Bamford was prepared to make; he took the call. Three minutes later he was a sixth form drop-out with a 3 track record deal, and our little Alfie had transcended from teenage-bedroom music maker to cutting edge hard-dance producer. Five years later, we catch up with Mr Bamford ahead of an Australian and New Zeeland tour and on the eve of his artist CD album that has already been described by MixMag as “the most eagerly anticipated hard dance CD of the year”.

Tidy: Thanks for coming up to London to meet with us today Alf, how was your journey?

AB: Good thanks… I got here well early, so I went shopping to kill time when I stumbled upon Hamleys – the worlds biggest toy department store… wow, it’s amazing. I’m well pissed that my parents never thought to mention its existence when I was a kid! Ended up doing a “Guitar Hero” set with some random girl… how can anyone not like Hamleys?

Tidy: Its full of kids, that’s why.

AB: Yeah, its amazing, innit….. I’ll always be a child I think! Can I just ask…. The in-bed bit of this interview… does that mean er, you and me, err, get under the covers? Like, on your bed? Is that what its all about?

Tidy: Err, no. It just means it’s more intimate… like In Bed With Madonna! You’ve caught us listening to your new album, does walking in to someone’s house hearing your own tune being played, does that freak you out?

AB: Not any more, it’s like a pat on the back really, but not in an ego trip sort of way It’s great to hear it, but I have to stay humble or you end up sounding like a tosser. I do take my work seriously but I don’t take my self seriously. I mean, I’m just a normal bloke, but to make my food appear on the table I make music, so I don’t see it as a glory thing, or as an idolization thing. We’re all the same in the hard dance scene. We’re all in the gutter looking at the stars.

Tidy: Isn’t that a Norman Cook record?

Alf: Yeah mate, Fat Boy remix!

Tidy: In addition to your hard-dance Technikal persona, you’re a bit of a Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde with a Technikore side… is that something to do with hardcore?

Alf: Haha, yes, indeed… Hardcore is my shameful other side, its like my gimp mask. Hard dance is my wife though. Hardcore is my bit on the side but I will always be going home to wifey.

Tidy: Talking of home, tell me more about your world outside producer mode.

Alf: Not much to say really.. born in Carshalton in Surrey, have one younger brother called Toby, two older brothers, they are half brothers, just about to move to Basingstoke with my fantastic girlfriend Amy, the rest is all to do with work!

Tidy: Wasn’t it one of your brothers that got you into hard dance music?

Alf: Yeah, how do you know that? I used to have a paper round. My mum said it would be a good job to do because I’d get loads of tips at Christmas, which weren’t true… 70 lousy pence! But believe it or not the paper round gave me much more. I used to take my Walkman and on one occasion I picked up the wrong tape; instead of Dr Fox’s Top 40 show I had my brother’s tape which was all trance.

Tidy: You were hooked from that moment then?

Alf: Put it this way, I was round my brothers house straight away rifling through his tunes!

Tidy: So at the age of 13 you became addicted to trance? Where else did you get your fix?

Alf: Pretty much, yeah. My friend Richie used to record tunes off the radio, stuff like Judge Jules or Angelic… all top quality trance, commercial but still banging. I then got good at downloading stuff… I embraced the whole Napster thing. Naughty naughty but back then it was so fresh and new, it was the only way to hear upfront music.

Tidy: So when did you start producing your own stuff?

Alf: When I was thirteen there was a program called Music Creation on Play Station which is a bit like a plug and play jigsaw to create sounds and that got me interested in making tunes. But then the next year I graduated on to a PC and started producing.

Tidy: Were you particularly musical before then?

Alf : My parents thought I was very musical and my middle name comes from Geno Washington [old R&B singer] and I drummed with him when I was three. My favourite track to drum to was Status Quo’s In The Army Now. My parents where so proud of their little three year old Alfie that they wrote to Richard & Judie who then invited me on to the show to drum with Status Quo.

Tidy: Who calls you Alfie these days?

Alf: My mum, and my girlfriend Amy, if I have been bad. She also calls me stud muffin if I’ve been good.

Tidy: Your mum calls you stud muffin?

Alf: No, Amy does… but normally more Alfie than stud muffin.

Tidy: I see. So you started producing music when you were thirteen, were you bunking off school to do that?

Alf: No absolutely not. I’d go to school, work hard, come home, do homework on the computer, and then make tunes. I’m glad because it taught me for the future and I learned a lot.

Tidy: A model student then?

Alf: I guess so. I didn’t drink until I was 17; I had no social life at school. My classmates took piss out of me because of my nerdiness back then but now I see some of these guys in the front row when I’m playing and it’s the biggest redemption you can get!

Tidy: Was it always your intention to turn your hobby of producing music in to a career?

Alf: No, not at all. I went into 6th form studying completely unrelated stuff but at the same time I started getting somewhere musically and my sound started to evolve.

Tidy: Do you still listen to the tunes you were making back then?

Alf: God no… most of them sound like horrible little jingles.

Tidy: Did you release any of these?

Alf: Yeah, I did as it goes… I set up an account with mp3.com and tried flogging a few on there. Think the site was a bit of a con… never got any money off them, although I did once get a $4 charge for using their service! But it gave me an incentive to produce and an excitement to see if any one would buy them. I’d race home from school each day thinking I’d earn loads.

Tidy: So when was your lucky break then?

Alf: In my second year at 6th form… I’d sent some material to a label called Alpha Music who are synonymous with names like Mowark and Raverbaby. My tutor at the time thought I was a dead beat dance producer but my phone went off during one of his lessons. I was hoping the call would be from Alpha but I was told if I took the call I would have to leave and would not be allowed back in the class room. Luckily enough it actually was the record company and they wanted a record deal so it was the flukiest moment of my life.

Tidy: What helped you move up from the “horrible little jingles” phase to land you with a record deal?

Alf: I worked in the chip shop… the only proper job I’ve ever had really… and they guy in there played the Lashed Euphoria CD; I remember the tune “Serious Sounds” by Guyver… that tune was just like trance with a rocket shoved up its arse. I listened to that album on repeat for about three months, and I became a total Tidy kid and even started talking to Guyver online… I started using a program that he used, called Fruity Loops, he gave me loads and loads of tips… I was totally star-struck to be honest. Guyver was a massive source of inspiration.

Tidy: You were not known as Technikal then, were you?

Alf: Haha, no. I first went under the name DJ Hatred; I’ve no idea where that name came from. Sort of DJ Hat Red etc, thought I’d be different and wear a red hat… and I thought it was a bit cool to be a bit attitudey… all a bit wankerish really.

Tidy: So where did the name Technikal come from?

Alf: When I eventually got signed the record company told me that DJ Hatred was a no go and Alf Bamford was not really a marketable name. They gave me 48 hours to come up with a new identity. At the time I was into a computer war game called Command and Conqueror that had a tank called Technical, so I nicked the name, swapped the C for a K and that was that.

Tidy: What releases did your first record deal cover?

Alf: It was a 3-track deal including Annihilation… it was quite banging.

Tidy: Justin Bourne remixed that didn’t he?

Alf: Yeah, he did one of the mixes on the initial release. I don’t have a clue how I ended up with a Justin Bourne mix. When the record company said that he was doing a remix I thought they were bullshitting me… I thought, “fuck off – you haven’t got Justin Bourne to remix my record?” Loved his remix, totally stellar – turned it in to a monster.

Tidy: So when did you start playing live sets?

Alf: A guy from Finland who ran Club Energy booked me off the back of my productions. I suddenly realized I couldn’t DJ… I always say I’m a producer who happens to DJ, so I needed to learn how to DJ on vinyl with my own tunes. I bought a couple of decks and practiced like mad, but when I played in Finland my mixing was shocking, and I didn’t play out for three years after that.

Tidy: For a while then you produced but did not get the benefit of dropping tunes into a DJ set?

Alf: I was happy for people like Marc French and Spencer Freeland to play my tunes at Koko. They were really supportive, and it was great for me to have such big DJs playing my tunes.

Tidy: What was it like hearing your first tunes being played out?

Alf: The first time was actually at Koko… I was 17 at the time, I’d never been to a club before and I only got into Koko because Spencer Freeland told them I was his younger brother. It was a real mind fuck. It was amazing to walk through the tunnel at Koko out onto the main room to hear one of my tunes being played out… I thought, “mission accomplished”, which was funny because that was the name of the tune being played.

Tidy: So when did the DJing side kick in?

Alf: It was when I had to move out of my parents’ place – the entire road had a petition about the noise coming from my house when I was producing in Winchester, so I had to move out or mum would have been kicked out. Spencer Freeland gave me a room free for a year then I started looking at DJing a bit more seriously as a means… as I had the opportunity to practice.

Tidy: You’ve spread your wings a little from your trance producing days and now have a few aliases’.

Alf: Yes, I work with a few different styles… started out on trance as Solarscape, I do a lot of electro-house stuff with the GRIN boys but I’m just their engineer. I also do some house stuff as Digital Interference. The Masif DJs alias is when I work with Steve Hill.

Tidy: He’s in Australia now though?

Alf: Yes, he moved there a year before we started working together. We now own Masif together, Steve has been there from the start for me and I basically regard him as my brother.

Tidy: And what about your Cloud Nine alias?

Alf: Fucking hell, forgotten about that one – it’s a fake trance name for me and Gaz West.

Tidy: Who is your biggest influence or inspiration?

Alf: I’d have to say Gammer, whatever he does I can translate it into hard dance – I’d love to get into his head for an hour - he is a massive talent.

Tidy: Gammer is on your new album “Klubbed Together” – tell me more about the album.

Alf: It’s been work in progress since May last year. It’s probably different from what many might expect, it’s a seamlessly mixed CD of 15 tracks… the concept combines my sound with other peoples sound, like Andy Farley, Rodi Style, Andy Whitby, and some less obvious people like Gammer and Whizz Kid. The Whizz Kid track is basically a classical tune with massive breakdown with an “Insomnia” style hard-dance-rap.

Tidy: Your track with Andy Whitby, Hard House Slut is storming at the moment.

Alf: Yeah it’s huge in mine and Andy’s sets at the moment, the original concept was going to be a robotic female voice but it didn’t quite work so we got the fabulous Stace to provide vocals, and she sounded so much better. It will be one of the first tracks released as a single EP.

Tidy: You’ll be releasing DJ friendly mixes then?

Alf: Yes, the first EP will have Hard House Slut, 20XX with Whizz Kid and Cosmoclasmic with Phil York. The naming thanks to spunk bubble Ian on that one!

Tidy: MDA and Spherical are credited on the album too.

Alf: Yeah, we tried to do something as crazy as Supersonic with “Turn It Up”, we wanted to do the most craziest out there record, I think it worked!

Tidy: Finally… what is the one track guaranteed to get you going?

Alf: It has to be Gamemaster by Lost Tribe. Signum remix! Totally awesome track.

Thanks for your time Alf!!

Technikal - 'Klubbed Together' is OUT NOW from all good record Stores!!
Tracklisting:
01. Technikal featuring Lisa Lashes - Stop The Noize
02. Technikal featuring The Tidy DJs - The Power
03. Technikal featuring Phil York - Cosmoclasmic
04. Technikal featuring Nick Sentience - Lose Control
05. Technikal featuring Paul Maddox - Free Your Mind
06. Technikal featuring MC Whizzkid - 20XX
07. Technikal featuring Rob Tissera - Don't Say Goodbye
08. Technikal featuring Steve Hill - God's Child
09. Technikal featuring Anne Savage - Give It To Me
10. Technikal featuring MDA & Spherical - Turn It Up
11. Technikal featuring Andy Whitby - Hard House Slut
12. Technikal featuring Phil Reynolds - Reflex
13. Technikal featuring Andy Farley - Tantrum
14. Technikal featuring Rodi Style - Listen To This
15. Technikal featuring Gammer - Finalé

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