An essential recipe for one banging festival: take one of the most energetic, hardest and underground DJ’s on the Hard Dance/Hardcore scene going by the name of Kevin Energy. Now stir in one of the most talented producers and prolific engineers – K-Complex. Top up with a load of live PA Equipment and slowly bring to the boil. By now you should have a live act who can really work the crowd in to a frenzy. The name of the chef’s speciality……..the Nu-Energy Collective unleashed!

Kevin Energy started his career way back in 1995 when he got his first break playing on London’s pirate radio station Dream FM. This got a huge amount of people latched on to the underground sound that he played every Saturday night. This led on to him playing at the Dream FM all night raves where he first got the chance to perform live at packed out venues like the Labyrinth, the Rocket and the Linford Film Studios. A year later and he was playing at some of the biggest promotions like Slammin Vinyl, Raindance and Diehard.

Whilst still playing up and down the country week in week out, due in the week Kevin worked at the renowned underground record store Wax City records. It was here that Kevin worked alongside Jon DJ Kaos who was responsible for the ‘Go Mental’ series, ‘Raving mad’ and ‘Lost the plot’

In 1998 Kevin founded the label Nu-Energy recordings. It soon turned in to a great success and Kevin Energy’s career went from strength to strength. The Nu-Energy collective was conceived when Kevin felt that the labels he had been involved in and founded with Jon –DJ Kaos would be a stronger force if they were all grouped together and ran as one. The offices above Wax City were converted and this became the home for the Nu-Energy Collective.

A couple of years earlier, a young artist had decided to call him self K-Complex; no he hadn’t been taking horse tranquilisers! But named after a state of brain activity due in sleep. Although always being passionate about music, he didn’t start making contacts until he moved down to London and found himself brandishing demo tapes to the Nu-Energy crew.

He became a very valuable asset to the Collective by being a key engineer and producer. The engineers job can be a deeply unsung role in dance music but K-Complex became well known as he worked with major artists like Phil Reynolds, Spencer Freeland, Daniel Ro, Sharkey, Proteus the Ting and Mark French. It’s deemed that the collective wouldn’t have got where they are now without K-complex’s talents. He also became a highly respected producer in his own right by coming up with pioneering Hard Trance and the style known as Freeform.

Mean while, Kevin had taken to putting on a few small, low key, live shows with Sharkey. But in 2003 things really took a turn when Pendragon asked Kevin if he could put on a live show for them. The first one turned out to be a great success but they felt that it needed more diversity so K-Complex was roped in to make up the trio. The Nu-Energy Collectives live PA was now well and truly on the road! Sharkey had been doing a heavy amount of studio work with AMS. He had gained a vast amount of knowledge from Sharkey and this meant that he progressed significantly with his own production work. He was now ready to become the live acts 4th fully paid up member.

The powerful, driving, fast music laced with a lot of innovative thought got dance floors well and truly stomping as they performed at clubs right across the South of England. One of the most notable parties that they performed at was the legendary, unique night Logic at the Fridge in Brixton, South London. The crowd on the dance floors would stop facing the DJ who had performed a set right at the front of the room, turn around and would be met by the sight of an awesome stage set up at the back which gave the club an almost concert like feel to it. As the laser green lights flashed down on to the frantic stomping army the collective pushed things on to another level and gave the night a whole new dimension.

And no you weren’t hallucinating, that guy prancing around, freaking every one out on the front of the stage, was their newest member Vinny aka the Green man, brought in to give the crowd a bit of visual amusement at the bigger gigs. The act became known as one of the countries leading dance acts; high profile gigs at Frantic and Tidy got added to their CV. They even managed to convert ardent followers of the London Hard Dance sound on to the more energised sound that the Nu-Energy label and the Freeform style represented.

For their Hard Dance acts Kevin Energy and K-Complex make up the Live PA: the Nu-Energy Collective Unleashed! Now the underground and stand out music gets to be unleashed once again at the worlds largest dance weekender, Global Gathering on the Contagious Club wear sound stage. As the music is going to be so fast and frantic, it’s a good thing that Contagious club wear design those sensational outfits that are especially designed for stomping around a festival dance arena. So make sure you remember to catch them come July 27/28th!

©Greg Lynn 2007
Feature by Greg Lynn

Kevin Energy pics by Beth Crocatt

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