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Interviews
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Interviews with artists, DJ's, promotors.
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DJ Silver
Author: DJ Comet & Milo |
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| DJ Silver |  | HappyHardcore.com moderators DJ Comet and Milo sit down for an interview with DJ Silver owner and operator of HappyHardcore.com... how's things?
Q: What got you into hardcore?
Wow that's a long story, I starting DJing in high school when I was like 14 or 15, I had CD decks and did all the school dances and friends parties, I got into the techno / dance sounds around 91 and soon found out that the good tracks like Force Mass Motion and early the Prodigy were all on vinyl, I did not have the money at the time to buy vinyl but there were radio stations in Sydney like 88.1FM (I think) and other community radio station's that played the hardcore music I liked. This was when Carl Cox was the biggest hardcore DJ out there - things have changed. My favorite labels were XL and Rabbit city, I actually bought a crappy deck to play the tunes I could find around the place - I still have those early vinyl's as well... Wicked tunes! Anyway from there I sort of progressed into the Dyewitness and Ultra-Sonic stuff, bought real decks and then moved into the harder / happy sounds until I progressed to where I am now.
Q: Why did you start HappyHardcore.com?
Good question! Why did I start it? yeah.. I would certainly have more money and free time if I didn't (laughing)... Well seriously I had just moved to Tokyo from Australia, I did not understand Japanese, I could not watch Japanese TV because it was boring for me - I wanted to promote the hardcore sounds in Tokyo more, I thought a web site would be a good idea, all I needed was a name, so I did a search on the internet for happyhardcore.com and it was not taken anymore (it used to be a porn site before I owned it). I quickly snapped it up and chucked up the streaming radio station and some "coming soon" information that stayed up there for nearly 2 years. Around the end of 2000 I decided to pull my finger out and actually do something with the site, so I moved the server to a big (expensive) server with database access and other wizzbang things so I could make something of it, I put in countless hours into getting the site running and I guess it paid off. I kind of wanted to build something that I would find useful myself and if I found it useful I would assume other people would as well.
Q: What is your favorite song of all time?
All time? Hmmmmm that's tough... I guess I would have to say "Take me Away" by Luna-C or maybe "Timebomb" by Jon Doe... more recently I'm into what Gammer & Dougal, Re-con, DeeJayBee are pushing out at the moment, it's like fresh hard-ass hardcore or something (laughing)... I guess any artist that is not afraid to try something new.... This question is to hard... next question!
Q: What is a day in the life of DJ Silver? What do you do all day?
Get up, take shower, miss breakfast which I never eat it, ride my motorbike to my office, sit down, open up all my instant message programs, get flooded with "heya" messages, ignore most of the messages because I don't have time for chit-chat, turn on HappyHardcore.com radio, bop head, check my email, delete about 200 virus', report all my spam which is about 500 a day (I get over 750+ e-mail's a day), check all the orders in the store making sure there are no problems. From here I then hit the forum boards to read all the message which can range from about 100-500 a day depending on the day, I normally have news I have to post so I'll get to that next. Then the hard part comes, I have to evaluate new DJ mixes for the radio station, it's hard telling people that they are not good enough yet, you never know what to say because they are looking for their lucky break, I just hope they don't take it personally and can understand they need to work more. Depending on the day will then depend on what I do next, I generally try to put up news every day, interviews on Tuesday and audio / DJ reviewing on Thursday's & Friday's.... There are so many little things it's hard to list them all... but it is much longer than this, I don't finish working until about 11pm every night....
Q: You are originally from Sydney, Australia and your now living in Tokyo, Japan what's the largest earthquake you've had to sit through?
Yes Aussie boy, in Tokyo the biggest earthquake I felt was like a 4 point something but there was a 7.4 last year but it was only 4 in Tokyo because the earthquake was far away from Tokyo. Not nice, I hate earthquakes, it's like when one starts you think to yourself "oh I might actually die now".
Q: Now I understand you have your third album coming up, Hardcore Tsunami 2, can you give us all the low down?
Yes it's not hard to guess what the HT2 promotions are on the site. Low down... well it's out near the end of June 2004, it's two CD's and the both sound excellent. Both CD's have been mixed and mastered, artwork is completed and should be getting some final copies soon.
Q: Is Kevin Energy mixing the second disc again just the same as Hardcore Tsunami 1?
Yes Kevin Energy is mixing the second disc.
Q: Wow, can't wait! What gave you the idea to do the first one?
Much the same reasons I started HappyHardcore.com and MasterWax records, I felt there was a lot of hardcore out there that was not being noticed and or promoted in the wrong types of ways. I wanted to make a community of hardcore people and this CD hopefully represents them somewhat. How did I come up with the name... Well I live in Tokyo at the moment so I wanted a name that would work in English and Japanese, Tsunami does that perfectly.
Q: How was it working with Kevin Energy?
One of the nicest guys you will meet, he has a passion for hardcore and with a load of artists on the NuEnergy collective that were not really seeing other CD compilations. A goal I wanted was to make a CD that had a lot of different artists from different labels and different countries, Kevin had the same types of goals so it was easy to work with him.
Q: After this is released you'll have three CD album's under your belt, any other plans in the future?
Yes there are talks of others releases coming out, but they are only talk at the moment so we see what pans out, I guess you could easy say that if Hardcore Tsunami 2 sells well there will be a Hardcore Tsunami 3 can't you (laughing).
Q: You also run the MasterWax label, how has that experience been?
Expensive, you have to do a lot of chasing money, unfortunately. Artists also instantly assume because your a label your going to rip them off, which seems to be a bad thing in hardcore and music in general (certain labels and distributors not paying people), so you end up having to pay advances and all these other things because no one trusts each other, then you got the tape packs and downloads which eat even more at your little sales money... it's not easy let me tell you. My advice to anyone thinking of starting a label, make sure you are doing and don't expect a penny back from what you put in.
Q: How many labels do you own and how many are running?
Four - MasterWax Records, Infinity Recordings, SAW and one more which I aint telling you.
Q: Can you drop any clues about what's cooking release wise?
Well we are re-launching in a very big way Infinity Recordings (which we took over last year), look for some serious tunes from big hardcore names soon on that. We are doing the artwork at the moment on MWX008, MWX009, MWX010, MWX012, INFTY025 and INFTY026 so those tunes are ready to go.
Q: You run the largest, most popular hardcore dance website in the world as well as the top streaming hardcore dance radio station. Care to share your "rags to riches" story with everyone?
Riches? I drive a motorbike and I am wearing a HappyHardcore.com T-shirt... there is certainly no riches here, the website just pays for itself most months from the little money the banners and shop brings in. I guess when you mean riches you mean popularity wise and not money wise... Well HappyHardcore.com radio used to regularly get about 5 simultaneous people listening, then went to about 20, then went to about 100, and now does not really drop below 250 with peaks every day of just under 600. Those numbers made us the most popular hardcore dance radio station in the world. For the web site, I just worked hard as I said before, I figured out early in my life that you should not expect people to do things for you or help you, do it for yourself and other people will notice.
Q: So who all runs the website?
Me, with help from all the good moderators.
Q: Do you ever go on holidays? It was always seems you're busy.
I have not been on holidays in about 4 years, I have time off and have been overseas but I would not call that a holiday.
Q: Where do you think hardcore will go from here?
Hardcore will have a healthy future as long as artist keep pushing out new and interesting things. I think hardcore artists these days have been lifting the hardcore profile as sometimes hardcore is seen as underproduced kiddy music - Most larger labels and magazines are now starting to wake up and see that people do listen to what they like and not what they tell them to like.
Q: Who is your favorite DJ and why?
Favorite DJ, now your putting me on the spot, since I am a DJ myself, the DJ tune selection does not for the most of the time impress me, so I would have to say that Dodgee is my favorite based on his scratching skills.
Q: Well thank you very much for the interview Silver, any last words you'd like to get out there?
Thanks guys for the interview - yeah - buy hardcore tsunami 2 when it comes out... (laughing).
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Added: 2004/05/25 Hits: 5709
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