Exclusive Interview with Skeptical

Siam2nite had the opportunity to have an exclusive interview with Skeptical, shortly before his performance at Glow Nightclub on 7th August.

You are a Drum& Bass DJ & Producer from the UK. How did you get in touch with Drum & Bass in the first place and how did you get into DJing & music production?

I was first introduced to Jungle by listening to compilation CDs like jungle mania and hanging out at record stores in my local town. Back in 1997 when I was still in school my cousin had a pair of Technic 1210's and we'd always meet to have long mixing sessions with his mates. This then led to me buying my own pair of decks and taking my craft further.

Skip forward around 10/11 years I started to produce music. Which is a good way for introducing yourself to the music world because it's harder to breakthrough nowadays just being a DJ. I felt I had learnt my craft as a Dj and needed to be more creative so I widened my pallet by self-teaching various bits of production software. That has led to where I am today.

How would you describe your own music in a few words?

Clean, minimalistic and snappy

You have released tracks on prestigious records labels such as Exit, Dispatch, Renegade, Ingredients, Commercial Suicide, Metalheadz, Soul:r and Samurai. You are best known for the track 'Marka' which has almost 4 million views on YouTube. What other tracks, remixes or mix-sets would you recommend to someone that is not yet familiar with your music?

Tracks like Blue Eyes, Process of Elimination and the more recent Imperial are definitely tunes that I would say are my concrete sound. I have a lot of love for those tunes.

There are quite a few mixes up online so it might be worth having a dig around. There's a mixmag set with dBridge on YouTube and the latest one is for Friction on BBC Radio 1 which was an Exit Records 60 minute takeover.

What’s on your agenda for the near future and what are you currently working and focusing working on?

Release wise I have another 4 track ep forthcoming on Exit Records and some remix work for Metalheadz. All should be due out this year.

I'll be djing in UK, Croatia, Germany, Sardinia, Austria, Belgium, New Zealand to name a few and also playing debut sets in Thailand and Hong Kong which I'm excited about.

What was the best and the worst gigs you ever played and what were the funniest things that occurred during any of your performances?

I've enjoyed many gigs through my career so it's hard to pinpoint just one. The most recents ones have been Mungos stage at outlook with SP:MC, MC GQ with the crowd in front of us going nuts, that was definitely a career highlight for me. The Perth, Auckland and Melbourne legs of my Australia and New Zealand tour were good too.

Another memorable one was when Exit Records had a night at Horizon Festival in Bulgaria and it was based in a strip club, I'll let you use your imagination for that one.

Funny moment has to be when a boat party at a festival I played left without any artists and we were left standing waiting for the boat to dock again for around 10 minutes. Everyone was dancing to a cd the sound engineer had put on.

On 7th August you will perform live here in Bangkok at Glow Nightclub, alongside the PHATFUNK crew. Have you visited Thailand before? What can Bangkok expect of your upcoming performance?

I've never visited Thailand before until this month when me and my newly wedded wife have come here for our honeymoon. What an amazing place it is, so many amazing views and the people are so kind and friendly.

I'm looking forward to experiencing Bangkok and playing for you guys. Expect lots of new music as well as some old classics. I like to vary my sets to keep things interesting.

See you soon!