Mark Knight Interview

Mark Knight plays a special five hour set at Egg London on Saturday 5th March for Toolroom Live alongside Umek and Rene Amesz, plus Weiss, who launches his Weiss City party featuring Ninetoes and Lewis Boardman. 
It's a chance to build on the portrait painted by his recent 'A Year In The Life' documentary, which you can watch below, and its accompanying album, the proceeds of which went to the War Child charity, which helps children affected by war. We caught up with Mark to find out about both of these projects, while also speaking about a secretive new band project, the pressures of maintaining an upward trajectory in today's industry and the defining influence of Disco Gary… 

How important is it for you to have a residency in London, your home stomping ground? 
It's really important to have a successful residency in London. London is the cultural capital of the world, specifically for dance music. People talk about Los Angeles being the city of the moment, which I understand, but that's far from the truth. Your centre piece show should be in London. If you can have a successful show there, that reverberates globally in terms of how strong your brand is. It's the most important show we do so we put 110% effort into it. It's our calling card for the world. We're happy to be teaming up with you guys, musically there's a great connection now. 

Can you tell us a little the line-up you've got then: Umek, Rene Amesz, Weiss and Ninetoes? 
What we try to do with our events is encapsulate what our roster is, what we are musically. The line-up at Egg is totally representative. What we're trying to do is create different scenes. So in the Garden we want to play more techno, with myself and Umek, with Rene playing first. Then Richard Weiss launches his night, Weiss City. He's curating that, he wants to get people onboard that are musically akin to where he's at. So it might be a bit more housey and deep in the middle room. We think about how the night progresses in terms of the line-up, because it has to tell a story. We very much look at who we book to be the chapters in that story. 

Would you say your current sound is more techno-y then? 
One person's interpretation of techno is not another's. I don't really want to pigeonhole myself musically, I like to play across the board, but generally it's got lots of energy and a very rolling sound. I don't know if it's techno or tech-house... it's just house music really. I don't want to slap a label over it. The energy level is complementary to what Umek is doing. 

You’ve just released your new album 'A Year In The Life’, with all proceeds going to the War Child charity. Can you tell us how that came about and why you wanted to get involved in such a project? 
I was just reading about it a lot online really, David Bowie was doing a lot before he passed away. When you have kids you can really feel the kind of impact something like that would have first hand. If you put yourself in the shoes of some of those kids it's unbelievable, you can't really comprehend it. It's so sad. If you can do anything to help, you should. I'm in a very fortunate position right now and I should use that to my advantage. There's also a good synergy between what we wanted to do, giving something back, and what this charity is doing. They're very much aligned to other music brands, they really get the industry. It was a very easy connection to make. Sometime it's very difficult to work with charities. There's so much red tape to get a partnership. But these guys were less about bureaucracy and more about making money to help these kids. On all levels it seemed like a good fit. 

Can you tell us about making the album. How do you approach making music? Is it different for an album to a single? 
The most important thing is having an idea of what you want to say. You approach each track in a different way. Sometimes you start with a rhythm, sometimes you start with a bassline, or a sample, then you write around it. This album, to be honest, was more of a collection of club records rather than the historic approach to writing an album. I'm actually working on something right now which is more like that, where you have varying styles and musical tempos. We're about three quarter of the way there with that. It's a band project I'm working on that I can't say too much about right now. It's going to be very different and it's going to shock a lot of people. They're going to be like, where the fuck did that come from? I'm really excited, it's a nice opportunity to come away from the cliches within house music, to rip up that handbook and say, anything you do normally, don't do. I would imagine I'll start to drop one or two singles over the summer, then possibly an album at the start of next year. It's more of a classic approach to making an album. 

Your documentary gives an idea of how much you travel. Where are your favourite clubs and countries across the world? 
The States is an amazing territory right now, it's still relatively new and they're still hungry for new music. It's great, there's less of the pigeonhole element which you get in Europe especially. They don't have such big preconceptions about where you sit musically. That's really nice, you can be quite expressive with what you do. Bulgaria is an unbelievable territory for me. Argentina, Chile, Serbia. It's always really inspiring when you go somewhere for the first time. I went to Sri Lanka this year. I wasn't sure how it was going to go, but it was in the top three gigs this year. Unbelievable. They were lapping up this music, wow, this is all brand new. There are still pockets of the world that are untapped. 

You grew up in Maidstone, the same as Nic and Mark Fanciulli. How much of an influence did it have on? 
If you look within the industry, the amount of people that are from Maidstone: the guys from Three Six Zero, the guys from Club Class Music Management, Saved, the guys who manage Deadmau5 and Calvin Harris, I went to school with them, Essential, the big distributor back in the day, there's such a vibrant music scene. I kind of apportion it to when we were all growing up. This is my theory anyway; there was a school disco on a Monday night in Maidstone and all the guys who are now big players, we used to all go. The guy playing there would play really underground music. He was playing early hip-hop, really early house, this was in 1986, '85. He could have played pop records, he could have played Madonna, but he didn't. He was very much a DJ in the classic sense. He played all this great music. I seriously think he inspired a lot of kids. 

Do you know what his name was? 
I do. His name was Disco Gary. Cutting-edge music, but not so much a cutting-edge name! He was the guy that for me instilled the idea you don't have to listen to shit music. Even before that as a kid every single penny I had was spent going into Boots and WH Smiths back in the day to buy 7”s. Saturday was about getting the bus into town to buy music at the age of 9 or ten. I already had a passion for music and that guy brought more out in us I imagine. 

What was the big break for you when you felt you really had made it as a DJ? 
My career has never really been based on big peaks or troughs. It's always been a general ascent. I think that breeds more longevity. There was never, oh, this record has put me on the map. It was a consistent amount of output, building the brand. There were big records at the start, 'In the Beginning', 'Sandcastles', but there was nothing that stratospherically propelled me into having a massive career. It was a general progression across all the different facets of what I do. 

That seems to have changed now. People can have a huge hit now and become overnight stars. 
This was pre-digital when you were only doing vinyl. Digital has created a completely different playing field. As you said, you can have one big platform with all the social media you have now, and you can go from no-one to someone in one record. There's a formula of creating a career. But the hardest thing with success is following on. You can one big record, but can you have two, can you have three. That's what makes a career. So many people have one big record then, bye bye, you never hear from them again. That's what cuts the wheat from the chaff, who can consistently follow up. Back then it wasn't about that, it was so hard to get in the game, which was already sewn up by these big DJs who weren't budging. Digital created a bit of a more level playing field, that's when things started to change. But like I said, nothing in my career was stratospheric, it was about continuous hard work. 

What do you do outside of music to relax? 
Hang on, let me look that up in the dictionary! I don't know that one. Mate, if only. My life is family and work. There's very little in-between, it is a lifestyle. It's not like, I'm going to clock off now, it's five o'clock. Every day has a different schedule and agenda. Tomorrow I'm going to Seattle. Today I'm in the studio and it's my radio show. Everyday is completely bonkers. To have any routine outside that is hard. When I finish my career, maybe I'll get back to playing more football, and things like that. But right now, to be at the top of your game, you need to dedicate 110%, because if you don't someone else will. 

Before you go, can you tell us something you think we should listen to before we head out the door to Toolroom Live at Egg London? 
Anything you love at the end of the day, and gets you inspired and in the mood. Music is so subjective that what I might like might not be right for someone else. I like to listen to disco and things like that before I go out because it puts me in the right mood without listening to the thing I'm going to listen to all night. Everyone's got their own little take on that. 

Check Mark's Weekly Toolroom radio show and visit his Facebook and Instagram. 

Buy tickets for Toolroom Live here.