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Features
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| Introducing NEM3SI$’s new label Infinite Resistance! | | Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! | | Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! | | Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! | | Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. | | Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! | | Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! | | NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! | | Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! | | Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! | | Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! | | SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! | | The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! | | NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! | | Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project | | The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! | | A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden | | Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma | | Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino | | New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! | | PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! |
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Ephexis INside for Freeformation
Reported by benz
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Submitted 12-12-06 20:05
There are still a lot of people who seem to think that all hardcore music is about cheesy pianos and naff vocals, dripping with saccharine musical motifs. I suppose they can’t necessarily be blamed given the mainstream representation of hardcore. It’s a shame that the more underground strains of hardcore don’t get quite the same exposure, as it would probably pleasantly surprise a lot of people. The Nu Energy Collective and their Freeformation parties have done sterling work to educate the masses on the breadth and diversity within the ‘ardcore spectrum, and have always been keen supporters of the less overtly-cheesy strains. Their next party this Friday 15th December at Hidden once again sees their bright new hopes Ephexis in tow with their much-acclaimed live PA. Psy-freeform anybody?
Ephexis, a.k.a Adam and Alex, have always been involved in a diverse variety of music — something which they continue to do so today. Adam first cut his teeth on dance music with Sharkey’s mix on Bonkers 4 — his disc traditionally being the less cheesy/vocal-led in each volume. “This was a real eye opener to hard dance music that wasn’t cheesy as hell!” he exclaims. “I pretty much immediately started the journey into music production from there. I had been listening to metal and industrial music for a long time before then, so I decided to try and get the raw sound of metal out of synths, and it seemed to work!”
Alex had been listening to a wide range of music for a long time when the pair met. He had been drumming with a variety of bands including Sonikitch (“psy-jazz”!) and Skindread (“ska-metal”!) before starting his own dance act Aum3 “which was inspired by a mix of Prodigy, Senser and Hybrid.” The pair met while both performing as live acts on Southampton’s intimate music scene, where they were both forced to create outlets for the music that they loved. “We both did a lot of our partying at free parties in and around Hampshire, as well as some of the bigger psy trance parties in London, such as Antiworld and Symbiosis. There weren’t many clubs about in the South that played alternative dance music, which is why we started our party Hard Acid Style,” Adam tells us. He started the aforementioned party with a group of friends known as the Sonic Decay Collective, where they would play full-on, hard and dirty dance music that refused to conform to mainstream dance music ideals. His live PA under the name Father had been attracting a fair bit of attention, while Alex’s role as lead musical driving force in Aum3 had seen him break loose of the limited shackles of his drumming past. This was following on from his Music Technology course at college and his discovery of the rave scene. “I stumbled across the live PA Aum3 at a free-party in the New Forest,” Adam recalls. “I was totally blown away by the music I heard, and I instantly booked them for the boat party. The mastermind of Aum3’s music production was Alex. About six months later, we started writing tracks together, and after a couple of years decided to form a new live PA — Ephexis was born.”
The pair started making music together as Ephexis in 2002, creating new cuts to be aired at the hard acid style parties. After they had built up enough confidence to start sending out their material, Adam gave his hero Sharkey some of their tracks to see what the outcome would be. “We got a great response from him. He was the first big DJ to release our music on a commercially available CD and vinyl on his label Kaotik Records.” Sharkey has always been one to play the more inventive, dirty, tough breeds of hardcore/freeform, and the Ephexis style perfectly fitted his remit. An anything goes style that combines exhilarating trancey riffs, dirty breakbeats in a DnB style, psy-trancey b-lines and synths, gurgling acid lines and occasional carefully-chosen vocal performances all at breakneck speeds is the best way to describe their freeform cuts. The sound they create is very emotive and atmospheric, whereas a lot of freeform can often sound rather flat and basic in feeling — and this is more than likely something they have picked up from their diverse musical backgrounds. “We love to listen to loads of different types of music — our favourite artists include Prodigy, Hybrid, Machine Head, Senser, Space Buddha, Eskimo, Save the Robot, Nine Inch Nails, Rex (Sinister Records) and a load more!”
It’s not just hardcore that they excel at though, they have been churning out exciting, euphoric psy-trance, inventive vocal-led drum ‘n’ bass (like Pendulum on speed) and seriously phat breaks. You can check it all out on their website and even download full tracks for free. “We definitely have serious aspirations for all of the music we write. We get bored of writing any particular style for longer than a couple of months, so we like to change things around as much as possible. We’re music lovers, not genre lovers — and we think that this is reflected in the music that we write.” Adam informs me.
After Sharkey got hold of their material, Adam did the logical thing and invited him and Nu Energy head honcho Kevin Energy down to one of his boat parties in 2003. “From there on in we stayed in touch, and as our music production skills grew, so did our relationship with Nu Energy. We have always been sending them our tracks, and a lot of them have regularly made it into the playlists of the Nu Energy DJs, and we’ve even had two of our tunes played in the Nu Energy Live PA at Frantic at seOne.” So far the Nu Energy Collective have released two of their EPs on Sharkey’s Kaotik label, and one on the main Nu Energy label, helping to bring their name to a global hardcore audience.
Studio partnerships can often cause a lot of pressure and stress between friends who never normally argue, but it doesn’t seem to be something these two suffer from. “We have two studios between us, so we are able to work very independently if we want to. We both have very similar musical goals, and our skill compliment each other — it works really well. This is one of the main reasons our music has come so far. We use Ableton Live 6 and Logic 7.2, on Apple Mac Computers, along with Novation Remote 25 and Remote Zero SL MIDI controllers. If there’s enough space at the gig to include live vocals, we also use an RME FireFace 800 as a mic pre and mixer. All of our live instruments are software based, playing synths out of Logic, and using the effects and sequencing in Live. This is a really versatile setup for us.”
They prefer to use a lot of hardware when in the studio, but when it comes to gigging, a down-sized set-up is called for. “It’s just not practical to take a massive rack of synths to a gig, especially abroad. Using Ableton and Logic means that we can still make amazing sounds, without moving the whole studio!” The wonders of technology eh!
Although their live PA isn’t that well known in the UK yet, their fame has been spreading across the world slowly, with the pair playing a gig at a Finnish forest rave earlier this year. “We wrote a track with Finnish producers DJ Rx and Toni from Carbon Based — they work for FINRG recordings. Our relationship with these guys led us to getting heard in Finland. We were considering going to the festival as punters, and got in touch with Rx. When he heard we were considering flying over, he contacted the main promoter of the festival, and got us a gig there! The festival is called Konemetsa (www.konemetsa.net). It’s an open air forest festival in the heart of Finland. It was one of the best parties we’ve ever been to! The atmosphere was fantastic, and the line-up was even better. There were all styles of music, and the weather was awesome. Seriously recommended!”
Hopefully the Konemesta gig was a sign of things to come, and with the pair moving more heavily into the ultra-global psy trance scene in 2007, they could soon be playing all over the world. “We’re going to spend the first couple of months of 2007 preparing a full-on psy trance CD. We’re aiming to be playing at some major psytrance events in 2007/8. Hopefully in the summer we will be doing another Australian Freeform tour, with friends ‘Clerics of Anarchy’ (C.O.A), and we will definitely be playing in Finland again too. Should be a great year!” As for their upcoming set at Freeformation, it sounds like they’re going to be pulling all the stops out for a seriously tough and pacey set. “We’re going to be playing a no-holds-barred set, featuring our own special breed of psychedelic freeform — including a few previously un-heard tracks! There’s always a great atmosphere there, and the crowd is awesome — we’re really looking forward to it!” Now Lab4 have stepped out the way and the hard dance scene has one less live PA, could these guys fill the gap? Could they ever...
Photos courtesy of Ephexis. Not to be reproduced without permission.
www.ephexis.co.uk
FREEFORMATION - CHRISTMAS CARNAGE 2006
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On:
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Friday 15th December 2006
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At:
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Hidden [map]
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From:
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22:00 - 06:00
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Cost:
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ABSOLUTELY FREE!!!!!
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Website:
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www.nuenergy.co.uk
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Ticket Info:
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Entry Rules:
THIS IS A MEMBERS ONLY PARTY!
IT'S COMPLETELY FREE BUT A DOOR NUMBER IS REQUIRED FOR ENTRY. WE WILL NOT BE LETTING ANYONE IN ON THE NIGHT WITHOUT A DOOR NUMBER!!
PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY TO AVOID DISSAPPOINTMENT – PREVIOUS FREEFORMATION’S HAVE HIT CAPACITY!
Door number's are available from http://www.nuenergy.co.uk/freeformation
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Buy Online:
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Click here to buy tickets
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More:
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Friday 15th December is a very special day. Not content with being the anniversary of the invention of the plimpsole, Friday 15th December 2006 will more importantly host the totally bonkers ‘Freeformation Christmas Carnage’ party @ Hidden in Vauxhall, London. Essentially our first Hidden birthday, it’s exactly one year since we first brought our road-blocked brand of wised up and stupid bonkersness to Hidden so there’s no excuses for excuses….
Especially as for another night of mayhem we’re making FREEformation completely FREE again as a present to you from Kevin Energy, Sharkey and the Nu Energy Collective! Why……. Because we love to party so come and join us as all the DJ’s involved get on a festive one and rock the rave from start to finish! Wise up…. Let’s get stupid!!
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Flyer:
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Region:
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London
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Music:
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Trance. Acid Trance. Euro Trance. Hard Trance. Nu NRG. Hardcore. Hard House.
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DJ's:
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On the 17th day of Christmes Freeformation gave to me:
HARDCORE AND A SNOWMAN with HOLLY
Kevin Energy vs. Sharkey (Record for Live Mix)
Marc Smith vs. Arkitech (Notorious vs. Kaotik!)
CLSM vs. Eryk Orpheus (For First Time Ever!!)
Ethos vs. Robbie Long (FD vs TNC!!)
Mark Ashley vs. K-Complex (1995 - 2002 Dutch Cheese)
Stormtrooper & Druid (Party Mayhem!)
Ephexis LIVE!! (The Psy-Freeform Pioneers!)
Lost Soul (Production Showcase!)
M.C's (Complementing not destroying):
Sharkey, Odyssey, Knight, Ethos, Obie, Scottie B and Rizla Dizla
REMEMBER: We Don’t Need Crackers Cos We Are!!
On the 24th day of Christmes a random gave to me:
HARDDANCE and a REINDEER DRUNK ON CHERRY
Kevin Energy (Pendragon Classics!)
Greg Brookman vs. Phil York (Battle Of The Gingers!)
Little Gem (Wildchild Anthems!)
The *Ting* (The Legend That Is!)
Jon Doe (Classic European Hard Trance!)
K Complex vs. Matt Style (N.E.C Live Classics!)
Hoopz (Upfront Hard Dance Anthems!)
Nick The Kid (The South West’s Hard Trance Legend)
On the 72nd day of Christmas Freeformation gave to me:
OLDSKOOL and an ELF SHEPPARD TEA
Druid & Stormtrooper (Rhythm Station bounce)
Spinback (Classic Dream Reunion Set)
Energy & MC Suicide (Dream FM Reunion Part 2!)
Barry K vs. Sharkey (Journey Through Hardcore Set)
Supreme (Rhythm Station Classics!)
Ramos (91 - 94 Set)
Mark Ashley (Trance Classics)
WARNING: Freeformation Is Not Responsible For Loss Of Marbles, Christmas Puddings Or Ability To Speak
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Other Features By benz:
Introducing: Salerno - part of Chemistry's NuWave selection
Eat Static return for Lost In Space
Coburn bring their live show to UP^^
The return of The Colosseum
Modernism, Politburo and Sedition: Matthew Duffield’s manifesto
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Comments:
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From: *cheeky chick* on 13th Dec 2006 13:13.09
From: SiameseJesus on 13th Dec 2006 21:06.27
Quality! I remember the first time I saw them, top stuff!
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