Shades of Gray Interview for Beatportal

Shades of Gray Interview for Beatportal

13 July, 2009 | 9.15PM

• Written by: schwa
• Filed under: Music News : beef records, plus minus, shades of gray

Shades of Gray achieved a great success with their EP Moog in the House that reached #6 Beatport Tech House chart and their latest EP Jack the Freak is getting strong support by Djs like Jimpster, Nick Warren, Slam, Stephan Bodzin, H.O.S.H and others. Check out this interesting interview with the boys.

Who is Shades of Gray? Tell me more about you and your musical project.

Shades of Gray are Michal Ruzicka and Nick West, co-managers of Beef Records.  We formed the project 3 years ago out of a shared interest in the evolving sound of dance music. As the name implies, Shades of Gray represents the many influences we draw on to develop our sound. Those influnces range from Soul and funk through to techno and House music.  We don’t like to stick to one formula for our tracks. Instead we continue to search for new production techniques and ways to push the sound.

You manage your own record label, Beef Records. What kind of artists do you release at your label, what is the label’s target when it comes to music and artists?

Beef Records is our personal playground where we are able to have total control and release the music that we feel best represents the most current and inspiring dance music at the moment. Our label direction has changed over the last few years, and now our main focus is in the tech house/deep house area. In the next twelve months we have a great line up of fresh music including releases from Kreon, Ok Corral, Yori Hulkonnen , David Garcett , Moonbeam, Manjas and few other names that we would like to keep in secret for now.

Can you please tell me a bit about your musical background, history and influences as producers and djs?

N:- I started out as a DJ whilst living in Tokyo in the late 1990’s . In 2000 I began producing my own music and wrote a number of albums under artist names such as Didjitalis, Oculus and Floattank.  I then began working with Michal as Shades of Gray.

At the same time I have a career working in the film and television industry as a composer. This has given me access to a great studio and also brought me into contact with a great number of musicians. This is now starting to flow into our latest productions as we create the more organic sound of Deep House.

M: I basically grew up in a recording studio because my father is a owner of ORM recording company and when I was about 5 years old he decided to build his studio inside our house. When I was a teenager I have discovered Radio 1, which I was listening everyday via satellite and I started recording my favourite electronic music on tapes. Later I went to a club and saw DJ at work, which completely changed my live. I was blown away and started DJing myself.  In the meantime I was working in ORM studio as sound engineer and assistant. In 2004 I moved to Sydney and started producing my own music with Nick West.

The Romanian producers from Ok Corral will release their third EP at your label, and one of the tracks on the EP is actually a remix made by you. What made you decide to have a remix of your own on the ep?

We like to remix artists that inspire us. The OK Corral guys produced a great EP and naturally we were inspired to do our own take. This is one of the great benefits of owning the label and producing.  This is the model that Jimpster uses with his Freerange imprint.

Your EP Moog hit no. 6 on tech-house beatport chart and no. 3 on decks.de regarding sales. Now you have released a new ep, Jack the Freak. What are your expectations regarding this ep and how was the feedback on it?

We were really blown away by the success of the moog in the house EP. That really helped to get us on the map and inspired us to work harder in the studio.

For us the Jack The Freak EP best represents where our sound is at the moment. We drew on many new influences and pushed our production to new levels. It has received great feedback and support from artists such as Jimpster, Nick Warren, Slam, Tim Green and Stephan Bodzin to name a few.

We are obviously hoping that the EP will be successful and it is already in the charts on Beatport.

As i know, you also perform live acts and dj sets. What do you most like in a show? The live act or the dj set? And, as djs, what kind of music do you most like playing?

M: Nick doesn’t Dj at all which is good for us so we don’t fight over the decks. DJing side inspires our productions side and it brings a lof of fresh ideas to our live show and production. However when we tour together we prefer to play live and then do a short dj set after. This formula work very well for us.

• (0) Comments
• (304) Views