WMC interview: Dubfire’s DJ winner Matt Herdman

WMC interview: Dubfire’s DJ winner Matt Herdman

26 March, 2009 | 4.17PM

• Written by: Terry Church
• Filed under: Music News: matt herdman, wmc 2009

Canadian Matt Herdman was the winner of our WMC Dubfire DJ competition and he played the opening set at Space at the SCI+TEC party last night.

I caught up with Matt at the Beatport Pool Party just a few minutes ago to find out how his set went.

How did last night go?

It was really good. Amazing actually, by far one of the best nights of my life. The visuals, the music - everything was above and beyond what I was expecting.

How did the set go?
Well I had a couple of tracks set aside as I wasn’t sure what kind of vibe to go with. In the end I went with bouncy groove, but I kept it strong and techy.

The demo that won you the competition, what was it like?

I have some Minus stuff on there and some Gregor Tresher cuts, and the vibe was primarily a darker, more minimal techno sound.

It’s where I’m going with my sound. I didn’t want to submit him a banging mix as it was an opening spot and that wouldn’t be appropriate.

All my impressions of Dubfire was that he was really techy, so my mix had to be techy.

I heard Dubfire took you out for dinner?

Yeah it was great - at dinner was Oliver Huntemann and Laura from SCI+TEC. Dubfire was a really funny and engaging person.

He could tell I was nervous but he really put me at ease which was much appreciated.

Did Dubfire speak to you about your future career? Did he share any advice?

Laura insisted that I give her a shout and continue to send them my stuff. I spoke a lot with Oliver Huntemann about my music.

Dubfire has been to Windsor a lot, and he’s coming back soon so we’re really looking forward to that.

We also spoke a lot about Traktor set ups. I use Traktor Pro, so winning another copy of Traktor won’t be useful to me, but the real prize was always to play before Dubfire. I would have entered the competition even without the Traktor prize.

I was quite surprised at the negative comments towards the competition with some people complaining that the prize wasn’t good enough. I was just happy to be able to take part in the competition and winning was a dream come true.

Where do you go from here?

Well I’ve had releases out on John Acquaviva’s label Definitive, and I’m playing with John at Shore Club Hotel on Friday in Miami. It’s a Definitive showcase so I’m excited about that.

Long term wise, I plan to do stuff with John as he’s been really good to me and helped me to grow fast. He has been a mentor. He also has a forward thinking insight into where dance music is going, and that’s inspiring.

What’s your sound like?

I guess electro-tech is the easiest description for my sound. In my studio I have a Mac and use Ableton Live for producing as I love the way Live works and flows. I also have a couple of keyboards and MIDI controllers.

How did you get into dance music?
I grew up in a really small town and one of my friends gave me some CDs with house music and I got hooked from there. It was before I even knew what house was.

The Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk then got me in deeper. I started DJing three or four years ago and producing two or three years ago.

I currently have day job doing graphic design, but I defintely want to get into music full time.

I’m waiting for my music career to become self sustaining before throwing myself into it proper.

Right now I’m concentrating on getting more gigs, playing out more and traveling. I need to build my network and my name.

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