Record label owner, producer and DJ extraordinaire, A.Skillz’ incredible deck talents fuse funk, soul and hip-hop with D’n'B, dub-step and breaks, all sliced, mashed and cut together with a unique style of scratching and mixing.

His reputation as a true party rocker has won him prime-time slots across the world at a who’s who of major events, festivals and music industry parties including FabricLive (London), The Hit Factory (New York), WMC (Miami), Shambhala (Canada), Field Day (Sydney) and Glastonbury. Whether he’s in a club or at a festival, A.Skillz always gets the place jumpin’…As a producer A.Skillz has established himself as one of the most highly regarded in his scene, releasing countless bullets, including the infamous Insane Bangers series, a host of impressive remixes for the likes of stadium rockers Queen, dance legend Don Diablo and Northern Soul Groovers Smoove & Turrell, together with singles on the legendary Finger Lickin’ Records and the now classic artist album ‘Tricka Technology’ with breakbeat heavyweight Krafty Kuts.

We sat down with Adam for a quick chat and put the questions to him everyone has been eager to find out.

What’s the origin of your name ?

I think it started back in my school days when I got called “Skills Mills” on the footy pitch (which is weird as I sucked at football). As I was growing up the “Skills” tag stuck, so once I’d been into djing for a bit I was asked for my DJ name for my first gig that had a flyer (rather than just a chalk board out side saying “DJ Tonight”) so I went with Adam Skillz. I kept that for a while and then it was when I did a gig with Krafty Kuts (just before we started working together) he said, “why don’t you just go with A.Skillz, it sounds better!”, I agreed, and the rest is history!

What genre of music do you consider your work to be ?

I’ve never had a straight answer to this question; I normally say “it’s like funk but fatter with a bit of oldskool hip hop and breakbeat thrown in”. I know that’s a bit of a mouthful, and you’d think I would have welcomed the name nufunk when it came along, but I was actually a bit reluctant to fully embrace that as the home for my music. Mainly because I’d done alright with out being pigeonholed up until that point and I wanted to see whether there was gonna be any original music released under that name or just bootlegs. It feels like “nufunk” has morphed in to “Ghetto funk” now so I’m kinda glad I waited to see how things panned out. Who knows, maybe I’ll come out with a new genre name and see if i can get it to stick!

 

Who are your major influences ?

I grew up listening to my parent’s record collection; The Beachboys, The Beatles, Queen, ELO, Earth Wind and Fire. I still love all those bands, but as I got older I wanted to hear more stuff like EW&F so I started getting into James brown, Stevie Wonder, Jackson 5, The Commodores. That led to crate diggin where I discovered the band Tower of Power, which are still my favorite funk band. Funk and soul is the root of the music I love, but now I listen to everything and am influenced by all genres, some for production some for energy but mostly just because I just like a lot music.

What inspired you to make music ?

I’ve been playing drums since I was 5 and from the of age of 14 I was regularly gigging. I was in a rock band on the grind trying to make it like every other band until I was around 17 when I started getting the bug to do something more uplifting (like how all my funk and hip hop vinyl’s made me feel). I also I wanted to create my own music rather than just play along. My bro and I had been buying bits of studio gear over the years for recording band demos, but it was when we got protools that I knew I could start messing around with my own ideas. I started sampling bits of my favorite vinyl’s and putting them together and the first track I made was called “Trickatechnolgy” which ended up being the title track of the album I made a couple of years later with Krafty Kuts.

What are your views on the whole bootleg debate ?

Not sure exactly what debate that is but what I’ll say is this….
I think bootlegs are cool as long as you bring something creative and fresh to the tracks your sampling. If your gonna put your name on it you need to put some production value into and really make it your own. Even then you have to realize that it’s illegal and if you get sued, that’s a risk you take. I have been sued, it was expensive and annoying but at no point did I think it was unfair.

What made you want to start your own label ?

I had done a couple of remixes of some great unreleased tracks that weren’t scheduled for release, my manager Abel (of Finger Lickin’ Management) and I had a cunning plan to sign the tracks and release them along with my remixes on a new, fresh label and thus ‘Jam City’ was born.

What future plans do you have for your labels ?

Jam City is purely for original music (well at least legal music) and where I will release my music from now on. The next release we have coming out is DJ Yoda and Friends EP featuring collaborations with Izza Kizza, Herve, Nick Thayer and Myself, we are hoping to really kick start things this year. As for my insane bangers label, we have just started releasing the old catalog digitally on www.junodownload.com. I’ve been reluctant to do this for a while but it’s got to that point where most of the volumes are out of stock and I don’t think I can handle another inbox message saying “where can I buy these on mp3″ I will literally go mad if I see any more of them! At least now I have an answer other than “nowhere”.

A.Skillz Serato

How has technology, like Serato, changed the way you perform ?

It’s totally changed it. There were a couple of years where I was trying to accept the fact that CDJ’s were the future. I was really fighting it as I hated using them. I would do a load of DJ edits, go down to Heathmans (now Final Tweek) and get dubplates made. It was expensive, time consuming and you couldn’t really scratch the dubs anyway cos they were so heavy and they wore out (Having said that I do miss the smell of a freshly cut dubplate). So.. Yes, Serato was a breath of fresh air! As soon as I got it I made a playlist packed a bag and went on a 4-week tour of Australia. First time I really used it was on the first gig of that tour; at first it was just like vinyl but once I got into all the cues and loops it became a whole new way to DJ. I love being able to edit tracks live using cue’s, I used to import / edit / bounce / burn, sometimes even cut a dub plate to do what i do with the touch of one button now (thanks Serato!).

What future technology or advancements do you hope to see ?

To be honest I find technology moves pretty fast for me, there’s so much that can be done with what we have now, I like to really get to know something before I move on. I was using Protools 5 on OS9 up until just over a year ago; in fact I still use it a bit now. If there were no new bits of kit that came out for the next 5 years I would be totally fine with that.

From Left: Abel, Will Streetwise, A.Skillz, Nick Thayer, Jess, Krafty Kuts, Richie Balboa. Eden Project 2010

Your ultimate gig, where would it be, who would share the stage with you ?

I hate these sorts of questions, where there’s no limits… Well if i was sharing the stage I would picture myself in a band playing drums, Prince would be on guitar, Stevie Wonder on vocals and keys, David Garibaldi from Tower of Power would be on drums but he’ll have to go on percussion (just give him the bongos). Oh, and Clyde Stubberfield (the funky drummer) he can have a tambourine. Noisia can just sit there playing synth bass and twisted sounds, Q-Tip spitting some rhymes, Q-Bert on the cut but some times he would step aside for Premo to do some cuts just to keep it raw… Actually I’d be way to shit to play in this band.. I’d just be the monitor engineer or something.

Where is your favourite place to play in the world ?

The Cova’den’xoroi in Menorca but with a specially flown in crowd thats one 3rd Canadian, one 3rd Australian and one 3rd Romanian (sorry I’m still on this whole “no limits” vibe).

Festivals playing to thousands or small intimate club playing to hundreds ?

I do love playing small venues with kick ass sound system and an “up for it crowd”. The only thing that you really lose when playing a big gig is being close to the crowd, but if you can get a set up where your right in front of the railings with a monster sound system and a hyped crowd, that’s an even bigger buzz!

What’s one killer production tip you know now that you wished you had discovered years ago?

Probably sidechaining (more of an obvious tip than a killer one). I never used to know that technique when I first made records, now I always have stuff sidechaining in my mixes. A good tip is not to limit it to just using the kik pattern as the trigger. You can use the lead vocal as the source and subtly side chain things that are battling with it in the mix like guitars, this way they you barely notice them dip but they create room for the vocal. It’s a real quick alternative to doing a lot of volume automation….(Wow this is getting really nerdy!)

 Can u let us into your secrets for your signature drums ?

There are no secrets really; I assume I do drums like everybody else. Here’s the on going battle, if you layer a nice break over your programmed beat and get it to play exactly the same pattern it’s not hard to make it “flow”, but the louder the break is in the mix, the more it can make the mix messy, unclear and ultimately soft! This is why so much older hip hop had a wicked vibe but doesn’t sound as tough as say the average dubstep track. If you can get your beat to flow really nicely just by programming it well and using tight sounds, your track has a better chance of sounding tough. But if you don’t get it right it will just sound Rigid! That’s just one of my theories anyway; I am always trying to get the balance right.

 How do you feel about people sampling your drums for there own productions, especially as you have sampled a lot from others in your past ?

I generally sample stuff that is pretty old and try to do something creative with it. There’s something strange about sampling a beat that’s just been released and using it as the soul drum track on a new record. I don’t see that happening in any other genre, I think it would be seen as being a bit lazy. Don’t get me wrong, I do sample new stuff for what I would call “DJ edit’s”, but I don’t generally release them. (Disclaimer- there probably is something you can dig out from somewhere in my back catalogue that goes against what I’ve just said, but I’m speaking from how I feel now)

 What have you got coming up for 2011 ?

I’ve got a few tours that I’m gonna do that I’ve had to put on hold for a while- Canada in March, USA, Asia and Australia are all in the planning process at the moment. I’m just finishing up a remix of the classic hip hop tune “Buggin (it’s nothing serious)” by Whistle for Champion Records, along with a couple of other remixes. I’ve got my hands quite full with Jam City and Insane Bangers too so along with general weekend gig’s and the UK festivals I’m pretty set for the year.

Is there anyone you would like to thank ?

Most people know I’ve had a pretty devastating year in 2010, so I’d like to thank everyone who has supported me, sent me facebook and twitter messages; there have literally been thousands, all of which I have read (sorry if I haven’t replied). They have all meant a great deal to me. Thank you.

Thanks Adam from everyone at GhettoFunk for spending the time chatting to us. We wish you all the success in 2011.

You can now grab the famous Insane Bangers Digitally from HERE

Also become a fan of Adam on Facebook HERE and his new label Jam City HERE

Tweeters follow Adam as he travels round the globe HERE and anyone still using Myspace its HERE

And if you have a party that no one else can rock and he cant fit it into his busy schedule head over to Finger Lickin Management for all bokings enquires HERE.

Not forgetting his Soundcloud where you can grab some amazing DJ sets and a few cheeky bangers:

Latest tracks by A.Skillz