Mick Welch Interview

Well, as I was growing up may dad was always playing Jean Michel Jarre, Vangelis and Kraftwerk albums. Man this stuff blew me away, I mean I had never heard anything like it. The normal stuff on the radio never pulled me in like this synthesizer music. So I would borrow his cassettes and listen to them in bed at night. You no the Albido 0.39 album by Vangelis, the track Pulstar, man that shit was crazy. Then there was Jean Michell Jarres’s Equinoxe, now that was what made me want a synth. I guess it was more the sounds than the songs that enthralled me and I begged my parents for one. I think I was 12 when my dad got me one, well it was only a Yamaha portable thing but it was the one with the blue pads and the FM synth built in. So I taught myself how to play some of the tracks on the Equinoxe album and would play them constant. So then as time passed by it would be 1988 and and one of my older friends had this cassette fresh from Detroit, the legendary WJLB Derrick May radio mixes. Thanks to Lee [Purkis] who was I think one of the first people in the UK bringing records back from Detroit.

Read More from this interview HERE.

When I was young my best mates eldest brother started listening to this really beautiful music which I related to – even though I was about 10. That music was House. I started borrowing tapes that came from the UK’s earliest house pioneers and all the legendary parties. These tapes caused a lot of fights and are now legendary. That was it – at the tender age of 10 I got the house bug and I haven’t looked back. I was buying records getting the best tapes and just constantly listening to them. Then as I got older (about 13) me and my mates started going to parties where there was always house music and turntables. I just wanted to be able mix like all the Dj I was seeing – although it took me 5 years before I could afford my first set of decks. When I got them I spent the whole first day just mixing and I have not stopped. I guess the producing just came naturally as the need to broaden my style and the inspiration could not be kept on just a set of decks- Taken from Electronic Directory Interview by Kazuumi Ishi