Kingkade’s Urban Chaos Records continues to impress some of the biggest names in the business. We caught up with the man himself to find out more about the label

Where are you based and how did you first get started in the scene and what were your biggest achievements in the past?

I’m based about 5 miles from Liverpool, just through the Mersey Tunnel in a place called Wirral. I started djing and producing in 1997, as soon as I got back from living in Tenerife. A friend of mine introduced me to djing and things just progressed from there. In the past I would say my biggest achievements were djing around Europe and getting plays of my early productions on Radio 1.

What made you come back to dance music?

The call to produce and Dj again was too strong to resist. My sound has changed a lot but I have always liked listening to and producing music for darker dance floors.

Why did you take the bold step of starting your own label Urban Chaos Records as your first project since your return?

I used to run 2 labels in the past Minimal Records & Dirty Blue Records. We notched up 50 releases combined, so running labels is something I have had experience with in the past. I know how hard it is to try and get noticed by the bigger labels out there, so that’s wanted to setup a label where I could get my music out to the world’s biggest jocks and do everything on my terms. It’s a very saturated market and very hard to get noticed, so I also want to use UCR as a platform to help emerging and undiscovered artists get noticed too.

Talk to us about the music scene like where you’re based: where’s hot, who are the big names locally and how often are you playing?

The music scene in North West is booming with nights popping up all the time and the region is attracting A list DJ’s most weekends, not to mention huge nights like Circus, NGHTWRK, Underground and 303. I live near Liverpool when it comes to big names take your pick, Yousef, Rohar, 303 DJs, Kinnerman… the list goes on.

You’re working with a new party in Chester. What’s the concept behind it and what made you want to get involved?

Nexus Chester is coming up to it’s first birthday this month. The concept is quite simple we find a space and make it our own, set the whole thing up from scratch and create a environment where people can express themselves to the music. We have a no phone policy. The people who come are there for the music, we are trying to create a vibe like is was the whole dance scene started. If you remember the old D.I.Y parties in the 90’s, its got a vibe like that.

We never advertise who is playing on the night and on June 29th, we have our first live act playing and a DJ flying in from Ibiza!

All the team are great we are very like minded musically. Our nexus hashtag is #technoforeveryone . We were asked by Techno FM to start a radio show, so we started that a couple of months ago and is going really well. The show goes out live 2nd Friday of the month 1900 – 2200.

For those that are not aware, how would you describe your sound and what’s your preferred setup when DJing

I like to keep things dark and hypnotic, sometime minimal, but I also like to bang it too; depends on what the crowd are up for really. I try and stay away from really obvious stuff and use a mixture of my own productions with artistes that i’m really into. Gear wise I keep it simple and use a pioneer DJM900 and 2 X DJ1000’s MK2.

Talk to us about the future releases you’ve got coming out on the label and your personal goals moving forward

Things are looking great for UCR at the moment. We have releases lined up for the rest of the year, so we’re signing stuff for 2019 now. Future releases I have lined up are a 4 track ep from Rohar – release date is July 16th,

Will be following that up with an EP from myself, then a follow up release from Dj Nightnoise, A Han’s Delbruck 4 track ep, Phobetor ep with remixes and Derk Van Huet (one to watch) ep. Currently Pako & Fredrick are writing a track for the label for release early next year, which I am really excited about.

Goals moving forward are to grow the label slowly. I want to continue to help, support and develop new artists on my label and I’m really enjoying the Nexus Chester setup, so I want to continue to support this project and who knows where it can go?