Эксклюзивное интервью с RUFFNECK
(перевод появится в ближайшие дни)
1) How did you like the event? What can you say about the atmosphere and organization of the event?
I absolutely LOVED every minute of it. The Russian people once again showed that they are the craziest and best crowd on the planet.
The warmth and love the crowd showed me/us was amazing. I can’t wait to come back to Russia now. The atmosphere was fantastic and everything was awesome. I wish that I would see this kind of appreciation more across the world. Russia holds the crown for the best party people in the world in my opinion. Be proud of that and keep up that spirit!
2) What was the most memorable happening during your stay in Moscow?
Well of course the party, but apart from that I was amazed by the changes Russia has gone through since I visited 13 years ago. Moscow is amazingly pretty with lots of culture and old buildings to visit. Next time I am definitely going to stay longer when I am invited! Most memorable was me and Jessica getting super drunk the night before the party when Stanislav took us out to eat at a traditional Russian restaurant as we wanted to eat real traditional Russian food! We drunk soooooo much vodka and when we finally got back to the hotel room we got so sick we puked all night long hahahahahah. That shit was funny.
After the party my friend Or-Beat showed us many cool things in Moscow, like the Kremlin and a lot of cultural buildings. He told us a lot of Moscow history and we ate and drank a lot
Thanks my friend Andrey, you were great!
3) For some time you stopped producing and performing as a hardcore DJ. There were rumors that you would never compose hardcore again. But gradually you came back. Why were you so stern before about not doing hardcore music anymore, and why did you start doing it after all?
The idea behind this was making the world believe that I retired to give all of my artists an equal chance to develop themselves fully without having to stand in my shadow. Everyone believed this retirement to be real for at least two years; and some still do to this day. This was also the only option I saw to restart the label and continue it in a new style of hardcore. Now my producers are all pretty famous themselves so I could pick it up again a bit.
4) Two years ago I met Paul Elstak and asked him about Enzyme Records. He said that at first this music was very unusual, but later became a normal mainstream. How can you comment this and how would you describe the music of Enzyme Records (I am not talking about Enzyme X here, only Enzyme Records).
Well it just shows in my opinion that Enzyme yet again was groundbreaking at that time and that apparently Paul did not completely understand that I guess but now he got used to it. Nowadays Enzyme sets a lot of standards so we changed from being strange to being examples for the majority of people who embraced our sound.
5) What shall be the label sound in the nearest future? Any strategic plans? New sublabels or maybe opening of new labels?
We are always just doing our best and we will continue doing this for as long as we possibly can. Opening new labels is not really one of our plans to be honest. We really want to concentrate on Enzyme and that is already taking up a lot of our time.
6) What’s going to happen with Bionic Recordings? Are you going to close this label?
No this label is not going to be closed. We just haven't found the right people yet to continue this label we all love here at cardiac yet. When we find new good music and producers willing to populate this label we will definitely release new stuff!
7) Every time I meet a foreign artist coming to Moscow I ask him this question: where are the new bright artists? Why there are so few?
That’s a fantastic question. I ask myself that also all the time. Nowadays no labels I know get hardly demos at all. And the times we do it is just A: A rip off of our stuff or just really bad. I wish we would receive more music from talented producers. Nowadays people just want to be a DJ without putting in the effort of making new good music.
8) Are there gonna be some new artists on your label soon? Any fresh talent you want to sign at the moment?
We are busy with a new talent and also Miss Twilight is working her ass off to make some new good music!
9) Why Nexus left Enzyme?
He believed he would do better without Enzyme….
10) Where is hardcore going? How do you think it will sound in 3-4 years?
Hell if I know, we’ll just have to wait and see I think. Someday a young new producer like Ophidian will come along again and put everything upside down like he did.
11) Please tell us about your latest vinyl “Divine Intervention”. For how long you were making it? How and why did you start working with Miss Twilight? Any interesting facts or stories?
Well, divine intervention took a long time making. More than a year really. I just went through a very difficult time and I was very angry, sad and disappointed. Then one day Ophidian dropped Miss Twilight in my studio and asked if I could bring her to the train station. I was working on "Shades of desperation" when she sat next to me, watching me work quietly. At that time I was also busy working on the track which later would be known as "No turning back". She wrote the lyrics to "No turning back" and I didn't have to instruct her at all. She knew exactly what I was feeling and translated that into words. She sang it and then we worked together finishing the track which took us months of mixing and remixing it! This song is about the fact that sometimes you have the key for your problems already in your heart but you just don't realize it because sometimes you are just too scared or blind to see what is dangling right in front of you. She also wrote and sang the lyrics to “Where memories hide” which are about the emotions inside your heart. All other tracks came to be after my producers knew what was going on in my life and they all wanted to help me writing my emotions down into music. After a while I asked if she wanted to go eat out with me and we did. We liked each other and we started to hang out more and more. After some weeks she left to go back to the USA and I noticed that I really started to miss her. I decided to pick her up at the airport a month later and instead of me bringing her home I drove her to Paris in France where we stayed for a week. It was very romantic and I asked her to be my girlfriend. She refused!!!! hahahahaha. I was totally confused as we still hung out and were very romantic to each other. A month later when we went out for dinner at a sushi bar she told me she was ready now and asked ME to be her boyfriend LOL I said yes and the rest is history. We are now together for more than a year. I bought a house in The Hague and we are moving in together soon.
She made me smile and wonder about life again and helped me through a lot of hard times. She gave everything up in the USA to pursue her dream to become a hardcore producer and DJ by simply leaving America to go to Holland and spend ALL her savings by renting a way overprized apartment for a long time losing thousands of euros because no one knew her or gave her a chance to show her talents. I admire that without ends and was really amazed by her story. She has so much love for hardcore that I was reminded myself about how passionate I used to be. She really is a very inspiring person and I am proud to be with her at this point in time. She really saved my ass!
This whole “Divine intervention” album really is a big emotional outburst for me and at the same time a love album. “Divine intervention” is a term for a miracle caused by God's/a gods active involvement in the human world. In my case Jessica (Miss Twilight) has been my divine intervention.
12) Will there be new releases from Miss Twilight on Enzyme Records?
We are working on it
13) There was a CD coming with vinyl package. Was it only for this release or it will be your standard package from now on?
It was only for this album as a thank you for all my real fans who still appreciate the time, work and money we put into releasing vinyl.
14) Until recently it wasn’t possible to by Enzyme music on the internet, but starting from release #31 it is possible. Why did you review your policy about it?
We noticed time and time again that people are illegally spreading our music on the internet. We even found sites selling our music illegally pretending they had deals with us (Unfortunately I have to say that most of these are from Russia….) People need to understand that this is our job and we cannot work for free like anyone else who has a job. However we also realized that there must be people out there who understand this, but simply would like to have our music digitally instead of on vinyl. It is not up to us to make that decision for anyone so we decided to try it out and see if people are willing to pay for it, which would be good for the scene as that means that producers (and not DJ's as some people just want to make music and not spin it! Big up to the anonymous producers!!!) can breathe again and make some money again so they can keep their job!
15) Do you plan to do your own large events like Masters of Hardcore?
We don't have the money to finance that kind of parties. We are still not rich to be able to do that. We do throw some smaller parties though and those are in my opinion just as good as the bigger commercial ones. It’s all part of the culture.
16) I’ve seen “Nightmare” event… vinyl is gone? There is only CD and mp3 in use?
That’s not a question for me, ask Mid-Town. They own “Nightmare”.
17) Please tell us about the coming releases on Enzyme Records, Enzyme X, Enzyme VIP, about your new tracks and tracks from your comrades Nosferatu, Endymion, Ophidian, Meagashira, Weapon X, Hamunaptra, Sei2ure. Do you plan any collaborations? Releases on other labels?
That question is too difficult to answer. A lot is going on all the time and things are always changing. The only thing I can say is that everybody is very busy now and that the next release will be one from Weapon X. Miss Twilight and me are also busy with some new music, but have no idea when it will be finished.
As for collaborations, I always like that as I have made so many records solo back in the days, I now really would just like to have some fun in the studio and prefer to work together. This is also true for spinning as a DJ. I like it better spinning back to back with someone as that guarantees for interesting different unique sets!
18) If you would leave hardcore, whom would you appoint to lead your label?
No one, it would die with me
No really I don't think about that now.
19) Shout out your legendary «Ruffneck message» to all hardcore fans in Russia.
Well right now it probably would be: Russia rules the hardcore partyscene!
20) Thank you very, very much for your time with this interview!
No problem, I just want to say, Thank you, thank you, thank you to all the Russian fans who came to see me / us. You have filled my heart with love and joy once again.
do svidanya, DJ Ruffneck
Огромный респект DAMIEN за интересные вопросы для интервью.
(с) Damien & OZZO Promo