Dave Mac / MackTeck - My Year In Hard Dance

What's been your biggest achievement of the year?

Well its been a mad 12 months, the label has been going from strength to strength with every release. I'm always stunned people are liking the label and buying the tracks, so I guess the biggest achievement its managing to constantly find new and exciting music people are enjoying! From a personal point of view it would be a toss up between having a couple of my tracks under the MacTeck guise getting played on radio one by Kutski, or being commissioned to do my first ever official remix for Trevor Dans label Pitch Bend. Was great to see the MacTeck n Riggsy remix hit trackitdown and get featured!

What moments will you never forget?

Without doubt would be playing the first ever Electrik Shandy LIVE set for Puzzle Project. It was a huge step for me from messing about with Ableton to actually taking that into a club. It took a whole lot of planning and praying all my surfing of questionable websites wouldn't cause the lappy to die mid set!! But it all went amazingly well and was great to rinse out loads of really upfront ES tracks and mess about with them loads in Live.

Who's been your favourite newcomer of the year?

Described by my missus as more Northern than Emmerdale it has to be Kris McLachlan. He might love old skool sounding pianos and the Glitch plug in way more than any normal person should, but he has been on fire. I was lucky enough to sign Sensations to ES which went down a storm, but he keeps sending me more and more stuff and it just keeps getting better and better. At the risk of soudning very Kris like, his stuff is mint!! I can see 2010 being his year.

Who's been the artist of the year for you?

Picking just one is near on impossible. I'm such a musical whore I love so many different types. For the tech dance stuff its got to be either Scott Attrill whose album was jaw dropping, or Mac and Taylor are tickling my fancy. For a bit of driving trance, hard dance cross over stuff I am utterly loving Gary Maguire. As far as pure hard dance goes Matt Lee has been awesome, SQ, Adrenaline Dept. and of course anyone into hard dance and doesnt mention the boy wonder that is Technikal is a fool. So my favourite is one of the above seven!!

What's been your favourite label of the year?

Goes without saying Electrik Shandy has been tip top through out 2009! But if I had to pick a close second its tricky. Theres been some amazing labels but have to tip my hat to Ben Bennett and Impact, the output has been amazingly good all year. You know Impact always delivers the hard dance goods. But special mentions to Trevor Dans with Pitch Bend, only a few releases in and each one has been utterly wicked and well worth keeping your eyes open for!

What do you think has been the best track of the year?

Cause I've got the ego the size of a train I'd have to say BK - Revolution (MacTeck n Riggsy remix) its got bags of techy influences and a killer bassline. Otherwise it would be Pero ft Lucy Clarke - Addiction (Damage Effect) [Kye Shand remix]. Out on ES and has been utterly huge, such an amazing original from Pero, Lucy's vocals are brilliant and Kye on the remix duties really made it something out of this world. But I'm backed into a corner and pick a tune not connected to me or the label, Matt Lee - Wait a Second (SQ remix) Nick might be some classic music star, but this is what hard dance is all about huge slice of fun. Plus Matt's riffs always tick the boxes for me!

What's been your favourite event of the year?

Has to be Zoology vs Electrik Shandy earlier in the year. Is the only and only event ES has tied its name to this year despite loads of offers. The headline act was SQ live and was utterly blown away by his set. There was a good group of people there who really enjoyed it and got to meet up with a fair few artists signed to ES who I'd only had the pleasure of emailing before.

What's the funniest thing that's happened to you?

Dancing away to an SQ live set I had Mad Phil from Puzzle Project tap me on the shoulder and ask me if fancied doing a live set for them. One quick look at SQ rinising it out I thought yeah I can do that, so jumped at the chance. Then about 4 seconds later realised I didn't actually own any of the kit or have any clue how to put a live set together. Cue a frantic few weeks of working out how to do a live set and convincing the missus to let me buy all the gear I needed to actaully do a live set!!!

What do you have planned for the next year?

Just to carry on pushing the label more and more. I've made a few enquiries into perhaps putting out a compilation CD and unmixed CD with the label. I want to really get more and more people following the label on facebook, twitter, myspace and all those places to keep spreading the word. Personally I want to push the MacTeck guise and push the live set I'm working on with that, so fingers crossed I'll be popping up on a few more line ups!!

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