Hot off the decks: Clubpacity interviews DJ Modium
Unless you’ve been living under a rock here in Singapore, you’ll know one of the hottest acts on the current club circuit is DJ Modium.
DJ Modium
The Australian born DJ and producer has been heating up dance floors from Pangaea to 1-Altitude, peddling his signature mix of progressive UK house and thumping electro. We caught up with Adam to find out what makes him tick.
 Hey Adam, so to start off, tell us a little bit about your history as a DJ.
I originally got the DJing bug back in ’94. I was still in high school at the time, and I was really only messing around as a bedroom DJ and in production at school, but I got a real taste for it. Then some years later the day job kicked in, so I pulled back from doing the Djing thing for a bit.
Even though, I still kept in touch with the technology, it wasn’t until about 5 years ago that I really got back into it – the last few years have really seen me get into the producing side of things again and now have around 12 tracks signed to various labels; a mixture of originals and official remixes.
What are your genres of choice and why?
I play two main sounds really. First is a blend of electro-progressive house, your anthem type mainroom stuff, and when I DJ a big set, its quite layered. Depending on what mood I’m in, I’ll play with up to 7 inputs with beat machines, resamples, groove boxes and so on, on to of the normal CDJs. I like to try and blend new DJ and music technology with the more traditional style of using CD’s (and yes, I stopped playing vinyl live some years back. Love vinyl but the digital direction gives me more options I feel).
The other genre I love and play a lot of the classic bouncy UK house sound. I’m also a sucker for trance, but you don’t get to play a lot of it here, which is a shame.
I first fell in love with house back in ’89 when I was just a kid. Oddly it was a high school ball thing, and who ever was the DJ back then was playing this thing called house. At that time house had only just really come out a few years earlier so it was 4/4 but a different punch to what it is today.
Back then music you’d hear on radio was mostly rock and pop, and I was introduced by my friends to this thing called House music – I just fell in love with it.
What’s your opinion of the Singapore club scene at the minute?
It’s unusual! It’s almost as if Singapore has a club for every person, which can be good and bad. For clubbers it’s great because it means there’s a load of options, theres always something different. It also can mean that the scene is a little oversaturated.
It’s generally quite commercial which means that the risk is that commercial clubs at any given time could be playing roughly the same 3-4 hours of tracks so you need to be creative in your set selection and more of the performance side of thing.
But the vibe is great and the technology (sound and lighting) of the clubs is improving greatly. It’s got a way to go until it hits the clubs at at the size of say some of the big Jakarta clubs, but given its Singapore, it won’t take long.
The last few years I’ve been here the club scene has evolved a lot. I’ve seen how it’s gone from a couple of clubs to a load of groundbreaking venues that are really changing the landscape. Singapore has two clubs in the top 100 clubs in the world, so for a small island, its doing ok!
We are starting to see some real diversity coming in with clubs like Kyo making an impact. People are going there and saying that they love the music, even though it’s outside of the norm, which is great. I think there’s a growing influence of club styles and music from overseas too.
Over the years it’s only really been clubs like Zouk which have brought in the international names, but now other clubs are brining in different sounds and international acts from the US and Europe.
It’s an organic process and it’s not something you can push, but I have high hopes for the scene here.
Tell us a little bit about Dj Modium the producer
Well, I’ve been making remixes for years, focusing previously on top 40 tracks. While I enjoyed to art of making the remixes, it wasn’t something that got the hairs standing up n the back of my neck.
So for this year I’ve focused more on progressive, tech and classic house. It’s a bit of a mix of sub genres but I like them all so I’ll keep working on a broad set for a while.
I produce from a home studio and then use a proper production studio just outside of London to do all my engineering. This year I’ve had 5 tracks signed and have just finished another 3 over the past few weeks. All have been signed to European labels like Crazibizia’s Pornostar label, HouseSessions, Mjuzieek and others. And getting other producers and DJ’s creating remixes. So that’s a good feeling to have someone else like your original works enough to want to spend time on remixing.
What can we expect from DJ Modium going forward?
You’ll be seeing a lot more production for sure. I’m also doing a lot more gigs outside of Asia and playing through Europe, UK and Africa will become more common.
I’ll also be doing a lot around the F1 season, so between that and the new releases, there’s a load to look forward to.
By Richard Masters
(Source: news.clubpacity.com)
