The Melbourne-based Ballarat boy is clearly having a good day. He almost sings his answers down the phone and his energy is immediately addictive. It is clear that this is going to be not only an easy, but also an enjoyable interview. Before long our initial pleasantries have veered towards a full-blown conversation, but luckily we stumble upon Zala’s important first meeting with his Denzal Park cohort Kam Denny. Three years of critical and commercial acclaim down the line and Zala’s concedes, “I guess there was a lot of luck involved. A lot of guys approach DJs in clubs and hand over their demos and hope to get a listen. That is pretty much what I did with Kam (Denny). I was just very lucky that he had time to listen to it and that he liked what he heard. A couple of weeks later we started working on our first project then eventually we got a system going. Luckily we were releasing things within a year.”
With Denny already established at the time of their initial meeting, Zala was fortunate enough to find a musical mind that met his own. With the partnership quickly developing, they soon enough fell into a pattern that ensured the consistently high level of output. He describes their working process as follows, “Basically we’ll meet up together to do a melody of a remix or jam on an original idea. We will meet up and discuss the idea, then often we will work over the internet in our separate studios. Sometimes I will do a little more on the melodies and Kam will do a little more on the drums side of stuff, the rhythm. Then we bring it all together at the end and engineer it.”
With the partnership more than a little renowned for their re-workings – be it their take on Kylie (for whom they produced a mega-mix) or Lady Gaga (who opened her Monster Ball tour with their twist on Finally) – is Zala willing to reveal his favourite remix to date? “There have a been a few,” he sighs before adding, “I guess the Art Vs. Science one we have just done. It was a very musical track and it wasn’t just a blatant pop song or something. We were very excited to work on something so artistic enough. We were fortunate enough to work on some of the tracks for people we really appreciate like Dirty South and Avici.”
“I guess when we are in the studio we do have a bit of fun but we do try to be a bit more professional. When we play it changes depending on every gig.” With their working relationship of course extending over two very different forums, Zala and Denny have found that the Denzal Park is a lot harder to define structurally. Within the music creation process they only really have to rely on the two of them, live there is an extra ingredient – the audience. “Some crowds want you to behave yourself a little and some crowds want to be entertained, so we are willing to have a bit of fun and fool around a bit to help that process.”
“Of course for us the main process is the track selection and trying to move people with the music.” While the crowd might add the final dimension to a successful set, the musical output is of course completely within the control of the partnership – yet even within the set planning stage they have to leave room for movement. “We put a bit of thought into what we are going to play, but everything changes as soon as you step into the booth to play your first song. We carry a lot of mash-ups and bootlegs and things that are very tied into the production that we do and the remixes and singles we do. It sort of creates a very distinctive Denzal Park feel to our sets I suppose.”
“For the CQ show we are probably going to do a lot of the things that we would normally do, to give it the Denzal Park flavour. But we are obviously putting in a few extra tracks to contribute to the Italian theme of the night.” With the pair all set to get those booties shaking at CQ’s Taste Of Italy event, Denzal Park are determined to bring their own twist on to the evening’s proceedings. However Zala is not about to give too much of their game away. While he admits of the event’s organisers, “I think that they have got a lot of interesting ideas of their own about what they are going to be doing on the night,” Denzal Park are determined to find their own unique way to spice things up. “We will probably bring along a few extra bootlegs and things of the Italian nature that we will probably do up before coming in for the night”.
BY JEREMY WILLIAMS
