Just back from playing the Superbeat Music Festival in Bangkok and straight into interviews, Halliwell explains the events behind his recent Twitter posts and why he nearly missed the gig due to flight delays. “I just got back [from Bangkok]. Had a nightmare with flights and scheduling. I was connecting through Finland… and the flight had been cancelled and it was all going to be rescheduled the following day at eight in the morning.” Luckily, a connecting flight to Bangkok and a prodigious amount of disgruntled Tweets saw Halliwell to the gig, days before the release of his single.
With a hectic schedule since his Bangkok gig Halliwell has been gradually obtaining feedback from his remix of the classic Bullet In The Gun, released last Wednesday. Halliwell has been grateful to hear it first from fellow DJs. “I’ve not seen to much of it but [I’ve had feedback] on Twitter, messages from people enjoying it,” he says. “Most feedback I’ve been getting has been creeping and crawling out of the DJs. Getting some good feedback from the DJs that have been playing it.”
Featured alongside Halliwell on the single is remixes from fellow DJs Gary Maguire and Refracture. Though Halliwell had his track listed alongside theirs he admits that the process behind Bullet In The Gun was segregated, with Halliwell not having contact with the other artists. “Everyone was doing their own sort of thing. I mean I was just one of the people asked to do the remix.” Though Halliwell admits he believes the segregation allowed him to bring his own interpretation to the song. “I tried to just put the sound in of now and from the other productions that I’ve done… [I took] the sounds that people seemed to sort of enjoy in the sets that I play and bring it into that remix.”
For Halliwell, road-testing a track is an essential part of finding what works and what doesn’t. “To date, I’ve been fortunate to have the time to road-test things. Which, to be honest, is very important for me,” he admits. “The more and more you get into production you get deadlines and might not have that opportunity to do it but I think by playing stuff out it gives you such a different feel from working on something in the studio.”
Having a chance to road-test some new material at Summerdayze on New Year’s Day, Halliwell compares the advantages of the festival gigs to smaller, intimate gigs. “I like both… I like the intimate gigs because people can see what you’re doing. You’re very close to your audience,” he says. “But on the flipside to that, if you play a big track on a big stage the reaction can be phenomenal. So they’re two completely different gigs, but I like them both.”
BY SHAUN COWE
