Matt Darey has been one of the pioneers
of trance since its early beginnings in 1994 with the release
of his first (Goah Trance) record "Li Kwan - Point zero"
one of Oakenfolds pinnacle tracks. Since then the Matt Darey
style has been a major influence on the next generation of
trance producers such as Michael Woods (Who was trained by
Matt), Above and Beyond, Darren Tate, Neo and Ferina.......etc.
"I started off making music back at School when I hooked
up with my friend Jamie White. We formed a live four piece
band, I was the singer Jamie played keys and we wrote most
of the songs together. Fortunately there are no known surviving
copies of the tunes we made!!!!! After a couple of years I
went off to do a Degree in Marketing and Jamie went off to
live in Australia. It was around 1992 when I started to get
into the rave scene in the U.K. There was a budding Drum and
bass scene in my home town Leicester...... I got right on
board and started to make mad breakbeat tunes. I didn't really
attend my degree classes much over three years. I knew it
was just a way to delay getting a real job while I decided
what I wanted to do in life. It was only in the last few months
of the final year of my Degree that it dawned on me........shit......Final
Exams.....Argggghhhhhhh!!!!! Each student had to do a final
year thesis on a ficticious product. The only way I was gonna
pass my Degree was to excel at this so I decided to make a
real product and do what I love most......... I called it
"The Marketing of a Rave record". I got a student
loan and pressed up a thousand copies of my track "Overdose".
I went round loads of record shops and raves giving out promo's
and selling copies and within two weeks I'd sold the lot.
There was a bit of a buzz going on from the copies I'd sold
so I convinced a Distributer to stock it, borrowed some more
money and pressed and sold another few thousand. I knew that
from now on I wanted to make tunes.
About the same the same time Jamie's Australian visa ran
out. He only went over there back packing and landed himself
a massive record deal. Even so, the goverment threw him out
of the country so it never got off the ground. Within a couple
of weeks of him coming back to the U.k we started making tunes
again and sent off demo's to all the rave labels at the time.
The day before the BPI awards we set of to London to follow
up our demo's. Just by chance we were sitting in the office
of a very small record label playing our demo tape when some
big shot from New York's Sire Records called Seymour Stien
(the man who signed Madonna) rang the guy in the office.
He heard the demo in the background....the coversation stopped.....then
he said "That sounds like a hit, I have to meet these
guys. The next evening we met up, played him our demo's, explained
the plot and he offered us a massive album deal.......it was
like a dream come true...... almost........ we got loads of
cash and spent it on Laywers, Big studio bills, producers,
managers.....oh and of course we pissed some of it up the
wall aswell.....who wouldn't!!!! Anyway, the whole thing never
worked out...we spent more cash than we had but we learned
a lot of valuble lessons and had both made the move to London.
It was like rags to riches to rags.....and we were both skint
again....more than skint actually!!! It was desperate times
so it called for Desperate measures. I made a double A side
record called Li Kwan - Point Zero/I need a man and signed
it for 400 quid......not the best deal in the world but it
kept me going for another month. Before long it was all over
Kiss FM, Pete tongs essential new tune, One of Oakenfolds
Top tunes........ It was catagorised as "Goah Trance"
and that was where my venture into the world of making Trance
started off............
Since then Matt Darey's remixes and productions have been
responsible for many of the massive tunes that made trance
a household name in 1999-2000 selling well over a million
records with the Darey imprint. Go to the discography page
for a full list of Matt Darey Productions and sound bytes.
After selling over a million "Euphoria" albums:
"Ibiza Euphoria", "Pure Euphoria" and
"Best of Euphoria" Matt has been Djing all over
the globe. Oh and Jamie went on to make the world wide smash
hits: PF Project - Choose Life, MirrorBall - Givin up, Tzant
- Sounds of the wickedness as well as the 3 Jays - Feelin
It Too....not bad for two smalltown boys!!!!!!! After taking
two years off from making music to travel from 2000 to 2002
Matts back "I needed to take some time out after 18 months
of continious clubbing and studio work. I've now been back
in the studio for the last six months and have many new tunes
to be released so watch this space!!!!"
| Tracklistings
::Matt
Darey - Nocturnal Sessions
In August 2005 Matt Darey started the "Nocturnal Mix
Sessions" to broadcast his own mixes as a bi-weekly show
on DI.fm (without guest mixes). This didn't work well though,
some shows haven't been broadcasted. That all changed after
34 weeks when Matt Darey started a weekly radio show with
guest mixes. The new show kept the old name and "Nocturnal
34" on 1st April 2006 was the very first Nocturnal Radio
Show.
