Calvertron – exclusive Prodigy remix and interview | DJ Mixes

The Prodigy – Thunder (Calvertron Boot) (MediaFire)

He has a hard techno past, smashed Radio One as half of techno-bass merchants Twockers and is playing at Chew the Fat! ahead of his forthcoming Wearhouse Music release. We caught up with the very B-movie sounding Calvertron, who dropped us this hot new Prodigy remix, to find out more.

Hi. You’ve recorded as Alex Calver, Twocker and Calvertron. Which of these is your priority right now and can you tell us how the output of all three differs?

Alex Calver is my real name and the name I used for my releases since 2002. I’ve had in the region of 100 vinyl releases in various forms of harder edged techno, house and trance. I haven’t made any of that stuff in a long time.

Twocker was a collaboration I did with Will Bailey for about a year or so, we stopped working together about 9/10 months ago.

I started the Calvertron thing in late 2006 when I decided to produce music at a slower tempo but this took a back seat when I met Will Bailey and I put 90% of my production efforts into Twocker.

I have also started making stuff under the name Kalva. I just had a release on Toolroom’s ‘Leaders of the New School’. I have official remixes about to get released of tracks including Sander Kleinenberg’s ‘My Lexicon’ and Chicane’s ‘Saltwater’, and am working on various projects for labels like CR2, Twisted Frequency, Abzolut and Xtravaganza among others. This is a more techy edged sound in comparison to my Calvertron sound which I suppose would be classed as electro house.

You’ve had a fair amount of Radio One play. Which has been the biggest tune in helping carry you to a wider audience?

As Twocker we did a remix of the Armand Van Helden version of Sugar is Sweeter which got pretty big. It never actually got an official release as CJ Bolland wanted $10,000 from us to licence it. I heard It was nominated as remix of the year in DJ Mag for 2008. I’m not sure what position it came. I’ve been getting a lot of support from Judge Jules on his radio show just recently with the Calvertron stuff which is quite encouraging.

There’s been a backlash against the term ‘fidget house’ from the likes of Hervé and Jesse Rose. Is it a scene you associate with and how do you respond to their distancing from what seems to have become a really popular movement.

Tricky one to answer as I don’t want to appear to be negative, but I don’t really feel as though my stuff is accepted as fidget and in these kinds of cliques there sometimes seems to be a bit of snobbery. I don’t really care what my music is pigeon-holed as. It gets sold as Electro house on Beatport so that’s good enough for me. Maybe Hervé and Jesse Rose don’t want to be artistically limited? There also seems to be an explosion of similar sounding music that all have something or other to do with the word ‘Jack’ (says me with a label called Jack Knife, he he).

What’s next on your release schedule?

I have a remix out this week of a track by Funk Republic called ‘Oh’.

I have an EP on Lee Mortimer’s Wearhouse label due out on April 27th. Two of the three tracks are collaborations I made whist on tour in Australia last October, hence the title, ‘Down under EP’.

The next release on my label Jack Knife is due in May. It’s an original by one of my favourite producers at the minute ‘Gigi Barocco’ (by Blatta & Inesha) with remixes from the equally awesome Aniki and Bryan Cox. I’ve done a mix too. It has some crazy porno samples, pretty fun stuff! There are loads more in the pipeline including a remix I did of a Rico Tubbs track that I hope will do well.

As someone who is inspiring loads of young kids to get into production now, who were your heroes when you started back in 2002? Do you still feel any associations with the hard dance scene?

It’s a little embarrassing but my first few releases were on some bouncy hard house labels like Shock Records and 12inch Thumpers (under different guises). Still, it was a great achievement for me at the time and a dream come true to have my music pressed onto a record. People like BK, Andy Farley & Paul Glazby were a big influence in hard dance, but I was much more into techno, people like Dave The Drummer and Guy McAffer and a lot of European stuff (Tom Hades, Patrick Skoog, Gunjack) were a big influence. I became quite successful in the hard techno scene and was lucky to get to DJ all over the globe.

‘Doggy Style’, ‘Doo Doo’ and ‘Dwarf Porn’. What are you trying to tell us with your recent track names?

Maybe I’m a bit of a perv!

If you had to give it all up tomorrow, what would you do instead?

Move to California where I met my wife and enjoy the sunshine I reckon.