Very few members of the dance community can lay claim to inventing an entire genre, but when it comes to techfunk, DJ and producer Elite Force can do just that. From his early beginnings hosting west country parties and student raves, Elite Force has gone on to be one of the most in-demand and widely known purveyors of his craft in the world. 

You are widely attributed as being the fore father of the tech funk scene. How would you describe it to someone who hadn't heard of it before?

The term was really intended as a deliberate side-stepping of that kind of gender-purism that frequently, and tiresomely states "you must only play one style - you must belong to one tribe". So really, tech-funk is a loose amalgamation of house, breaks, electro and techno, and as such it's more a DJ style rather than a producer's style.

You've been described by some as one of the most exciting DJs on the scene. Do you think this reputation is just?

Well if people want to throw compliments my way, I'm hardly going to slap 'em down for it am I? :) No, it's very gratifying to hear such comments if they are, indeed, justified!

What do you do to try and set your DJ sets apart from the rest?

I think long and hard about them, and I spend a lot of time every week tweaking and re-editing almost everything that I buy or get sent, so that my sets generally feature unique versions of tracks which have been customized to fulfill a specific role. Sometimes that amounts to little more than chopping out or extending the odd section, but quite often I do fresh EQs on tracks, and cut them to bits before putting them back together again - in those cases, the finished products are closer to remixes than re-edits.

Do you think your background of being a former Student Union DJ has influenced the way you play today?

I don't think so, although I've always been quite a magpie when it comes to music, which I think is how it should be. When I first cut my teeth playing student nights you had to please a really broad range of people, so maybe I never had the freedom to be so self-indulgent as to focus only on one tiny sub-genre of music.

The StrongArm Sessions radio show you do has an almost cult status. How do you view internet radio as a medium?

It's been a really important part of what I do for almost 6 years now - we'll often get upwards of 15,000 downloads on a show as it's now split across many different servers in different countries, and it's the first port of call for an awful lot of people who follow my kind of music.... the one thing that is a shame is how damned slow the industry has been in capitalizing on developing the technology to let people buy tracks as they hear them - links should really be embedded in every track and thereby every mix that gets aired, so that people can click a button & buy the download as soon as they hear something, but for the past few years the industry's chosen instead to focus on bleating about the death of vinyl rather than looking to the future.

Who's been your favourite guest on the show since it's inception?

Meat Katie, as he's about the only person to regularly come down & do guest back2back mixes with me. Much fun.

And is there anyone you've always wanted to get, but never had?

Oh yeah - there are plenty still out there ... Crookers, Sinden, Switch, Bassbin Twins, Underworld ... er, yeah, right! Actually the list is pretty much endless to be honest.

You've recently taken your Used & Abused label entirely digital. Why?

Because there is no future in selling vinyl.

Talking about the 'death of vinyl' is almost a cliche these days. Do you prefer to see it as a birth of a new medium as opposed to the death of an old one?

Absolutely. It's such a wasted conversation these days. The one thing I have realized recently is that I don't think vinyl will put on it's pipe & slippers and slip into this comfortable niche market retirement home as people have been saying for years. When the last remaining labels of note stop putting it out, the market will finally collapse completely and it will disappear veryquickly. I can see that happening within the next 12 months.

The falling cost of production software and cheap machines means that more and more people are turning to producing. Is this a good thing, or is the scene in danger of being overly diluted?

Well I'm all for the democratization of the creative tools, but I'm also very much aware of the poor standards that most new producers are achieving, and accepting. It takes a long time to learn a trade, and making music is a real skill. People want instant results straight out of the box, but it thankfully doesn't work like that with music - it is still an art form, and it's important that we retain our critical faculties and recognize that fact.

Other than the usual software and hardware, what do you consider to be a 'studio essential'?

A classy cup of coffee, and acoustic treatment panels.

What tracks are big in your box right now that we can expect to hear at Chew The Fat?

The Soulwax mix of 'Phantom' by Justice is massive - have done a re-build of that to take out much of the melodic element. Also big for me at the moment is Bassbin Twins's 'Woppa', Zodiac Cartel's "Devil's Music', Calvetron & Tallaght's 'Control Freak', a rework of the new Freeland track 'Hate' using the acapella from 'Driving Me Crazy' and my own retake of Robbie William's 'Lovelight' (I kid you not :)

And finally......what does 2008 hold for Elite Force?

Quite honestly I'm not sure at the moment. I've just come back off a run of 8 weekends out of the last 9 out of the country DJaying and whilst I have some amazing gigs, I don't want to be doing as much traveling as that next year, so I might cut back on my shows a little. Having said that I'm committed to doing the Future Music Tour in Australia in March, and then WMC, so we'll see. As it is, everything's changing in this industry and the traditional 'model' of 'make a record - do some gigs' doesn't really stack up any more, so I'm just in the mood to take stock & decide which areas to push myself in next year.