Contributions Made : Live Mixes
DJ Biography.
“Ive had enough of one dimensional DJ’s playing the same sounds all night, after all you have different ingredients to make a great meal don’t you, I wouldn’t have a three-course meal of chips in the same way I wouldn’t play two hours of back 2 back looped up banging techno! I like to play different sounds while finding the thread from one track to the next, Its important for me to get the dynamic right between the records. Derrick May once called them ‘mood mats’ and to me that’s exactly what they are. Who wants one mood, flavour, style, sound, all night?”
For Doncasters Carl Taylor it all started at the age of 13, inspired by listening to early Hardcore mix tapes “I told my mam I wanted a couple of decks and she said ‘what do you need two for? Your dad’s only got one’, the worse thing was it was my own money!” Thank god his dad (a northern soul DJ himself) understood the cause & took him in the car to get his first pair of decks. Like most DJ’s you don’t start with a pair of Technics though “looking back they where terrible, one was a hi-fi deck & the other was some shocking belt drive thing, which seemed to have a life of its own!” A familiar story for most DJ’s I would think, but at the time he was in his element, “I used to spend days locked in the bedroom trying to mix the same 15 records over and over in a different order, nobody showed me how to mix or DJ, but I didn’t give up. I was fascinated by the whole thing but I used to drive my parents mad with those hardcore records.”
This fascination soon led onto the need to make his own creations. After leaving school at 16, while working at his first job, Carl saw an advert for a Music Technology course at Doncaster college, “I didn’t have a clue, & didn’t play a note of music but I just wanted to know how you made a record”. While most people where in the student bar Carl got stuck in straight away, “I got to play with Cubase, a midi module and an Akai sampler, I would spend hours messing around sat with headphones on, just learning really.” In the college holidays he got a Job in a crisp packing factory in Scunthorpe, “I managed to hold out for six weeks! At least it made me realise what I didn’t want to do for the rest of my life, plus it enabled me to buy my first synth, a Roland Alpha Juno.” Six months later a drum machine / sequencer was added to the set up & basic tracks began to take form. Again hours where spent experimenting & generally making a noise in the Taylor house hold, however he still didn’t know much about the actual recording process which was needed to make a finished record, “I knew my music didn’t sound like what was on the vinyl I was buying, but I just didn’t know why.” It wasn’t till he got his job in a local call centre that he could really start to build his studio up, “I spent two and a half years in that hell hole, but it was a means to an end as they say, I got all my studio gear, bought a load of records and paid for a car, not to mention funding my new found clubbing habit.”
Although Carl had been to some clubs and events before, it wasn’t until Bugged Out! moved to cream that Carl, along with his brother and friends found their clubbing home “I think we only missed 2 events in over 2 years, the music, the sound system, the lights, everything was amazing, we were proper addicts! First in and last to leave.”
Carl got his first break when he won an F Communications competition to remix Laurent Garniers ‘Greed’ a few years ago. It was Garniers seal of approval, and the fact that Mary Anne Hobbs was playing his tracks on her Radio One Breezeblock show, that actually prompted him to start sending out demos to record companies. Bugged Out! responded, leading to 2002’s ‘Exile’ / ‘Space Disco’ 12-inch. “It was great to get some music out with them seeing as I spent most of my clubbing time in there.”
Since then he’s had another record out under the name Auterform on the Room Tone label and a follow up release on Bugged Out called ‘Static’ / ‘Compulsion’ which has again received a great response from DJ’s and press alike. 2004 will see more releases for Carl under both Auterform & his own name “Its going to be an interesting year for music that’s for sure, digital downloads are taking off and some independents are getting it together on that front as well” one things for sure, what ever the format or means of distribution this is just the start for Carl Taylor.
Discography.
Carl Taylor – Exile/Space Disco [Bugged Out]
Carl Taylor – Compulsion/Static [Bugged Out]
Carl Taylor – Who Is In Control [Dust]
Auterform – Diversion EP [Roomstone]
Auterform – Probe Droid [Auterform]
Remixes
Laurent Garnier – Greed (Carl Taylor Remix) [F-comm]