Kniteforce Revolution

The History of Kniteforce - Chapter 4

Nov 22, 05:50 PM

Chapter 4





From KF1 to KF20, we were doing okay. I had big ideas, and I wanted to present fresh music to the scene. But we were always selling less than 2000 copies, sometimes as little as 500. The work of setting up and running a label has to be learned hands on, and experience comes with mistakes. I made many, but learned swiftly, simply because I loved what I was doing. My ambition was larger than my skill, and I think it remains that way. I also think this is key to success, because the desire to do better, to pass the highest personal level achieved so far, is a formidable drive. Money wasn’t a big problem, so I was able to weather the inevitable teething problems at the labels inception. Even so, I burned through the Smart Es money relatively quickly. I wasn’t wise with cash, but the profits I made were reinvested into the label, even when the ideas were bigger than the budget!





I had met Jimmy J at Labrynth through Bertie, who got to know him from being such a regular at the club…Jimmy played there most weekends, and played many of the Kniteforce releases. He owned a record shop in Camden, called “Remix Records”. He had released a track on Labrynth records, which was a great track, but badly produced.
My production skills had improved over the course of those early years, and I liked Jimmy, so we set up a label to compliment the shop, and gave it the same name and logo as the shop. This created a good synergy between Jimmy as Dj, me as label owner, and the Labrynth club to test new releases and get crowd response.
Jimmys view was different to mine – I wanted to change the music, push boundaries, create a new sound. Jimmy simply wanted to make a good tune that made the crowd go nuts. I will always be grateful to him for teaching me to hold back my more bizarre ideas, and focus on what SOUNDS GOOD.
The Remix Records label was a deliberate attempt to make a label which concentrated on the music as party music – nothing clever, just good tunes. It was imediately more succesful than KF, and we were both pleased with the results. When we did “Take Me Away” we finally had a genuine anthem…but it still only sold relatively small amounts, because the label was new. I was frustrated…I had Dj Ham creating some of the finest hardcore ever made (KF38 remains one of my favorite releases ever), Future Primitive consistently pushing the piano lines, Dj Force and The Evolution destroying all boundaries, and everyone pushing to learn and create…but the sales were small in relation to the work put in. I wasnt motivated by money, but I thought we all deserved more credit, and that people would like our stuff if they heard it. I wanted the label to be the best Hardcore label ever. The problem was we had no big names to draw people in. So we did the series of joint remix releases, imaginatively entitled “The Remixes”.


Lesson 6 – Everyone says they want to hear an original style…but its not true. If you want to do fresh music, first make obvious music – copy someone elses formula. As an example, look at REC004 and Fat Controllers “In Complete Darkness” – a blatant format copy. I did this to learn how to make an obvious release – and guess what? It out sold all my Luna C releases to that date. If you keep trying to release fresh music, no-one buys it. You run out of money (Kniteforce was on shaky ground by KF0021 as the Smart Es money was no longer floating the label) and then you can’t put out anything, because you are broke.
BUT, once you have drawn people into buying something as obvious as REC004, they will listen to something different with a more open mind. Then you have the money and the freedom to make whatever you want.


Lesson 6b – If you are a big name, and you make an original fresh tune, people say how original you are. If you are unknown and you make an original fresh tune, people say “its too strange”. As a newcomer or an unknown artist, the Catch 22 of the music business is this – if you don’t do something fresh, you get ignored, but if you do, no one buys it, because it is a risk, and most people are followers, not leaders. My advice is do what you like doing, and fuck everything else…you might not be “successful”, but you will be happy with the results even if you don’t get rich and famous from it…





The remixes brought a lot of attention to the label – and sold extremely well. Slipmatt did us a cheap price for a remix fee as he had always been supportive of the label. Plus I had bumped into him on more than one occasion as he was promoting SL2 when I was doing Smart Es. And when his remix sold well, we paid him extra. I think this is the most honourable way to do business. With the exception of Ramos and Supreme, everyone was really helpful, and I tried to put work to these people again. I also sneaked a few of our own artists as remixers – and it showed that they could hold their own against the big names. Things started to pick up…we started to do color sleeves with all our releases – we were the first to do this, I think.
I wanted the label to sound the best, look the best, and stand out from everyone else. Plus, my creative side had started to emerge, and the sleeve was a new canvas for me to play with.


The years flew by and the released kept improving. Until about KF35 we were doing exceptionally well. So I expanded. I set up Knitebreed for new artists – and it wasn’t a bad little label, only I didn’t have the time to look after it properly. And Malice? This was set up to annoy some of the German and Holland Djs, who had been saying that English Hardcore was easy to make, and their sound was was much harder to make, and therefore better. Bollox. Both styles are of course equally valid – I loved Ruffneck, Omar Santana, all that stuff, but the truth is, you could make a gabba track in 4 hours. Which I did – Malice 1. It sold around 6000 – almost all to Germany and Holland. Ha Ha. Malice 2 sold fuck all though…oops! But although I loved Gabba and the European hardcore sound, I was upset when the British scene started to copy the European one…I thought it was unnecessary. I thought (and still think) that a 4×4 kick sounds wicked, but a breakbeat sounds as good, when done properly. I loved listening to a Brisk set – hard as hell, followed by a Slipmatt set, all breakbeats and piano lines! But the scene was changing….And I was making the classic and predictable mistake of clinging to a past instead of embracing a future.


Here ends Chapter 4….

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