Kniteforce Revolution

The History of Kniteforce - Chapter 6

Nov 22, 05:53 PM

Chapter 6


So there I was. Where was I? I was in near to ¬£30000.00 in debt, and to be frank, I was shitting myself. How would I get that money? I mean if you owe ¬£1000.00 its a lot, yet manageable…but this was ridiculous, way more than I had or could get. I figured I could sell my studio, and I would get around ¬£10000.00, if I was lucky. It would help, but would not solve the problem. Plus with no studio, no more music…and while you have a studio, you can always make money. I only had one other thing I could sell.
The labels.
So I did.
It was a heartbreaking decision. It would mean that I would loose control over all the rights to the music I had made, as well as letting down all the artists, and selling thier rights too – which I owned automatically as they were released on my labels. It was the end of everything I had been building for the previous 6 years, it was in fact, the “End of an Era” for me and all involved.
Most of the KF crew were cool about it. No one was happy, but my closest friends saw what happened and could see there was no other way. People who came to the first KF site when it first went up all that time ago will remember the on-line guestbook hoo-har between me and Ham, and this was what it was about. Ham was deeply unhappy that I had sold his rights (although legally they were mine to sell) but being more reserved than some of the other’s, never told me, so the resentment built up, and was triggered by my writing this history. It was different for him than for the rest (except maybe Brisk and Dj Force & The Evolution) because he carried on making music and has lived all this time knowing that someone who he couldn’t trust owned his work.
I understand it, because it was the same for me, but most of the other artist’s stopped making music at this time…we all grew up, and as most could not survive on what the label made, “real” jobs beckoned!
So I sold the label to Death Becomes Me. Why? They offered the most money, plus the deal should have been sweet. I sold them the Kniteforce, Knitebreed, Malice and Remix Records rights, but NOT the Remix Records logo…I will explain that later. I would retain creative control over what went out on the label, design of sleeves etc, but the rights would be owned by DBM.
And it was okay for a while…although the music was nothing special after KF47 (this was the last track I funded on KF) the working relationship was okay. The trouble was I was depressed about the whole thing, and still burnt out. Plus the artists I was working with were upset because I had sold the rights, and as the label had gone down I could not pay the artists…and I pushed some of them aside in my shame and misdirected anger. DBM would not be responsible for my debts, of course. But I wasn’t responsible about them, and that made a bad situation worse.


So there was no-one to work with…except the new people, people I had met over the years through renting out my studio. Although many of them had talent, I just couldn’t get excited about the new sound, and although there are 1 or 2 tracks that I really like on the later releases (Refuse and Resist “Blow the Horn” is wicked) in most cases you can hear my lack of interest in the recycled ideas and sounds.
I also made some terrible decisions, upset Nick from Bang and Ham by using vocals that I had no right to use (the first Tailbone release used the “Cloudy Day” vocals. There are about 10 TPs floating about…) as well as various other misdemeanors. Because my accounting was innaccurate, Brisk thought I had ripped him off (I had not, but I dont blame him for thinking so – I proper fucked up, the fault was all mine) and released stuff that I knew was “average” at best…but I just didn’t care that much anymore.


I will point out now that Ham, Brisk, Nick and I have all talked about this stuff, and everything is good now. Thats what adults do :o)


Rule 9
Everyone makes mistakes – you will too. I found that when I was honest with people, they were usually cool. I have tried to always pay people what I owe them. Even now, if I find I owe money to someone from years ago, I pay them. I recently had this with Sy & Unknown. They never got their remix fee for KF44. I paid most of it a few months after the KFA label got into its stride.
I could have kept the money I owed people. No one would take me to court…but I like to be honest, for one, and from a business point of view, I will always be seeing these people again. If I rip everyone off, I will eventually have no artists. See Suburban Base for details.
Because I have paid everyone as soon as I could, it is not a problem for me to get the old KF boys in the studio again. They know I will sort them out. And I will. The phrase what goes around come around is apt, I think. People in this industry have long memories – and just because you haven’t heard about them for a while doesn’t mean they are gone. They have probably moved into a different part of the industry, thats all.


The relationship deterioated between DBM and I as money wasn’t paid to the artists or to me, and there was a lack of respect on both sides, until things became acrimonious. It didnt help that the decline in the sales within the scene continued from 1997 to now, and the releases I was making just werent good enough. The artists were not getting accounted to from DBM (ie, not getting paid). Plus I was unhappy with the label being grouped in with “Punisher” and “Happy Trax” which, in my opinion, were rubbish labels. So, after 13 releases on Kniteforce, 8 on Knitebreed, and 3 on Malice, the whole relationship broke down.

In the end, I had to take DBM to court twice (I won both times, eventually) and no-one was happy. Basically it was all fucked up.


The Remix Record’s Logo was sold to the guys that took over Remix Records the shop, because it would be stupid for me to run a label linked with a shop, when the link was gone with the owners of the shop. However, the shop did not own the rights to the tracks, I did (then DBM did), so all they got was a logo. When the shop was sold, the logo became the property of Alpha Majik. See Suburban Base for details (ha ha)


During this period I met and married a wonderful Japanese woman. When I realised I had mistaken pure evil for wonderful, I got a divorce, ha ha. I also set up the D’n‘B label “Influential” around ’98, just so there’s some cronological order here. It was pretty successful for a short time, but I grew weary really quickly, diversified too much, and really didn’t learn the lessons from Kniteforce. Instead, I repeated them but on a smaller scale. In general, I make all mistakes twice – then I learn from them. oh well :o) It didn’t help that I was still paying off my Smart Es tax and KF debts throughout the whole time that Influential was running, as well as renting somewhere to live and trying to keep my wife happy (an impossible task, I soon learned!). Next up, the birth of kFA!

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