Raised in the South Eastern suburbs of Melbourne Australia on a staple diet of Hip Hop, Eddie (EK) began Djing from his teenage years.  Introduced into the graffiti culture, it became apparent that EK was more adept at mixing up records than holding a spray can. By the end of his High School years EK was sold on music as a career and so after completing Year 12 he enrolled in the Melbourne School of Audio Engineering and a year later graduated.

It was around this time that Eddie soon read an article on the revival of the old analogue gear that helped to craft the sounds of his hip hop favourites like Afrika Bambatta and Grand Master Flash and those early influential P-funk basslines. Soon after he brought his first analogue keyboard.

Being from Melbourne, you have grown up with bands and producers like FSOM, Nubreed, Phil K, Sonic Animation and the like doing well, what was your initial inspiration for starting to produce ?
Initially i was into hip hop and started off djing house parties and my friends would hop on the mic and start rapping. I suppose we thought we could start a hip hop group so i got myself an entry level keyboard and started playing around with beats and music. Then I got myself an education in audio engineering and slowly started buying more equipment for production. I was getting a bit tired of hip hop and started to get into the rave scene at the time and it was musically kinda the opposite of what i was listening to. So i started to blend my favourite elements of each music, tuff hip hop beats with trippy electronic sounds and that kinda lead my into trip hop, big beat and now breaks.

In terms of releases and remixes what are you working on at the moment and what releases are soon out ?
My next single is coming out on Meat Katie's Lot49 label, and I have a remix for Peace Division due out fairly soon. I'm working on my second album and have it nearly all finished so i'm hoping for a release later this year. And i'm also working on Forefront 2 which is a mix cd featuring all australian breakbeat artists. I've also been doing a few behind the scenes production for some friends of mine in a hip hip group and also the production on Sonic Animation's next single.

Can you give us a current Top-10 tunes ?
Umm, since i'm working on the Forefront 2 compilation all i've been listening to are the submissions for that comp. There's a lot of good australian talent out there! I've been listening to Prince lately but breaks wise, anything by Elite Force, Meat Katie, Chris Carter, JDS will be in my top 10.

As a producer yourself who inspires you musically ?
There's a lot of inspiration out there and its not just from music, just life really, and the mood i'm in generally reflects on the track i write. And I also listen to all sorts of music. Artists like Prince inspire me cause he is so versatile in what he writes, and i really like the soundtrack type music by artists like Hans Zimmer and on the flip side of that the Prodigy are one of my all time favourites along with Cypress Hill and LL Cool J. So its just music as a whole that really inspires me.

How do you rate the Australian breaks scene and who do you think will do well internationally ?
Really good, healthy and diverse. There are heaps of australian artists making really good music and getting overseas attention. A few names that spring to mind are Bass Kleph, Soma Rasa, Karton and Blueprint

From a DJ perspective what do you regard as the most important ingredients in a great set ?
Variety and a good flow. I pretty much like all styles of breaks so i always try to cover as much as i can, from the funky to the deep to the dark and tuff sounding breaks. I like it all!

 
Catch EK @ Bass Session 2005-1 - Sat Aug 13 - Pendulum/Concord Dawn/Dylan Rhymes/EK - Ambar + Gilkinson Dance Studio