Pete Kay: This is your sixth GU release; what has been the
relationship with yourself and the Global Underground guys?
Nick Warren: My albums are my life. I like to work with people I
trust, and so far the Global Underground have done a great job for me,
so I've never seen a reason to move elsewhere. We're good friends,
it's good business for all of us, so I'm more than happy to stay
there, and it's a privilege for me for them to have asked me again to
go my sixth album, so it's great.
Pete: It's a great label to be with. What was the process of
selecting the tracks with this particular GU?
Nick Warren: What I wanted to do on this album was to choose as many
unknown, unsigned acts as possible from all over the world.
So what I did was I sent out an eMail on the message boards and so
forth and asked for tracks to be sent, and I got thousands and
thousands of CDs from all over the world and I spent days and days
going through them. And I think I picked out some amazing young new
producers, people like Peter Martin and Derek Housing in the States,
Wyrom Christian from Hungary, there's Alex Talby from Russia, people
from all over the place that really are cool new producers.
Pete: There's thirteen different nations represented on this mix,
what do you think about the globalization of dance music now?
Nick Warren: Well I think it's more vibrant now than it's every
been. At the moment R&B is doing a lot in Eastern Europe and the USA
and South America and Asia and Australia and Europe, and it's just
really strong everywhere. I think a couple of years ago dance music
went through a dip where people were saying 'oh, it's going to die,
it's going to die.' But then over the past six or eight months or so,
the scene is really picking up again and the parties are getting
really good and people are really getting into the music again.
Pete: Why did you pick these particular producers out of all the
entries that you did receive?
Nick Warren: As far as I'm concerned they wrote the best tracks. So
it's as simple as that.
Pete: This has been the most diverse GU to date that you've done.
What was the particular thought process behind this mix, you know,
what were you going for?
Nick Warren: I wanted to do a mix that had a real energy through
different forms of music, from chill-out to techno to breaks, it had
to have a real energy and that's what I was trying to create in every
single track there.
Pete: How has 2005 been so far for you?
Nick Warren: Fantastic. I'll tell you something, you phoned me and
I've just arrived at the Glastonbury Festival in England, and I'm on
my phone in the middle of a field with maybe a hundred and fifty
thousand people around me…
Pete: Wow.
Nick Warren: So it's a very special moment for me.
Pete: Incredible. Were you producing before Way Out West?
Nick Warren: I did a couple of things. When I was working with
Massive Attack as a DJ, I did a remix for them of a French band and
that was the first time I went in to the studio really. And then I
worked on some of the writing on The Protection and that really sort
of gave me the bug for writing music. And so that's the time I found
Jody and we felt that we could work well together.
