Darren Glen Pitch Dark
DARREN GLEN (AKA PITCH DARK)
Darren Glen has DJ'd all over Australia and has had his tracks released all over the world. His track 'Automatic Machine' was voted #4 ARIA Club Track for 2007 and 'Sex Shooter' - Firefox (Darren is one half of Firefox) was a club favourite across Europe and Australia. He has mixed various 'Wild' compilations, has had tracks and remixes on: onelove, Hed Kandi & Ministry of Sound compilations. He was a host on LOADED - Austereo for 5 years (as Smash n Grab) and has remixed / had remixes by: Judge Jules, Hoxton Whores, Richard Grey, E-Smoove, Jay-J and most recently Syke n Sugarstarr.
Darren co-designs synth
Darren has now taken his production and creation to the next level by teaming up with plugin designers Angular Momentum to design one his dream pieces of software for the DAW/VST environment. Darren explains… "The sound of the Kick drum is the foundation of every great dance track. A production can live or die by the Kick sound if it is not selected correctly, compressed correctly, and seriously nailed. For years I've been implementing various long-winded tricks to take kick drums to the next level when producing and engineering. There's never been anything that is specifically designed for the complete job of making a Kick which is ridiculous. Now I've help design all these tricks and concepts into one revolutionary kick-ass VST instrument. "
Darren will also be providing unique kick sound presets for the Kicklab XXL, extracted from his successful releases and huge unique sample library collected from over 12 years of production. Covering House to Electro to Tech they will all have one thing in common, which is punchy, tight, deep, solid Kick to make the dancefloor rock!
Check out more at: http://www.amvst.com/index.php
Forthcoming & Previous Releases:
Can U Feel the Music - Pitch Dark & Christian Luke [Vicious]
We Got A Funk - Darren Glen & Ben Grayson [Vinyl Pusher]
Ticket to Ride - Syke n Sugarstarr (Pitch Dark Remix)
Live 4 Believin - Darren Glen & Rob Care
Curious (Pitch Dark Rx) - Darren Glen feat Tania Doko [Vinyl Pusher]
Be On TV - Pitch Dark featuring Lady Lauryn [Vicious]
Hope (In Your Soul) - Darren Glen [Tinted]
Automatic Machine - Sgt Slick & Pitch Dark [Vicious]
Forthcoming Gigs:
June 6 - Cargo, Adelaide
June 13 - Platinum Lounge, Mackay
July 4 - Planet, Brisbane
July - Bedroom, Gold Coast
August - Fusion, Melbourne
For more info on Darren Glen:
http://www.myspace.com/pitchdarkk
http://www.myspace.com/darrenglen
http://www.darrenglen.com
Darren Glen - Pitch Dark Interview
Tell me a little bit about your new releases:
Darren Glen: I have a new release on four different labels currently, "Cant You Feel The Music" on Vicious, "Curious" (feat Tania Doko) on Vinyl Pusher, "New World" on Unlimited Sound (DONS) in Germany and "Live 4 Believin" on the current Hed Kandi 2009 CD. Plus several remixes coming out of other artists! Once you start to get really good at production you then start to get faster at producing well. When I first started only 1 on 4 tracks I made would come out. Nowadays its almost everything I do that gets released.
Sex Shooter is STILL being played in clubs and at parties- how does this make you feel?
Darren Glen: I get the biggest kick watching really hot girls dancing on the floor to a bass drum I engineered and a synth sound I played. No-one generally knows I made that track. So I just stand there and think about how it could be better when I hear it. Its even better when sexy girls ask me for Sex Shooter as a request….once I said "do you know I made that track" to one of them, thinking she would drop to her knees but in reality she said "yeah right, SURE you did" and walked off so I just gave up on that and never fessed up to it again hehe…
You have remixed tracks for so many different compilations- do you have a favourite?
Darren Glen: The track for the current Hed Kandi 2009 Summer CD "Live 4 Believin" is one I'm very proud of. It's a really great house song with a great vocalist, great sax player, great guitar player, just all class. And it takes House a little forward from the traditional Defected stuff from a few years ago, its tougher in the percussion and the musical elements make for a great contrast.
Tell me about Angular Momentum:
Darren Glen: It's a company that made the best Kick drum sound module software Vsti plugin there was. But it had some serious drawbacks, that made it just fall over. So I contacted them and said "you know how close you are to something really special, all it needs is this…and this…and this…" and the main programmer Thomas was really impressed with my background and technical knowledge and ideas that have never been considered before in a percussion maker like this. So we decided to design Kicklab XXL together. There was many weeks of back-and-forth. But it is exactly how I imagined it should be. I added so many features and kept coming up with so many more ideas that we had to draw the line somewhere and they are going to be in Ver 2 I think now otherwise it will never be finished! I dream big.
Whose music do you admire most?
Darren Glen: The early synth music pioneers. Giorgio Moroder. Depeche Mode. New Order. They had so many dramas, it was so hard to make good electronic / dance music even 10 or 15 years ago. I know, I was there and had so much problem gear I had to deal with. So many things that could go wrong, so much money invested. You could get bogged down for weeks with technical problems which would just drive you insane. You would mix down a song after struggling with timing problems and sound dropouts and in the last 30 seconds you would have some midi crash and lose the clap sound for a few seconds and have to start again. Now it's a lot easier with all software.
What's your inspiration?
Darren Glen: The weirdest things. One time I was in this clothes shop and there was this mother with her two little girls and the mother was trying on clothes in the change room and the two girls were outside and bored and just started singing stupid stuff, then they started repeating each other and created this rhyming riff, and realized they were onto a good thing and started singing it louder and louder and then started screaming it and pulling each others hair. It was totally spontaneous. I wipped out my phone and put it in record mode and caught the last few seconds ..its ridiculously catchy, in a new track of mine, but I wont say which one or where!
If you could collaborate with another artist, who would it be?
Darren Glen: Elvis.
What is the story behind the Pitch Dark?
Darren Glen: It's my main Tech-house moniker that I produce tracks under for the label Vicious. There are several unreleased Firefox tracks, follow-ups to Sex Shooter. I'm not sure if they will ever come out, there were so many problems with the labels involved and fighting and one going broke and trying to do a rip-off version of Sex Shooter with our sounds and pass it off as ours etc. that it just became too messy and too frustrating. Artists just want our songs out. Labels fight over money. So I just called up my good friends at Vicious who are in music for the right reasons and was ready for a musical change anyways, something tougher and more underground. So Pitch Dark was born. Funnily enough the first thing I did I wanted it to be the direct opposite of Sex Shooter on purpose, it was called "Automatic Machine." and had one single mangled catch-line as opposed to a big female vocal, as it turned out it probably became bigger! Which was not expected. I like surprises like that J
For Pitch Dark, Darren Glen and Firefox gigs go to:
www.girl.com.au/whats-on-music.htm
