Mark Knight

Interviewer / Editor: Alex Rose

PREAMBLE: Mark Knight is a Tour de force when it comes to electronic music heavyweights… He’s spent the last 16+ years building an ever growing underground music empire as the head honcho of mainstay independent label Toolroom Records. Writing and producing a never ending barrage of electronic music, from refined deep, soulful house and disco, to upfront tough tech house dance floor monsters, Mark continues to work with a who’s who of artists on his numerous projects. Suffice to say then.. we had a little bit to talk about…

BTG: Mark Knight, welcome along. Perhaps you can begin by giving us a brief introduction to yourself.

Mark Knight: Well, I'm Mark Knight. I'm the owner of Toolroom Records, and I'm a DJ and a record producer. And I spend a lot of time on planes.

BTG: Haha, great… So we are ultimately here to take a little look back and do a retrospective on your early experiences… First, introduction to house music, way back, and so on. And what's inspired this conversation is that you are honoured really with taking on a Mi-Soul radio show in the Saturday night slot, which was a slot held by the late great Mr. Paul 'Trouble' Anderson, a truly pioneering legend of the underground house and garage music scene and someone very special to you.

In a bid to pay our respects to the great man and indeed to an era of really early influential house music, I'd like for us to spend a little bit of time getting behind the groove, taking a look back at your story and how you became interested in the world of alternative music and how that led you on to your sound today.

Maybe you can take us right back to the beginning. How did you become aware of music culture and get yourself into music from a young age?

Mark Knight: Ever since I was 10, Saturday would look like this; I'd go football training in the morning with my mates and then we would jump on the bus and we would go into Maidstone. There was about five record shops in Maidstone then.

BTG: Wow.

Mark Knight: …And I would spend all of Saturday going between shops… There was Richer Sounds, Plastic Surgery, there was this news agent that sold some great records, they used to randomly get imports from the US. There was about five records stores, even Boots used to sell music back then.

BTG: Sure.

Mark Knight: I would spend all Saturday afternoon going from one record shop to another. And then i’d come home and in the front room we had a record player and I would spend Saturday evening, in a cabinet… well you could sort of get under it and I'd sit in it and just listen to all the music I bought that day and read all the credits. So yea, I've been buying music ever since I was old enough to catch the bus into Maidstone.

BTG: The first record you bought, Break Machine, is that right?

Mark Knight: Break Machine! Yea… and I've still got the seven inch somewhere!. Again, I've had this connection to HipHop and soul music since forever. I mean I probably still am stuck in 1985 now, with the greatest respect. Haha! I mean, most of the music I listen to is from that era because I just think it was such an incredibly influential time within youth culture. I still have that passion and I think that passion never leaves you. If that's you, it stays with you forever.

BTG: Absolutely, absolutely. Amen to that. I'm exactly the same.

Mark Knight: When we were kids at about the age of 11, there was a party on a Monday night at a place called Kent Hall in Maidstone and it was like a disco for all the schools locally. Now… the DJ… this guy could've played all the top 40 at the time , but he didn't. I mean, he was playing really early house music, LFO, from LFO. And this was like 1985, 1986. Proper underground music, y’know. And it just made such a massive influence on me.

And it's so weird coming from a place like Maidstone, which is a tiny little town, but there's so many people that come from this era that used to go to that night because it went on for a long, long time, and they have gone on to do massive things within dance music.

I mean, Nic Fanciulli was a little bit later. Dean Wilson used to go, (deadmau5 manager), he used to be there. Owen Ingram, who used to run Toolroom Records with us is now running a huge publishing company in LA. It just struck a chord and I think influenced so many people from such an early age, so it created a very credible scene right from the get go.

Kids in Maidstone, we didn't want to hear shit pop when we go on a Monday night and listen to the brand new record from LL Cool J!

I have such a passion for that time and it was great growing up within that era and being fortunate enough to be able to listen to someone who believed in that ideal as well. It planted an incredible seed in my musical history.

BTG: Tell me a little bit about how you became more seriously interested in house music then. How did the transition into that world occur for you?

Mark Knight: I mean pre sort of '93, I didn't really get house music. I went to Ibiza for the very first time on a lad's holiday in 1988 and we randomly stumbled across Amnesia and Es Paradis. We'd no clue what we were doing and had a bit of an Ibiza moment and we're like, "Oh my God this is amazing." And we took Es, and we were like… this is the best thing in the whole wide world and we were never coming home hahaha. And of course we did. But my real love at that time throughout the 80s and early 90s, that it was hip hop and soul and swing beat at the time. I was the biggest swing beat fan ever. And would spend most Saturday nights a club called The Starlight Club in Paddington .

I always liked bands like Ten City, who sort of joined the dots between electronic music and soul. And the more I got into that and all my mates were going out, we went to raves, we did things but I like this. First of all, we'd go out, we would take so many pills, we'd literally dance to anything. But then, you're like, my integrity and my heart really wants to find something more soulful.

And we started going to Garage City. And I met Bobby and Steve and the and all the guys involved. And they were the first guys to ever really give me any breaks. We used to religiously go to Garage City every week. And they did a DJ competition. I entered it and I won it and they gave me a set playing in the club. We forged a relationship and that kind of grew and grew and grew. I have so much respect for those guys and I owe them so much for believing in me and from a very early stage.

Around that was all the other soulful clubs. I mean, we used to go religiously on a Wednesday, to the Loft to Paul’s night every single week, we were there without fail.

BTG: Sure. Can you give us any holy grail tracks from that time period? What are these standout tracks that introduced you to that scene?

Mark Knight: I think anything by Michael Watford.

BTG: We're talking real US garage…

Mark Knight: That's what I fell in love with, real soulful house music and that stayed with me since day one. Obviously my things have evolved sort of musically, but my roots are totally embedded in that sound.

BTG: Sure.

Mark Knight: That's where the love affair began really, with house music, through the medium of Garage City and The Loft. And it was from there that I forged a relationship with Kiss because Garage City was in partnership with Kiss FM and I was playing at the club more regularly and they were like, "Look, there's a guy here, and he's not bad. We should do more stuff with him. Kiss gave me more breaks and eventually they gave me my own residency at the Hanover Grand, in London on a Friday night it was called Independence.

Every week we'd be playing with Erick Morillo or Joey Negro or C.J. Mackintosh or all the big guys at the time. I mean, the other clubs, hugely influential, Ruling, for us it was Garage City or Ruling. I don't think I missed either of them, ever.

When you look back through dance and the history of dance and you pull out eras, it's like The Paradise Garage and people who live through going to that, I think I'd be very proud to say that I lived and I went as I a member of Ruling, between sort of '94 and '98 when it was just at it's heyday.

BTG: Sure, sure.

Mark Knight: I think that probably is as influential and monumental within dance music culture as people who went to Paradise Garage or Studio 54. That period between 94’ - 98’..it was so magical, between Ruling, Garage City and The Loft, that was like, "Right, this is where I want to be, this is my love."

We used to book Joey Negro a lot and we've become really good friends, myself and Dave, just because we've the same sort of sense of humour. And I was making records and he said, "Look, you should come and work with Kevin, my engineer to help you finish off some of these records."

I went and started working with Kevin, we got on together like a house on fire and we started a production partnership working in Dave's studio.

Dave would say, "Come in on some sessions." He'd be recording brass sections and backing vocalists and I jumped at the deep end. I learned at that level, I'd gone way above my understanding, right the way through to recording different string sections and so on. It was a real baptism of fire. I would go in and sit there every day and Dave would be ask me, what do you think of that? Bounce ideas off of me and say, do you think that's the right snare? I hadn't a clue, but I'd blag it and I learned from the master.

It got to the point where Dave and I shared the studio, I made a few records and they got traction straight away. The first record I made properly Dave signed to Z Records. That was my first proper release on Z. He later moved to Crouch End so I inherited his studio.

I Jumped in at the deep end, learning from one of the best producers in the history of electronic music. It was a great way to start my career. The first track I ever released on a Z records, with a jazz funk band that we produced called Sensitivo and the track was called, This is Why.

I was working as well at the same time and I would literally rock up to work, go get my work, and go straight to the studio. My boss knew what I was up to, he was so good, he was so good with me. He let me get away with murder.

But that kind of funded the early part of my recording career. The fact that I could get away with getting a salary and be in the studio all day, but it got so expensive. So I took the view of selling up my house, with my girlfriend at the time, who is my now wife, she moved back to her mum's, I moved back to my mum's, she went to university and I invested all the money in building a studio in a shed outside my parents' house, which we called the ‘Toolroom’ where we used to put the tools.

So I moved all that out of there, built a studio in there and that's the story of how Toolroom Records began. My Dad was in music when he was younger, he's a drummer and they toured. They were quite successful in a band and they wrapped all that up and he went to business. We sat down and I said, "Look, I want to start a record label." Because I'd been releasing records on other labels. And most of them could run a bath let alone a record label.

BTG: Right.

Mark Knight: We just sat down and said, well, where do we want to be? And at the time, there were labels like Subliminal and Defected and we said look, this is what we want to be. So we sat and wrote out a five year strategy and plan and we stuck with it religiously, the three of us and here we are 16 years on…

BTG: Since then, as you have mentioned, you've pushed and pulled, grown, expanded, launched, developed yourself as a DJ, label owner, a 20 person strong team, as I understand at one point second biggest selling artist on Beat Port.

Fundamentally, you've developed your own little empire. First of all, huge congratulations on this amazing work with the Toolroom are doing, it's a fantastic mainstay and ever-present pillar in the world of independent underground music. We could talk a lot about the many endeavours that surround the Toolroom imprint, but in the context of holy grail, nostalgic house music… What can you tell us about the Second Summer of Love remix package I was seeing on Toolroom that dropped last August? Featuring a heady mix of remixes doing over what I understand to be one of your all time favourite tracks, right? It's All Right.

Mark Knight: Yeah.

BTG: How did that come about?

Mark Knight: We've got a random email saying, would you guys be up for signing it? And we're like, Oh my God, of course we would be!

I mean, that's one of the cornerstones of, of dance music, that record. Singlehandedly. We were like, yeah, that's amazing. And it just sort of chimed with what was going on, with the time. 2018, 30 years on.

I'd been there in 1988 so for me it was like, wow, we can't not do this. We have to do this and we have to this properly!

BTG: Amazing. Yeah.

Mark Knight: It's always a pleasure to work with records like that because you're given incredible parts. The the trick is to try and see if you can better it or at least do it justice, but yeah, it was the right thing for us to do, to tip our cap in homage to the very early part of house music in the way that we could.

BTG: Super excited to hear about a new project. So you've got a coming out in coming weeks, which is Mark Knight featuring Laura Davie and the Melody Men, If It's Love. That's coming out on Toolroom Records as a super cool, soulful, solid track there. Can you tell us a little bit about how that one came to be?

Mark Knight: Yeah, so, I've set myself the goal this year of doing two things. One, was getting back into the art of writing songs. I think too much music written nowadays is written as a means to an end and not enough love and craft applied to making the music itself. It's all about writing the record, keeping the constant flow of music going so you've got presence on people and thus generates shows. But I really don't feel there are enough records that are of defining now. I wanted to step up and go back to the art of writing songs and that's where I very much came from.

I wanted to go back and push myself as a producer, that if I was going to go into the studio, I was going to turn the computer and I was going to write something that I would be more than happy to play in 10 years time or 15 years time and say, look, this really represented me as a producer at that moment in time and hopefully to a point where people will look back and see it as part of the records that defined this era in dance music. Within the tech house genre, were I sort of exist, I wanted to bring that art back and also go back and revisit my roots in soulful music. I mean, I always try to apply soul in everything I do, whether I write a tech house record or a techno record or house record or whatever, it always has to be underpinned with a feeling of soul.

They were my two objectives this year, to do both of those things. So I had this piano group going, this backing track and I've put together a bit of a writing camp, and off the back of that I got to work with Laura Davie from the House Gospel Choir and three Uber talented top-line writers. They're called the Melody Men. They're actually women, and we got together in the studio and we just sort of jammed.

They've got such an incredible energy when you're in the studio with them, they just come up with these brilliant Uber catchy riffs and melodies. Even my son likes this record and my son’s into grime! …. he's walking around the house singing it. If I've nailed that I'm definitely onto winner,

BTG: It's a really nice soulful, solid, bouncy track. Bravo man. Looking forward to that one.

Mark Knight: Thank you very much. Yeah, that drops on the 27th of March 2020

BTG: Another project I'm really keen to talk to you about is an amazing remix opportunity you've had working with Jasper Street Company. Featuring Byron Stingily, Norma Jean, which is remixing Change - Paradise, the 1981 absolute holy grail disco cut. One of my all time favourite disco tracks. How'd you get the opportunity to do that one over? What a privilege. Tell us a little bit about that one.

Mark Knight: Oh absolutely. I mean, god, you don't get any better than Change! We got a phone call from my Mark Weiss over at Nervous Records saying they’ve got this cover version from Jasper Street Company. Again, they were like the holy grail of artists. I've always wanted to work with since day dot, and it's like wow, covering Change - Paradise?? how could you possibly turn that down?

And yeah, the parts were great. I mean the original was really cool and very musical, but I just kind of wanted to do something which paid an homage to the original yet still feeling modern and now and accessible and playable. I went back and remade all the parts and it was just a dream to work with really. I worked on this one with Michael Gray, doing quite a few bits together this year. I mean, you put all those ingredients in a pot and you can't fail to get it wrong.

BTG: It’s a really, really lovely tribute and it feels like a solid re-edit of an amazing classic. And it's fresh again. It's ready to be played. It sounds absolutely great! So great work on that one man. When's that one coming out?

Mark Knight: That drops on April the 17th on Nervous Records.

BTG: Fantastic, this has been an absolute pleasure… I guess, all that's left to say really is, thanks for your time today and for taking us behind the groove and telling us a little bit about your history. And Mark, please keep on doing what you keep on doing!

Mark Knight: Very kind. Thank you so much for having me, it's been a real pleasure to be asked to be part of such a great thing that you do.

This interview was brought to you by

Alex Rose for behindthegroove.co.uk