Matt Darey has been one of the pioneers of trance since its early beginnings in 1994 with the release of his first (Goah Trance) record "Li Kwan - Point zero" one of Oakenfolds pinnacle tracks. Since then the Matt Darey style has been a major influence on the next generation of trance producers such as Michael Woods (Who was trained by Matt), Above and Beyond, Darren Tate, Neo and Ferina.......etc.
"I started off making music back at School when I hooked up with my friend Jamie White. We formed a live four piece band, I was the singer Jamie played keys and we wrote most of the songs together. Fortunately there are no known surviving copies of the tunes we made!!!!! After a couple of years I went off to do a Degree in Marketing and Jamie went off to live in Australia. It was around 1992 when I started to get into the rave scene in the U.K. There was a budding Drum and bass scene in my home town Leicester...... I got right on board and started to make mad breakbeat tunes. I didn't really attend my degree classes much over three years. I knew it was just a way to delay getting a real job while I decided what I wanted to do in life. It was only in the last few months of the final year of my Degree that it dawned on me........shit......Final Exams.....Argggghhhhhhh!!!!! Each student had to do a final year thesis on a ficticious product. The only way I was gonna pass my Degree was to excel at this so I decided to make a real product and do what I love most......... I called it "The Marketing of a Rave record". I got a student loan and pressed up a thousand copies of my track "Overdose". I went round loads of record shops and raves giving out promo's and selling copies and within two weeks I'd sold the lot. There was a bit of a buzz going on from the copies I'd sold so I convinced a Distributer to stock it, borrowed some more money and pressed and sold another few thousand. I knew that from now on I wanted to make tunes.
About the same the same time Jamie's Australian visa ran out. He only went over there back packing and landed himself a massive record deal. Even so, the goverment threw him out of the country so it never got off the ground. Within a couple of weeks of him coming back to the U.k we started making tunes again and sent off demo's to all the rave labels at the time. The day before the BPI awards we set of to London to follow up our demo's. Just by chance we were sitting in the office of a very small record label playing our demo tape when some big shot from New York's Sire Records called Seymour Stien (the man who signed Madonna) rang the guy in the office.
He heard the demo in the background....the coversation stopped.....then he said "That sounds like a hit, I have to meet these guys. The next evening we met up, played him our demo's, explained the plot and he offered us a massive album deal.......it was like a dream come true...... almost........ we got loads of cash and spent it on Laywers, Big studio bills, producers, managers.....oh and of course we pissed some of it up the wall aswell.....who wouldn't!!!! Anyway, the whole thing never worked out...we spent more cash than we had but we learned a lot of valuble lessons and had both made the move to London. It was like rags to riches to rags.....and we were both skint again....more than skint actually!!! It was desperate times so it called for Desperate measures. I made a double A side record called Li Kwan - Point Zero/I need a man and signed it for 400 quid......not the best deal in the world but it kept me going for another month. Before long it was all over Kiss FM, Pete tongs essential new tune, One of Oakenfolds Top tunes........ It was catagorised as "Goah Trance" and that was where my venture into the world of making Trance started off............
Since then Matt Darey's remixes and productions have been responsible for many of the massive tunes that made trance a household name in 1999-2000 selling well over a million records with the Darey imprint. Go to the discography page for a full list of Matt Darey Productions and sound bytes. After selling over a million "Euphoria" albums: "Ibiza Euphoria", "Pure Euphoria" and "Best of Euphoria" Matt has been Djing all over the globe. Oh and Jamie went on to make the world wide smash hits: PF Project - Choose Life, MirrorBall - Givin up, Tzant - Sounds of the wickedness as well as the 3 Jays - Feelin It Too....not bad for two smalltown boys!!!!!!! After taking two years off from making music to travel from 2000 to 2002 Matts back "I needed to take some time out after 18 months of continious clubbing and studio work. I've now been back in the studio for the last six months and have many new tunes to be released so watch this space!!!!"
By John Bush
