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TheBeatRanch.com - Interviews - Toryn


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Finishing off our March 2010 interviews we have Toryn D.

Toryn started his Dj career back in 1997 when a bunch of his friends caught the infamous "DJ Bug". It was not long after that Toryn's high energy, hard dance sets landed him gigs playing alongside, Nick Sentience, James Lawson, M-Zone, Paul Glazby, Marc Vedo, John '00' Fleming, Dynamic Intervention, BK, Lisa Lashes, Andy Farley and Ingo to name but a few. More recently Toryn has joined up with infamous Nick Rowland to create "Research & Development".

Now with out any further ado, Toryn D

Welcome to The Beat Ranch Toryn, this being your first time featured, can you give our readers a bit a background about you, where are you from and how is the scene out there?

Well Im from Cardiff but lived in West Wales for a number of years working off the coast on a fishing trawler, but moved back to Cardiff about 5 years ago to go to University to study music production, sound engineering etc. The scene here is mainly hardstyle unfortunately, dominated by the likes of Cally & Juice etc, but there are plans for a hard house/dance event next year which myself and Nick are putting together so hopefully we can put cardiff back on the Hard Dance map.

Do you remember your first hard house event that you attended?

Coming from a free party background I didn't really go to many Hard house events in the early years, It was mainly raves in quarries, fields, etc, Although thinking about it a mate of mine used to run a legendary nightclub in Swansea called the Palace, his event Inner Rhythm was probably the first Hard house "Event" I went to, they always used to go off :) Good atmosphere, good people, good music.

Do you listen to anything other then hard house and if so what is it?

I have quite a varied taste in music, love Drum & Bass, the Prodigy, Orbital, John Anderson, Enigma, pretty much anything really.

On the DJing front you have had the chance to play along side Nick Sentience, James Lawson, M-Zone, Paul Glazby to name a few, what has been your most memorable event to date?

Thats a hard one.............Id have to say Transmission back in 2002 we had Sterling Moss down to play for us, he was amazing, 3 dex & FX and jumping around like a lunatic in the DJ booth but managed to pull down the army camo netting from the ceiling and cover the crowd! The whole place was rocking tho, was definitely one of the best nights I played at. :)

Whats been your worst moment up on the decks, if any?

Cant say I've really had a bad moment to be honest, clubs supplying sub standard equipment, or really dodgy sound systems, that really gets up my back up had a few of those so i suppose you could count them as bad moments.

What is your favorite equipment to use while DJing?

First & foremost the beloved 1210's altho now they don't see the light of day anymore so I'd have to say the DJM 800, CDJ1000's and Ableton

If I were to dig through your record crate right now, what record would you not want me to see?

Ha ha um...... thats a good one, I have quite a collection so it could be anything but I'd have to say my old Mr Men album on 12" I've had it since I was 18 months old lol

Your label Digital Rehab Recordings has gone quiet, are there any plans to release more on the label?

Good question, in recent months I have taken a lot of time out to concentrate on my own production and creating my own sound, (When im not working with Nick) so Digital Rehab has been on the back burner for a while and this last year has seen most of my productions picked up elsewhere but I’ll be putting plenty more releases out on it in the future as myself and Nick are going to be using it as a platform for our "Research & Development" material this year, got some wicked stuff lined up for it but I cant say too much, you'll have to wait and see.

Who or what would you say have been an influence to your production?

The biggest influence I have got to say is a very good friend of mine Adrian Walmsley aka Dj Abstract He is the main reason I got into production, I was renting a room in his house back in about 99 / 2000 and he was running cubase on an old Atari with various outboard gear and after watching and working with him I was hooked! Others are obviously Nick Rowland, James Lawson, Alf Bamford, Matt Williams, Dom Sweeten, BK & Nick Sentience, Rob Yellowley, Ian Jay, anyone else I've had the pleasure of working with and work with in the future.

You recently started "Research & Development" with the infamous Nick Rowland, how did that come about?

Quite randomly really, I had been toying with the idea of moving into making Hard Trance for a change and then I met Nick, we did a few tracks together which have gone down a storm with DJ's & clubbers alike, Nick is writing a lot of Tech Trance these days with Sentience so wants to keep the "Nick Rowland" name away from Hard Trance so we decided to setup the Research & Development partnership.

Can you give us a run down of your studio?

Where to start lol! Well we're running a Mac based studio, although we do use some other apps from time to time but it is mainly Logic Pro that gets the hammering. Most of the outboard gear doesn't get used anymore as software has really come in leaps & bounds over the years and has practically made hardware obsolete.

Mac G5 Dual Core
Mac Pro Quad Core
Logic Pro 9
Ableton Live 8
Reason
Recycle
4x Alesis M1 Active
2x Mackie HR824
2x Wharfedale Dovedale SP
Novation Remote 25 SL
Emu Xboard 25
Lots of VST's, to many to list.

What hardware or software could you not live without?

First off definitely my studio monitors! I've just spent the best part of 6 months without them because of situations out of my control and its been hell to say the least. Secondly i'd have to say; Logic Pro! In my opinion its the best program out there production wise.

When you are not out raving what do you do for fun?

I go to the cinema quite often, I watch a hell of a lot of films lol, apart from that I'm either in the studio or in the pub.

Any last words or shout outs?

Big Thanks to you guys for having me on here :) and to everyone else for the continued support. Watch out for Research & Development in 2010 :)