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Australia's Simon Coyle on Melbourne, Techno & Making it Big

Author: Angie Ng /Jonty Adderley
Saturday, May 18, 2002
As well as his close involvement with acclaimed Australian label Wetmusic and equally well known promoters Agent Mad, Melbourne's Simon Coyle is one of the country's biggest "name" DJs. And while Agent promote such events for such organisations as Gatecrasher and Ministry, it's techno that dominates his DJing, including a residency at acclaimed Melbourne hotspot Fokus.

Stepping out of Australia for a brief South East Asian tour, Simon met up with Skrufff's Angie Ng recently at her Wow FM studio in KL (Malaysia).

Skrufff (Angie Ng): Although Australia's a lot closer than Europe or America, far more DJs from those places fly into KL, how much do you feel yourselves in competition with them-

Simon Coyle: Well Australia is a long way away from Europe and therefore it is quite isolated. It has been a hot spot for a good 10 years now in terms of DJs travelling to Australia with all the big names visiting. There are also all the huge events, some with up to 20,000 people. It has only been the last couple of years though that Australian artistes are starting to branch away from Australia. The way we've tackled it is by hitting Asia first because it's so close, there's a huge market and it's only an 8-hour flight away rather than a 24-hours."


Skrufff: How much is there a distinctive Australian vibe or sound that is common to Oz DJs-

Simon Coyle: "Melbourne has really developed its own sound and that's something we're quite proud of and we're really trying to push. And I think that is what is going to bring us global success. Melbourne is quite a techno capital, it's quite a minimal hard sound but it is different to a lot of the stuff you hear overseas, with its own distinctly Australian vibe. I expect Australia to be flavour of the month within the next two or three years. Every year there's a new country, for example, a couple of years ago everyone was talking about Sweden. That's our goal basically to take the Australian sound to the rest of the world."


Skrufff: How much has dance music nowadays replaced rock amongst younger Australians-

Simon Coyle: "Dance music is a really popular culture now, maybe not worldwide but certainly in most countries and definitely in Australia. But there are still very unique underground clubs with very unique genres of music being pushed, which is very similar to the vibe when I first started going out and I think that will never change. That's one of the beauties of our culture."

Skrufff: How do you prioritize between DJing and handling your promotion business-

Simon Coyle: "It's not something that I find a problem at all because each different thing feeds off the other and it's more about a lifestyle. We have the Wetmusik label, a DJ agency called Liquid Bookings and we do events and tours with both Wetmusik and Agent Mad. You'll find yourself not just working on one thing at a time because while you're organizing a tour, you're also organizing an event and you're hooking up a release at the same time. So it all works out really well together."

Skrufff: It seems like a lot of pressure..

Simon Coyle: "Yeah…I put the pressure on myself but that's just how it is. This kind of industry, as anyone will tell you, is not about 9 to 5 work and then going home and forget about it. Especially if you're promoting events you can't just switch off. You're constantly thinking about it, you're constantly working and worrying about it and you're on call 24 hours. But having said that it's not something that I regret at all because it really is a great lifestyle."

Skrufff: Would you drop everything if a dream DJ gig came along, say if you were asked to support Derrick May across Europe-

Simon Coyle: "DJing is my top priority and has been from day one and I aim within the next 5-10 years to have other people running all these things that we're organizing now, with more staff so I can concentrate more on DJing and traveling globally. I've played with Derrick quite a f
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