:: BB INTERVIEWS ::

:: MYAGI ::

Myagi - On Labels, Laptops, and His Dad, the VIP Stu Fingerhut chats with one of Breaks rising stars In the past year and a half, Myagi (Andrew Mavor) has worked the breakbeat scene like a punching bag. Canada's most renowned breaks artist has cemented himself at the forefront of the big room funk sound with a string of releases that saw support from every major global player, from Freddy Fresh and John Peel through to Soul Of Man and Annie Nightengale... even industrial rock legends Front 242 have sent their compliments! Working under two names, Myagi and Sole Claw, Andrew has built a sound that is both forward thinking and nostalgic, with elements of techno, big beat, house, electro and funk all stirred into the mix. Myagi has done radio shows for the BBC, the CBC, and Crystal Method’s acclaimed "Community Service," and the Plump DJs featured "Sole Claw - Smartbomb" on their new Fingerlickin' album "Saturday Night Lotion." Myagi let his live show debut in May, rocking out headlining slots at North America's legendary nightclubs The Guvernment (Toronto) and Stereo (Mtl) in the same week before heading to London to export his sound to the UK.... a high energy mash up and blend of originals, remixes and personal edits that has got him pegged as one of the next North American superstars. What’s the breaks scene like in Canada these days? Really healthy! Personally, I find it a really supportive scene, and it's full of promoters who recognize the amount of talent there is in the country and go out of their way to push the sound. Its tapered off a little bit as of late, but no more so than in any other music scene, and it feels like things are improving. There are lots of opportunities to play nights that are not simply "breaks" which is great because its nights like that which afford an opportunity to expose new people to the sound, and they tend to be very anti-puritanical, as opposed to purely breaks nights which tend to have a lot of trainspotters and musical fascists. There's always been a great production scene but until recent years, UK reception of Canadian material was lukewarm...Canada is less guilty than many other places of the inferiority complex that most scenes have in relation to their UK counterparts, and that's reflected by the fact that there's traditionally been a very "Canadian" sound that’s totally independent of whatever is coming from the UK. You’ve released tracks under a couple different names. Does each name bring out a different personality in you and your music? At one point, yeah, but that was a while ago and I'm not so sure anymore. I think in the last year I kind of came to terms with my sound, something which I hadn't really done before. The Sole Claw name came about as an outlet for more aggressive sounds, at that point in time I was kind of ticked with the "death of big beat" and although I wanted Myagi stuff to do well, I felt I needed a second name through which I could get more material out without making people think I had gone totally nu-skool. None of the Sole Claw stuff was ever dark in my opinion, just a lot harder than my other material, but that was a couple years ago. Recently two things have happened; one, I play out a LOT now, and I've gotten to the point where, in order to really take it to the crowd, I play harder material than I could have imagined myself playing a couple years ago. Not dark, just pounding and energetic...deep funk for the big rooms. Obviously, this has affected my writing...I don't think I've ever aimed to write a "warm-up" track, I always want to write stuff that I'd want to drop at peak time. As my sets changed, my style changed. And two, over the last year and a half or so, the scene overall has gotten a bit funkier. I think people are realizing now that without variety, the vibrancy of a genre tends to wither. For a few years, breaks as a whole was pretty guilty of that...there was very little coming out that didn't subscribe to the same kind of ethos, and I don't think that did us any favors with the masses, who might have preferred a little bit more accessibility. A lot of breaks heads subscribe to that "a breakbeat is at the root of all music, so if you don't like breaks, you don't like hip hop, funk, etc,. etc." Personally, I find that to be a hugely boring argument. Yeah, OK, sure...its true, but a tune and a hook still count for something. We're at the point now where people are playing a good variety again, and tunes that have their own flavor help make sets more interesting. I remember realizing how far we'd come when i played a show with the Breakfastaz in Seattle and they played "The Rub Off" by the Plumps...I had finished a little earlier and had dropped a Breakfastaz tune...it kind of cracked me up, cause they're bassline dons and I'm kind of the funk guy. I was really happy after cause I realized how it was coming back to just rocking parties, not who had the rarest, most upfront tracks or who could play nothing but the hardest stuff. Were you a big Karate Kid fan as a child? HA! Not hugely to be honest. The name originally belonged to a punk band I was part of when I was in high school. I tried out a couple different names; Mod, Downtime, etc., but realized how much I liked the look and sound of Myagi. I hit a point where I debated changing it, but I'm still attached to it. There's actually a karate dojo started by a man named Myagi which I did some reading about at one point...I'm not going to pretend I know a lot about it, but I felt at least like there was a little bit of commonality, he kind of did his own thing and so do I, or at least that's what I like to think. Vinyl, CD or laptop? Laptop. I concluded I'd never willingly go back to vinyl after my first show. Every aspect of it is better...sound, feel, ability to play, and especially my own personal comfort factor. I feel more at home with a computer than with vinyl - I miss the tactile sensation, but man, it's so much more exciting to be able to do literally whatever you want, whenever you want. The writing's been on the wall for a while, and I'm not going to put myself at a disadvantage just to prove a point...there will always be a market, but the number of people using laptops as instruments is going to grow, not diminish. Every time I've played using Ableton, I've had a huge number of people come up after and say that they were amazed that it could work that well. The bottom line is that it's just a better experience for the dancefloor if you know how to use it well. People can be exciting or boring regardless of their medium, and that's much more important than what they physically play. Have your parents ever attended a club to hear you spin? Yup...a couple times. They both came to a show at the El Mocombo in Toronto a few years back...that was a big deal to them because when they were younger, a lot of their favorite bands had played there...the stones, etc. My dad was once ushered into the VIP room at Guvernment in Toronto because he showed up wearing a suit...he showed up with a buddy about the same age, and the bouncers kept asking "gay or straight?" I think that was probably a little shaky an experience for two mid-aged men. When you’re on tour, what’s the one thing you can’t live without? Half decent food. I'm not a fast food guy...I don't think I eat more than one burger a year and I try and keep it that way. I have a strange love of airplane food though, which I've never understood. I usually make a point of cooking whenever I go anywhere...I worked in restaurants for about 10 years, and did a few years of kitchen work, so I know my way around a grill or a stove. It's fun because where ever you go, there are different local items you can get that are hard to get elsewhere...I remember making a salad in San Francisco where I had someone grab some mushrooms for me - I only needed shiitakes or portabellos, but they came back apologizing that all they could get were chantrelles...I found this pretty amazing because in Ontario, that's like asking someone to get you a beer and them coming back with a 300 dollar bottle of champagne. I chalk that up as yet another reason to love the west coast. Other than food, its probably web access. I still handle all my own bookings, and there's a LOT of paperwork that comes along with that...I tend to get about 20 emails a day that require fast feedback, and whenever I'm offline for four or five days, I come back to a glut of emailing that knocks a good 8 hours out of my day. I’m sure you’ve heard the recent scandal of the CEO who spent $280,000 at a strip club. What’s the most you’ve dropped on a boys night out? A bit less than that...all I can say is that for a long time, I had a bad habit of picking up the pace when everyone else was calling it a night. I think that's part of the reason why I kept up with music....socially, most DJs are like that. Strip clubs aren't really my thing...they're a lot more fun in the states than they are in Canada though. In Canada, people seem to take it so seriously...everyone looks intense and is watching the girl like they're going to be tested later on what they saw. In the states I tend to go with friends and their wives, and that's a LOT more fun, because it's just pure debauchery...usually ends up with chugging gin at five am while wading through a harbor or some madness like that. Yo, I can use a drink. Do you have a favorite post-club beverage or routine? Usually, It involves a lot of gin and a joint. If there are ladies involved, so much the better. To be honest, I hate hotels...if there's an after party, I try and play it, and if sun comes up before the party's over, it's the sign of a good night. I don't really have an off switch. Unless it's part way through a really mad tour and I have to get on a flight, the end of my set is usually the start of my night. What’s been the highlight of your musical career? The Love Parade in San Francisco. I played three sets in 14 hours...one at the parade, one at an afterparty, and one at an after after party. The other guys on those bills read as a list of who's who in breaks, and it was a pleasure to get to see all those guys again. The crowd was immense, well over 100,000 people, and the clubs were bumpin...I really like playing at Mighty - Murphstar always puts on a good show, and my buddy Greg J always tears it up scratching while I'm playing...I'm thinking about adding him to my rider as he's a great guy to play with, and the crowds there eat the show up. What advice would you give the bedroom DJ or producer? Get your stuff out there...even if it doesn't get picked up, Even if you find out why a label won't put out your material and that's it, at least you learn something from it. Don't fall into the self-indulgent trap of thinking that no label is gutsy enough to put out your material...there are a lot of labels with a lot of sounds. If you can't find someone to put out a tune of yours, it's probably not becuase "no one wants to take a chance," it's most likely that you just arn't good enough yet. Learn, regroup, write more tunes. At the same time, do what you want. Never sacrifice your sound but stay open to what other people are doing. Learn where you come from so you can decide where you're going...the sounds of the 60s and 70s are present today in almost all music, and if you go back to early electronic stuff you can learn a lot. Most importantly, buy a real synth. Even if it's only to learn on and then resell. VSTs are great, but it's REALLY important to know how and why certain noises can be made, and that's a lot easier to do on a real CS-80 or SH-7 than it is to do on an emulator. What’s the future hold for Myagi? More releases, but more selective releases now. I write a lot, and I've been guilty of being a label whore. That's stopping, and I'm moving into a phase where I'm probably only going to release originals on one label, as I'm going to work on an artist album over the next year and a bit. In the meantime, I have some really fun stuff coming out."Cure for pain" on Splank! Just came out as of my writing this, and it's doing really well. The title track on that EP has been literally the highlight tune of every set I've played for the last six months, and the two versions of "Release the hounds" on the flip add a nice chunk of funk to round out the package. Angus Robinson's label Money Shot is about to drop a record of mine called "Dirty Girls," and it's going to be quite large. I'll let Angus do the promoting on it, but between the original and the Atomic Hooligan remix, we've got everyone from Freeland and Koma & Bones through to Friendly and Meat Katie giving props. It's exactly what it sounds like, a big chunky raunchy tune. There's always been a certain sexual edge in my tunes, and I love playing raunchy filthy stuff...expect more like that in the future. Also, I've recently completed remixes for Mantra Breaks out of Italy (The (An)Architects - Rock is my DJ), Unique out of Germany (for Malente - Like A Freek) and West out of the UK (Western Allstars - Bob The Bleeder)....each of these has gotten great responses and are all varied in their sound and feel, but all work a peak time floor really well. I'm doing a lot of touring now - Asia, Europe, North America, looks like Australia and some of the Middle East as well. As far as my career goes, I can feel things gearing up nicely, and it's been a good couple years. The global climate is much more fun than it was a couple years ago, and that makes it a pretty good time for someone like me, who plays mostly big, bouncy, idiotic music. I love it! :: November 2005 :: Myagi's latest release 'Cure For Pain' / 'Release The Hounds' is out now on Splank! Additional information on Myagi can be found at www.myagimusic.com

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