Evolutionary: Alan Fitzpatrick

Speaking of Drumcode you have the labels Halloween Fright Night Warehouse party on October 26th in London coming up. How do you find playing in London?

London is and always be a special city. I grew up in Southampton and so have an outsiders perspective on the city. I’m lucky that I regularly get to play there at Jaded and Fabric and think people who live there sometimes forget how good the scene is there. It has everything you need for a vibrant scene, great venues with excellent sound set ups, a cosmopolitan vibe and one of the most educated crowds in the world so I always enjoy playing in London. Halloween has become a bit of a tradition for us at Drumcode now and naturally will be in the highlights of my year alongside Awakenings here in Amsterdam. Last year people really went all out for the vibe and dressing so I’m looking forward to what this year has in store and I’ve got a few surprises in my record box that hopefully the crowd will enjoy.

One of the criticisms of the London scene in recent times has been its slightly lacking of after hours scene and clubs like Cable that used to host them seemingly increasingly shutting down. Considering the first time I saw you DJ was a Cable for Jaded I’d be interested to know what your take on that is.

Yeah it was a shame what happened to Cable but somewhere else will spring up to take its place. That’s what happens, in a city like London regeneration is bound to happen as new clubs sprout up to replace the ones that have faded away. I’d agree that there aren’t enough after hours events like Jaded in comparison to a city like Berlin but that does have a much bigger after hours culture and I’m sure once that develops in the UK we’ll see more of it.

Over the last few years we’ve seen an increasing variety in your back catalogue with various themes emerging in your productions. Is there a definitive reasoning behind your eclectic nature in the studio or is this just an organic process?

Well I have been writing music now for well over 10 years so naturally there is going to be a large difference in sounds from in between that period but in regards to what you would define as my sound would be the last 5 or 6 years,  I like to think my sound is developing all the time. I have a curious nature so I am always interested to see where I can take my sound next. I like the fact that I’d feel comfortable releasing on lots of different labels; I’m confident enough to take on different sounds. Naturally my focus will always be techno but that is such a wide net to cast that you can do so much with that it is hardly limiting as the boundaries of the scene are changing all the time. Evolution is very important to me as a producer and I constantly push myself to write not only better but different tracks. Just because something is a hit doesn’t mean I want to try and replicate that sound which is a trap I think a lot of producers fall into. You need to please yourself before you can attempt to please anyone else because if you don’t like it how can you expect anyone else to? It’s in my nature to shift my style every few months so that I may incorporate different ideas or main elements to my tracks. Last year I really wanted to work more with vocals and out of that experiment came tracks like ‘Skeksis’ and ‘Always Something For Nothing’ which on to do really well for me. At the moment I’m leaning to some more retro rave infused stuff and you’ll be hearing that in my upcoming productions. Tracks like ‘1992’ will be trying to capture the spirit and sound of going to a party with thousands of other people in a field and just having a good time.

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