News

Dan Miracle

Dan Miracle is giving away a free four-track EP featuring drum & bass, dubstep, house and breakbeat tracks to help promote his forthcoming Demonstrate project. We got the latest from him...

Please introduce yourself briefly...
I'm Daniel Jobbins and I record as Dan Miracle and I have been releasing material since 2001. I've worked with for many labels over the years including Reinforced Records, Intasound and most notably Valve Recordings.

Tell us about the free four track EP you're giving away and why you're doing this...
Demonstrate: Styles is the free sampler to my 2010 Dan Miracle – Demonstrate project. This will be given away free because: A) I'm feeling generous! (being the season 'n' all that). B) By giving this away and announcing this project now, it will force me stick to a deadline and actually release the full material next year. (Otherwise they will remain on my hard drive forever!)

Tell us about the tracks on the EP...
Jacuzzi Track is a chilled, liquid, bass heavy drum & bass roller, All I Ask is a dubstep track with guitar driven intro and nasty twisted b-lines, Coconut Bird is a percussive 4/4 house track with an energetic, funky, electronic bassline and Make Your Own Way is a dark breaks tune with a monster reese bassline.

What is the Demonstrate project about?
A few months ago I was going through my hard drive, CDs and old demo tapes. I found literally hundreds of tunes I've created over the past 12 years that have never been released.

I've also been building up a lot of unreleased dubstep material under my Citizen Snipz alias so I decided it was time to combine all of these tracks (plus other house and breakbeat experiments from the past) into one big project. Demonstrate has been chosen as the title as it is both a collection of my (revamped) demos and also a platform for me to demonstrate all styles I create.

The current plan is to release four albums on Miraculous Digital with schedules as follows: Demonstrate: Drum & Bass (Spring 2010), Demonstrate: Dubstep (Summer 2010), Demonstrate: House (Autumn 2010) and Demonstrate: Breakbeat (Winter 2010). Within each respective genre I aim to showcase a variety of styles across the board.

They will also include videos that you've made, when & why did you start making these and what can we expect?
Well, they're actually not quite made yet! I'm from an artistic background and I've always been passionate about animation. More recently I have been getting into VJing and video editing. I'm learning photography and film making at the moment in a bid to get into making proper music videos. I intend for this Demonstrate project to be a showcase of my works as both an audio and visual artist (with videos being the perfect way to show this).

You're relaunching danmiracle.com in 2010, what will be different about it?
It will be more of an interactive personal blog site that I can update regularly (and allow readers to comment and feedback on). I plan to record regular podcasts show, host remix competitions, and give away free sample packs and "early versions" of tunes I've made (tunes that have been released but have changed dramatically since the initial version). It'll also be the first place to go to hear my latest material and I plan to record some studio sessions where I'll be showing the weird (tracker sequencer) way I produce my music!

What are you currently working on in the studio?
Currently going through beats, loops and basslines, engineering sounds up and deciding which tracks to feature on each project. Basically making new tunes, scrapping / remixing the ones which don't really work (the usual!)

Done any interesting remixes recently?
I recently made a dubstep mix of Lemonde's Dead By Dawn for Valve, which is due out in 2010. I also remixed a track for Slaughter Mob (under my Citizen Snipz guise) called Techno Skank on Halo Beats, which came out in the summer 2009. I've created some special VIP mixes of my Valve material: Blazin' Fire (which is out now on Valve Digital) and Low Down & Dirty (not yet released). There are also a couple of unreleased remixes I've made for DJ Bailey and DJ Vapour, although I'm not sure if these are ever coming out...

What have been the highlights of 2009 for you?
So much good music out there this year that it's been inspiring to take a back seat from production and just listen to everything. Also hearing Emalkay - When I Look At You and Redlight - Feel So Good on the Valve Sound System was immense! Finally, performing as a VJ (for the first time) on the VLV Summer Slam night at IndigO2 in May was a great experience (stressful but fun!)

What are your other plans for 2010?
More art, more music, more video work and hopefully collaborating with other producers. Ideally I'd like to start playing out too but it's not something I've wanted to rush into. I'm more inspired by the whole live show aspect, especially now that I'm getting into visual creation. An audio / visual showcase like Chemical Brothers / Daft Punk with a band would be the ultimate goal, but that's no easy task!

Anything else you want to tell us about?
Hmmm, I randomly modeled alongside The Fuel Girls as a video game character for EA earlier in the year. I appeared in the Need For Speed: Shift game released in September 2009 (PSP version only) as a character called Diablo Montana. Lastly, look out for volumes 2-4 of the 4 EP on Miraculous Digital, continuing in January 2010.