
Vital Elements is the solo artist name of Graham Warnock from Serial Killaz. Vital Elements' V2E Recordings imprint has reached its tenth release and to celebrate he's releasing a digital bundle entitled Double Figures featuring all ten releases, many of which are now sold out. We spoke to Graham to find out more...
What's the digital bundle all about?
With V2E I've always aimed the tracks at the dancefloor, the styles have switched up a bit over the releases but that's always been the goal. There are some things on there with some ragga flavours, a nice liquid track I made with DJ Velocity which was signed to V Recordings' Big Picture album and a large amount of dancefloor DJ tools that have received wide support over the last few years.
What are you currently working on in the studio?
A lot of Serial Killaz projects have just been finished: a Burial remix, a Tom & Jerry remix and a couple of tracks on the Top Cat album as well as the second instalment on our own imprint Serial Killaz. We also have another label coming called Killa Dubz.
On my own I have about five tracks coming out with Grid / Zombie, a few nice different things there. Look out for Cosmic Beings & Murderation for a different flex and coming on Zombie soon with my jump-up sound will be Humanoid / Straight Up.
Added to that I've been doing some private tuition to a select few and you can expect to see the fruit of that labour coming next year via a lot of collab tunes. All with different flavours too...
Done any interesting remixes recently?
All the Serial Killaz remixes are always fun, we've really done a lot this year so I'm very happy with that, big ups to my Serial Killaz production partner Tobie for that. I've also remixed Twisted Individual's Fleshwound which has been getting good support from a whole host of DJs. That will be released early next year.
What's happening on your V2E label?
We've just seen the vinyl release of number ten, Marshall Law / Ministry Of Attack, and following that is the digital bundle Double Figures.
Next up is some of the collab work I've been talking about. I will be giving debut releases to two DJ / artists that have been hard at work behind the scenes for years, DJ Pressure and DJ Ruffride. Come Down Selecta is a collab with Pressure and features MC Deadly and Energy Burst is my first tune with Ruffride.
I've been working with them both this year amongst a few others (shout to Paul D) giving them lessons and engineering their ideas. There's lots of tunes doing the rounds and a lot of my releases next year will be collabs with some of my students! I've even been venturing into doing dubstep and house with some of them.
What tracks, producers and labels are you feeling at the moment?
I've been into dnb since it started so I like too many to mention them all. Really liking a lot of the new jungle sounding stuff where my roots have always been! Original Sin's album is excellent, Jaydan has stepped right up and Serum and some of his boys are doing some really good things.
I also like a lot of the stuff Viper Recordings have been doing too and artists like Noisia, C4C, Spor, Break etc. Label wise I have to say Hype and Pascal are smashing it with all their labels and it was a dream come true to have our first Ganja Release with Serial Killaz this year.
What are your plans for 2010?
Serial Killaz is my main priority next year; another big Congo Natty remix will be coming, along with some new Congo Natty material we've done mixes for. We'll be looking to get some more original tracks over to Hype for Ganja, as well as some more remix work.
I like teaching and working with other people as I find two heads are always better than one so there will be a lot of collabs with the Vital Elements name too.
What are you most looking forward to in 2010?
I'm out in Canada in January so that's always good and I'm getting a tower PC instead of working on a laptop as I've had enough of it! Hopefully the fall and exposure of our corrupt economic and legal system but I won't hold my breath on that one...
Anything else you want to tell us about?
Just a big thank-you to everyone who has helped and supported me. Shout to Twisted, Gareth and all the Grid camp, big shout to everyone at Nu-Urban and everyone who has been through V2E Studios throughout the year.
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