What a year Gammer’s had! His tunes are filling the boxes of every hardcore DJ, no matter whether their sound is freeform, bounce or trounce and he’s just finished 2004 off in style, picking up the award for best breakthrough DJ at the Hardcore Heaven awards. "Winning the award felt really good but getting up on stage and being handed the mic was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I said about three things and walked off!" Modesty is something I became accustomed to when talking to 19 year-old Matt Lee. Although you are guaranteed to hear at least one of his tracks at whatever rave you’re at, he’s down to earth and totally focused on his music. "It gives me a fuzzy feeling hearing someone play one of my tracks.” He’s been producing tracks for 4 years now and has racked up a staggering figure of around 130 tracks, many of which haven’t been released.
His trademark sound of disordered, distorted beats, crazy, mind-blowing noises and awesome samples are sending ravers totally crazy. He says, "I love processing sounds in weird ways." His work really does standout distinctively from other producers work. The trax usually have a touch of the Dougal magic with a trance riff to keep the fluffiest of ravers happy.
Matt got into producing through a friend of the family who gave him some software. He used to play about making tunes and eventually made a track called ‘Bodypop’ which got played to Dougal. When he heard it he went straight round to Matt’s house to get him onboard. He was originally going to write hard house but Dougal persuaded him to write hardcore (thank God!) and their first collaboration was called ‘Jam The Nightclub’. When Dougal relaunched Essential Platinum he signed him up and let’s just say the rest is a fantastic history of awesome production.
The D&G sound really is a winning combination and so is their alliance: "Dougal has the knowledge and expertise and I love pushing the buttons and finding the innovative sounds. Technically he isn’t that good when it comes to computers and using hardware. He does get on the controls but him and computers don’t mix! When he gets in a room with a computer it crashes, he’s that unlucky. Musically he’s very good at mixing down, EQing and knowing how the track should be. At the end of the day all of the tunes I have done with him have done a lot better than the tunes I have produced on my own. He adds whatever magic it is that makes the ravers go for it. He has a big involvement. A lot more than people think. If he didn’t do anything I wouldn’t be working with him. Simple as!"
At the moment Matt is creating some absolutely stupendous freeform tracks. "I don’t get a chance to write the freeformy stuff very often but it’s my favourite. It has a lot going on but at the same time isn’t complicated. I like to have things quite clean and punchy and not too messy and overproduced, just straightforward. ‘Rippin’ Up’ is one of my all time favourites. It took a long while to complete but that was more to do with me doing what I wanted rather than producing something influenced by another track. It was more my own ideas."
Scott Brown is a big influence in his work and he spends a lot of time listening to his tracks. Most of the gabba he listens to and plays is by him, because he loves the quality and style of his production. He also gets inspiration from Stargazer, Jon Doe, a bit of Breeze and Styles and listens to hard dance albums to absorb ideas. And as for his all time favourite track, Peter Gabriel ‘Big Time’ ticks the box!
Matt has always wanted to get into music and the boundaries to what he can achieve are limitless. He’s made a name for himself within hardcore but his desire for the future is to create as much music as possible trying his hand at d’n’b, some hard dance stuff and maybe embarking on some more commercial productions. As for his future within hardcore, this year will see Gammer gracing the decks more and more around the country and if he has his way he will be working with Scott Brown and anyone else who will have him in their studio. His work with Dougal is moving towards a more German hard trance and hardstyle sound with their latest track ‘Make Noise’ being a perfect example. Matt describes the new sound as: "Loads of big strange distorted noises that not only sound different you can hear how clever they are just by simple distorting, filtering and time stretching." At only 19 he has already achieved so much, but this is really just the beginning for Gammer.
