Luke McMillan, a.k.a The DJ Producer has been a name synonymous
with the U.K. underground rave/techno scene for the last 14
years. His passion for high powered, super precise, rapid beat
mixing stems from his early passions of electro and hip hop,
he got his first turntables in 1988, and by the time he started
strode college in 1989 he was already starting to realize that
the music was changing, and being a skinny white kid from Shepton
Mallet, he wasn't exactly going to be the worlds greatest hip
hop DJ.
By 1990, Luke and a friend had already played a couple of
organised small events at the Glastonbury assembly rooms,
so they were kind of aware what the rave thing was about,
but when a fellow DJ friend of Luke's suggest they go to London
to check a full blown event out, This changed everything.
The night was energy at docklands arena, September 1990,that
night Luke entered the rave as B boy, and left a raver…but
more importantly, Luke realized that the one man controlling
these thousands of people was the DJ…"I can do that"
is what he thought…and the mission was on……….
Luke continued to get small slots at various clubs round
the south west, and at this time the illegal raves were starting
to kick off round the south west and Luke kept his ear to
the ground and ended up playing a lot of the illegal raves
at oxford, Stroud, Chipping Sodbury, and south west generally.
It was at one of these illegal raves that Luke met a guy who
was looking for local DJ's to play at a large rave that was
going to happen just outside Bath. This guy was called Paul
Shurrey and his company was Universe. Within 2 universe events
Luke was made Universe's resident DJ alongside Bristol's DJ
Die (now of Full Cycle fame).
Round this time Luke was also doing a club night for the Universe
guys in bath in between doing the larger universe events and
it was here Luke met his girlfriend Mellony (whom he is still
with), and shortly after this he moved to bath, which just
made the business more accessible.
In 1992 Universe staged their largest event to date "Mind,
Body, Soul and the Universe". And for this event they
had booked the Berlin techno DJ Tanith. At the time, every
DJ under the sun was playing break beat hardcore in the main
arenas, and Universe just wanted to air new music. Luke at
the time was also playing breakbeat, but had slight knowledge
of the German techno scene, and seeing as Tanith was the only
techno jock on the line up, Luke decided to go for broke,
back him up, and play techno. This in hindsight was a dangerous
move, as "Producer" at that time didn't really have
a big name, and at that time virtually no one was playing
techno, but just purely because he had back up in the form
of Tanith, he went for it.
As it goes that performance of "the DJ Producer at Mind,
Body, Soul and the Universe-September 1992" was only
28 minutes, but that set changed EVERYTHING. It seemed like
the world went Producer mental temporarily, the cassette of
the event sold nearly 10.000 copies and Luke got calls from
promoters nationwide to play techno-----which was mad seeing
as Luke was a breakbeat DJ the night before!!!!
Since these days of hedonism, Luke's career has gone from
strength to musical strength, and as the music evolved, Luke
really began to carve his name into the UK rave scene as one
of the first mainstream "hardcore techno" DJ's in
the UK. From 1994-1997/1998 Luke became a permanent fixture
in the techno rooms at raves like
Helter Skelter, Dreamscape, Vibealite, Club Kinetic, Resurrection
and Revelation,
And it was in this time period he started his venture into
the field of record production
PRODUCTIONS
During his residency at Revelation in Plymouth, Luke met Gordon
Matthewman of London's edge records, who was down as a guest
to DJ, and from this meeting Gordon Invited Luke to the studio
for the week. At this time Luke had absolutely no studio experience,
but he did know music, so accepted the invite. The outcome
of that collaboration was Edge Records #13, and represented
everything Luke was into at the time-1 track 303 and 909 driven
techno and 1 track sample ridden distorted kickdrum hardcore.
It would be a year before he made another tune, By 1995 he
had bought a computer, sampler, mixing desk, keyboard and
effects and Between him and a good friend, Chris Maxey, they
embarked on a mission how to make music themselves.
Within a short space of time, Luke had sent out demos to
various underground labels
Including Essex based Deathchant records, Scotland's storm
records, and London's
Skrewface records. Unbelievably all demos were accepted, and
since then has recorded for a number of labels worldwide including
Industrial strength (New York), Psychic genocide (Paris),
Impulsives (Bordeaux), Hardroks records (Amsterdam), Social
parasite (Torquay), North technology (Stafford), Bloc 46 (Paris),
Hardcore Mafia (UK).
The majority of his output from 1996-2002 was on Deathchant
which spanned 15 solo releases and 5 releases with label owner
Julian Cobb a.k.a. DJ Hellfish. The two of them now frequently
record together as Hellfish and Producer and have released
several 12 inches together, and also released 2 albums for
experimental label, Planet Mu entitled "constant mutation"
and "bastard sonz of rave" apparently hailed as
some sort of new wave b boy punksters, Producer and Hellfish
are now regulars across France and Belgium, Amsterdam and
Italy, appearing both together and separately. Luke's other
collaborations include regular recordings with France's Manu
le Malin, and these tracks take on a more dark and sublime
twist. And experimental drum and bass outings with his friend
and cohort Chris Maxey as "the coalition" Together
they have seen tracks released on London labels Hard Leaders
and Bacillus And one 12-inch release for Rebelscum.
Luke also finds the time to front his own small label, Rebelscum,
which encompassed all styles of industrial hardcore with touches
of techno, drum and bass, and cold Ambience, although only
having 13 releases to date, Rebelscum has already become A
name synonymous with the UK underground and thus has seen
several of the back catalogue tracks licensed to many cd compilations
across Europe. It is this track licensing that has also helped
to keep the DJ Producers name in the face of the overseas
public, and resulted in more appearances out there than ever.
In the last 3 years, Luke has started to produce a number
of trax under his real name,
Luke McMillan, more in the vein of serious underground European
techno. Releases have appeared on warehouse and north technology,
and received heavy rotation from the likes of Dave Clark,
Laurent Garnier, and even received airplay 3 weeks running
on radio one from Judge Jules. With new contacts made, Luke
plans projects for Germanys Highland beats and Paris's highway
labels in 2004.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Apart from all the hardcore techno in his life, which is the
majority of his work abroad, Luke, now being "from the
old school" regularly plays at old skool and revival
nights round the UK, and being more closely affiliated with
John Woods a.k.a. DJ Vinyl Junkie, owner of Warehouse Wax
records, the 2 share a passion for the true underground, and
regularly play together at Bristol's Absolute OldSkool, Also,
for the last 5 years, Luke has DJ'd for Energy 24 at Glastonbury
festival-this is a key event in Luke's calendar, as he has
attended most of the festivals since the age of 2, and DJing
at the festival is like a special vibe, and plays a less violent
breed of dance floor techno and early Detroit techno which
always rocks the house….
For the last two years Luke and john played oldskool sets
at Energy 24, which were roadblocks… roll on summer (again).
