Phil K - Lo-Step to Burma

Phil K is undoubtedly one of Australia's most talented DJ/producers. For almost 20 years he has been mixing up a storm in Melbourne and more recently, has been showcasing his talents overseas.

Phil's been particularly busy of late collaborating with partner Luke Chable to create tracks under the guise of production duo Lo-Step. The pair has gone from making tunes on Phil's home computer to negotiating a record deal with Global Underground.

According to Phil, the whole Lo-Step project started by accident.

"We'd been working on Dark Alley with Ivan Gough and I was working on the track 'Roots' in my lounge room on my PC and Luke just comes around and one day and I said 'Luke, look what I've been working on,' and he says 'Oh that's fucken wicked! Can we put a bit of bass in- Can we do something with these drums-' So I said 'yeah' and it kind of started like that,'" he explains.

The duo were in no great hurry to finish the track until UK DJ Dave Seaman payed a visit to Phil while he was in Melbourne putting together a Global Underground CD.

"He just came over to listen to records and he had asked me to make a package of local stuff for him. So we were listening to music and he asked if I had anything and I told him I'd been working on this thing, which was still on my home computer in my lounge room and he says, 'this is a really good track. I'd like to use this on my Global Underground CD,' and I told him it wasn't really finished but that I'd burn him what I had on the computer as a demo and if he was serious about using it, then when he got back to England to give me a yell - and he did.

"So, I said to Luke 'we need to finish this track coz Dave wants to use it on his GU compilation,' and that was it really. Then we did that and we started getting all these phone calls from labels going 'we want to find this record,' so, then once we signed it off on a label it was a commitment for 3 singles."

Lo-Step's second single 'Burma' is due for release and similar to 'Roots' , it also has an interesting success story to tell.

"We sent out a 3 minute fade-in-fade-out demo mix of it to people overseas and some DJ's, just to give them an idea of what we were working on - and Danny Howells and Ashley Cassel lost it when they heard it and did their own edit of it. They cut it up and made a long version out of it and from that it got played on Radio One in the UK.

"It's surprising actually cause there's only about 10 copies of this 3 minute edit that went out anywhere and then last year when Sasha got out here the first thing he says to me is 'what can you tell me about a track called Burma-'"

When Phil explained it was a track he and Luke had been working on and Sasha put in an order.

"Well I've heard it and I've got this three minute edit and I'm going to be in Melbourne next week and I need you guys to have it finished," so that's exactly what they did.

Sasha asked the duo to hold back on releasing the track because he plans to use it for his next Northern Exposure CD. In the mean time Lo-Step are in the process of negotiating an artist album for Global Underground.

"We haven't signed any deals yet, we're just working on bits and pieces because obviously what we're doing seems to be working really well. We just need to put some time and effort into writing tracks now and if this album deal does eventuate then we'll have 5 or 6 tracks up our sleave that we can start working with and we can make another 5 or 6 for the album down the line."

Despite their international notoriety, Lo-Step have never appeared behind the decks together I get the impression from Phil that the duo aren't 100% ready for their debut set at Seven this Friday.

" I don't see this weeks gigs being the maddest live gig anyone's ever seen. I think people have to take into consideration that we've only just considered it and we haven't had much time to prepare something.

"I think we want to further develop it and I can't see Tags