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Interview with Rollin Connection - Keeping It Real

Author: Liz Charles
Wednesday, February 1, 2006
With a style and sound that are unmistakable, Rollin Connection have fast become one of the Melbourne underground's most treasured acts. Darius Bassiray and Daniel Banko, as a duo have gained much respect whether playing alongside their local peers or supporting Internationals such as James Zabiela, Habersham and Numinous, Jonathan Lisle and James Holden.

Through their promotional crew 'darkbeat' they plan to take their journey even further, and of course a whole lot deeper in 2006. Tranzfusion caught up with Rollin Connection to get the story "straight".

Where does the name Rollin Connection come from-
We are really into rolling music - which I guess in words is quiet difficult to describe- but to us its just really flowing, fluent and consistent timing of percussion and its relation to hi hats and snares in a track. One of our friends Luke Simpson came up with the name - we liked it so we liked it so we stole it!

For our readers who may not be familiar with your sound would you give us an idea of what it's all about-
Deep, techy, dirty and dark tech-house and the odd break beat mixed with percussive elements. I guess this is our fundamental sound. However, we always like to drop extremely twisted records in there too.

DJing partnerships are not too common. Why is it that you choose the play together-
We have a very similar style and have played together for a very long time, so it just feels natural when we DJ now. Even though individually we do have differed tastes in some respects we find that when we really hit it - it is often when one of us introduces a certain element it forces the other to balance it all out, and then going back to our fundamental sound which is on the deeper, darker tip. We pretty much buy the same records and are always talking with each other when we are DJing and discuss programming and where we want to take it, depending on the gig. I think it has been the last six months that we have really found a good balance and it seems to be working well.

You have become regular guests at Melbourne's most famous underground party, Sunny. A gig I am sure makes you the envy of many Melbourne DJs. What is it like to be part of this institution-
It is great to be a part of Sunny. It really is a one of a kind party. The resident DJ's, the manner in which it is run and the crowd is second to none. We have always been very fond of the more traditional percussive deeper "Sunny sound" and it is one of very few places where you can play the deepest records and not blink and eye. You don't ever have to worry "should we be playing records this deep-" So it is always great to play there.

Who have been your greatest musical influences-
Gab Oliver would probably be the biggest influence on us both in the beginning, in terms of the sound we developed, along with Phil K and the way he approached DJing and thinking outside the square with his programming. More recently Ozzie LA has always taken a keen interest in what we were doing, and really went out of his way to guide us and listen to us when we were a lot younger. He was the first to play my records to a full dance floor at Sunny, to give us the encouragement to keep going and belief that what we were doing was on track.

Habersham's style and productions have been a big influence, his consistency is unbelievable. We are really into a duo from Texas, at the moment called Opencloud who are making amazing music. Their brand new stuff is very aligned with what we are playing, along with all the amazing techy stuff coming out now.

Together with your DJing gigs you also run the 'darkbeat' promotional crew. What are your plans for 'darkbeat' in 2006-
In conjunction with Sunny, we have Lee Burridge playing an exclusive four hour set this month so we are really excited about that. We have both worked really hard along with the other residents to make that happen so that's wonderful. We<
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