London born DJ & Producer Radio Rental has a wealth of experience and many years undertaken in the game. With more than a decade producing and nearly two decades now Djing on the circuit under his belt, he is a man that has carefully fine-tuned his skills to a place now where he is fully confident in whatever aspect of the industry he turns to.
After discovering electronic music in the outskirts of East London as a young 11-year-old boy, he scrimped and saved for whatever music he could find in the record shops that took his fancy, in particular, the jungle and hardcore breaks genre. This enthusiasm to learn and study electronic music as a whole is something that has stayed with him for the last 20 years, and is a reason why his knowledge for various dance music styles is unfathomable to many, from garage to house, jungle rhythms, techno bombs and acid house, this artist likes to explore it all.
Under his previous alias Type 1, he had highly respected residencies at most major landmark London club venues as well as toured Ibiza numerous times.
His own sound is a mixture of house and techno with bold and brassy grooves paired with acid leads and wonky basslines, keeping things tightly underground.
He's been based here in this region for much of this decade, particularly KL since early 2015. 2017 saw him set up his first professional recording studio called Bad Hatter Studios in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia taking time out of the DJ circuit to concentrate on that.
He’s currently signed to such impressive labels as Mr.C’s imprint Superfreq with a current remix of Mr.C’s single Show Me released under his belt and a track on the recently released various artists Freq Traxx EP. This will be followed by a full 3 track EP out early in February 2019. He is also signed to labels such as Zulu Records, Black Lizard and Pukka Up.
The City List caught up with Radio Rental very recently:
How has the last year been for you and what’s been interesting for your music and production work over the last year and especially in recent months?
Yes, it’s been very productive and been busy working closely with Mr. C's amazing Superfreq label which has always been a label I'd like to be signed to. Firstly, I had a track out on their Freqtraxx VA EP last year called Deep Lana with my full solo EP being released at the end of the month; alongside engineering for Mr.C on 2 original tracks and remixing his only release last year called Show Me.
Tell us more about working with Mr.C and how did that all come about?
I've known him for some time and in fact was a resident at his amazing club The End in London back in the day. We worked together in 2017 on Show Me and then we were back in the studio a few months ago, this time I engineered another track for him and we also recently collaborated and now call ourselves WonkyTonk; the first track is called Wonk. We work really well together in the studio and are both on the same wavelength in what we are after.
So your Radio Rental - Get Mental EP is out later this month on Superfreq, tell us about the tracks featured.
It's a 3 track EP. First up is Sophia the Robot; it’s a concept sci-fi infused tech house roller which samples the famous android Sophia the Robot, followed by an even more banging techno track called Twisted in your Mind, finished up by a more deep and summery acid track to finish up a diverse EP with tracks that can be all played at different times of my sets.
You opened up your own studio here in Kuala Lumpur in 2017. What was the decision behind opening it here in KL and how has it been going for Bad Hatter Studios since?
It was always a dream of mine and subsequently, my friend's dream to set up and run a professional recording studio, so we came together and built our dream studio. I am from an audio engineering background and have a degree in music production and audio engineering. It's been a challenge; it’s a business that has to grow organically, it's not like we have a product to sell, so it's all through trust and results which leads us to repeat business and recommendations. We have had to change our business model over the past couple of years. We are now mainly concentrating on the movie and advertising market as well as voice-over works in different markets.
What have you got lined up for 2019?
DJing wise is going to be slow for the first half of 2019 due to studio commitments, I'll be hoping to be over in Europe and hopefully the USA second half of the year. I cannot do it right now due to the studio. I mainly spin at Le Noir KL these days, and I will be releasing more tracks this year under Superfreq plus a few remix projects in, so keep an eye out, I will be more active on the releases and remixes this year.
Describe your current sound?
It's definitely got a lot more underground and acid, going back to my roots. I'd call it real tech house, not the generic tech house that's labelled these days on most major download sites. In a nutshell, I'd call it - wonky acid tech house with concepts.
You can catch Radio Rental this Friday 8 February 2019 alongside fellow Brit and KL-based DJ/producer Circuitbreaker at Le Noir KL
