On the 20th July 2014, BLOOP Proactive Arts Festival will be launching its month long program of art and music based activities, taking place across the unique island of Ibiza, and all completely free. Pretty good eh? Headlining the festival’s opener is the versatile London-based Riva Starr, alongside longtime collaborator Santos. The producer took time out of his busy summer schedule to give us his Five Steps, from the track that started it all and his friendship with Santos through to BLOOP and his rather peculiar Urban Essential!

 

Step 1: Origins

MARRS – PUMP UP THE VOLUME, I remember listening to a live mix from a club in Naples on the radio. I totally fell in love with it, the way the samples were creating an orgy of sound and still keeping it groovy and giving it such an edgy feel.

I totally felt that I had to understand how they did it, so after a short while I bought a sampler and it all started from there 🙂

 

Step 2: Introducing

My first release was on a friend’s label, it was a four-tracker of loops. I didn’t have that much RAM on the sampler so I worked with what I had… simple tunes but as far as I remember they were banging! LOL, probably not but who cares.. it made me confident enough to go ahead and improve my sound!

 

Step 3: Foundation

It’s pretty hard to pick one [release I feel made my name] as I’m quite eclectic and I’d rather choose two.. the first one is the BUBBLE EP on Dirtybird, it really put me on the map in the cool underground circles… Dirtybird is such a cool label and all the eyes were on me after that and plenty of cool gigs came straight after. The second tune is without a doubt I WAS DRUNK feat those crazy horses called NOZE. It was born as a bootleg/joke with a jazzy swing sample and it really did the crossover, my name has been thrown into the big game in no time, it brought me a crazy schedule of almost 200 gigs per year and all that…

 

Step 4: Present

I think Ibiza really needs some different kind of events on the island beside the usual ones… Bloop has been really brave to try and push it here… culture should always be pushed whenever you can and it’s paying off. I’m pretty proud of supporting the Bloop guys as they are so talented and are really bringing something new and fresh to the table! Santos has been a friend of mine for ages, we have done several productions together in the past as TROUBLE SOUP! And as SANTOS & MADOX then we moved to different countries and lost track for a while… and it has been a year now that we have started again doing things together… expect some damage soon!

 

 

Step 5: Future

I have a brand new release just out on my label SNATCH! called POLAROID BEATS EP 01 and the concept is to push the sound I’m feeling at the moment like instant sound snapshots… it’s a way to explore sounds and ideas… Next is an EP on DFTD the underground label of Defected and a few remixes. On a personal level I’d really like to go to the moon at some point.. let’s see.

The URBAN ESSENTIAL I can’t do without are my leopard skinned underwear.. I wear them for every special occasion..

 

Big thanks to Riva Starr for his input. For full BLOOP press details follow this here link via The Rest Is Noise.

 

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