Thread: Boykz - The Unofficial Interview on Mystery Men - Inspiration/Space Bass

Before we do this, I must waffle on as a precursor as to how this "interview" came about.

I was delighted when Boykz, aka Euphoria, Heartless, Mercurial and one half of the Mystery Men joined this forum. As Mystery Men (2) - Inspiration / Space Bass (Vinyl) at Discogs was the second vinyl I ever bought, I decided to pm Boykz and ask him some questions about the vinyl and the label, Flyte, which he also ran with DJ Distroi (which with interest, it's sub-labels were Heartless & Prophet).

Boykz kindly answered my questions, and has given his permission for me to publish his answers on this forum... many thanks Boykz, your generosity knows no ends

Enjoy, I sincerely hope you find it as fascinating as I did:

----------------------------------------------------------------

Boykz: I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can but it’s nearly 20 years ago so the memory isn’t quite as good as it used to be!

1. Where did you get the (excuse the pun) inspiration [not who] to make that track?

Boykz: That’s a tough one because we never really came to write a track with any sort of plan beforehand. We usually started with the beats then added some melodies, bass and vocals till we had a good 4 to 8 bar section then built it into an arrangement. With Space Bass I already had the main melody and the intro vocals before we started then we added the beats and other stuff and did the arrangement together.

2. How long did it take you to produce?

Boykz: It was probably about a week for both sides. Basically Mark (DJ Distroi) would come round to mine early evening and we would work for a few hours and over the course of about 5 nights we would have a couple of tracks done. In the early days I didn’t have a proper mixing desk or DAT machine so we would then go down to Soundback (a local studio) and get the tracks onto DAT.

3. What equipment did you use?

Boykz: For Inspiration/Space Bass it was nothing more than an Ensoniq EPS16+ which was very similar to the Roland W-30 that the Prodigy were using at that time. On some of the other Flyte stuff we used a Korg M1 but that was just for piano sounds. Later on I added an Akai sampler, Lexicon reverb, Mackie mixing desk, a DAT machine and an Atari with cubase but I never really had loads of kit it was more a case of getting the most out of what I had. In those days synths and samplers etc would cost upwards of a grand so new kit was a real investment, not like today where you can do everything in software for free or very little cost.

4. How or where did you get the Flyte logo and label name from?

Boykz: The Flyte logo was done by a friend of Mark’s he also did the logo for Prophet Records for me. When we did the Flyte EP we just had the 4 tracks with no names, we had to go to the printers to get a stamp made up to stamp some details on the white labels, we were wandering round the town centre trying to come up with a name to call the EP and “Flyte” just came into my head along with the way of spelling it, we both liked it so it was the Flyte EP. When we decided to set up a proper label after the Flyte EP it just seemed sensible to call it Flyte Records. Funny looking back at stuff like that that we actually sat stamping records by hand! Those were the days.

5. Did you expect it to do well?

Boykz: I suppose we did because we had already done a few other releases by then which had sold well. We had most of the top DJ’s on our mailing list and a good relationship with our distributors so by that point we kind of knew what we were doing.

6. I presume the 1000 limited copies was due to budget/finance?

Boykz: It was something that we decided to do for Jungle Warrior/Darkside and we just stuck with it for all the Flyte releases. It kept things simple and I suppose we just wanted the label to feel a bit more exclusive.

7. How much did it cost you to release this?

Boykz: I really can’t remember but the figure of £750 rings a bell, we used to get stuff pressed with JTS who used to do us a bit of a deal.

8. Ever heard it in a club?

Boykz: Yes, it was always a good moment to hear something I’d knocked up in my bedroom being played out by someone. I actually got more excited when I heard one of my tunes on TV, that was in the days before there was 200 channels of nothing.


9. Do you feel priveliged to be one of the better producers back in the day?

Boykz: Difficult to answer that because I’m always really critical of my own tunes, nice of you to say though. I suppose looking back I’m quite proud of what I did bearing in mind when we released the Flyte EP we were only 18. It was such a different time and it was so difficult to learn how to make a track, I basically bought the Ensoniq EPS 16+ and then read the manual……..lots. There was obviously no internet and no one else I knew of in Ipswich to ask for help so there was a lot of trial and error and some quite horrendous mistakes that actually got committed to vinyl.

10. What's your association/love with the scene now, still go out and stuff?

Boykz: Vinyl Junkie brought me out of retirement for his We’re still not dead CD a few months back and I’m supposed to be remixing Free Me from the Flyte days for Future Rave Anthems 4 but the deadline is coming up fast and I haven’t found time to do it yet so that may not happen. I tend to dip into a few forums now and then to check out what’s going on and some of it I like some I don’t. I guess I’ll always just love the 92/93 era but a lot of that is just because there are so many good memories associated with the music from that period for me. Life is very different now and is centred around my kids so no I don’t really get to go out like the old days but then I haven’t got the stamina for it these days anyway.

I hope that has answered your questions

All the best

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

-

Many, MANY thanks to Boykz

* some of the pm has been edited

Nice of you to share the interview on here Swipez. Was a great read from an artist who produced some real class tunes (and still is!). Is always amazing to hear how modest some artists are towards their old tracks. Cheers!

this is really good, are you sure you did it ?

Originally Posted by oldskoolrules

this is really good, are you sure you did it ?

Ahhh, the northerner with a hangover who thinks that all Brummies are thick

Yes mate, I did do it

Originally Posted by swipezster

Ahhh, the northerner with a hangover who thinks that all Brummies are thick

Yes mate, I did do it

haha not thick just slow... love you, mean it!

amazing, really nice especially to read about the production processes back in the day, I would love more of this kind with other producers, djs of that time

Not surely I even have any of their tunes...?

DJ Distroi & Boykz - The Flyte EP (320)

come with it bad boy!

I've nearly got all of their releases on vinyl & i am a 1 in 2 holder of this DJ Distroi & Boykz - The Flyte EP (Vinyl) at Discogs

I will never sell it, i've played it once to rip it to wav & now it's in it's sleeve in a plastic cover safely with all of my other vinyl treasures that no-one will ever get

this was a good interview; but I was surprised you didn't ask him opinions on the MP3 status, of his choons being banded about willy-nilly and what he felt about it. My guess though, judging from his down-to-earth and friendly manner is that he wouldn't really be getting his knickers in a knot over it; it's just sign of the times I suppose.....

Originally Posted by tomahawk

this was a good interview; but I was surprised you didn't ask him opinions on the MP3 status, of his choons being banded about willy-nilly and what he felt about it. My guess though, judging from his down-to-earth and friendly manner is that he wouldn't really be getting his knickers in a knot over it; it's just sign of the times I suppose.....

Funny you say that as this was sort of an informal interview in pm and for my personal knowledge initially. With Boykz's permission I put it on here, Puffa liked it and asked me to do a couple of interviews for RR, and I discussed the mp3 situation with Spacework... seems the producer from BITD don't mind nowadays their music getting bandied about as it's all about the love now.

Think if we had the technology back then though, there'd be a few unhappy label owners!!!

Check out the interviews on RR my friend

Originally Posted by swipezster

DJ Distroi & Boykz - The Flyte EP (320)

Excellent interview,Swipezster!
It was nice to be unofficially part of that.. ehem..

Originally Posted by tomahawk

this was a good interview; but I was surprised you didn't ask him opinions on the MP3 status, of his choons being banded about willy-nilly and what he felt about it. My guess though, judging from his down-to-earth and friendly manner is that he wouldn't really be getting his knickers in a knot over it; it's just sign of the times I suppose.....

Thanks to everyone for their comments on this and thanks to swipezster for the interview/chat.

The whole MP3 thing doesn't bother me, I think it is more flattering than anything that my labels and tunes are on sites like this. The only time it does bother me is when someone is trying to profit from it, for example trackitdown were selling "Darkside" from the Flyte days as it was licensed to Kickin' for one of their Hard Leaders albums. To be fair to them though when I pointed out that the license deal with Kickin' expired in 1998 they did remove it.

Originally Posted by Boykz

Thanks to everyone for their comments on this and thanks to swipezster for the interview/chat.

The whole MP3 thing doesn't bother me, I think it is more flattering than anything that my labels and tunes are on sites like this. The only time it does bother me is when someone is trying to profit from it, for example trackitdown were selling "Darkside" from the Flyte days as it was licensed to Kickin' for one of their Hard Leaders albums. To be fair to them though when I pointed out that the license deal with Kickin' expired in 1998 they did remove it.

I think that's fair....I suppose it especially applies to one offs and white labels, where most times we don't even know who the original producer(s) were so can't even credit them, let alone find them for permission....I think also, it's a good indicator on the strength of what the scene was and provided that people "share" willingly 'rips' of their records and finds...we might have grown old, but we still retain the same values that we had growing up with the music!

Wicked Boykz

I just think it's excellent that people like Boykz are regular members on here, as well as Spacework.
I think this proves that not only is the oldskool love still here amongst us, but the producers are decent down-to-earth people who - to be fair - are generous and modest about their own tracks.

Anyone noticed DJ Trax is a new member?