Artist Profile – Pacific – (Canada)

There is no doubt at all that Canada is a DNB hotbed right now. There is no end of talent coming out of the country, and Pacific is no exception. With a pedigree of DJ’ing and producing that goes right back to 1993, this fella has written some absolute bangers and is an extremely proud member of the Canadian scene. With Nightfall Recordings also keeping him busy AND a first rate regular stream schedule on Twitch, this is one fella to keep a steady eye on.

Hello and welcome to INSIDE DNB, please introduce yourself!

Hi I’m Matt and I DJ and produce DNB as Pacific.

So, you’re a resident of Vancouver, British Columbia? Is that your place of birth? Tell me about your home town!

Yup, I’ve lived here my whole life, born and raised, but I have English parents and have been fortunate to visit the UK most summers and  Xmas holidays growing up. I spent a load of time of time around Oxford and the Southwest, and more than a few nights out in the fields somewhere!

Vancouver is a beautiful city and will always be home though. I live about a 5 minutes walk from the beach, but get in the car for 20 mins and you’re in the Alpine.  It does rain a lot, but it keeps things green and is good weather for working in the studio!

The Canadian scene is so vibrant! There’s A LOT of talent up north?

It’s very healthy and always has been. Back in the 90’s Toronto had the biggest scene in the world outside of London, and there have been loads of incredible producers to come out of the tundra. Some CDN artists doing it for me right now are NC-17, Polaris, Gremlinz, Aaron Payn and Rohmz ,and of course Marcus Visionary, Rene LaVice and John Rolodex have been leading the charge for years.

You’ve been DJ’ing for a while now. How deep is your involvement with the ‘live’ side of DNB in Vancouver and Canada generally? 

I got my first decks in ’93 and had been buying records for a couple years before that. I got into jungle DNB via hardcore, so yeah, I’ve been playing for a bit!

We’re STILL in lockdown here if you can believe it!?!?  But before that there was a very healthy DNB scene here, with great events at least a couple times a month.  I used to run a night called Automatic at a club called the Lotus with my buddy Jay, and between ’99-’07 pretty much every touring DNB DJ passed thru.  The last decade has been a bit more mellow in terms of throwing my own shows (family life took over) but I was still able to DJ a fair bit, the year before lockdown I opened for Andy C, Chase + Status, the Worship tour etc…..

You own and run Nightfall Recordings. How long have you been running the label, and where did the idea come from?

Psidream and myself started Nightfall in 2008.  We had been working on music together for a while at that point with releases on Hardware, 1210, DSCI4, C4C –   a lot of the tech-ier labels around at that time.  We felt like we had really found our sound and approached a couple distributors and were able to secure a vinyl P+D deal which was such a huge moment for us at the time, I think people forget how difficult it was to get your own vinyl label with proper distro back then so we were both really stoked!

What’s the main music policy at the label? Does it reflect your style as an artist and DJ?

We generally use it as an outlet for our own material, so it features lots of our own work and collabs, and we both have a fondness for that rollin, tech funk sound.  Psidream and I are huge fans of Virus, Matrix, Ram Trilogy, BC etc. Those are definitely the roots of our sound.

And with that in mind, tell us a bit about your studio. What goodies have you got in there?

I’m a firm believer in whatever DAW you can use well is the best, and I find I can get ideas out the fastest in Ableton, but I learned to produce on Logic and Psidream and other producers I collab with use Cubase which I’m comfortable with too.  I use a few analog bits as well, I have an SSL Fusion and buss compressor which add a lot of nice warmth to my master chain, and I have a Distressor which is absolutely deadly on bass.  I even still have my old EMU 6400 sampler as well that I fire up from time to time to get a certain sound. I monitor everything thru a Dangerous D Box that flips between my speakers  (Nuemann KH310s) and Avantone mixcubes.  Don’t get me started on plugins or we’ll be here all night, although I have to mention ADPTR Metric A/B, which is a reference tool that allows you to hear and see using the visualizer how your tunes compare to others – that’s a game changer, nowadays I can get a mixdown into shape quickly just based on how it looks and sounds in that plugin next to other tunes I rate.

How long do you spend making the average tune, and what kind of things inspire you?

That totally depends on the vibe, some tunes I’ve finished in an afternoon, and some I’m working on years later after starting.  I’ve tried to become a lot more ruthless when working on music over the past couple years,  if I haven’t caught a vibe off something after a few hours I usually start fresh with a new idea the next session.  But even those days can help down the road, there’s lots of times where I’ll go back and listen to old projects and before scrapping them I’ll grab a synth or bass sound that might be sick but didn’t fit with the original idea.  With original music it always depends though. Sometimes it takes a while, but then after a bit a few things fall into place and you have something special that you may not have thought of to begin with.  I guess it comes down to patience and how long you have to work on something, or how long you can listen to a riff before you get tired of it.   If the beats aren’t quite right and it’s all a bit muddy sounding, but you wake up the next morning and the riff is still there in your head, it might be worth another visit with fresh ears.

You make a lot of bootlegs right?

That’s a great follow up question, cause I wanted to get into this a bit – I started doing the bootlegs because I wanted results, not in terms of commercial success, but in terms of just getting things finished and out into the world and played / listened to.  I’ll go thru periods in my life when I have less time to work in the studio than I’d like and doing the boots is a great way to finish up something quick.  The bootlegs also helped me understand how effective a lot of old hip-hop and house is with really just a few core elements of sound.  I kinda reverse engineer the boots in the sense that I try to build out the project using the same source sample as the producer of the hit used, then layer the acappella or whatever over that (and drums and bass of course!) rather than just sampling the whole song.  In doing that I found out so many huge tunes over the years were really good samples filled out with a good kick sound and a great vocal.  So I started taking that approach and instead of layering 4 or 5 drum hits on top of each other I’ll find one really good one that does what I want it to.  And trying to leave space in my mix so each element of the song comes thru loud and clear, nothing is competing with anything else for your ear to hear it.

And who’s style are you really loving right now?

Now we’ll really be here all night!! Actually, it’s impossible to narrow it down. It really feels like the last couple of years DNB has hit another golden age, the quality and the amount of good music coming out weekly is mind-blowing, and it’s amazing to see that there are still loads of the old guard at the top of their game, but also an equal amount of new talent with an anything goes attitude that really makes the whole thing seem so fresh again

What would the average week look like for Pacific? What other hobbies and interests do you have?

Family is the most important thing to me, so lots of time on the Nintendo Switch and hanging out with my daughter, also I’m Canadian so I watch A LOT of hockey!! Vancouver is a beautiful city and I live really close to both the beach and the mountains, so there’s always lots to do when the beats aren’t calling me, even if it’s just a walk down by the water to clear my head a bit.

Name three albums in your collection that might surprise us?

I love all music, everything.  I was an open format club DJ for years as my “day job” so anything goes really, yes, even the odd country tune haha.  I love seeing people enjoying themselves, and music makes people so happy, so anything that gets that result, I’m down with.  If it’s Sweet Home Alabama with the drums from Empire State of Mind looped underneath getting you off, I’m there for it!  I do have a killer heavy metal picture disc collection from my youth that I may get around to showcasing on stream one day too!

As well as the endeavours mentioned above, you’re also a regular face on the Twitch DNB scene. How did you come by Twitch and what do you think of it generally?

I found Twitch at the beginning of lockdown when like a lot of others, I was looking for a way to socialize via music that I was missing with no clubs or events to go to.  But even then I didn’t quite get it at first, I’d sort of play for an hour and it would be a set like I was headlining at EDC at midnight lol, just anthems and bangers, and I don’t think I even knew there was a chat at first.  An old friend who I’ve thrown parties with for years here in BC, Special Ed aka @The_Boiler_Kitchen had been streaming for quite a while on Facebook pre-Twitch so I leaned on him a lot for tech advice at the start, but the best thing I learned from him was one night after he’d raided into me, he texted and said “I just brought a load of ppl to your channel and you didn’t look up or say hi?”  and then it kinda clicked – it was the social aspect of the platform that made it special, not just another DJ playing another DJ mix.  So I went out and bought a mic and another monitor so I could view the chat while playing and it was off to the races. 

The platform has a community quite unlike any other in the DNB scene, right?

Absolutely, it’s so genuine and you can tell everyone loves the music so much, whether they’ve been into it for 25+ years or if they’ve just found out about it, it’s just pure enthusiasm and it’s been great meeting people all over the world who feel the same way as you do.  It’s also come at a time when people need connection more than ever.  And on a personal level it’s helped my music out so much, it gives me the same feeling as a big gig, where I want to finish music to test out and will work in the studio until the last minute before streaming, and then take the feedback I get from playing it to people and tweak the tunes based on that.

Could you discuss some of the highlights of your career so far?

Releasing on Ram is definitely up there, and working towards even bigger goals with them, they’ve always been my favourite label, so I’m excited for the future!  Playing a set before Andy C the day I had a tune come out on Program a few years back was pretty wild too!  And much much earlier on, writing and releasing music with Noisia was definitely a cool experience.

What plans have you got for Nightfall? Are you going to be looking further afield for artists? There is quite a large collective of unsigned acts in the Twitch listener community!

We’re always looking for new artists!  We have a pretty defined sound so we definitely look to keep things within that framework a bit musically, but like I said earlier, good music is good music so we’ll listen to anything, send it thru!  And are you ever right about there being a lot of great producers on Twitch, I get sent killer stuff all the time from people and always try and support on my streams when I can.

Finally, tell us a bit about the next Nightfall release and any other projects you have lined up for the future.

We’ve just released the “XX” Ep which is a collection of updated remixes from our back catalogue that we’re really happy with the end result.  The tune Runway was on our very first release back in 08, and was one we knew we could start a label with based on the support it was getting on dub within the scene at the time.  It was also fun re-working Bloody Fives which is a tune Psidream and I wrote with Matty from Concord Dawn back in the day.  And of course I have to mention the amazing cover courtesy of Grym, who’s done our artwork for years and is one of the best graphic designers in the game!

Thank you for you time Matt. Checking you on Twitch is always a pleasure, and I’m so glad you agreed to be interviewed. We aim to rep DNB across the entire Globe, so CANADA CREW, BIG UPPPPZZZZZZZZZZ!!!