Inside The Vault – DJ Nex (Mark Archer/Altern 8) – (UK)
Mark Archer is and will likely always be best known for being one half of the old skool hardcore behemoth Altern 8. The band had a decent amount of chart success during the heady days of 1992 and their short-lived pop career took them halfway around the world.
The thing is, listening back to those tracks, and listening hard, the hardcore energy within those waveforms (and I’m talking about quantifying the term ‘hardcore’) is pretty much second to none. The choice of sounds and the structure of those tracks is immense.
But it was off the back of these tracks that Mark birthed his alter ego (and this is one of many) DJ Nex, releasing two EP’s of outstanding quality. The ‘Respect is Due’ and ‘Poundstretcher’ EP’s, released on Network Records sub label Stafford North.
With the ‘Respect is Due’ EP now celebrating it’s 30th Birthday, we caught up with Mark to ask him about the tracks and how they came about.
Mark! Please accept a very warm welcome to INSIDE DNB! How is life treating you right now?
Gigs are finally coming in at long last, which is great and we can try and get back to a bit of normality.
What was the initial idea behind Stafford North. There have been just seven releases on the imprint in 30 years, and two of them have been within the last two years?
I was recording a lot of stuff in 91/92 that we wouldn’t have been able to fit into the Altern 8 release schedule, so I asked Neil (Rushton, Network label boss) if I could start a label as a vehicle to get the tracks out.
You’re a Stafford native. It’s always been a big part of who you are. It was only natural that you used the name as a label identity, right?
There’s always a level of pride about your hometown, unless of course you hate where you live, but it was just a way of tying it all in with people knowing that Altern 8 were from Stafford, and trying to put the town on the map music wise.
If you can, set the scene for around the time you developed the DJ Nex alter ego and started working on the first EP. What was the state of play?
I was recording a lot of music myself, many of which became Altern 8 tracks as they were, or we worked on them in the studio in Stafford. Because Network records had a full release schedule with a lot of artists signed to the label, I needed an outlet for the tracks. Breakbeat hardcore or hardcore as it was known then was really coming to the forefront of the scene and was the style I was really into.
It just seemed to make sense to get the tracks out on my own label rather than sit on them.
The quality of the music on that first release is just off the chart (and I say that without bias. The music speaks for itself). What was your method for laying down tracks back then? There is quite a broad spectrum of influences on some of those tracks. The title track for example incorporates both acid and a slightly Italo theme?
I was actually using an Akai S950 sampler at the time with a Yamaha RX17 drum machine acting as the sequencer. I’d assign samples to each pad and program the drum machine with patterns and then put the patterns together to make a song. With me being from the midlands, the influences were coming both from the north and south so there’s a bit of everything in there, style-wise.
Fluid is a Moby/Beltram influenced Belgian Techno esqu belter. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said that was made in 1991?
That’s the first track that I recorded as Dj Nex and was probably late 1991.
The DJ Nex theme is one of my all time favourite hardcore tracks, ever. It just slays, and those drums are just so crisp and clear. Can you remember much about putting that one together? I mean, where did a producer even look for samples and sounds back in 1992?
I’d always wanted to use the blippy little sequence in the track which was sampled off a cassette copy of Electro 2, so that was kind of the start idea of the track but I did the drums first. I had a copy of a white label Italian album so don’t know the names of any of the tracks but there was a rather cheesy hip hop tune on there, and I sped it up from 33rpm to 45 rpm and the drums just worked.
The sub bass was a disco tom tuned right down but I’ve no idea where the piano chord came from and I wasn’t ever clever with naming samples so I could track them down later haha.
When I Come, I Come Ruff is another wicked tune. It wouldn’t have been out of place on a label like Reinforced to be honest?
The influence for that track was a tune by Nu-Matic on XL Recordings. It used a 303 for the bassline and had a heavy reggae influence so I wanted to do something in that style. It was brilliant to see the likes of Fabio, Micky Finn and Randall all playing tracks from the first EP, especially this track.
The tracks are stated as being recorded at La-song studios. Where was that, and what was it like?
Haha! I lived in a little cottage that my Mom & Dad owned in a village outside of Stafford called Gnosall. La-Song was just my bedroom set up (it spells Gnosall backwards). If you watch the very beginning of the infiltrate 202 you can see my decks in my room when I pretended to be a pirate radio DJ.
Could you enlighten us on some of the equipment you would have been using in 1992, and do you still own any of it?
1992 was the year I finally got an Atari 1040 ST to replace the Yamaha RX17 I was using to sequence. I had an Akai S950 sample, a Roland TB 303 and a Korg KMS 3 sync box. I can’t remember the mixer I had then, but it was only a small 6 channel thing, all mastered down onto a Casio DA7 portable DAT machine.
These tracks are available on the Altern 8 Bandcamp page. Did you feel the need to re-master them in order to re-introduce them to the market, and if so, how did that go?
The main reason to remaster the EP’s was firstly because people were asking if they were coming out again so there was a demand for them, but also the fact the second EP had 8 tracks on it so was really quiet. A remaster was the obvious thing to do really. Both EP’s were released as a triple record pack and sold out (which was nice) but I made them available digitally when Bandcamp started to do their Fee Free Fridays and to be honest, the digital and merch sales really helped out what with me not having any DJ work at all.
You’re still playing out. These tracks must still slam on a big sound system?
I didn’t really get a chance to hear them out much back when they were made as I didn’t DJ as much back then, so now I drop them as often as I can in sets and for tracks made in a bedroom studio on a couple of pieces of kit, they still wallop.
Looking back on your output during the early 90’s, it’s really stood the test of the time.
It’s amazing that the tracks are still played 30 years later and are still relevant, blows my head a bit to be honest because it’s not something I ever considered at the time. It’s more than I could have wished for.
So, moving back into the modern era, what is Mark Archer doing these days?
During lockdown I released the first Altern 8 single for 27 years which was a really big thing for me, and it went way better than I expected (all helped by some amazing remixes!) I’ve been working with Shadow Child who’s an absolute studio don on a project called M.A.S.C (basically our initials) and we have a new single out later this year on Pets Recordings.
There’s a chance I may start work on a new Altern 8 album but it’ll obviously be different to the last one, still with some trademark A8 sounds though.
How does making music the modern way compare to the days of analogue and Cubase?
You can do so much more these days and aren’t really limited at all really, whereas in the early 90’s you were confined slightly by the kit you had, you ended up making the kit do things they weren’t intended to do and sometimes invented techniques.
Finally then, where we can we next catch you slamming down beats?
I’ll be playing at a few festivals this year including Shindig, Flashback, Heal, Clockstock, Field Maneuvers, Mucky weekender and a few more.
Nice one Mark. Thank you for sharing both your memories and your thoughts!
