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Features
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| Introducing NEM3SI$’s new label Infinite Resistance! | | Mindbenderz talk ‘Lord of the Rings’ and fishing, as well as the creation of their new album ‘Celestial Gateway’! | | Iono-Music artists One Function, Eliyahu, Invisible Reality and Dual Vision talk Robert Miles, kids, dogs and vinyl, while we chat about their current releases! | | Luke&Flex talk influences, the Irish rave scene, why Flex wears a mask and Play Hard, their new EP out now on Onhcet Repbulik Xtreme! | | Lyktum expands on his new album ‘Home’ – talking about his love of storytelling, creating new harmonies and the concept behind his musical works. | | Pan talks getting caught short crossing the Sahara, acid eyeballs and tells us Trance is the Answer, plus shares his thoughts on his latest release 'Beyond the Horizon' - all from a beach in Spain! | | Miss C chats about living with the KLF, DJing in a huge cat’s mouth, training her brain and the upcoming super-duper Superfreq Grande party at LDN East this Saturday, 16th September! | | NEM3SI$ - I Live for the Night – talks superficiality, psychopaths, and bittersweet success, ahead of a plethora of evocative, emotional, and passionate upcoming melodic techno releases! | | Psy-Sisters Spring Blast Off! We talk to DJ competition winner ROEN along with other super talents on the lineup! | | Blasting towards summer festivals with Bahar Canca ahead of Psy-Sisters Spring Blast! | | Shyisma talks parties, UFO's, and Shotokan Karate ahead of his upcoming album 'Particles' on Iono-Music! | | SOME1 talks family, acid, stage fright and wolves - ahead of his upcoming album release ‘Voyager’ on Iono-Music in February 2023! | | The Transmission Crew tell all and talk about their first London event on 24th February 2023! | | NIXIRO talks body, mind and music production ahead of his release 'Planet Impulse' on Static Movement's label - Sol Music! | | Turning the world into a fairy tale with Ivy Orth ahead of Tribal Village’s 10th Birthday Anniversary Presents: The World Lounge Project | | The Psy-Sisters chat about music, achievements, aspirations and the 10-Year Anniversary Party - 18/12/22! | | A decade of dance music with Daniel Lesden | | Earth Needs a Rebirth! Discussions with Psy-Trance Artist Numayma | | Taking a Journey Through Time with Domino | | New Techno Rising Star DKLUB talks about his debut release White Rock on Onhcet Republik! | | PAN expands on many things including his new album 'Hyperbolic Oxymoron' due for release on the 14th April 2022 on PsyWorld Records! | | Psibindi talks all things music including her new collaborative EP 'Sentient Rays' on Aphid Records, her band Sentience Machine and 10 years of Psy-Sisters! |
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Interview with Paul Glazby
Reported by Ru Curthoys
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Submitted 14-01-07 16:39
“You know what I like about Paul Glazby? He plays hard, and he looks hard too, he really suits his music.” These sentiments were offered to me by a friend as we watched Mr Glazby play recently, and I could merely nod in agreement. Glazby, like his music, is tough, uncompromising, no-nonsense. Somehow, you really don’t expect Paul Glazby to be the sort of man to tell puns straight out of a kid’s joke-book…
“Put your thumb and index finger together, shake your hand and growl — that’s a Vicious Circle!” laughs Paul, shaking his head. That little visual joke is how the world’s biggest pure hard-house label got its name. In the six years since its inception, Vicious Circle has emerged as a truly powerful brand in a saturated market and the label continues to go from strength to strength. Never compromising on quality, the VC style is as immaculate as the VC substance. And to many, Vicious Circle is Paul Glazby, a DJ who commands respect from peers and fans alike, and with a persona to match his musical style.
Now signed to Red Management, Paul Glazby and his Red colleagues are preparing a bit of an event to celebrate six years of Vicious Circle at the 1600 capacity Stylus, Leeds University, on Saturday 3rd February. The VC.r1 night will have two rooms, with VC hosting one room, and Red Management hosting the other. Paul took some time out to talk to me about Vicious Circle’s first six years and more about his decision to move to Red Management.
Has the last six years all been limousines and champagne?
Hahaha, sometimes it’s been Robin Reliant and Bovril, but seriously things have gone pretty well, everyone has ups and downs, things are going well at the moment.
No one can doubt its success, but has Vicious Circle lived up to your own hopes and expectations?
I never expected it to be as big as it is; I mean VC is now the biggest purely hard house label in the world, that’s not quite as grand as it sounds but still a great achievement.
You started DJ’ing at the end of 1998, which by my calculations means that VC was conceived roughly two years into your career. What prompted you to launch your own label?
I needed an outlet for my own material, so setting up my own label seemed like the best option. It quickly escalated into an outlet for many different artists though and we soon developed a reputation for supplying the harder edged stuff.
Is it true that the name Vicious Circle was born out of some kind of joke? If so, what was the joke?
Unfortunately yes it is true: you put your thumb and index finger together, shake your hand and growl — that’s a Vicious Circle!
Vicious Circle has some of the most striking branding I’ve ever seen: was branding an important part of the label from the outset?
Yes, it took us a few attempts to get the final branding right. The logo evolved over a few years, but I always thought that tidy had the right idea when it came to branding, their tidy man logo is instantly recognisable and very memorable because of the likeness to the ‘Keep Britain Tidy’ image we’ve seen for years — that’s the edge they had over someone like Nukleuz, who’s branding is a bit crap!
Having something people can relate to without realising it is very helpful when you’re trying to establish a brand — every time you see a can of Pepsi you will probably think of VC!
ilovevc.com and VCMP3.com are extensions of the Vicious Circle brand and both are great examples of how record labels should embrace the internet. Is VC therefore run as a ‘dot com’ or as a record label?
It is run as a record label that makes the most of the (most of the time) dot com facilities.
To many, Vicious Circle is Paul Glazby. It is less well known that Vicious Circle is the product of your business partnership with Les Harris; what is Les’s involvement in the business and where/how did you meet him?
Les has more of a background role to VC, we meet every couple of months to discuss what we’ve done and where we should go next regarding events, releases, merchandise etc. Les is highly successful (and busy) in his own field so devoting any more time to VC isn’t an option for him, he always makes time to get to the events we do though and VC wouldn’t be where it is today without his involvement.
Another key member of the VC team is your girlfriend Kate Hammond. Now Kate has set up Red Management along with Kelly Dayus Cook (formally Tidy Kelly), does this mean she will no longer be involved with VC?
Not at all, Kate splits her working day (now about 14 hours) between VC & Red. A lot of the VC stuff she does can be done out of hours. Also Ben Stevens is back on board helping out with VC stuff.
I know that you have been very supportive of Kate’s move to Red, and on face value it’s perhaps no surprise that you appear on their roster of artists; but why would an established and highly respected name like yourself want to sign up with a brand new and therefore unproven management agency?
I thought it was time to have someone looking after me that had my best interests at heart and, for the record my work has doubled since making the move!
You are joined on the Red roster by scene figure head Andy Farley. It’s no secret that Mr Farley has been your greatest musical influence; who or what other influences have shaped your style?
Probably from my younger days, things like Metallica, Pantera, Machine Head.
Your Tidy Weekender 9 CD is a live recording of your closing set, and brings back many happy memories for me. Would you say that the CD is representative of sets you play at other events?
No not really, it’s not that far away in terms of style, but a lot of the tunes are older things that I dig out for the Weekenders. Also the tempo is a bit higher than I’d get to at other events. I’s hard to make things different for TW’s, so it’s just a case of playing really hard and fast, I think TW10 I started at 164bpm!!!
Talking of that particular CD, there are three tracks on the track listing that you have previously said are your all-time top 3: Tony De Vit — ‘Are You All Ready’; Lab 4 — ‘Candy Man’; and Captain Tinrib & RR Fierce — ‘Street Tab’. Do these tracks still remain as your top three and if so, what specifically is it about each of these tracks that you like?
‘Are You All Ready’ & ‘Street Tab’ definitely, I still love ‘Candyman’ but if I thought about it I’m sure I’d find something I like more.
As for what it is about the tracks, it must be the energy that they have, they’re all dark and dirty but have good energy and are kind of melodic
The trend at big hard-house events is to give DJ hour long slots. Is this a good thing or a bad thing?
I don’t mind it to be honest, it can be a pain when you’ve driven for three hours to just play an hour, but I like the fact you can just drill it with all your latest stuff then let someone else have a go!
What are your opinions or views on one off back-2-back sets?
It depends who is involved, there are some weird combinations you see on flyers. There are only a few people that I will do B2B with,
What have you got planned for the VC 6th birthday party?
Well firstly we’re teaming up with House Of Red so we can offer an alternative music policy for anyone who’s not into hard house — girlfriends / boyfriends of the VC massive etc. We have a top notch line up for both rooms, entertainment and we will be kitting the venue out with exclusive décor.
Whilst researching this interview I was reminded (albeit rather tenuously) of the origins of the Virgin empire; a record label and record retailer founded by a popular figure head with a strong emphasis on brand and quality. Admittedly, I’m not sure that Vicious Brides, Vicious Atlantic Airways and Vicious Rail would be quite as marketable, but how do you see Vicious evolving over the next few years?
That’s a problem we have, because we appeal to a niche crowd we can’t expand to appeal to other people as we will lose the respect of our current following. VC only releases material that I would play so that sort of expansion isn’t something we would want to do.
Someone once described you to me as the Grant Mitchell of hard house. Is this a true reflection of your personality or do you have a secret stash of Donny Osmond or Cliff Richard CDs cunningly disguised as hard-core niche German porn?
Erm don’t quite understand that one, but I think my Grant Mitchell days are over and my porn is proudly displayed as porn.
Has any of your family seen you play? What do they make of the Glazby sound?
My sister has seen me play, she quite likes it but I think she prefers her Alistair Whitehead CDs from ’96.
How would you describe hard house, and in particular Vicious Circle-style hard house, to a dance music novice?
If Tidy were Westlife, VC would be Motorhead!!!!
In March 2003 you famously adorned a “fuck trance” t-shirt for your appearance at Hard House Academy. Nearly four years later and I’m interviewing you, did you ever think that your t-shirt would still be a topic of conversation?
Haha, no way, that T-shirt was given to me by a good friend, Adam; he ordered it and two got delivered. I wore it that weekend and never even thought about the message. Sadly I had to part company with it recently, it was far too big for me after having lost weight so we used it as a competition prize on ilovevc.com
Have you ever considered producing VC branded “fuck trance” t-shirts? You’d shift thousands!
Maybe we will, although a lot of the forthcoming VC releases have more melodic elements to them, which the uneducated out there will call trance, if we released those t-shirts at the same time we’d have all sorts of arguments on our hands!!!!
Photos courtesy of Ben Thomas and Red Management. Not be reproduced without permission.
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Other Features By Ru Curthoys:
This is Scott Fo Shaw!
Tobias and Nathalie get Bouncy
One AWsum interview
Sam Townend gives us a Tidy little Twist
All bow for Lady Bianca
The views and opinions expressed in this review are strictly those of the author only for which HarderFaster will not be held responsible or liable.
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Go on Glazby 
Nice one. Keep up the good work. Always plays fantastic sets 