So this is MIXMAS and what have we done?
We’ve had DJs playing genres they’re not known for. (Big up Sweetpea)
We’ve had DJs playing mixes loaded solely with their own productions. (Shouts to Skorpion and Kenji)
We’ve had vinyl only (Yes yes Kidsonic).
We’ve gone fully multigenre (we’re looking at YOU – Yazmin C, Erotic Café, EONE and CHIZ)
We’ve had D&B mixes that cover the whole spectrum and dig so deep you beard grows thrice as long every time you stroke it (Oi oi Winslow, Filthy Philp, Section, Sonnet, Randoma)
We’ve had bananas rave sessions that are so hectic and intense they should come with a warning (well well well Narna and Glitchgirl)
We’ve had pure technoid drama influenced by location and environment (check out Igubu’s Oslo Sonics mix from the other day)
We’ve welcomed an exceptional competition winner in the form of Fireworks Factory. AND we’ve had our own 1 More Thing showcase mix which is a statement about what we stand for and what we want to see in the world (check it here)
What a session.
Now to tick one box we’ve yet to tick, from an artist we’ve recently shouted as an artist of the week but never actually interviewed. In fact until he submitted this mix we thought he was around 20 or 25!
It’s Kravitz with his Diary Of A Noughties Raver mix. Get stuck in and regress to a more innocent state as the anthems roll out banger after banger…
For the final mix of this series (which we’ll definitely be repeating next Christmas), Kravitz goes old school.
Not the usual go-to foundational old school, but a slightly younger old school where many of us overlap in terms of reference points and roots regardless of generations… The noughties. A time when D&B was in a wild state of flux, booming, shaking and tearing between two critical commercial points around 2000 – 2012.
It’s not a decade that’s celebrated as much as the 90s or cited as much as the 2010s in terms of its influence within the modern streaming/social media age. But it was a decade when some of the biggest names today emerged and blossomed and a time when some absolutely humungous anthems were crafted. Total Science’s Nosher, Zinc’s Creeper, Noisia’s Block Control, Un-Cut’s M.I.S.T, Bad Company’s Snowcat, Brookes Brothers Take Me Away… The list of heroic dancefloor headbutts from this era is endless and they’re pretty much all in Kravitz’s mix.
Rolling out to his favourite and most influential records that brought him to this point. What a fun and authentic way to bring this celebration of mixes to an end. We catch up with Ben Kraweic for a long overdue interview…
Noughties raver! I thought you were born in the noughties mate! Hope you don’t mind me saying.
Not at all. I take that as a massive compliment! I’m actually 40.
How you finding it? I love being my age
Same. I feel more comfortable in my own skin than I did when I was younger. But more sure of my self and certain of what I want in my life.
Totally. So take me back to the start of your musical journey. The start of Kravitz.
Well the Kravitz story is an interesting one in itself. My surname is Krawiec, my dad is Polish, and for years I was DJ Krawiec. Then remember in lockdown when Skiba was doing those Saturday sesh live streams? I sent him some music and he couldn’t pronounce my name. I thought ‘hold on, there’s a problem here’ so I have the legend Skibadee to thank for me being Kravitz.
Wow so that’s quite recent!
Yeah it is really. Before then I was a local DJ spinning tunes since I was 16/17. I grew up in a little town just outside bath and we’d have the decks in the living room. A few us DJ’d, a few of us MC’d and we’d have these mad parties in my flat that would go on and on and on.
So you were living the party life and raving. What’s your day job?
I’m an electrical engineer in a papermill so I do shift work, days and nights which is brutal but it allows me a lot of time off. When you’re in work, it’s full-on but when you’re off, you’re completely off and it allows me time to properly get into the music.
Ah I’m slightly envious of people who are able to do that and leave their job at their job. My job is always in my head.
Yeah I get that. And there is another maintenance engineer holding the reigns for another 12 hours so when I come back the situation will be different again anyway. I can’t carry any type of worry from one shift to the next.
Oh true. That’s nice. A fresh day every day. Papermills sound dangerous.
Yeah one of the biggest rolls we can change weighs 6 ton and there’s a lot of heavy lifting. I’ve been doing this 20 years so I’m pretty used to it all now.
Ever had anything REALLY bad happen?
Yeah I’ve seen a few things where people are lucky to be alive. I won’t go into any details.
Wow man. Dangerous life! So you’ve got a proper trade and career and everything. And DJing has just been a passion thing / hobby essentially. When you were sending things to Skibadee, was it a lockdown circumstance that pushed you to making tunes and take being an artist a little more seriously?
Exactly that. I’ve always wanted to do production but to do it right it’s such a massive task isn’t it? I’d dabbled a little here and there. A few mates were doing things and getting some support and I’d actually downloaded a cracked copy of Ableton in 2019 and was exploring it a little but yeah when Covid broke out and lockdown ensued I was sitting on my arse doing nothing so I got stuck in. I watched every possible tutorial I could, I soaked it all up and wrote 100s of shit tunes until I got better!
It’s the only way!
Bless my friends, they’re a very supportive bunch and they had to listen to a lot of shit music. You’ve got to do the mileage don’t you?
Absolutely!
There’s no easy way around it. There’s no shortcut. Even now after five years I still feel very novice and like I’m at the beginning of it all!
Oh for sure! Any particular tutorials help you along the way?
There’s a series called You Suck At Producing. The guy who presents those ones is a bit annoying but the way he explained things, it made sense to me. I’m not very academic to be honest so his approach worked. Then once I felt confident enough I started watching Stranjah’s videos. He’s the don. So between those and a load of my mates I got up to speed quite quickly.
Did your job help? Engineering is engineering to a certain extent, right?
It did help massively. I feel there was a bit of a skills crossover as I deal in frequencies all the time in work and I love nerding out with that sort of stuff.
Amazing. I love how this all started as raving and no other agenda and now here you are
Haha yeah. I do tend to fall into things. I find myself in situations and I think ‘ah I’ll carry on with this for a bit!’
You were carrying on A LOT last year. Loads of releases!
Yeah! But the funny thing is I had really bad writers block all year and for most of the year I wasn’t able to write a thing! All the releases were written in 2023! Until a few months ago I couldn’t write a single tune. It’s crazy.
Woah. Why do you think that is?
Well I had a really productive 2023, I must have written 30 tunes or so and I think the tank was just empty. I wasn’t feeling inspired at all. So luckily I had this tank of tunes to send to demos and release and now that’s running thin I’m feeling inspired to write tunes again.
How did you get back on it?
I started doing loads of collabs and they got my juices flowing again.
Yeah sharing perspectives and processes
Exactly. Me and Son have been inspiring each other massively in this way. We’ve just dropped a new single on Deep In The Jungle really soon.
Sick. Must have been frustrating when you couldn’t get any sounds out?
It was. I was looking at my DAW and just couldn’t get anything I liked out at all. None of it felt right so I thought ‘you know what, I’m gonna leave this until I feel inspired’. There’s no point in forcing it.
I learnt that from Hazard. Don’t beat yourself up or build a toxic relationship with the studio. If you can’t find inspiration then leave until you do. Don’t force it.
Totally. And when things are at their lowest, or just after, that’s when the best things happen. For example I had a really bad spell a few years ago and nothing I was making was hitting the spot or getting any response from labels or getting any DJ gigs. Then I made a tune 3 Coffees Deep in two days and I thought to myself ‘this sounds like a Bingo tune’ and I loved playing Bingo Vinyl years ago. I found out Zinc’s email address, sent it to him and he replied the next day asking to sign it! I could hang up my headphones there and then! Just days before I was ready to give up! So that’s why I wasn’t that worried. Maybe it’s the age thing too. I was chill with it.
Zinc is a legend!
He is. He’s been really kind to me and given me some great tips and advice. It’s an honour to be on that label.
Did you play those old Bingo Breaks releases? You mentioned house earlier on…
Hell yeah. I started in house. There was a night in Bath pavilion called Karanga which I used to go to right at the start of my raving. Tall Paul, Sonique, Seb Fontaine, all those DJs. It was mash-up, as you can imagine! You’d go there and lose yourself in the music – it was almost biblical.
Then I guess Bristol was next?
Then I guess Bristol was next?For sure. When we were 18 we started travelling further and the first D&B night we went to was True Playaz with Zinc, Hype and Pascal at Creation. That took my raving to the next level. I’ll never forget Foxy being on the mic all night shouting ‘who wants a revolution?’ I was bouncing around the place like nuts. My house days were over and I was D&B head all the way.
Hahah. This mix soundtracks that!
Definitely. I thought you’d be up for this and dug out all the tunes that got me into D&B and the tunes flying around at the time. They’re the first tunes I started playing when I started D&B and mixing to my mates in my flat
Go on. Tell me another raving story
My pinnacle rave moment… I was in the old fire station in Bristol, D Minds were on the decks, Eksman was coming through, Pendulum’s Another Planet was still on dub and D Minds opened with that tune. Eksman called for a rewind 3 times and the rooms went nuts every time. It was wild. I’ve got tingles just thinking about it now! But there were so many mad nights like that. It was a great time to be raving.
Are you still raving now?
Not as much as I used to. I do have a good rave when I DJ and I went to Worried About Henry the other day, which was brilliant. So yeah I rave when I can and hopefully always will.
Amen! Any advice for your younger raving self?
None at all. I’d do it all over again and do it exactly the same. I had a bloody good time!
YES! How about future Kravitz?
I’m just having fun with it. I’ve got my job that pays my bills, I don’t want this to be my full time job, I don’t want anything to take the pleasure out of this by putting financial pressure on this. I just want to carry on making tunes, often with friends, and play them out every now and again. I get a lot of pleasure form it , I find it very therapeutic and I’ve made some great friends through this. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
