Menu Magazine

MENU meets: Phetsta

We chat to Phetsta and check out what he is up to!

MENU: Hey Phetsta hows it man? Big things been a happening with you lately, tell us about it.

PHETSTA: Hey I'm good thanks. I just celebrated my 28th birthday at the weekend so I'm still in recovery mode!

MENU: Your recent release with Shockone “Crucify Me” has been getting charted left right and centre, including #1 on beatport and track it down, and now up for tune of the year for the “inthemix” awards in Oz, this is wicked stuff! How does it feel to have some much success with this release so fast?

PHETSTA: It's definitely been rewarding, especially after all of the hard work involved. Karl and I (Shock One) started writing the track over a year ago. If my memory serves correctly the final track was version twenty or something stupid like that.

MENU: The chart success is always cool, like you know you're sitting on a big tune but seeing it shoot straight to number one is a good feeling. We've become the first artist to top the drum & bass and dubstep charts at the same time. It feels like a culmination of all of our solo and colab stuff up until now, but also a starting point for our next batch of material with Shocks' album and my forthcoming stuff.

PHETSTA: The 'inthemix' shortlist was one of the biggest surprises for me, drum & bass is almost never represented in those awards. We owe a lot to Triple J over here, their support has been amazing. For a major radio station they're not afraid to take risks and play stuff that others aren't.

MENU: Tell us about the recent European tour, must have had some interesting nights abroad?

PHETSTA: It was so good to get back to Europe! I've been over twice before for a few months at a time. This time it was just for a week. I was in Brussels most of the time, it's a totally kick ass city. I got to link up with plenty of people over there and my mate Kito from Disfigured Dubz & Mad Decent was in town for a few days. I was just over for a few shows, I'm already trying to line up the next tour there.

MENU: What would be the highlight of your career thus far?

PHETSTA: This is always a hard question to answer, there's been so many. I can't pick one; touring through Spain, Italy for a week and checking out Venice, Mainframe in Vienna, Dallas TX, the last few Perth Dance Music Awards, getting to play alongside your childhood idols, all the radio support, our video clip on TV. I seriously have the best job in the world, I get to travel for free and meet heaps of cool people. There's always those sleepless nights and red eye flights but all in all it's good times.

MENU: You obviously do a lot of your work with Shockone, tell us about how that started and how it’s been?

PHETSTA: We started working together in about 2007 but I'm not exactly sure how we linked up initially. I'd been up to Karls studio a few times and we swapped a bunch of synth patches and samples. I'm really into eighties music and he was making D&B on that tip which wasn't exactly a common thing. I guess we were the only guys pushing that wall of sound anthem thing after Pendulum left Australia. A mutual friend suggested we should hit some tracks together. He came to my place and the first track we produced was Cyclones feat. Grant McCulloch. From then on we've always worked quite closely together. It's a true 50/50 partnership when we work. We can't remember exactly who came up with what idea. It's good to be able to hit the studio together for a few days then leave the project with one or the other and trust them artistically and technically. Everyone always says it and we feel it too, that our collaboration stuff is like a perfect balance between our styles. It definitely feels like it brings out the best in both of our production. When we work together it isn't even really work, we just get into the studio and bounce ideas off each other.

MENU: Your style crosses from Dnb into dubstep and with such power, what can people expect at a show?

PHETSTA: Everything heavy! Honestly I get bored of the same thing all night so I try to mix it up as much as I can. Any sub genre and any tempo. I usually flip between big sections of dubstep and D&B throughout my set and even slot in some electro house for good measure. Djing has always been about that shock factor, pulling stuff out that people don't expect, or combinations of tracks that work but you might not necessarily think of.

MENU: Your coming over to NZ in August for our birthday! What a prezzie for us! But aren’t you originally from NZ?

PHETSTA: Yeah I was born in Dunedin then I moved to the Whangarei area until I was 11. I hit intermediate school in New Plymouth before relocating to Perth when I was 13 or 14. I never actually went back to NZ until about three years ago, so much has changed. The scene is so strong in NZ. I have to say it was a sad day when I was informed that Georgie Pie didn't exist anymore. RIP. Most of my musical influences and knowledge has come from my time in Australia but I can't ignore the influences I took growing up in NZ. There's a huge reggae and dub scene there and my Mum has always been into it. My Dad is a sick blues guitarist as well. I lived with my Aunty and Uncle for a few years while my parents got set up in Perth and they were both musically inclined, both are amazing singers and songwriters in their own right. There's such a diverse mix of musical influences in NZ to draw from, I can safely say that some of these subconsciously got inside my brain as a youngster.

MENU: So Perth is home now? That’s a way away from the main centres of international tours etc., how is the scene in Perth?

PHETSTA: Yeah Perth is definitely home for me, I grew up here and I owe most of my music career to it. It's pretty isolated geographically but there's always been a big D&B scene here. On top of that we've always had great promoters bringing acts through since before I started going out, if anything it's become stronger in recent times with crews like Knowledge, Inhibit and Loaded Dice running most of the tours for Australia from Perth. It's definitely the hub for bass music here. The only down side is the flights are too bloody long to go anywhere! We've got so many D&B and dubstep nights on here, sometimes there'll be two international events on in one night. There's also a larger than average number of talented producers here, I'm not really sure why that is. It can be shit boring in Perth aside from the parties so maybe we have nothing better to do...

MENU: Thanks man! Looking forward to seeing you later this month, till then how can people get hold of you?

PHETSTA: Cheers for the chat, I'm looking forward to making NZ's wildest dreams come true. You can get me on my Facebook page which is facebook.com/phetsta or twitter at twitter.com/phetsta. I've got tracks and mixes streaming on my bandpage tab on Facebook and they're all over YouTube. I make a thing of it to actually talk back to people when I'm not too busy. I'm always doing some stupid shit online in the name of entertainment.