My friend Emilio AKA HLZ, is one of my favourite producers in the scene. If you haven’t heard of him yet that might be because he spent years writing as a duo but I’m not going to talk too much about his past because its time to focus on his future as a solo artist, I had a chat with him ahead of his brand new EP on The Dreamers Recordings…
Bassi: For those who don’t know you Emilio, introduce yourself please mate…
HLZ: I’m Emilio AKA HLZ, I’m all about music production, DJing, synths and good food. I’m Italian and I’ve live in London since 2007, still my italian accent is pretty thick!
Bassi: Your latest EP is called ‘From The Past’ whats your proudest musical moment in your career from your past so far?
HLZ: DJing in Rome , Goldie was behind me, and I drop a tune of mine and Kiat, called Badfellaz. I see him doing the screwface. I send him the tune he has been playing that tune everywhere for more than one year, it didn’t end up for Metalheadz but having a personal idol supporting my music is amazing, so probably that.
Bassi: How did you come to work with the Dreamers crew?
HLZ: The whole dreamers crew are like family. I know the founders Marco and Roby since long time, they booked me in Turin many times and it always felt like home. During the years they linked up with Andrea aka Neve, Pier aka kermit , Alessio aka Sciso and added young talented guys like Enrico aka Bow. For me Turin musically has always been the most interesting city in Italy , the moment I’ve seen that all this cool people were joining forces I knew that they were going to do something special. We can easily say that the Dreamers Recordings exceeded all the expectations, getting incredible support by the likes of Noisia, Kasra, Rockwell and many more, still, knowing these guys and their passion in what they do, I’m not surprised at all.
Bassi: They have been nominated for best new label at this years drum and bass awards, what do you think makes a successful drum and bass record label?
HLZ: Quality control and taking the risk . The Dreamers is definitely pushing forward thinking dnb and 170bpm music. I can easily say that there’s a genuine competition between the artists who release for this label. What I mean is that after I heard what artist like Was a be, Synthethics, Kiril, Lynch kingsley and Neve himself put out for the label I wanted to make an EP that would be as good as what these guys put out. Last week Neve sent me the future releases, and guys, there’s some fire in there. Deffo the label is setting the bar high…
Bassi: Give us 5 of your favourite rolling drum and bass tracks from the last 20 years…
HLZ: Thats a bit tricky but let’s try, still the concept of “roller” is bit of a mistery for me…
Special mentions:
Spectrasoul – Guardian
Usual suspects – Tribute
and basically 90% of Break catalogue!
Bassi: What releases have you got coming out in 2017? What can we look forward too?
HLZ: 2017 looking good so far, main thing I’m working on is an EP for Dispatch, and defo wanna have more tracks for AI label Integral. Then i have a release for a label called Flexout, you know something about that Tom?! Overall I’m quite happy about the music I’m writing right now , so hopefully more good things will happen!
Bassi: I hear your quite the man in the kitchen, can you give us a recipe for one of your signature dishes?
HLZ: Carbonara ! First there’s no , i repeat, there’s no cream in the carbonara, Possibly you should use some meat called “guanciale” and some cheese called “pecorino” , they are not easy to find in London and could be quite expensive, so some pancetta cubes and parmesan will do the job. You fry a bit the pancetta with some olive oil,in a ball you put couple of eggs ( better just the yolk) grated parmesan , you scrumble the raw eggs and the parmisan and leave it there. When the pasta is ready ( “al dente” of course) , you drain it , you put in a ball and you drop the pancetta and the eggs . Here the magic happens, the heath of the pasta cooks the eggs, you just stir for a bit and you get that creamy feeling without cream. Last thing add some black pepper and if needed more cheese.
Bassi: I can confirm that is banging, finally, HLZ – whats that all about?
HLZ: My HLZ name!? Basically HLZ is some sort of acronym for Hellraizer, my former DJ producer name. The issue is that it was pretty confusing because Lynx made a lot of tracks with a musician called Hellrazor. So lot of people asked me ‘Are you the guy who does tracks with Lynx?’ and my answer was always ‘Well, I wish but thats not me!’ So because of this confusion I decided to change my name into HLZ.
