• Tweet

• Tweet

Don’t put Marcel Woods in the same room as a box. Chances are the box won’t make it out alive!

“It’s nothing personal” explains Marcel, “I just can’t stand being put into them. People try to define my sound, style and influences down to just one or two genres, but if you’ve heard me then you’ll know that’s impossible. I don’t like pigeon-holes either to be honest. I just don’t fit into them, never have and never will.”

The new Marcel Woods album will be released early 2012. This album will provide a mix of brand new tracks and earlier hits of Marcel Woods with treatments of Woods himself and fellow DJ’s who wanted to cooperate on delivering more musical madness to the world!

http://www.marcelwoods.com

Tim Stark: Marcel, with new tracks, some old tracks remixed by yourself and some by others, all contained on ‘Open All Hours’, what type of album do you classify it as?

Marcel Woods: A good one? ;-) I think I want to show the music I created in the past is still relevant in a whole new period of music. Riffs such as the one I used on ‘Advanced’, ‘Time’s Running Out’ and others are more or less timeless I think. But what type/kind of album it is, I don’t know to be honest.

Tim: You’re not a man to pigeonhole music, so instead, style-wise, give us three words that you think sum up the album!

MW: Electronic Dance Music…. Easy!

Tim: On the album, which track do you consider to be the most….

MW:
House: ‘Questionary’
Trance: ‘Cherry Blossom’
Techno: ‘Monotone’?

Tim: There’s also a first team-up with Marco V. How did that come about and how did you find working with him for the first time?

MW:  Marco is such a great producer, so it was really cool to work together on ‘Scream’. Don’t know when our collab was negotiated, but we start talking about doing things together and ‘Scream’ was the result of that.

Tim: There are a couple of collaborations with Tiesto on the album. How did you get him to remix ‘Advanced’? Was it his choice of track or yours?!

MW: Basically it was his choice, but I think it was the only one he wanted to put his hands on, as he’s such a fan of the tracks. He was one of the first who strongly supported this track back in the day, and he smashed it for years.

Tim: Having worked with him are there any collaboration ‘mountains left to climb’ or have you reached the peak!? If there is who would they be?

MW:  Ha ha! Well if you look at things only from the viewpoint of the status as an artist, it can only go down the ladder. So I’m not really busy with getting collaborations done at the moment. I did recently do one with W&W and that turns out to be a monster of a tune. So cool things coming up…

Tim: How did the division of labour work for the rest of the album? Was it a question of you asking people to remix specific tracks, did you give them the choice or was it first-come, first-served!?

MW:  I created this ZIP file and asked most of them what they wanted to remix from my back catalogue, and it seems a lot have different tracks on their wish-list to remix, so that worked out pretty well for me!

Tim: In terms of the new ‘Treatments’ you’ve given you own tracks on Open All Hours, which was the easiest to come back to and which did you find the toughest?

MW:  They all came pretty natural, as I have strong feelings towards all of my tracks which were used on the album. ‘Everything’ was maybe the most difficult, which is why there are 2 versions.

Tim: Time-wise, from concept to conclusion, how long did it take you to put ‘Open All Hours’ together?

MW:  6 months, or something around that.

Tim: The album artwork is very original. How did you decide on the concept of the motel and how does it relate (if at all!) to the title?

MW:  When we came up with the title the designer stick to the concept behind the title and he asked me if it was ok to go for a dirty motel look and feel. I was ok with that, even if at first I was a bit sceptical. The end result though is very cool in my eyes.

Tim: Any actual unspoken desires to own and operate a roadside motel one days!?

MW:  not at all!

Tim: Are you touring the album?

MW:  Yes. I’m just back from an Asia and Australia trip, and now it’s on to a Europe leg, with lots of gigs here, afterwards we will do a couple of gigs in the USA and Canada.

Tim: Musical Madness recently celebrated its 100th release. Did that give you time to pause and reflect on the label’s history?

MW:  I see #100 as a new start; it was a bit out of control with too many releases on it that I wasn’t always playing myself. So I decided to stop releasing music that falls into that category. I’ve started that new A&R standpoint with 100th release of the label…

The 100th release was one of yours and appears on Open All Hours. Where did you get the title Black Angus from?

MW:  As it’s a big juicy dark track, and so is a Black Angus steak; big, dirty and juicy!

Tim: Anything else you’d like to say?

MW:  MWOAH…. :-) That life is great to me! As I’m so blessed with a career that goes so strong for so many years now, and it doesn’t slow down a bit!

This month the doors of the Motel Marcel will open for business, where, of late, proprietor Mr Woods been working day and night on its final preparations. He’s staffed his new musical enterprise with some of EDM’s most reliable studio merchants. Alongside Woods himself you’ll find the likes of Tiësto, Marco V, Bassjackers, Chris Schweizer, Jonas Stenberg and others, all keeping this motel motoring. From Jan 27th you can check into his new establishment. Be warned though folks, there’s no sleep here – its Open All Hours!

(Forthcoming thru Musical Madness Jan 27th 2012)

Grab your copy

http://www.marcelwoods.com
http://www.facebook.com/marcelwoods

Posted in: Interviews | Posted on February 1, 2012 by Tim Stark