Chris has been involved in dance music since the very beginning, when in the early nineties he was a regular at Brighton’s infamous Zap club listening to the likes of Eric Powell, Dave Clarke, Tall Paul and John 00 Fleming.
Already from a strong musical background, Chris started working with the connections he made and learned the ropes as a dance music producer. His early works were well received but it was his 1996 tune, ‘Breathless’ (co- produced by Zap resident John Weatherley) that catapulted him forward. The release, helped by a classic remix from Tony De Vit, went on to sell over 40,000 copies and appeared on numerous compilations.
From this point onwards Chris became a full time producer/sound engineer working with some of the coolest producers in the business notching up quite literally hundreds of engineering and production credits.
As a producer in his own right he has remixed and been remixed by the likes of Sinead O’Conner, Tiesto and Satoshi Tomiie through to Sourmash and Tony De Vit.
He has sold over 100,000 vinyl units and had well over 100 commercial releases. He is one of only a small group of producers with genuine cross genre appeal with successful projects in house, progressive, techno, hard dance and trance. His first label, Interflow Sounds, went from being a small imprint set up as primarily a vehicle for his own productions, to one of the leading independent hard dance/trance labels with over 20 releases and two subsidiary labels. In 2002 he released the critically acclaimed mix album ‘Harder, Faster, Deeper’.
In 2001 he signed to the established trance label, Eve Records, forming a relationship which would ultimately see him buy the company in 2004.
In 2007 he released the mix album Dark Sessions which became Album of the Month in Mixmag and prompted DJ Mag to say, “this is trance at its most gorgeous”
He now presides over a suite of labels under the Recoverworld banner and has helped launch the careers of some of industries biggest hitters including John O’Callaghan, John Askew, Sean Tyas, Thomas Datt, Manuel le Saux and many more.
As a music industry entrepreneur, he helped write, launch and and has an ongoing involvement in the AMPsuite record label software management system which powers many of the worlds largest independent labels.
Chris’s DJ’ing career has mirrored that of his productions - eclectic and always one step ahead of the game. With over 10 years behind the decks he has played as far afield as Japan and Australia together with regular European and UK dates.
He has taken the famous ‘Recoverworld Live’ brand all over the world and regularly features as a guest mixer on various dance stations including of course “Recoverworld Radio” which celebrated it’s 10th year on air in 2012.
Name: Chris Hampshire
Location: Brighton, England
Dimitri: Can you mention your biggest achievements in your music career in 2014 as dj & producer,label owner,radio host and your personal life if it is something that you wish to share with our readers?
Chris Hampshire: Setting up our new agency, “Militant Artists” (
www.militantartists.com) was a huge step for us in 2014. I had toyed with the idea many times and already managed the vocalist/ writer “Senadee” and had been involved with several bands /DJ’s through the years.
However, I do believe that you shouldn’t do anything unless you can do it properly and up until 2014 we had neither the time - nor the resources to dedicate to a formal agency.
This changed in July 2014 when we took on Militant Hannah to set up and run Militant Artists and it is fair to say we have hit the ground running and 2015 looks like it is going to be huge for the agency.
The Recoverworld Label Group goes from strength to strength and in 2014 we expanded to 18 labels and had several number one releases across the various white label stores.
With literally 100’s of artists I wouldn’t be happy singling out individuals, as I really am proud of every one of our signings and every one of our releases.
However, a couple of overall highlights were:
Discover Dark reached it’s milestone 100th release which was celebrated with a fantastic remix album compiled and mixed by Oberon. I was massively proud of that and we also released Gary Maguire’s debut artist album INSIDE which in my totally unbiased opinion is one of the best “trance” artist albums certainly of the last 12 months and probably longer.
Other highlights included playing my part in the continued expansion of AMPsuite (
www.ampsuite.com) – a record label management system, of which I am a co-founder. We now look after labels that include Drumcode, Iboga, IONO, Sudbeat, MN2S and a whole load more.
And a personal highlight after all that is that I am still here and still smiling!! …. Just!
Dimitri: 2014 was packed with releases from so many different styles, which Electronic Music style you believe is the absolute Electronic Music Style Of 2014 in the mainstream indifferent if you like it or not. Why you believe this style became so successful in 2014?
Chris Hampshire: I don’t spend much time looking at the mainstream to be honest. I’m so entrenched in what is largely referred to as the “underground” that what goes on in the mainstream largely passes me by. I don’t have any axe to grind with it. It’s just someone else’s party and I don’t have - or want an invite.
1) Best Track:
Chris Hampshire: Inside – Gary Maguire
2) Best Artist (Dj & producer):
Chris Hampshire: Gary Maguire
3) Best Remix:
Chris Hampshire: Matt Holiday – Breakthrough –Thomas Datt Remix
4) Best Remixer:
Chris Hampshire: unable to single out one person for this –loads of good ones!!
5) Best New Talent (Dj or producer):
Chris Hampshire: Neither of these are particularly new but both have started to achieve the recognition they deserve in 2014 – Lostly and Liam Wilson.
6) Best Electronic Music Album:
Chris Hampshire: Outside of Recoverworld and Trance in general it has to be Daniel Avery – Drone Logic.
From us it has to be Gary Maguire – Inside.
7) Best Electronic Music Compilation:
Chris Hampshire: Discover Dark 100
8) Best artwork/cover of an Album or Compilation:
Chris Hampshire: I love every cover we put out. This is down to our super talented in house designer Kerri Sharp (Vestige). If you want a snapshot at how good he is, check out all the recent sleeves for Discover Dark. That’s not just it – but it's a good starting point.
9) Best Lyrics in an Electronic Music track:
Chris Hampshire: BT and Senadee –Lifeline
All Senadee’s lyrics are nothing short of breathtaking – this is just one example of many.
10) Best Vocalist/Singer featured on Electronic Music track:
Chris Hampshire: Female : Cat Martin / Julie Harrington.
Male: Senadee,
11) Best Electronic Music Label:
Chris Hampshire: All of ours. My favourite other label is consistently Bush Records.
12) Best Electronic Music Video:
Chris Hampshire: I’m going to bend the rules here. It was released in 2013 but I’m a late arrival to this guy and only got into him in 2014 so as far as I’m concerned it counts
Jon Hopkins - Collider
I’m going to have this as well just because its Christmas and I love it when people show their “non serious” side.
Orbital – Christmas Chime
13) Best online Funny video related to Dance Music:
Chris Hampshire:
Bertie Big Balls
14) Best Online Social media network:
Chris Hampshire: Instagram – I’ve only recently got into it but it’s easy to maintain and f*** about with the pictures and make yourself look better ;-)
15) Best Twitter or Facebook message you received from a fan or friend or you have read on someone else’s account:
Chris Hampshire: We get so much positive support from our loyal fans and I’m humbled every time someone goes to the effort of sending a supporting message to us.
16) Best personal selfie of the year, where, when and under which circumstances you took it?
Chris Hampshire: ADE with Militant Hannah. It’s symbolic because Militant Artists really started to kick off from that point.
17) Best music composition software:
Chris Hampshire: Logic Pro
18) Best Event or Open Air Festival:
Chris Hampshire: ADE with IMS running them close!
19) Best personal Dj Gig:
Chris Hampshire: South Africa –Discover Records at Truth
20) Best Dj set of the year from other fellow Dj:
Chris Hampshire: Super8 & Tab from Luminosity 2014
21) Best country that you have visited to perform with the most up for it crowd:
Chris Hampshire: Japan
22) Best Radio show:
Chris Hampshire: Recoverworld Radio and Dark sessions of course!!
23) Best Radio station:
Chris Hampshire: DI.FM
24) Best Online Record shop that you purchase your music:
Chris Hampshire: Beatport
25) Best Website that you visit frequently:
Chris Hampshire: Music related – Loopmasters
Non-music related – yeah right………
26) Best Smart phone/Mobile phone device:
Chris Hampshire: iPhone
27) Best Dj equipment (software or hardware):
Chris Hampshire: Pioneer CDJ
28) Best new sound or sample that has been used in Electronic Music this year perhaps introduced first by you?
Chris Hampshire: I prefer old sounds. Show me a track with a decent Energy Flash style hoover in it, or a squealing 303 and I’ll show you a happy face!!
29) Best tip that you learnt this year for your Djing techniques or music composition:
Chris Hampshire: Know when it’s time to move on to the next project.
30) Best piece of advice you got in relation to your career in 2014:
Chris Hampshire: Do more stuff and stop concentrating quite so much on other people’s music!!
31) Best hobby or activity that you spent a lot of time in 2014:
Chris Hampshire: Any spare time is spent in the studio doing the digital to analogue conversion. Unfortunately there is not much spare time in my life so it’s been moving at a snails pace.
32) Best holiday destination for 2014 that you manage to visit this year either to relax or to perform in a club or festival:
Chris Hampshire: Miami was quite nice!! ;-) And Ibiza of course! And South Africa!! (It’s not been a bad year)
33) Best Book of the year preferably related to Electronic Music:
Chris Hampshire: Sound on sound – it's a magazine but it’s pretty much all I read at the moment. Also – and it’s not from this year , but everyone involved in this industry should read Kill Your Friends by John Niven.
34) Best Movie of the year preferably related to Electronic Music that may inspire you to compose a track:
Chris Hampshire: It’s not electronic music but it is music and it was one of the most inspirational films I’ve seen in years –Nick cave – 20,000 Days on Earth.
35) Best online/PC/video game of the year that you have played this year?
Chris Hampshire: If I had time to play video games I wouldn't be doing my job properly.
36) Best piece of News you learnt this year related to Electronic Music Culture:
Chris Hampshire: Every time I press play on a demo and I think – “yeap –this ones a keeper!!”
Dimitri: Finally, 2015 is ahead of us would you like to tell your plans with your future releases, tracks, albums, collaborations, Dj gigs.
Chris Hampshire: Keep supporting the artists that we work with for Recoverworld as well as finding the next exciting new talent. Make more tracks myself. Keep the momentum going with Militant Artists and most of all to keep enjoying what we do as I firmly believe that without enjoyment in what you do, you might as well not do it.
Thanks very much to Chris for finding time despite his many duties to reply in this interview.
Thanks very much to Hannah from Militant Artists for organizing this interview.
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