Producer Scott Robinson first got the music production bug when acid house exploded in England, after nurturing himself on hip hop and early electronic music making machines. Quickly buying early machines on his student income, his first release was the “Invisible EP” with Nottingham’s Nebula II crew in early trance style for Collide Records. But techno music was in his blood, and he chose that direction inspired by hours of listening to Colin Faver (RiP) and Colin Dale on pirate radio station, Kiss FM, and assorted mixtapes that he could lay his hands on. Frequenting record shops, Scott started going to raves and warehouse parties, and then threw himself into the early UK techno scene, having worked and performed with early UK techno frontrunner Russ Gabriel, as the band, K2.
In 1998 Scott sent the Liberator brothers a demo, the “For Muffin EP” which was released on Cluster Records, an offshoot label of Stay up Forever, and played by Radio 1’s legendary John Peel as well as being championed on the Midlands free party scene. Scott then helped set up the wonky and leftfield techno club, Ugly Funk, which built up a good reputation before moving to London in the early Noughties. He also produced an eponymous release in honour of Ugly Funk.
Scott has played Live at events alongside Bill Youngman (now Headless Horseman), Neil Landstrumm, Subhead and Cristian Vogel, whom he learnt a lot from. He’s racked up an impressive catalogue of releases that includes the “Ancient Shadows EP” on UKR, known for its heavy and dark techno, and also featured on the “Touched 2” cancer fundraising album alongside Radioactive Man, Plaid and B12. With his new release “Everyone EP’ topping the Beatport Raw/Hypnotic Techno Sales chart, Scott is set to follow with the “Corrupt Sounds EP” on UKR March 31st and the “Meraki EP” on Acidworks on April 30th. 2025 is a consolidating year for this techno stalwart.
Hey Scott it’s great to catch up with you with your new “Everyone EP” topping the Beatport Raw/Hypnotic Techno Sales Chart this week. Tell us about the music you make and your sound and how you came to make this EP?
Thanks for having me and with this EP, I had already sent Colin some earlier releases I had done and he liked them so I promised to write him an EP to just see what he thought. I wrote it as if I was writing a demo tape for him back in 1990. I tried to use similar composition and arrangement methods I used to use back when I was 18. For inspiration I went back over tracks I remembered Colin Dale and Colin Faver (R.I.P) played on Kiss FM at that time. A few examples were tracks produced by Underground Resistance’ Mike Banks, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Now I actually have the equipment which I didn’t have in 1990. I wanted to produce the demo tape I never could have written 35 years ago.
You’re a big fan of Colin Dale’s and how do you feel about having a release on his Abstrakt Dance label? Also can you tell us how long you’ve been following him and your experiences of Colin on the radio and at gigs?
As with many people my age we grew up during a time when the scene around us was buzzing with life and a car was essential for us to get from A to B, just as essential was the music in the car. I always made sure the car was fully stocked with the latest Kiss FM tapes for the journey. Colin was the voice in the car, when he would speak. He felt like part of the crew and certainly kept us company on dark nights driving down random roads in Hampshire trying to find parties.
Shout out to my best friend at the time who drove the car and shared those great times with me, Giles Hinkin who we sadly lost a year ago and whom this EP is dedicated to (R.I.P old friend). I have no idea who we met and spoke to or who was playing at the parties but I am almost certain I was at a party or two that Colin played at at some point during that era. We literally just used to show up at a party with no idea who was playing there. Hazy memories.
When did you start making music and what inspired you to start producing?
My mum worked in a record shop in the early 80s and she had amassed a huge collection of records from all sorts of genres but the ones with synths in, stuck out for me. So prog rock, funk, and New Romantic records were my favourite at the age of 12. A bit later I discovered Joy Division and New Order which started my love for music from Manchester and Factory Records.
I wanted to start a band pretty early on but as a family we were pretty broke so buying synths was out of the question so I read about them constantly trying to learn everything I could. I attempted to start a band at school and I played some electric drums on a rubbish Casio DD5 but I had to travel to my friends house to practice and the whole process was just slow and I wanted the music making process to be more immediate. There were some talented musicians at school but they didn’t need a keyboardist. One of those members helped to get this EP off the ground but more about him later.
By 1988 I decided that it was time to earn money and save up. I wanted to start my own band so I didn’t need to rely on others. A studio was the solution and did any job I could find to save up for my first sampler and a synth. Unaware that a new music scene was about to explode around me.
Your first release was the “Invisible EP” with Nottingham’s Nebula II crew in early trance style for Collide Records. You’ve also worked and performed with early UK techno frontrunner Russ Gabriel, as the band, K2, and can you tell us abit about these times and how you came to work with these guys?
Those times were 4 years apart and the K2 project was cut short because I went to art college. Russ went on to set up Ferox. I’m not sure either of us really liked the direction K2 was going in. I have a fond memory of driving back from Southampton, where we’d been talking to the record company about our first release, and listening to the radio with Russ and Aphex Twin’s “Analogue BubbleBath” came on the radio. We literally stopped the car to listen to it and for both of us it changed the direction K2 was going in.
I started writing more IDM from that point on with Warp Records inspiring that era for me. Nebula 2 came after I finished uni. I met them purely by mistake. I made a tape of my music and put it in a record shop in Nottingham where a friend worked and Joe Shotter happened to pick up a copy of the tape and phoned me, he asked if I wanted to come round. When I got there they asked “are you K2” and I said “yes”, without knowing that there was another artist going under the name K2 and also living in Nottingham. Total coincidence. It turned out they liked my music anyway and asked me to come into the studio and make an EP. Nebula 2 and I started to swing more towards techno after the release and I became good friends with Tony who was making the type of Hard Techno I loved and that reminded me of stuff that I had loved in the early 90s. From then on it was techno full time. In fairness trance wasn’t really trance in those days, it was a type of Acid techno with a melody.
You’ve also worked with the Liberator brothers releasing the “For Muffin EP” which was released on Cluster Records, an offshoot label of Stay up Forever, and understand it was played by the legendary DJ John Peel on his radio 1 show and how excited were you when this happened? How did you come to work with the Liberators?
At the time I was deeply into the free party scene and had grown to know a collective called BWPT, from the Midlands. They held free parties that reminded me of early parties down South before the music became about how fast your tracks were. While I was visiting Tony Thomas, from Nebula 2, I had my latest demos and one of these was the track “Varuka”. The Nebula 2 guys felt it didn’t really fit the label but the BWPT guys and girls loved it. One of them sent it to Chris Liberator and a few weeks later he phoned me asking for the DAT tape so he could release it. I knew I had a title for “Varuka” but he asked what the other tracks were called. As I walked down the street I literally picked things I saw so the other tracks became “Fagbutt” , “Drainpipe” and “Bus Shelter”.
John Peel, who I had a huge amount of respect for. Next to Colin’s show, I always listened to his show but of course missed the ones when he actually played my stuff. I never actually got to hear him playing 2 tracks of the EP until years later, when the shows were archived and put online. In fact I didn’t believe people that he’d played my tracks until years later.
Things are much easier these days.
You’re a real studio head and can you talk us through your favorite machines or software and why they’re so special and integral to your music?
My first Sequencer was an Alesis MMT8. I loved it because of its simplicity and functionality but it was basic and this was probably what was so appealing about it. With a tiny screen it was hard to edit with though. After that my Atari ST running Cubase blew me away being able to follow the music and write with a screen, not to mention save everything on a disk. Next was Ableton after being told it was amazing by a friend. I was sceptical but it was amazing and I stopped using Reason at that point. Then the Korg Electribe, EMX 1 and ESX 1 were perfect for live performances VERY easy to perform with everything very hands on. I would say that these two paired together made for the best and most versatile instruments to play a live techno set with.
The Elektron revolution was next, still finding new things to do with these machines and I still love them all and they are the backbone for sound design and performance in my studio and live. Finally the Ableton Move, I have used this extensively over the last few months because you can literally carry it around with you, sketch out some ideas, and dump them back on the laptop at the end of the day and use it as a controller with Ableton. It’s just amazing how far I have seen tech come over the 35 plus years which would have cost £1000’s of Pounds 35 years ago you can now buy for a tenner. It’s hard not to enjoy the new tech if you are a “Studio Head” like me.
What’s the track you feel/felt the most exciting while in the process of making it?
Sometimes you know when a track is a winner, strangely this only happened twice to me. First time was “Varuka”, which I started writing over the space of a few days but never thought much of it until one lunch time when I came back home pissed off with work and went up to the studio to take my anger out on the machines. Strangely I just did it on the spot and it took 15 minutes to record 2 takes. When it was done I knew it was something different and perfect in its own way. One night we played it at the end of an Ugly Funk night and I went into the crowd and people were talking about it saying things along the lines of “what the f*ck is this?”
The second time was when I wrote the “Everyone EP” for Colin Dale. “The Alternative” I only listened to a few times because I knew it just worked. “Everything and Nothing” was the second track that was nice but it never sounded finished until I played that synthline over the top and then I knew it was done. What makes a track exciting is when you write a great track but produce something different that breaks the rules and moves Techno on. That is what made me fall in love with Techno…you can push the boundaries of music.
An original ‘Summer Of Love” raver I believe and how did you first get into the house/techno scene and can you tell us about the early days of the scene as you experienced it and your favourite raves/events?
To start with, I spent a lot of time in London. One club I loved was Dance Wicked in Vauxhall. The sound system was perfect for the Bass and Bleeps of the time and it was basically a hot sweaty tunnel. I loved it but it’s probably why I am half deaf now.
Summer of 1991 was 2 years after I’d started going to parties and clubs but it was when the outdoor parties exploded. I had been to plenty of clubs but the sound of an outdoor party just sounded perfect for me. My first illegal rave was in 1990 at Torpedo town but in 1991 it had grown to a huge party that lasted the whole weekend. A lot of sound systems were playing tracks for the first time that are now techno classics like Joey Beltram’s “Energy Flash” and Toxic Two’s “Rave Generator”, and it was put on by Spiral Tribe. One of the biggest bonuses was living in Hampshire in 1990/91, There was literally a rave every weekend, without any planning you could find a party and even if you couldn’t find something we had the legenday club, Sterns. It was an amazing time.
What was your first big break and what did it lead on to?
I never really went looking for a big break so I am not sure I ever really found one. I was always told my music was great but some would say “not sure what I would class your music as”, so I never really felt it was good enough to send in. I sent some tracks to Warp Records once and never heard anything so I assumed my music was crap.
I have given up a few times but the music was always there in the back of my mind so I always kept going. Recently I was talking to an old school friend of mine Scott Wright, who told me my music was great and that he was friends with Colin and that I should finally send him a demo. So I did and as we all know he liked it. This may not be a “big break” but it’s certainly been an amazing journey this year and I’ve met some amazing people connected to Colin. So if this is a big break let’s see what happens. Either way I am happy with everything I’ve done over the years and meeting Colin was just a realisation of finally not doubting my music anymore.
I finally feel free to write the music I love writing and people seem interested in it.
You went on to co-promote the Ugly Funk events and produced a track in its honour? What were the highlight/ most memorable nights of these parties and what makes them stand out?
Without a doubt it was the nights we did at Electrowerkz in Islington. It never felt like a club but more like a warehouse. We also had some great artists and DJs perform there as well as being focused on live sets, which for me was the one thing I loved because in 2000 live sets were just becoming possible so it was amazing to get the opportunity to experiment with this using hardware and affordable laptops for the first time.
Who are your major musical influences and how have they informed your music making?
As I mentioned earlier, the Manchester scene of the 70’ and 80’s and bands like Joy Division and early New Order and the rise of Factory Records. And The Hacienda deeply inspired me and allowed me to jump into to 808 State’s “Newbuild” when it came out. The production was so raw and new to me at the time and it broke the rules and that’s what I loved. Proof that you didn’t need a huge studio to make great music.
What was the first House/techno record you ever heard and who clued you up to House music and when?
One stand out mini LP I can always come back to is 808 State’s “Newbuild”, a sublime piece of work that adds a live feeling to the music that is rare in electronic music with that funk that A Guy Called Gerald brought to the table. Fantastic work. And “LFO” by LFO which of course was played over and over on white label at Dance Wicked on the Soul 2 Soul sound system it sounded sublime and it’s still clear in my head to this day. This led me to love everything on Warp Records at that time.
You’ve also released on Nebula II’s Collide Records and Liberator Brother’s Clusterfunk imprint and do you have a favourite release in your catalogue and what makes it so special?
I love “Varuka “because it was pure punk, just angry noise that somehow worked and sounded great on a huge soundsystem.
2025 sees you ramp up the releases and what’s coming up for you?
I am extremely lucky at the moment because there are so many great opportunities opening up for me kicking off with the “Everyone EP” on Abstrakt Dance. Also out now is my second EP on UKR called “404 Corrupt Sounds” which is very RAW and at the end of April I have “The Meraki EP” coming out on a label I love at the moment called AcidWorks, with another release to follow in May. I’m also doing a collab EP of remixes with the Acid Cats guys that are one of my favourite couple of producers at the moment. Also I’m going to work solidly on my live set with the view to playing out again this summer.
Scott Robinson’s new “Everyone EP” is out now on Abstrakt Dance Records and follow them at https://soundcloud.com/djcolindale or https://www.instagram.com/colindale/
