Materia, the Swedish dancefloor destroyer is about to see his new single 'Razorball/Underfall' drop on Drawn Recordings on September 12th. We wanted to gain a little insight into the man as well as the music, so we put a few questions to him. This was supposed to make it into issue five of the Drawn Zine, but we couldn't quite get everything together in time, so the zine ended up with a couple of questions about his recent triumph of being on the latest Carl Cox mix album. So, here at last is the full interview with Jan Warnstam AKA Materia...

DR: What are you wearing?

M: Groundbreaking stuff: Jeans, t-shirt and a pair of Etnies trainers.

Where in Sweden do you come from?

It's a town called Linköping which is about two hours south-west of Stockholm. It's the fifth largest city in Sweden, a nice and sleepy place with a very under-developed underground music community. When we launched a drum'n'bass club night in 2003 it was the first the city had ever seen, and possibly it remains the only one. I was introduced to electronic dance music from listening to tapes, records and the radio - there where the odd club nights and raves with focus on techno, acid and trance but as far as other genres went it wasn't until the late 90's that I made it to clubs playing drum'n'bass and the like.

Are there really as many highly intelligent and attractive people over there as we are led to believe in a ridiculously nationaly stereotyped way?

Well, yes. :) Seriously though, this is a funny question, as there are so many differences between the countries that could not be described in just one or two sentences. I have learned a lot about the difference between growing up in safe and secluded Sweden as opposed to growing up in the UK, and it isn't necessarily obvious that one is better than the other in every way. Sometimes it feels quite refreshing to leave Sweden for a bit and get out in the big world, but sometimes I obviously do miss Sweden a lot.

Is there any food you miss that you used to eat a lot back home but can't get here?

Blodpudding (a bit like your black pudding but nicer) with bacon and lingonberry jam. Sill (herring), but I have some in my fridge at the moment so I am sorted! In general, IKEA makes it possible to get my hands on most basic Swedish food products these days.

There must be some weird food in Sweden that people over here just wouldn't understand - got an example? My dad used to hunt bats with spears and his mother would make a curry out of them!

My dad did not hunt bats with spears, but I am sure many of you here wouldn't agree with either blodpudding, isterband or inlagd sill. Then there is the fermented herring we like to call surströmming but to be honest I have never sampled it myself, and very few people actually eat this in Sweden.

I've heard of that through watching foreign TV on BBC4!
How did you end up here in Bristol then? Is it the weather?

It definitely had something to do with a certain lovely lady that I met in Copenhagen a few years ago. She happened to be from this beautiful country and the rest is history (and present).

Obviously, your lovely lady is more then enough incentive to stay over here, but how do you like Bristol otherwise?

Bristol turned out to be a melting pot of creative people and the more time I spend here the more I find that makes me excited - just take something like the See No Evil project down on Nelson Street, how good is that! What other city would acknowledge that its most horrible 60's concrete zone needed a treatment from some of the best graffiti artists in the world.

I agree! Bristol is a great city for creativity.
You've been producing music for, what, a decade or so?

If you count the first time I started a sequencer on my Amiga 500 it has actually been over 20 years now! But I guess I have been serious for something like 15 years, and I had my first vinyl release in 2001 which somewhat marked the start of a new chapter. Back then it was breakbeat and drum'n'bass, but a few years ago I started doing more house and after moving to Bristol I have definitely diversified my music even more.

What got you started? Did you play an instrument or something first?

I played the piano from an early age, but I was always surrounded by music as a child - I got a small drum kit when I was five years old which I managed to give a serious beating or two. When I was ten years old I got my first Amiga 500 and started playing around with SoundTracker and soon realised I would rather spend my time doing my own music rather than practise on the piano playing other people's music, so one day I took a tape with Amiga tracks to my piano teacher, played them and told her why I had decided to quit my piano lessons. I wish I could go back to her now and ask if she had any idea what I was talking about back then - music made on computers?

What sort of gear are you using at the moment?

I have gone through phases of using only a computer, buying my first synth back around 1996, investing in more and more gear for a home studio (such as an EMU E64, Waldorf microQ and much more), moving on to build a studio with recording room and then moving to Stockholm where studio space was much more at a premium. Since moving there, and definitely since moving here, I have done an immense amount of travel and I've found that working on a laptop works really well for me. I use FL Studio since 1998 and after almost 15 years with a program you learn pretty much every little feature that the program has, and that makes working so much more efficient. If I want to automate a filter on a bass sound, or sidechain the flanger depth of a hihat to a vocal, I know what to reach for and how to use it. No broken cables, no MIDI routing, no mixer channel confusion, no limited sampler memory banks...

Got any memorable gig stories from your travels?

Poland is always a great place to play, and I had some of my best drum'n'bass gigs there - whether in abandoned factories without any heating in November, in the basement of gigantic wharf buildings, and in a local pub with fish painted on the walls, the party is always on top there! Also, when I lived in Denver I got to play some really versatile gigs, one that specifically comes to mind was when I was asked to play live electronica to open an astronomy panel discussion in the IMAX cinema at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, including one of the astronauts involved in the moon landings.

Wow, the actual moon landings!
What's the most ridiculous thing you've seen someone do while pissed (or otherwise incapacitated)?

It could be many things, but if I think about it I think accidentally ending up walking on the E4 motorway on the way home from the club is one of the least successful tricks one of my friends has ever pulled off. Either that or a student from Gothenburg riding downhill in a shopping trolley crashing into a speaker stack.

What's the most dangerous thing you've seen anyone do of their own free will?

This could probably be a paraglider in the Alps who went out over a cliff with treetops directly under him and ended up crashing into said treetops because of mischievous winds. I got involved in the rescue and he was found halfway up a tree, but alive and well. Either that or a student from Gothenburg riding downhill in a shopping trolley crashing into a speaker stack.

What are you listening to at the moment?

Forsaken's Juno Dubstep mix for Juno Download.

Do you have a top 5 album or track list?

It is ever changing but some albums will always be high up on any list, like Prodigy - "The Experience", Photek - "Modus Operandi", Teebee - "Black Science Labs", Atjazz - "Labfunk" and Bonobo - "Black Sands". I guess that constitutes some kind of Top 5 right there.

Got any exciting plans for the near future?

I will be working on a new collaboration track with Lowbit labels boss Sonic Union to follow up the track Response licensed by Carl Cox for the Ten Years of Space Ibiza mix album. There are more collaborations underway in various genres, with Stockholm-based producer mates like Shift Lock, Miklo and Emad Moore, Bristol-based artists like Startslow, Dekoy and Forsaken, Dubkraft head honcho Silviu Costinescu in Barcelona, Swedish techno producer Håkan Lidbo and more that I can't talk about yet. Exciting times!

Materia's single 'Razorball/Underfall' is out on Drawn recordings September 12th

Materia is part of the crew who put on the Lost nights in Bristol and can often be found playing chooooons in dark places full of people jumping around. Here he is showing us his best side...