Simon Finnegan is one half (beside Marcus Harris) of soulful Production duo Tone Control, who’s releases can be found on their fast growing label Tone Control Music.

Since their debut release on Grab Recordings with DJ Freestyle in 2005, the duo’s Tone Control productions have received support from heavy weight house DJ’s such as Roy Davis Jnr, Miguel Migs, Charles Webster, JT Donaldson and Demarkus Lewis.

Your bio reads like a long queue of music-related experiences, from promotions and organization to radio broadcasting and Djing. When did you start producing music the first time?

I see, I’ll have to try and make it a bit more of an interesting read then! My first musical production experiences where a weird basic bleep rhythm I programmed on an Amstrad 6128 computer with my friends Damien and Anand when we were about 11 years old – yep I was pretty geeky!

When I was 18, my friend Sean (who DJ’d in a pub I was working in), invited me to write some music with him and a guy called Max using a 12 bit Roland Sampler (which had a monitor) and a Casio sequencer synth – we made a basic Gary’s Gang loop with some additional drums. I enjoyed it so much I spent my student loan on an Akai S3000 sampler (with 2mb or ram!) and a Korg X5 synth.
By chance, Marcus had a similar setup using an Atari ST to sequence but he had much more processing equipment than me. We started producing together when Marcus returned from studying sound production at university, around 2001…

A very interesting project is “First time around” on Hog Dogs in 2005, a classic Re-Edit. Do you share the love for re-edits and sample based dance music?

Yeah, sampling is really my background in music production. I’m not really a musician, so sampling was a good way for a musical novice like me to get into producing. Aside from that, we listen to all types of music.
I collect disco-boogie 12″s and we both have a fair bit of old soul in our collections, Marcus also collects dub and jazz etc, and being at high school in the early – mid nineties we were both influenced by east coast hip-hop like tribe, gangstarr, Pete rock, Wu etc.

You started Tone Control Music in 2006 with 6 highly praised releases until today. What was the idea behind Tone Control’s Music? Was it more a platform for your own music, or did you already think of a catalogue with various artists?

Yeah, the label was certainly started for as platform for our co-productions as Tone Control. We had previously signed a single to Grab, but not many labels were looking to release our kind of electronic dance floor soul (probably because we were a bit too eclectic, making music of all tempos and genres, from downbeat to broken beat and house) so we decided to release music our selves – its been a good and empowering experience with a fairly steep learning curve!

The label has kinda grown since then, and I have signed other projects, but the label will always primarily be about releasing Tone Control’s music, which is music produced by Marcus and I.

The first four releases were done by you and Marcus. When can we expect another release by you and Marcus Harris?

Very soon – we have forthcoming singles “Take Me Away” with vocalist Adeola Ranson, and “Without Your Love”, a follow up to “Illusion” with James B. Coleman… They are being mixed now, and when the remixes are in we’ll be ready to go.

We are also bringing a number of our recordings together as an album, which will be coming together during the course of the next year. We have always made music across genres and tempos, but with one sound – so an album is the natural progression for Tone Control.

One of my personal favourites of 2008 is “Keep on” by “Love over Money” (TNCL005), who is behind that and can we expect to hear any more?

Love Over Money is a project I co-produce with multi-instrumentalist, Nathan Thomas, and vocalist Amanda Posener. We had some success with “Keep On”, licensing it to several compilations, so we’re now pursuing an album project. We’ve recorded a couple of songs and I’m really excited about the concept, but that’s all I’m going to tell you for now!

How did the collaboration with Poussez and Demarkus Lewis happen?

Poussez is made up of Jafar and Maxime Cescau. Jafar is a friend of mine through my DJ residency at Soul City in London – he was the first guest DJ who played there, nearly 6 years ago. We remixed his release with cohort Andy ‘Touch’ Fingers (Jafar and Touch’s) “Don’t Rush To Find Love” on Universal Vibes), and Andy played Rhodes for us on ‘Illusion’ so you could say our friendship has been fairly productive and collaborative.

Poussez hooked up with Demarkus as he recently moved to London from Dallas, and the Vocalist, the excellent Hannah Khemoh, is part of their live project Poetiquette. They sent me the track coz they were looking for a label – I had been considering increasing the label output and expanding the roster by signing similar artists and songs, and because I loved the song so much I decided to go for it.

Its a great song, and received some great support by the likes legends such as Tony Humphries, Frankie Knuckles and many more, so it was a worthwhile venture… I love the song, so I expect there will be more mixes in the future.

Tone Control still releases it’s tracks on vinyl. Is there still a good market for physical sound carriers?

I think the vinyl market is still shrinking. Vinyl is my format of choice because its what I grew up with and I still think the analogue sound of vinyl, which is much warmer at the bottom end, suits rhythmic music much better than Digital/CD (which I think was designed for clarity and really, with classical music in mind).

I love buying physical products too – its not the same buying something intangible, but the move to digital is forgone, so there is no point moaning or debating anymore! Within house music, the soulful side anyway, its certainly much more a digital only market these days with sites like traxsource making up the majority of the sales. I wanted to pursue the vinyl releases, and have been fairly lucky up to now sales wise, but I think the decision to release 12″s of future Tone Control Music releases will be one I’ll consider carefully.

I haven’t been to London for more than 2 years now, but I think the climate for soulful house music is quite good there, or am I wrong?

I love London, and I think its great here for most forms of art, including music and clubs. Globally, I think there was a real peak in the quality of Soulful House releases a couple of years ago, and this resulted in a peak of interest and popularity of club nights supporting the genre.

Since then the number of quality songs being released has reduced, and as a result I think more people are being attracted towards the techy end of the house music spectrum – but its not to say that some of that is not still soulful (we could talk about our definition of soulful all day!). In the mean time though, the club scene is still quite healthy here (despite the closing of larger clubs like The Cross/Key/Canvas and the opening of Matter).

There are still great nights like Need2Soul, MUAK, as well as more rootsy nights like Inspiration Information, and our very own Soul City. Soul Heaven has moved to the new fabric club called Matter, which is huge (like over 2,000) and Shelter is back at Ministry with Trippin’, but its the smaller nights that hold the interest for me. If you come again definitely try and check the ones I mentioned as well as Artizan’s night at East Village, Fresh Minute at Home bar, Soul City, Ready and Deep London at Raduno, Tribe at Dex in Brixton, Not For Squares… I know there’s loads more, but that’s all I can think of right now.

Do you see any particular trends in the UK’s House music scene?

Generally I see it as growing – there is a whole new wave of producers coming to light, which I think are benefiting the scene in London and the UK in general. Look out for Soiled, Sean McCabe, Guy Robin, Jose Carretas, John Oudo, Danny Native, AphroDisiax, The Revenge – these are all UK producers coming on strong in 2009, again there are plenty more, but these are a few that have impressed me lately.

What are your plans as producer and with Tone Control Music in the future?

Tone Control and Love Over Money albums are gonna keep me busy for a while but in general I’d like to establish Tone Control Music as a label at the forefront of soulful underground dance music with crossover appeal… the main aim is to keep making, enjoying and sharing music! Bring it all on!

Link: Tone Control @ Traxsource
Link: Tone Control
Link: Tone Control on myspace

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