Mace - Inside Planet Funk

Mace began his career in 1991 after being heavily inspired by the legendary Sterns nightclub in his hometown of Worthing, listening to early sets from LTJ Bukem, Grooverider, Carl Cox and Kid Batchelor. This led to Mace picking up his first pair of decks in 1992, he self taught himself to mix, and was always into the rolling style, longer mixes that DJ's like Randall and Carl Cox were known for at the time. Come 1993 and the scene was splitting from Hardcore into Jungle and Mace naturally took the Jungle path, at the time he spent a lot of time in London visiting record shops such as Black Market, Unity, Wax City and Lucky Spin, often spending hours waiting around to pick up a limited promo run of the latest Jungle release, whilst religiously tuned into Kool FM. Maces big break was towards the end of 1996 when he linked up with local DJ Rok One who was part of the Jungle Pressure and Steppaz Convention crew, Rok introduced Mace to Richard Scott and Original Vibes who ran a studio in Chichester called Dancefloor Studios, incidentally this was the same studio that used to master the Sterns tapes that Mace grew up on. In 1997 Mace produced his first Jungle track called Reminiscene at Dance Floor Studios, a simple rolling drum & bass track that worked really well on the dance floor. At the time the Kiss FM Drum & Bass shows were very popular so Mace sent the track to Kenny Ken, two days later Kenny called him to arrange a meeting to sign the track for release on Mix & Blen records. This was to be the start of Maces production career, Reminiscence went on to be a classic, being played by many top DJs at the time and featured on the World Dance album in 97. Mace was still actively pushing his DJ career and won best up and coming Drum & Bass DJ on the 1997 Kiss FM DJ competitions. Shortly after this Mace also signed with Ton Management, a DJ agency with an impressive roster such as Kenny Ken, Ratpack, Ellis Dee and Peshay to name a few, Ton was the agency to be with at the time. The bookings soon came flooding in and Mace was performing weekly up and down the UK and abroad at clubs such as Labyrinth, One Nation, Pure Science, Ministry Of Sound, Steppaz Convention, Club UN, Slinky, Roadmender, The Matrix, Kiss FM, USA Tour, Paris, Amsterdam and beyond. Mace also had a weekly show on one of London's leading pirate stations, Rude FM where he joined up with Mc Evil B, who hosted his weekly show at the time. Over the coming years Mace released many tracks on Mix & Blen and often collaborated with Kenny Ken and good friends G-Squad, who are now known as Supply & Demand. Come 2003 and Mace was branching out musically and was releasing music on Fabio's label Creative Source, his track "Inside Your Soul" was a classic down at the legendary Swerve nights that Fabio ran at the Velvet Rooms, in Charing Cross. Fabio used to host a weekly show on BBC Radio One with Grooverider, and often played Maces new tracks, this exposure really helped and Maces DJ work picked up full time. Mace then set up his own label Planet Funk Recordings, which was co-owned with Kenny Ken. Planet Funk was more geared towards the Liquid Funk sound of the time, and was an instant hit, with many top DJs playing tracks from the label, it soon became well known for pushing new artists and music from overseas. The label had 10 releases between 2002 and 2009 and has been left open for future projects.... It was around this time when Mace was spending a lot of time in Miami, it was like a second home, initially it began with a booking at the winter music conference, where he met some local promoters and DJs, Mace was then back and forth to Miami Djing every three months and played all over Florida for a number of years. From the very beginning in 1991 to the present day, Mace has dedicated over 25 years to the music he loves and will continue to do so. Mace now goes by the artist name "Original Mace".

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• mixcloud.com