Now in 2006, Luke Slater finds himself at a new crossroads and for the first time in his long and industrious recording career at the helm of his own record label. Mote-Evolver will herald a new recording freedom for Slater as he lines up his first release Deep Heet Vol.1 under his Planetary Assault guise.
"At first I think everyone in the dark as to what was going on. I was as well," he freely admits. By the end of last year something had established itself to a certain degree and I liked the fact that things had been deconstructed. This is something that I can now do without going down the established route."
Mote-Evolver (a 'mote' being the smallest measurable particle) releases will come out in limited vinyl pressings for the traditionalists and collectors and as digital downloads via Luke's new site
www.mote-evolver.com "I'm not going into this with any expectations," Luke points out. "I'm trying to look at things in new ways. All I really know is that I can write music and now release it myself. Music used to be a lot harder to get but now you can find it right away With the site already launched with Deep Heet Vol.1 Slater already has future releases lined up including new material under his own name in the shape of Head Converter, special download releases of The 7th Plain's seminal albums The Four Cornered Room and My Yellow Wise Rug and L.B. Dub Corp's Spark as well as label merchandise such as already available 'mote-evolver' t-shirts.
About the new live: "I just think that live drums at festivals tend to get a bit lost. Because my music is very rhythm based I couldn't see how I could get across the sound that I wanted on just one set of drums. Having drums and percussion gives you a lot more rhythm. There seems to be this split where the electronic side is going to laptop and the live band set up is staying as it is and I want to present something that is essentially electronic with more acoustic influence. The sequencer doesn't have to rule everything in a live situation. You can lose some of the initial feeling. What I am interested in is that music is really created on stage. It's hard to create the same feeling live as that in the studio but that is what we are trying to do."
Luke Slater and ballet are not two words that you would usually associate with each other but thanks to a suggestion from the Berghain Club in Berlin (where Slater holds one of various monthly residencies) he has come up with new 7th Plain material to be choreographed by the Straat Berlin ballet. "I'm a really big fan of art and I don't see why it all has to be so alienated. I can't ever say that I've ever had an interest in ballet but I have always been interested in music interacting with art. It's kind of like ballet but not as you know it. It has a dark edge to it." Whilst it will take the Straat Berlin ballet the best part of a year to choreograph the whole thing, the piece of music will also form part of the new 7th Plain album when finished.
With all this going on you'd think that Luke Slater has little time for his passion of spinning records, yet he has been consistently playing the world over and forging residencies in different countries. "I'm really into developing a home in different places and it's nice to go back somewhere where you know the crowd." Playing longer sets in smaller clubs has established a more intimate vibe for Luke that harks back to his acid house days at London's Troll. With residencies at Barcelona's Nitsa, Berlin's Berghain, Petrol in Antwerp, Villa Rouge in the south of France and small clubs across Europe, Luke Slater has been tirelessly honing his skills, continually working the crowd, ever developing new sounds and constantly evolving.
