at SUHQ, and judging by some of the more heavyweight DJ's charts, they are also exciting crowds not just in the UK, but across the pond too. Oh by the way, Tone Control have kindly included an exclusive musical download for our readers within this interview. You need to read it to find it though people! Anyway, that's enough from me, let's get to the main feature. souledUp proudly present a chat with Tone Control:

SU: Let’s start from the beginning. Where and how did the pair of you meet and what led you into forming a production duo? What was the first track you produced under the Tone Control moniker?

TC: Simon: Hey Gareth, thanks for your interest!

Marcus and I met when I was doing my high school work experience in Essential Selection records in Ipswich in 1994. Marcus is a year older than me, so was at college nearby. Marcus was buying and playing Drum n Bass and we met over the counter – his cousins were part owners of the shop. Our friendship didn’t really develop until Marcus returned to our hometown, Ipswich some 5 years later following a stint studying sound production in Manchester and Birmingham. I had cobbled together a studio in my bedroom and Marcus and I met again at Ipswich Community Radio where we both produced radio shows. After listening to each others productions, we soon collaborated in Marcus’ studio, before ultimately

amalgamating our equipment to create one large lab in around 2002 – bear in mind, this was all outboard midi equipment, so we needed an entire room to fit it all in! At this point we decided to name our joint recordings under the Tone Control name.

In 2003, I was lucky enough to do a few gigs in Australia. One venue I played was a large club called The Family in Brisbane. A resident there DJ freestyle heard one of our tracks “I want You” and later contacted me to produce a remix.

By 2004, we’d had enough of Ipswich and moved to London, rebuilding our studio in our living room. We’d started shopping our demo’s and Freestyle had mailed our project to Grab recordings, then operating out of Dallas. They picked up “I Want You”, and another of DJ freestyle’s tracks, Electricity (remixed by Joe Silva from Canada) and released it as collaborative EP, called the “3 Zone EP” because we were all operating over 3 time zones – peeps like Miguel Migs and Charles Webster were playing ‘I Want You’ at the time, which was a good way to start!

SU: One of my favourite tracks of the year was ‘Illusion’. Everything was tight on that track, and I