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Mat Zo


Aza

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I cannot believe that this guy is only 20!

Recently I feel that he's become one of the most favourite artists. I think he first got my attention with his remix of Tiesto's Driving to Heaven but then 'Lucky Strike' and '24 hours' did it for me!

Absolute musical genuis - I love his sound and style. Right up there with the likes of Airwave, Andy Moor, Lange and Markus Schulz.definitiely

Great for the UK to have a sound that IMO, for trance, is best left with Holland :)

His Wiki entry is a good read...

Strangely I haven't heard any of his sets - anyone got any links? First time that I've actually become a fan of a DJ purely based on their productions...

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I've seen him play a couple of times, his best set was on the ElectronicSessions boat party a couple of years back - he was exceptional following Jody Wisternoff.

Personally (and I accept that our tastes are pretty different) I feel he has really lost his way the last couple of years. He was so interesting and fresh when he started out and seems to have fallen into being a carbon copy of Arty in some of his productions.

His 'Driving To Heaven' remix was very good and I did like that but lately he seems to have completely lost his way (from my point of view).

Tracks like 'Fumar' were magnificent - prog trance but with a totally different slant. His remixes of the two Holden & Thompson tracks were pretty cool too and he seemed to have a really wide ranging taste which translated in his productions and remixes.

Lately I just feel he has become exactly what Above & Beyond want him to be - i.e. a cash cow. He churns out a lot of similar tunes (the ones you mentioned above seem to be exceptions) in a short space of time, Anjuna whore him as much as possible to cash in and then when everyone gets tired of his sound they move on to their next 'discovery'. They've done this with quite a few producers (see Oli Smith, N2O, Daniel Kandi, etc, etc) and it irritates me.

Anjuna have far too much say in how their releases sound (in order to fit in with the label 'ethos') and it limits how creative producers can be (this has been covered extensively elsewhere so I won't go into detail). I could get it a whole other territory here with anti-anjuna speech but I'll save that for another thread.

He's a talented guy but is being held back - as far as I am concerned

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What's happened to Anjuna, have I missed something here? Not heard their recent releases for a very long time...

I'm off out shortly so I won't bore you with the long version.

Long story short they have lost the plot. They now sign artists instead of releases which leads to them whoring the same artist(s) for three months then casting them aside (currently it's Arty, before it has been Kandi, N20, Oli Smith, etc).

The signing of artists instead of releases mean that they have ultimate creative control and can basically have producers 'make tunes to order', i.e. the producer makes the kind of track that Above& Beyond request as it will fit into their set. It also dictates that we are deprived of any one off tracks which were often the most interesting releases on the label, Yilmaz Altanhan 'Eighties' anyone?

That plus their disregard for their loyal fanbase and seemingly pig headed attitude towards running the label and community has led to a vast -anii-anjuna culture forming.

In the wake of them making their forum a facebook only zone (you have to sign into the forum using your facebook account instead of a stand alone login like here and every other forum) and censoring the forum so that any remotely negative posts were instantly modified or deleted, and users were in many cases banned, a new alternative was created called Unjuna (http://www.unjunaforum.com).

The forthcoming Anjuna 200 release is a prime example of their ineptitude. Instead of celebrating the history of the label they have chosen to release a Mat Zo & Arty collaboration which represents the same generic shit that they have been peddling for the last 9 months.

I'm sure Jason can add to this as he is also a member of Unjuna and has seen some of the frankly fascist measures employed by the Anjuna people.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Entirely agree with what you said Tom, Anjuna is just a cash cow now, it's gotten very boring now, give me old Anjuna any day!

As for Mat Zo, I had the pleasure of meeting him in Berlin when he did a gig at my friend's club night, picked him up from the airport, nice guy, mad he supported Tiesto on a club night at the age of 18 or something.

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That would be awesome, especially at that age.

Tiesto did support his remix of 'Driving to Heaven' a lot and he has gone on to do great productions and remixes. His take on Signalrunners' 'Recoil2' was also a great remix I forgot to mention :)

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