The In Crowd

Carl Cox isn’t happy. He’s stuck in Bologna, Italy for the night as he’s just missed a flight back to London. However, given his cheerful disposition his bad mood doesn’t last long and, when it’s pointed out that Bologna is the capital of cuisine in a country that prides itself on good food, his demeanour changes and his trademark toothy beam lightens up his countenance.

Apart from getting stuck in Italy, Carl has a lot to be happy about. Later this year, the good-natured DJ finally releases his long-awaited new artist album and next month sees the fifth birthday of Intec, the record label that he runs with DJ C1.
In case you’ve been marooned on a desert island since the late 90s, Intec has been one of modern techno’s success stories. A&Red shrewdly by C1 and benefiting from Cox’s contacts, the label has released material by such cutting edge acts as Deetron, Oxia, Bryan Zentz, Smith & Selway, Trevor Rockcliffe, Valentino Kanzyani and Tomaz vs. Filterheadz.
As Cox explains, the label is the realisation of years of hard slog.
“I had been trying to run my own label for years,” he says. “I had started off with MMR in 1995 and we had a few big releases with that. Then, a few years later I started off Ultimatum, which also had the sub labels, Ultimatum Breaks and Worldwide Ultimatum.
“The problem was that at the time, I was tied in to a deal with Edel and found it hard to run an independent dance label. They were trying to fit in releases by techno artists like Trevor Rockcliffe in between putting out chart compilations. It was a very frustrating way to work but then C1 came along. We decided to set up an international techno label for which Intec is short for.”
Indeed, for someone with a reputation for rocking crowds with his no-holds barred sets, Cox’s selection is decidedly restrained and even manages to resurrect some hidden treasures from the label’s back catalogue.
Pure Intec opens with Oxia’s string-led ‘Troisieme’ and the electronic jazz-house of DJ Q’s remix of Valentino Kanzyani’s ‘House Soul’. It then moves into tech-house with the dense grooves of Destination’s evergreen ‘Definition Of Love’ and ‘Love Is’, a track by new Intec signing Roger Watson. Cox keeps playing the less obvious tunes and includes ‘Arrive’, the B-side to Smith & Selway’s big tune ‘Move’ as well as alternate mixes of ‘Visions Of You’ by Trevor Rockcliffe and the label’s biggest tune, Tomaz vs. Filterheadz’ ‘Sunshine’ - before ending with Swiss producer Deetron’s ‘Miss Suave’, a prime example of modern European techno, influenced by Detroit’s legacy.
“I tried to include the less obvious tracks and there’s some electro and vocal tracks as well as B-sides of big releases on the CD,” he observes. “Having said that, all the tunes on the mix have stood the test of time.”
Intec has been one of the most successful techno labels in recent years, releasing big records like ‘Watch The Sun’, ‘Pontape’ and ‘Sunshine’, but Cox is adamant that his motivation isn’t to shift as many units as possible.
“When I first heard ‘Sunshine’, my first thought wasn’t ‘wow, I reckon I could sell 20,000 copies of this record,’ it was just ‘wow, what a great tune’,” he says.
It’s an approach that has paid off well, in spite of a general downturn in dance music over the past year which has affected the sales of other techno imprints and has seen electronic music distributors go out of business.
“It has been a tough time, but we’ve been lucky and still manage to sell about 5,000 units on vinyl per release,” Cox maintains. “We also knew about a year before it happened that (techno distributor) Prime was going to go bust, so we got out in time.”
Indeed, while Intec is to release more EPs by upcoming producers like Leandro Gamez, Cristian Varela and Roger Watson, Cox believes that the onus is on labels to develop artists.
“Dance music has got stuck in a rut because there are far too many people putting out tracks and there aren’t enough real performers,” he observes. “Now is the time for another Prodigy or Basement Jaxx to break through and hopefully Intec will be able to bring an artist like that forward from a techno background.”

Pure Intec is out on June 1 on Intec