Interview: British DJ Mark Knight

It was busy! A lot of the gigs were part of the All Knight Long tour, so it was great to play for longer than I usually would do. But all the travel and 7/8 hour sets definitely took it out of me. It was an intense experience: I had to really get to know my music better than ever before and it was a test of how to keep things interesting every night. But as challenging as it was I loved every minute I was playing: every night threw up different challenges and surprises and I think we put together a fantastic tour in the end.

I’m from Maidstone, a town near London which has actually built a really good music scene over the last 10 years or so. It wasn’t always like that though. My first gig was at a pub in Maidstone on a Tuesday night. It was dead, with less than 10 people in there. It was barely a gig but it did teach me you need to know your music well if you want to play in public, especially after I let one track run out completely before putting the next one on. My first ‘proper’ gig was at The Arches in Suffolk Street, London. I remember that the sound system was so loud I had to completely change how I played. That would have been around ’96 I think.

I think that the industry as a whole has been quite down on itself over the last year or so, but actually, it’s in a really good place. Yes, there have been a lot of recent closures of clubs, but at the same time new ones have opened and thrived. And there are more people interested in DJing or producing dance music than ever before. We also seem to have moved away from the super-polished huge clubs, and back to something more in touch with the roots of dance music. Everything has just evolved, and that’s where we’re at now.

I’d say consistency is definitely key. In terms of the A&R policy itself, that hasn’t changed since day one. We’re after quality, memorable records that smash a dancefloor and hooks that stay with you. And that carried over to everything else we do – a level of quality and consistency that makes us stand out. We’re also always listening to our audience, whether that’s at gigs or on social media. We have amazing fans, so we definitely take on board what they tell us or how they react to certain records.

One of the things we’re really focusing on is growing the Toolroom Academy. We’ve been running this for some time now, and it’s just getting bigger and bigger. In fact, it represents the biggest area of financial growth out of everything we do with Toolroom, so there’s definitely a growing appetite for it. I think what’s made it successful is that it’s not just generic production courses – the programs are based on the sound of Toolroom, so fans know that they’re going to get the best possible instruction of how to create the music they love. And it also gets really stuck into the business side of things. It’s also a genuine talent funnel for us – we’ve actually just signed a new artist for management who we met through an Academy event at the Brighton Music Conference earlier this year. It’s definitely a side of the business we’ll be looking to invest in and expand in the future.