Chatting Belly Dancers With Fully Charged
Fully Charged (Lee Watson & Scott Ashworth) begun their musical journey 10 years ago when they first begun DJ’ing. During this time they held a residency at one of the UK’s most iconic clubbing venues The Syndicate, Blackpool and only four (4) years ago they decided to turn their hand to producing, which led them to the formation of aptly named Fully Charged, in 2013.
Since forming in 2013 the duo have already notched up 11 electro/prog-house cross-genre hits, consistently charting inside the Top 100 Beatport Chart along with gaining support from internationally acclaimed DJ’s, Jochen Miller, Pete Tong, Paul Oakenfold, Judge Jules, Richard Grey, Futuristic Polar Bears, Fausto, Pink Panda and Sick Individuals.
Since their collaboration with Richard Grey titled ‘Hey’ (#10 Beatport Electro Chart) the duo have gone from strength to strength. No sooner had the dust settled on ‘Hey’ and ‘Prayer’ was hitting the Top 20 in the Progressive House Chart. Since then the boys have become renowned for their high quality energy fuelled dance-floor hits most notably ‘Prayer’, ‘About The Music’ and recently ‘Showdown’.
One thing is certain, the future for these guys is sure to be Fully Charged!
Hello Lee and
Scott, it’s such a huge honor to be doing this interview with you, thank you
much for taking time out to do it with us.
How are you doing
and how was your guy’s summer?
Hi
hope you’re well and thanks for your kind words, we love to talk about anything
to do with music :) Our summer was really good, we basically spent it in the
studio which has 4 carpeted walls so didn’t see much sun at all!
To start off tell
us who Lee is and who Scott is? If you could be any animal in the world what
would you be?
Lee has been in the spotlight quite a lot over
the last 15 years with his appearance on many TV shows and if he was an animal
then definitely a Monkey! He’s always pratting around and being cheeky... Scott
would be a Tiger because of the Eye of the Tiger track – he’s focused on being
the best and doesn't let anything get in his way.
Fully Charged on
what….?
We are
Fully Charged on music and the energy of the crowds – we think it’s all that
matters in life.
We are from South Africa,
and we ask all our “guests” this. What’s the first thing that comes to mind
when you hear South Africa?
For us it has to be the World Cup in 2010, we love football and it was
such a fantastic tournament! The South African people were amazing and the
atmosphere was just awesome :)
Together you
form Fully Charged for all our readers
out there who don’t know Fully Charged
please can you tell us a little more about how you both met and how did
you join forces?
We
both met DJing at the Syndicate super club in Blackpool which was the UK’s
largest club, from the moment we met both of us connected like brothers and to
this day we have still not disagreed on anything. We’re both crazy about music
and starting to produce just seemed like the perfect path for us to go down.
It’s taken a lot of hard work but our music is now we starting to get some
recognition which, we must say, is just fantastic!
The story goes you
only began producing recently tell us about the first time you sat behind a pc
to make a track? Did you love it or hate it?
Yes
actually, it was a nightmare! The first
time we ever sat behind a computer it was an old, slow PC and the machine kept
crashing all the time. As with all our
projects, we weren’t put off and certainly didn’t give up – we decided to
invest in a Mac Pro and have never looked back since.
Where does your
love for music stem from? Have you always wanted a career in music?
Yeah definitely, we both fell in love with music from a very early age,
starting to play the keyboard in our teens. We loved the track Underworld by
Born Slippy from the film Trainspotting, it was probably this track that got us
into dance music – it’s such an iconic track.
You’ve just
recently released Belly Dancer and the track blew up. Tell us more about the track, it’s not the
typical EDM record?
We are so happy that Belly Dancer is doing really well – it was a bit of a risk
track because like you said, it’s not a typical EDM record. The track started with us receiving an email
from Chaim in Israel
who sent us the original idea which we really liked, we decided to work on it
as a collab which resulted in the Belly Dancer you can hear on Beatport today!
11 Beatport top100
in one year. That’s pretty impressive. Do you think chart ranking are important
for success in the music industry?
Yes, 100%. You need to be in the
Beatport Chart without a doubt, it’s the world’s #1 and most recognised dance
chart so in our opinion, this is where the world will hear your sounds. So many tracks are released every week so to
get into the Top100 is hard, it goes without saying that we are so incredibly
grateful that people support us because without them we would be nothing.
Out of all the
Fully Charged releases thus far if you had to change one of the tracks which
would it be and what would you change?
Hmm tough one! Probably “What You Doing”
– it was our first release and we’d probably change everything now! But at least it’s proof of just how far we
have come in 12 months...
With so many new
styles of music becoming popular in your opinion what style is here to stay and
won’t change?
Our style! No seriously - music will always have trends where certain genres
become more popular than others but at the end of the day, music is beautiful
and affects many people in so many different ways so no matter what style you
like or are into, as long as it makes you smile then happy days!
You both started
out as DJ’s and it been said to get noticed in the industry as a DJ you need to
put out productions. Do you agree with this?
Yes, these days this is a must. You need to produce your own music so we’d
advise all aspiring producers put the hours in refining their craft or take a
music course like we did – then you will stand a much better chance in this
very tough industry.
How would you
describe the Fully Charged sound? Do you see yourself ever changing your sound?
The Fully Charged sound is very
energetic and uplifting, we don’t ever want to change it - we love and it’s
what has worked so far for us. Although
we understand that any sound has to evolve to stay current, we strongly believe
that if you love doing what you do then stick with it.
Do you think luck
has been on your side or do you make your own luck?
We believe that sitting in our
studio 12 hours every day has got us to where we are now, oh - and plenty of
cups of coffee! No, we don’t believe
luck has had anything to do with our achievements - if we had then maybe we
would be playing big festivals by now!
It’s that time
again DJ Mag 100 . We don’t agree with the poll what’s you guys take on it? Who
do you think is going to be number 1 DJ? And what makes someone a number 1 DJ?
We are not big fans of the DJ
Mag poll, it’s a popularity contest rather than a skill contest so don’t really
take much notice of it really. Plus, if
anything there should be a DJ Top100 and a Producer Top100 as many don’t do
both…
Dead or Alive If
you had to invite three people to play at a party you were organizing who would
you invite and where would your party be?
Tiesto, Underworld and Richard Grey at Hakasan in Las Vegas :D
We are heading in
to summer and you are heading into winter, where is the best place to spend
summer?
Ibiza - it’s the place to be every summer, we hope one
day we can get a summer residency there!
Any Last messages
for your fans?
We love all our fans and without them we would be nothing so a huge thankyou
for being Fully Charged!
Thank you for doing
this interview with us , we hope to see you playing somewhere around the globe
soon