"I Get To Showcase Everything I Can Do": Taxman On His Debut Album

Friday sees the arrival of Playaz for the next instalment of their long-standing residency. This time around label cohort Taxman is set to celebrate the long awaited release of his debut album Synthetic Visions. Described by Playaz as “timeless and visionary”, the latest drop to come from the collective is nothing short of unadulterated d&b revelry. You only have to hear Rebirth the first single off the LP (which you can preview in our player below) to understand what we mean. Ahead of the celebrations, we caught up with the main man himself on the new record and working with the likes of Diane Charlemagne. This Friday is the official launch of your album, ‘Synthetic Visions’. You looking forward to it? Yeah of course, only this time I’m going to stay for a bit longer and have a bit of a drink with my mates and celebrate! The official release date is March 3rd right? How do you feel now it’s all done? You happy with the end result? I feel a bit lost without it to be honest, but at the same time it feels great being able to start new projects again, because the last few months I’ve been running up to the deadline to have my album complete, I was just finishing stuff off. But yes, I’m happy with it, I could have kept going but I needed to draw a line somewhere and finish it. Hopefully everyone likes it! What can we expect from this record? It shows a lot of different sides to my music. I didn’t set out to write a compilation of "bangers", it was always supposed to be more than that, it shows that I’ve progressed and matured and I’m not a one trick pony. In what way would you say it was different to your previous records? Most of previous records have mostly been singles, and like it or not I’m pigeon-holed into a certain category. And every time I released a single everyone expected something harder and rowdier than the last. With an album I get to showcase everything I can do, different sounds and a few different tempos. You told our friend over at KMAG that your sound is starting to mature. What do you mean by that? By "maturing" I mean that obviously I’m older now, and I want different things out of my music than I did 8 years ago. I’ve shown everyone I can make in your face dance floor tunes, this is my time to show everyone and prove to myself that my music has vibe and soul to it too. Did the album come together quite naturally or has it been quite long progression? It’s taken me over two years to get it all done. It was on and off for a bit, a lot of it was practice, getting ideas down etc. A lot of the music I made for it is still just unfinished ideas sitting on the computer. I knew how I wanted it to sound when I was writing it, but because it was my first album I really felt the pressure from myself to make it right and to make it different from the rest. Making an album is very psychological, there was a lot of self-loathing and doubt along the way to be honest. It was hard work, probably the hardest thing I’ve ever worked on in my life. The first single off the LP is Rebirth with Diane Charlemagne. How was it working with Diane? Working with a vocalist like Diane was all new to me, I’d never worked with any vocalist as talented and professional as Diane is, and I couldn’t get my head around the fact I was having the woman who did the vocals for Inner City Life singing on my music.  I don’t think I’ll ever forgot it, it was a very special day for me as far as my career goes! And finally, if you had to pick one track off the album to be your favourite, which would it be and why? It depends how I’m feeling day to day, but today I’ll say ‘Mode’.