Interview with Toronto Is Broken & Night Tracks 022 Guest Mix

Today we have an interview with Toronto Is Broken, a producer and part of the duo behind Dual Signal Records (which if you don’t know yet, I recommend checking out immediately, especially if you love free music). He’s also included a guest mix, so you can check that out too. Read on...

NT: Hey, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?
TIB: Hi, I'm Christian Hoffmann, otherwise known as Toronto Is Broken, and co-owner of Dual Signal Records. I'm 18 and produce Drum & Bass, Dubstep and Future Garage. I come from a little village called Barwell in Leicestershire, that could be even more smack bang in the middle of the UK if it tried. I've also featured on BBC Radio 1Xtra, done various mixes and interviews for places such as Knowledge Magazine and Phuture Frequency Podcast.

NT: First off, a few questions about Dual Signal. What was the driving force behind starting a label of your own?
TIB: Basically, me and Steve (Kynch), who I run the label with had known each other for a while and one day I came up with the crazy idea to start a record label, somewhere where we can officially release our material, as opposed to self releasing on your Soundcloud page or promoting a Mediafire download link. At the time I was also finishing up my album "Reboot" and that basically kick started us off.

NT: All the releases have been given away for free so far. What’s the reason for this? Do you ever find it hard to convince artists to release with you over other labels?
TIB: Sometimes it is, but our label was set up and designed to release free bass music, legally. We see ourselves as a gateway for smaller, undiscovered artists, and we've received huge support. We've also been lucky enough to feature established artists on our label too such as Whistla, Whyrez, Krew, and more recently Brown Noise.

NT: Toronto Is Broken is a pretty unusual name. What made you choose this?
TIB: A long time ago I went through a phase of several, really rubbish names that I could never stick with, like, Loneproject, Hybryd Nation. God knows why I came up with names like that. Back in the days of Myspace being big, I had a friend that had a brother who set up a fake artist profile on there so he could upload his favourite music and then stream it from his personal profile, as back then you could only have certain tracks streamed off your profile, providing the band uploaded it. His name on his fake music profile was "Detroit Valentino", and he came up with it by getting a location and sticking a random word behind it. Then Toronto Is Broken was born. Personally I have nothing against Canadians, it was just purely created at random and as a result I've built up quite a following in Canada :)

NT: You produce in a lot of different styles, varying from the 2-step of ‘Down’, to drum & bass on ‘I Just Want To Love You’ and the seriously weighty dubstep of “Get Up VIP”. Do you prefer producing one style over the others?
TIB: My passion is the really electro, energetic Drum & Bass, especially artists like ShockOne, Metrik, Camo & Krooked, DC Breaks and Dirtyhonics, I could go on forever. So it's always the most fun to make, by creating nice crisp sounding drums and big synths and basslines. Its also the genre that I enjoy mixing the most as I can double drop a new track in really quickly and just keep on building up the energy.

Dubstep is still a joy to produce, but I dont really go for filthy dubstep basses that often, but I am no stranger to it. The thing I like about producing Future Garage though is that i can be alot more experimental. The techiques I use for making the drums in my tracks are always the same. I use the same processing and samples to create big pounding drums. However, with Future Garage, these just go straight out the window, and I can try anything and get away with it. I love the low reese basses like in my tracks "Down", "Get Up", and "Kusanagi". But at the end of the day my main passion is my Drum & Bass.

NT: Have you got any releases as Toronto Is Broken lined up? How about Dual Signal? Will there be any new artists releasing on the label in the future?
TIB: Well with Dual Signal, we've just released Brown Noise's "Corridor - EP". And my next release will also be Dual Signal's next release and its my single "Never Easy (Anodyne Industries Remix) / Forever With You VIP". I've had the Anodyne Industreis remix of my track "Never Easy" on my hard drive for over a year now, as I've never got round to releasing it, and now that he's released an EP on Empathy Recordings, and got a new forthcoming remix EP on IDMf, it felt like the right time. "Forever With You" was originally the introduction track on my album "Reboot", which is now over a year old. I like the introduction alot, but it was just a shame it was so short as I designed it to be purely and opening track on the album. So I remixed it and made it longer and DJ safe, so that I could actually feature it in my mixes.

NT: Can you explain your selection for the mix?
TIB: The selection for the mix is simple, music I'm loving right now.

NT: Finally, if you had to name your three favourite “Night Tracks”, what would they be?
TIB: Possibly "Make It Darker VIP" by Anodyne Industries that is to be released on the 13th September on IDMf, and from the promo I heard, it's sounding sick. "Ghost" by XI, and the Teebee remix of "The World" by Emalkay and Lena Cullen.

Toronto Is Broken - Voight Kampff
Toronto Is Broken - Move Your Body
Toronto Is Broken - Digitalism
Tantrum Desire - Pay Your Own Way
Ad Gannon - Bad Trip
Ravager - Raindrops [Inv3rsion Remix]
Loadstar - Hit The Ground
Drumsound & Bassline Smith - Close
Futurebound & Metrik - Sabotage
High Rankin - The Things You Do [Toronto Is Broken Remix]
Salaryman - Endless Night [Toronto Is Broken Remix]
Anodyne Industries - Make It Darker VIP
Noisia - Deception
JLS - The Club Is Alive [DC Breaks Remix]
DC Breaks - The More I Want (Ft. Rox)
Eric Prydz - Niton (The Reason) [Metrik Remix]
Funk D'Void - Diabla [Metrik Remix]
Smooth - Calling
Toronto Is Broken - April 9th
IG88 - Seahorse Paternity Test (Ft. Jenni Potts) [Toronto Is Broken Remix]
Nero - Me & You [Dirtyphonics Remix]
Nero - Me & You
Amon Tobin - Surge [16bit Remix]
Anodyne Industries - Kanjou Nashi
Kyza - Go [Bar9 Remix]
Toronto Is Broken - A Little More
ShockOne - Crucify Me Pt.II (Ft. Phetsta)

Toronto Is Broken on Soundcloud
Dual Signal on Soundcloud