Accelerating into the blurring boundaries of electronic music through his Me Me Me imprint, Man Power is the production alias of UK born music maker Geoff Kirkwood. We sat down with Man Power after his set last week at the A Club Called Rhonda party at The BPM Festival to share with us insight into his successes over the last few years, upcoming news and comment on the tragic shooting at Blue Parrot – reminding us all that EDM is not the problem.
SR: Your Me Me Me label has done incredibly well; with huge contributions such as DJ Tennis, Axel Boman and Red Axes. Who can we expect for 2017?
MP: Thankyou. Other than the other names already announced like Rex The Dog, Pale Blue and Daniel Maloso, the as yet unannounced contributors who you can see before summer would be Andrew Weatherall, Bezier, Pional, Paramida, Frank Butters, Elliot Adamson. When I set out I made a pact to only work with true friends, or artists that I HUGELY admire, so it´s great to see it all taking shape.
SR: With residencies in Monterrey, Mexico and Newcastle – how do find time to make music? Do you have any rituals that keep you sane whilst always flying cross-continent.
MP: Making music IS the ritual I have to keep me sane. My wife will tell you that I start unraveling when I have no creative outlet. I´m between studios at the moment though, so its all stuff sketched on the Macbook, then taken to friends places to finish. That can be a little bit frustrating in some respects, but does grant me the facility to work wherever I am, which is usually in transit to a brief stop somewhere else.
SR: Your career has escalated quickly in a short amount of time. This is a testament to your ambition. Do you have any life philosophies on hard work and success?
MP: Just be true to yourself. Its very easy to get somewhere quite quickly through the freedom granted by peoples lack of expectation regarding you. Then when you get there people start forming expectations of you, and its equally easy to submit to the pressure to conform to that.
That just becomes ultimately unrewarding and frustrating though, so the real trick is to confound those expectations in anyway you can. Especially try and subvert any expectations you have of yourself. Lots of successful people talk about the obliteration of your comfort zone being essential for your growth, and I find that so true.
SR: How was your BPM Experience? Was it an honor to be playing at its 10th Anniversary?
MP: My BPM experience was very unusual. The gig for A Club Called Rhonda was great, and it was lovely to hang with those guys, and see my other friends who were playing.
I´d actually timed BPM around a holiday in Playa with my wife and stepdaughter though, so I wasn´t immersing myself in the usual festival antics, and was actually building sandcastles on a beach about 30 mins before I played.
I also had to shoot straight off after I played, as I got a message mid set saying my wifes sister had been taken to hospital after an accident. When I got back thankfully everything was ok, but I went straight back to building sand castles.
The next morning I woke up to a ton of messages asking about our safety, as the news had broke about the tragic shooting at the Blue Parrot during the early hours of the morning (when we were tucked up safe in bed about ten minutes down the road). Its truly a horrific and upsetting turn of events that I imagine was very upsetting to everybody involved in this global dance music community.
I just really hope its not perceived as some kind of problem that make people shun coming to Mexico to dance.
In the last year I´ve managed to miss the truck attack in Berlin by 4 hours, and a knife attack at Leytonstone Tube Station in London (in the name of terrorism) by about one hour. Thats not me giving it the big one about being in the midst of danger at all times, but it does suggest to me that almost everywhere in the world has some element of unforeseeable danger these days, and I really hope that this isn’t turned in to some excuse for people to justify some skewed stereotype they have of Mexico, which for me is one of my favourite places in the entire world, and which is to me occupied by the most warm and welcoming people you could ever hope to meet.
Thats not to say that it doesn´t have gigantic problems which need to be discussed and addressed. I just hope people can keep a perspective on those problems in relation to everything else that’s going on in the world.
SR:Whats your favorite record store world wide?
MP: 586 Record in Newcastle (Tony would beat me up if I said anywhere else)
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