The Digital Blonde is one of the scene's greatest and longest standing producers, holding down the dark and synth drenched side of Trance for over 30 years, and still producing some of the best tracks and albums in the modern era. We go deep into his history and journey into the trance scene, get updates on his album Apex, and of course a top 10 tracks for good measure. Enjoy!
Hello Ricky! How haas 2024 been for you so far?
2024 has been a good year. I played at Luminosity and also Rebooted In Sheffield, and they were both great gigs. Musically I have had quite a few collaborations released and have been working on a lot of my old stuff. I’ve remade Electra, GoThIcA and Mooga. I’ve also remade the 80s classic tainted love and the 90s classic Yeki Yeki. All are made just for my gigs, but not sure if they will get a release due to copyright issues.
Could we start by having you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I was born and bred in Leicester, and I still live here. My day job is working on the roads around Leicestershire, repairing them and doing traffic control stuff like that. I don't really have any hobbies, all my spare time goes into the studio or spending time with the family although I do like watching movies, mainly horror or sci-fi. And this is where I also get my music inspiration from!
How did you get into Trance to begin with, and then eventually music producing/DJing?
I never knew I was getting into Trance to begin with. All music when I started was just dance/electronically made music, there weren’t many genres My journey started about 1985 when my uncle played me a song called Drowning in Berlin by The Mobiles and I couldn’t understand where these sort of weird crazy sounds were coming from and then he played me I’ll Find My Way Home from Vangelis and I had the same feeling. So when I found out these noises were coming from an instrument called a synthesizer that was when the penny dropped and I knew I had to have one. My parents didn’t have a clue what I was going on about but after a few trips around some music shops we found an old Korg and I fell in love with synths from there on in. With me being into horror and sci-fi I found it amazing I could sit there and make creepy sounds and lasers and wind and anything I could think of. I was hooked! One synth led to another and then a drum machine, and so on.So I didn’t really start by wanting to make music I was just addicted to synths the music just followed.
First introduction to real electronic dance music for me was the Street Sounds electro albums which were Hip-Hop at the time. My fav artist from these was The Egyptian Lover, that had lots of synths and vocoders. I loved it. Then when I was 16 I had a friend called Wayne Betts and he had a mobile disco and played a residency at the local in a place called The Golf Range. It’s here where I heard the track called Jack Your Body by Steve Silk Hurley, and watched peoples reactions on the dance floor, getting me into the House sound of Chicago and leading to me to start making my own stuff. But it was very hard. I had to play everything by hand to the drum machine, I had no way of sequencing. I read an advert in a music magazine asking for dance music and to send your demos to this Belgium address and so I did that. I called myself New Egypt because of the Egyptian Lover influence, and made a track called Flight to Egypt. I heard back in about 4 weeks saying they wanted to give me a record contract and I couldn’t believe it. I was still at school and felt really cool haha.
The label was called Clip Records and was owned by a man called Jo, who later became Technotronic, and he told me my music was going to be part of a big music scene that had exploded in Belgium called New Beat. I loved it. He sent me cassettes and albums of this genre and it was unreal, all synths, dark, grungy, everything I loved in music, although I couldn’t go to parties and see it for myself yet, as I was too young to go clubbing in Belgium. The Boccaccio was the place it was happening in Brussels. So I suppose this was the early form of Trance to me, and sticking with this sort of sound eventually went on to what we have now. Then in 1988 the rave scene was born, so this is what I got into when I finally started raving in 1989, and also started to produce too. So I'd say I’ve just been keeping up with what makes people dance at that moment in time really. I changed my name to Oz Beat for the rave stuff and that project was with two of us, me and my friend called Frank.
One of the raves we were in had tons of lasers, which was a rare thing at the time. There were 2 blonde girls dancing on the stage and they were wearing very shiny silver clothes that looked like tin foil. The laser controller scanned them with a blue beam which made them light up a bit like digital robots. Myself and Frank looked at one another and I said we should make a track called the Digital Blondes. So we went into the studio and started writing. When we spoke to the record label they said instead of making a track called Digital Blonde you should both call your self this. So we became The Digital Blondes. But around this time the rave scene started to go very Jungle with the big synth-drowned sounds sort of leaving the music. It wasn’t really doing it for the original ravers, so we decided to go back to the clubs. It was like the big electronic dance rave sound had split into two; the breakbeats and bass went one way, and the synth 4 beat sound went back to the clubs. So me and Frank got rid of the breaks and the hoover sounds and went 4 beat with pulsating basses and synths, so the track Stars by The Digital Blondes was born. But still being in sample mode I added a clip from a track that Abba wrote called the visitors. This got released on perfect world records and was played by a lot of big DJs at the time, we were so excited. It then got played on Annie Nightingale's Radio One show and it then hit the roof. But the sample got picked up on and we were in trouble with Abba. Not good. All the records had to be deleted and taken off the shelves.
One night when I was playing in the studio on a new synth called a Kawai K1M, this is when I came up with the Anthium riff. I had a little goosebump moment, I loved it. This came out on Fluid Recordings and it went crazy. Sasha was playing it and Judge Jules played it all the time. Jules then decided to sign it to manifesto records and it was set to go big places. But something went wrong and they decided to add a vocal to it and It didn’t work and Anthium was dropped. but from the strength of it we were remixing everything that was being released at the time including Chicane, Yazoo, Jeremy Healy, Trouser Enthusiast and also John 00 Fleming played this in a cd he released live from the club night Trade at Turnmills, which is how me and JOOF met. I also met my wife Jo around this time too, who I call the real Digital Blonde, as I think when you really fall in love with somebody your whole state of mind changes and I was on this weird high. And it was in those first few weeks that Electra was born, which was then followed by Legato. and the rest of the tracks that followed and at this point music became a part of me and from then I have just permanently written.
I don’t think there has ever been a part of my life when I’m not writing. It's part of living. I don't set out to earn money with it and I don’t push myself to be some sort of celebrity. I just make music. If I do earn some money some day then brilliant, but music isn’t for that, it’s for enjoying. People have lost their way a little when listening to Trance I think, I believe in the true meaning of the word when writing and I believe in making fantasy worlds and amazing visuals, but just with sounds. A lot of people think the length of my tracks is a thing: 10 mins, 15 mins, 20 mins… Who cares! If it’s a nice journey, enjoy it. Why do you want it to end so soon? I never even know how long a track is going to be when writing. I don't look, I don't use anything as a reference, also I never listen to trance music myself. This way I can’t copy anybody. I play the old stuff from the 80s and 90s, and most of the time I forget about my own tracks after I’ve made them. I need my mind to think about the next one. I can’t drive forward looking at what’s at the back of me lol. People have asked me what my favorite blonde track is… well I haven’t made it yet.
Flight to Egypt [1988]
Ricky's first signed track
How do you define your sound?
My style is a bit of everything I think. It's not full on trance or psy or tech or prog. It’s just Blonde. I don’t think many DJs play my stuff because of that reason, they don’t know where I fit it. It also hasn’t helped in my own DJ career. I don’t get booked as promoters are unsure of my sound. But hopefully an agency will pick up on me one day and I can get my music out there more.
In 2018 I watched you play at Dance:Love:Hub, which seems to be one of the few clubs in the UK supporting strictly underground trance music. What can you tell us about that night?
DANCE LOVE HUB! This night is quite special to me, as it’s like being part of a big family that loves the real sound of Trance, the serious stuff. You're not surrounded by DJs with attitudes that are always too good to talk to you. The atmosphere is amazing and people just give me hugs and are alway loving the music. Emma the promoter has supported me for years and years. She is a great woman, I have a lot of respect for her. People should really go to this night more and see and hear for themselves.
Let's talk about your Neon series. What was the inspiration behind these albums?
Well as mentioned, I love the 80’s and I love sci-fi. I love synths and I love Lamborghini cars too. So all this comes together in the synthwave genre. I love all this, right from being a kid. But all this was sort of at the back of my mind until Jo and I started watching Stranger Things, then it all came flooding back to me. I wanted to create a new take on synthwave, and the plan was to come up with an album that really was an audio movie, a big 80’s fantasy that you could create yourself by just listening. The covers were as important as the album to me, with the back of the Lamborghini on each Neon. Where is it going this time and what journey is it going on? Heading Towards the Sun or heading towards the city? The last Neon (N3ON), was black and white with the car parked… The journey is over (or is it?). If you like my synthwave sound, check out the track coming out Under my Arkeenia name.
You have an upcoming album called APEX in 2024. What can you tell us about that and what to expect? Any other releases in the pipeline?
This album is taking a long time and will probably be similar to the Neon albums, but darker. I want to create the visual of a spaceship that travels to hell, so dark futuristic sounds, stuff like that.
I think the album will release next spring, but there’s lots of stuff happening before. Another collab with Idiosyncracy, a psy collab with Lauren Lyon, and I’m working on a collab with Scott bond too. I’ve also been working with a female vocalist called Stacy jay who as sung the vocals for Tainted Love, so hopefully this will be in Apex as well.
The Digital Blonde - Stars [1995]
Rickys first track as The Digital Blonde
What’s your production process like?
I don’t really know the answer to this, it’s just something I do. I’ve done it for over 35 years. I wouldn't know how to go through life and not make a track. I get an image or an idea and I just create it. It's not a talent, I've just stuck with it and learnt how to create sounds and put them together.
What does your production set- up consist of?
This has changed a lot through the years. My studio used to have 14 synthesizers at one point, all being driven by a Atari ST computer. This was when music was good, in the times when you got lots of money for writing, sometimes £4000 for a remix. My best keyboards were an emulator, this is what I made my original Blonde bass on. I’m still using this sound today and I had Moogs, Rolands, Korgs, and a huge mixer to put them all through, but I think I had already established my Blonde sound by this time just with my K1M and a Roland Juno 1. I think the more kit you have the less chance you have of getting an original sound. With the one keyboard you actually sat there and created stuff rather than flicking thru presets. This is why a lot of stuff sounds the same now. But then the internet was born music became free and the company’s stopped paying for music and caused me to sell a lot of stuff, which I now regret.
What are you listening to in your free time?
You’re not going to like this. I love listening to the sets from Defqon 1 Power Hour. The faster the better, and the more dirty and distorted it is the more I love it. It’s a secret passion of mine. I listen to everything really from 80s to Classical, Techno to 90s, european dance to Trance. Rave. Ambiance. Chill out. Anything! I will catch up with JOOF radio show every few months to see how things are going and everything sounds good, but also nothing ever sticks out.
Trance and stuff is amazing at the minute, but only through sounds and drops and the second a new track comes in I have forgotten the one before. So I go back to the old stuff, where it was more musical and less technical. And I go back to raw style 200bpm plus. The energy from this stuff drives me crazy. One day I’m hoping to move my Arkeenia alias to this stuff, creating a hard distorted Trance mix with a hardcore sound, but it’s really hard to produce. The kick and bass alone is knowing about distortions and music science, plus I don’t know anybody at all in the industry. But that’s a little dream of mine.
Whats advice you would give to new and upcoming trance producers?
Just play with stuff and have fun. Don’t go in a studio to make a track, go in there to create sounds and the tracks will write themselves. Do your own thing and you will know when it sounds rite. Dont be influenced too much by others. They are doing their own thing, you do yours. Try and get musical elements in and listen to stuff that’s not Trance. Think musical conversations. A riff needs a question, then an answer. I was told in the 80s to recreate a Madonna track from start to finish. You will be amazed how much you learn about chords and musical math.
You also recently started a new trance project Synthazia, with some great tracks like Siren already released. What can you tell us about this one?
This is a collaboration with my good friend Dino, who I'd say is into the happy side of trance. He has great ideas but not much knowledge of putting into a computer to create what he’s thinking, so Synthazia was born as a way to combine talents. I like the overall sound that’s been born from this. Once again, mystical journey type stuff, listen and travel…
What do you think is needed to keep Trance moving forward and growing into something great for the next generation?
Hmm not sure. Just try and keep things real... It seems the bigger the Dj, the less chance you will have of hearing real stuff. Look for new names of people you haven’t heard of, that’s where listeners will find good stuff and support true artists. It’s sad but true.
If you could bring one producer back into peak time action, who would it be and why?
Wizzy Noise. Loved their sound and everything they wrote - Sea Song was genius!
And finally, you can submit 10 tracks to a top 100 list... what are they?
1. Energy 52 - Cafe Del Mar
2. Veracocha - Carte Blanche
3. The Mighty Ming - Brothers Love Dub
4. Ferry Corsten - Adagio Strings
5. Wizzy Noise - Sea Song
6. Binary Finary - Binary Finary
7. Quench - Dreams
8. Push - Strange World
9. OT Quartet - Hold That Sucker Down
10. Peyote - Alcatraz
Thanks so much to Ricky for taking the time to do this interview. At this point he has legendary status in the scene, and especially in this forum. He deserves all the the praise and more. Fascinating reading his big response about his history and getting into Trance. Big respect!
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