Throwing it all in the mix

By ALAN PERROTT

A room overlooking the Sound of Sleat on the Isle of Skye sounds more like the stuff of Lord of the Rings than homebase for a man declared the saviour of the British club scene.

Still, it's here where Mylo, or Myles MacInnes to his mum, first turned his ears to some of the cheesier, FM-friendly sounds of the 80s that have wormed their way into his genre-twisting debut, Destroy Rock & Roll.

Pulling together divergent styles is natural for a 26-year-old Rangers fan, who was proud to see his album lurking among the AOR best-ofs and reissues available at the service station near his mum's house.

"I can't understand anyone who claims to be a music fan and only listens to one type of music. I make dance music, but I'm a fan of lots of different bands.

"As a kid, my room was covered in Bon Jovi and Poison posters. I love Bob Dylan. In My Arms is built around samples from Kim Carnes and Boy Meets Girl, the zenith of cheesy soft rock. I just like how they sound together, the melody and emotive quality. But I can't take it too seriously, I think of it as more of a bootleg than a track in its own right."

With an equally divergent group of bigtime fans pushing him along - Elton John, for God's sake - Mylo's life post-album release has become a litany of remix requests and touring on repeat play.

Once chat was done, he was set to begin remixing a single by Swedish brother and sister combo, the Knife. "I can't turn anything down, but the work keeps the wolf away from the door.

"The album has sold about 35,000 in Britain, but I don't think I'll be seeing anything from that. I've had the honeymoon period. Making the music was a hell of a lot of fun, but things are becoming a bit of chore now. Next year, I'm having a rest." But no chance of that this week. He has promised to apply his grab-bag approach to Deep, Hard & Funky at the Civic. "I've never really been a serious house music collector till this year, I guess I've come to DJing rather late in life.

"But I really love to do it and occasionally get away with it. I try to drop in a few album tracks, it'd be silly not to, with a few rock tracks thrown in, but recently my taste has got a bit darker, more electronic, more ravier, with some acid records thrown in. I've developed a harder edge to what's on the album."

But punters be warned, when you hear a track you like, don't dawdle over your beer because it won't be sticking round for long. "I made a conscious decision not to have normal dance length tracks. I get bored with dance records that run around seven minutes, so when I'm DJing I always find myself trying to mix out records after about three minutes. I can't be bothered waiting it out, I like things to click along quickly."

Performance

* Who: Mylo at Deep, Hard & Funky

* Where and when: The Civic, tonight