Musicians - Luna-C

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	Musicians - Luna-C

Born Christopher Howell, May 1,1973, Luna-C is a DJ and producer, most well known for his work in hardcore music. He made up a third of the rave group Smart E's in 1992, who shot to fame with their remix of the theme tune to Sesame Street (Sesame's Treet). He started Kniteforce Records in 1992, and the label has continued to have a cult following throughout hardcore music's rise and fall in popularity. The label also sprouted many label subsidiaries and Luna-C produced hundreds of tracks and remixes both under the name Luna-C and many other aliases. Luna-C sold Kniteforce Records in 1997, and the label stopped releasing records, but Luna-C resurrected the label as KFA (Kniteforce Again) in 2001, and then bought back Kniteforce Records and all its subsidiaries. The label's status was propelled back into the spotlight by its online presence where a forum was started, and then an online store. The label has maintained popularity in the hardcore scene, although compared to the high volume selling labels like Raver Baby, caters more for a niche market of dedicated followers and breakbeat hardcore fans.

DJ Luna-C has become well respected both in the United Kingdom where he is from, and also in many other countries including Germany, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Japan and Poland, having spent a lot of time DJing at raves and clubs worldwide. His name has become synonymous with a versatile and varied style of mixing, incorporating breakbeat hardcore, freeform, happy hardcore, old skool hardcore and drum and bass into his sets. Another unique feature of his sets is his use of unreleased dubplates and DJ tools which he produces for the purpose of playing live. These planned, but innovative sets have been released free online, in a series called the "Supasets". Many of his releases on Kniteforce Records and sister label Remix Records have received wide airplay amongst hardcore DJs, and some, like Piano Progression or Take Me Away and Six Days (as Cru-L-T with fellow producer Jimmy J) have been considered classics of this style. In more recent years on KFA, tracks like My Angel have received critical acclaim from the UK music press.

Biography

Pre Smart E's

One of Chris Howell's first passions in life was skateboarding. As a youngster he was a junior champion in a major competition, and has continued to skate as a hobby ever since. As far as music goes, at school he was told by his music teacher that he would never make a career in music. He was a huge fan of hip-hop music and DJ'd in his spare time well before he experienced the UK rave scene and hardcore music. In fact, he has said that he and his friends would ridicule hardcore music when they first heard it, especially as much of it sampled hip-hop and sped it up. He was persuaded however to go to the hardcore club Labrynth in 1990, and it changed his view of the music and the scene forever. He soon began buying hardcore music in Music Power Records in Ilford, London, and Boogie Times in Romford. It was here that he met fellow record buyer Tom Orton, who he also worked with in a supermarket. Tom DJ'd as Mr Tom and helped run a weeknight rave called Ultimatum. Chris began DJing alongside Tom at these raves, and the two of them continued to buy records together in Boogie Times.

Boogie Times Records also had it's own record label, Suburban Base, and through talking to the shop owners, Chris and Tom decided to make a record, purely for fun. Tom had a friend, Nick Arnold who had his own studio and had some experience in music production. The three of them decided on the name Smart E's and set about making a tune.

Smart E's - The Beginning

The first tune Smart E's released was on Boogie Times Records, an offshoot of the parent label Suburban Base Records, and was called Bogus Journey. It was a simple hardcore track which featured samples from the film Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. It only sold a few hundred copies which wasn't unusual for a first release on a small hardcore imprint. They decided to make another track, and this time produced a track sampling the theme from Sesame Street. At the time, many hardcore tracks sampled what could be considered silly things, and as Chris recalls "the hardcore scene had a sense of humour". By this time the Boogie Times Records label was no longer used, and so this track would appear on Suburban Base. A number of promos were pressed up and quite unexpectedly for the Essex trio, interest in the record rocketed. Steve Jackson (not to be confused with the Steve Jackson who founded Games Workshop with Ian Livingstone) hosted a house music show on London radio station Kiss FM, and he had begun playing the record every day. Suburban Base and Smart E's saw an opportunity, and realised that the record had the potential to be a big seller, and so drafted in Steve Jackson to do a remix for the main release of the record. The record was being played at all the raves and on all the pirate radio stations (which were the main channel for hardcore music being played on the air - the commercial stations, other than a select few like Kiss FM, chose to ignore underground dance music entirely). The number of copies of the record which the distributor requested shot up from 1000 copies, to 10,000 copies, to 50,000 copies. When the record was finally released it reached number 2 in the UK pop charts, which at the time was the highest debut single entry ever.

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