K-Complex - Producer, Engineer, DJ

The key engineering force within the trailblazing Nu Energy Collective, K-Complex has contributed more to the hard dance and hardcore scenes than most producers over the past five years. Few producers, after all, can claim responsibility for more spell-binding scenes of rushing, big room euphoria. Something that anyone who has witnessed the Nu Energy Collective PA in full 4 am effect at venues like Brixton Academy or The Camden Palace will well attest. From Indestructible to soaring Mark Ashley collaboration Atomic Orbital, his many productions have also gained countless licenses to compilations like Hardcore Heaven and the legendary Bonkers series whilst the head-twisting Identify The Beat, created with hardcore legends Sharkey and Marc Smith, remains one of the most mind-blowing, if underrated, hardcore records of all time. A favourite of the late crusader for musical eccentricity, John Peel, it stands in the unique position as the only hardcore track ever to appear on a compilation for London's superclub Fabric.

Of course, as far as production goes it all began for K-Complex back in the late 90s when he started pitching his first visionary creations to a certain Kevin Energy, label boss of the pioneering Nu Energy imprint. Known to his mother and postman as Pete Richardson, K-Complex had previously been immersed in the vibrancy of the mid 90s hardcore explosion but, like so many, was growing disillusioned with the wholesale lack of vision and overload of rip-offs poisoning the scenes creativity. Instead, his stereo was invariably magnetised to the mind-noodling psychedelic sound of underground trance acts like Eat Static as well as the halcyon era European trance championed by React's now legendary Reactivate series. Nu Energy, however, opened up a new avenue that united his varied influences. Hardcore tempo energy, hard trance euphoria and twisted underground acid influences, its unique and futuristic hard dance alchemy soon grabbed Pete's imagination.

A perfectionist to the last detail, Pete soon absorbed feedback and studio manuals whole, spent long, exhaustive hours perfecting his promising creations and soon fed a relentless stream of demos to label boss Kevin Energy. It was always a matter of when, not if, he would break with a full vinyl release and come March of 00 the twisted euphoria of Free The Brain and quirky acid pumped anthem Mindwinder debuted the K-Complex (infamously misspelt K-Komplex) on the now legendary label. Unsurprisingly, it was caned by Hardcore innovator Sharkey - who he then spent two years collaborating with as Safe N Sound. It remains a cult underground EP with Pete's own recent remixes of both tracks bringing them up-to-date and to the attention of today's hardcore generation too.

You can trace the energising sound of K-Complex across the stretching discography of Nu Energy ever since that first pivotal EP on Nu Energy 12 too. From the anything-goes innovation of the Safe N Sound era, through to his solo masterpiece Cyberspace right up to recent head-twister Hands Up (with Kevin Energy), K-Complex's distinctive euphoria rushing sound has been synonymous with the label in a way no other artist bar perhaps the label boss himself - can claim. A certified end-of-PA anthem, his epic Adagio remains the fastest and biggest selling Nu Energy release in the label's 60 release legacy whilst Pete has also gone on to record ravey edge-cutting hardcore for Relentless Vinyl such as the metal riffed mayhem of the recent Suck My Rock and even bouncy euphoric numbers like Give Into The Motion on Hardcore Collections while this year has also seen K-Complex work his magic on hardcore remixes of K90's trance classics Red Snapper and Liberated.