Sauce

Amongst his flat’s walls being demolished, we talked to Katalyst about being beaten by Paul Mac to an ARIA, walking off with two accolades at the Dance Music Awards, and the anticipation of releasing his album to the overseas audiences.

Hey Ashley Katalyst, How are you going?
Yeah, not too bad! Sorry I’m so late bro, I just got a bit held up by the builders next door. I had to run downstairs and cal a couple of people back, and they decided they needed to knock down an internal wall in the flat next to me today…

Ouch!
Yeah, it’s been pretty noisy.

Na, it’s cool. I’m often late for interviews, so this is one for the artists; getting one back at me.
[Laughs] Getting their own back.

Yeah, yeah. Even things up a bit.
Yeah, good stuff bro. So how have you been anyway?

Yeah, mate. Things are flat out. And how are things at invader land?
Yeah, pretty good. Pretty bloody flat out as well, but I’ve got the new philosophy that busy is good, as apposed to busy is stressful.

Yeah. That’s it. There’s busy, and there’s good busy, isn’t there?
Yeah. It’s something that sometimes I have to remind myself about, but no, it’s all good man. Things are going well; the album’s doing good, got a few shows coming up that I’m sort of preparing for, and then I’m off to do a bit of, a few shows, a bit of a run over in Europe at the end of the year, so can’t complain!

No, it sounds like fun.
Yeah, it could be a lot worse…

Now you won best dance music album, and best producer at the 2002 Dance Music Awards. But this new album from you, what’s happening is more of a hip-hop production?
Yeah, I guess what you might find is, I was also nominated for an ARIA in that year. I can’t remember what the ARIA category was; I think it also might have had something to do with dance…

You can’t remember what category it was?
That’s terrible isn’t it?

It’s like me saying “What are the ARIAs?”
[Laughs] I think it might have been best electronic artist, or something like that… I guess what I’m trying to say is the following year, they actually started a category for urban music, which is still kin d of a broad term, it doesn’t necessarily find exactly what I do, so the dance music awards really encompassed hip-hop at times.

Far out.
And even though Paul Mac, I think won the ARIAs that year, that I was nominated for, he was also nominated for the dance music awards, which I won. They just really needed to… there wasn’t the recognition in Australia at that time, there was so much music out there, it’s like rock, pop and country going on. And I think that’s over the past five years, between then and now, obviously record sales speak for themselves. You know, they’ve obviously broadened the scope of the, or broadened the categories, you know, in the ARIAs, and Dance Music Awards is now the Urban Music Awards. So, go figure.

Yeah. And you’ve got some really, you’ve got a lot of overseas artists performing on what’s happening, as well as Australian artists. I’m thinking with the way you’ve positioned yourself with your label and having achieved these awards, I reckon it’s a pretty calculated move that you’ve got like, you know, people from the UK and the US on your album, to create an international appealing album, rather than just something that’s straight Aus hip-hop. Am I somewhere near the mark on that?
Yeah, I mean the international stuff, I guess there’s a lot of artists, you know, in the world that you sort of would like to work with, and I sort of made a conscious effort to hook up with a few people who I really wanted to get on the album. To sort of give it different flavours, like you say, from different areas, and different styles of music as well. So the album was sort of more geared to Australia but I always had a view to maybe slightly… to release in different territories and hopefully I’ve got a UK label that’s going to put it out for the rest of the world, so I’m just sort of waiting to finalise that with them. It looks like it will be a world-wide release, not necessarily on my own label, but for me as an artist.

What’s Happening is out now.

Listen to the full interview Below