Champa (Enterrec)

I met Champa a couple of years ago in Tenerife at the Winter S.U.N. festival, so I decided to interview this bright figure as well.

What fascinates you about psytrance culture?

That's like asking why I live. My whole life has been about music. I learned to play vinyl when I was two and started learning to DJ at 16, beginning with lots of genres: jungle and garage, then hard trance, hard house and German techno, later happy hardcore, progressive house and funky house.

After that I went back to mainstream trance. In 2005 I went to my first full-on psytrance outdoor event (Psy Invasion). Until then I was always searching for who I wanted to be as an artist and performer.

I changed genres because the music took me in different directions. The reason was simply living life. But a big reason I kept moving on was also to be with the right people, people who listened to the same music. When I started in 1994 I really loved the music, but the people weren't for me. So why am I fascinated by psytrance culture? Not only because I love the music, but because of the people around it.

The scene keeps growing, and of course lots of new people come into our culture. We have to accept everyone, even if they're not your kind of people. The point is to live happily, and I've done that with psytrance as music and culture for the past 15 years, and hopefully forever.

As artists we have a responsibility towards our audience. What's the message you want to pass on to your listeners?

Be kind to others. We were all young once, and we all had to learn the culture around us. In psytrance that's a BIG part of the scene. So the main thing is to always guide the young ones who join us, with information, an open heart and above all love.

You told me you run a label. Tell me more about it!

I started with psytrance in 2005. In 2007 I joined Free-Spirit Records as a DJ. With the birth of my son Vinnie coming up, I started producing psytrance in 2011. It felt like the natural next step to keep doing what I loved in the scene I enjoyed.

If I hadn't found success soon after, I would have simply left it as a dream. But in 2012 I joined Y.S.E. Recordings and started releasing my music, with them and many other labels. I was responsible for A&R and for releasing double-CD compilations (GOA SERIES), four a year for many years. Still, I wasn't where I wanted to be. In 2017 I was close to joining Dacru Records, but in the end the smarter way, for me personally, was to set up my own label. In summer 2017 Enterrec Music had its first release. It's simply a psychedelic trance label that now covers many styles of psy. The main point is to release good music from good people.

What are your musical influences?

That's a huge question in itself. Any artist who made my brain resonate in the right way, and there are too many to name. Artists also change their style over the years. But if we're strictly talking psytrance, then roughly in this order:
Infected Mushroom, Astrix, Sesto Sento, Oforia, GMS, Protoculture, Tron, Polaris, Suduaya, Talamasca, Atma, Bit-Kit, Digicult & Tropical Bleyage.

What's next?

I'm in this for the long haul. The label will grow, and so will my production. I'm currently working on my fourth studio album, which should be ready by autumn 2020. I want to help producers and DJs reach their goals and dreams in the scene, grow the Enterrec family, and keep meeting amazing people and sharing good times in my country and around the globe.

www.soundcloud.com/champalive
www.facebook.com/enterrecmusic
www.enterrec.com