That's right, hard dance's most prolific anthem-maker will be playing a set of 100% big room classics at KOKO, the country's best loved club arena, for HeatUK's massive 6th Birthday celebration on November 10th in London. We got the one like Ben Keen to fill us in on his current news, and on his past glories with Heat.

So you’re going to be back on the main stage at KOKO for HeatUK’s 6th Birthday – a stage you used to command frequently. Do you miss the venue much?

Yea it’s a shame there are not that many hard dance events at the venue as there used to be but that just makes it more special when there is. I do miss the days when there was at least 5 hard dance nights their a month It is one of the homes of hard dance. I especially miss playing the Heat parties there so this is a real treat!

What was the first event you played for there? Were you bricking it, and how did you calm your nerves?

Erm I think it would probably been at one of the Frantics back in its heyday. I would have probably been shitting bricks! As soon as you get on though you just get into it and the nerves subside. A few beers would have helped ;-)

Can you remember the first time you played for HeatUK? Did it strike you as being something different to other hard dance parties at the time?

Definitely. I was blown away. Heat has its own crowd and its own sound. When producing tracks I would often find my self-thinking “This will sound good at Heat!”
The crowd were slightly older and more open minded with there music.

You’ve been given the task of playing a “Big Room Anthems” set at HeatUK’s birthday...do you think that some tracks don’t really work in the bigger, more epic-feeling rooms?

Depends on the party. I wouldn’t play the same tunes at Heat as I do at somewhere like judgment Sunday for example. But with big rooms I tend to play big tunes! It’s a different atmosphere in a big room.

Your second album, ‘Under The Influence’ came out earlier this year...how pleased were you with the whole project in retrospect?

Really really pleased! The idea for the album was to take influences from the music around me and give it my own treatment. Hence the diverse collaborations. I had tracks that were played by Carl Cox ,Sander van Doorn, Judge Jules as well as the same tracks being played by :ashes, the Tidy boys etc, which is what I wanted to achieve. Each single release was tune of the month in DJ and Mixmag.

The live set was recorded at Global Gathering which I really wanted to include because it was a BK classics mash up which showed what brought me to where I am. It allowed me to don my producer hat and my DJ hat. To be honest it couldn’t have gone better.

Do you think hard dance is one of the more taxing genres to make a gripping full-length album in?

Depends what way you approach it. For me an artist album shouldn’t sound like a DJ mix. It wasn’t all hard dance . A lot of it was material I couldn’t play in a hard dance set. This was so it would have a beginning, a middle and an end. This made it more of a challenge for me to produce. I think it would be less taxing if every track was a similar production.

What have you been working on recently? Have you been producing much outside of the hard dance realm?

Lots we are working on the next project at RiotHQ. We have joined forces with Scott Vinylgroover form Traffic and have been doing so well we are one of the few labels that are just about to double the amount of release we have. We now have 2 studios (with Nick Sentience) running 5 days a week so loads of new material. After the success of ‘Under The Influence’, we now have 3 albums planned for next year. I have been in the studio with Jules again as well the Tidy boys, Alex Kidd and Vinylgroover. Scott has also been racking up the productions in readiness for next year.

As far as non-hard dance material goes, we have an electro label called FAKT. We have just completed 17 new tracks and we did so well with the singles from the label we have a FAKT album imminent. I have been working under my Black Russian pseudonym on that material with The Catz, Fake Hero, Tom Real etc.

Are there any styles that you want to try your hand at that you haven’t had the chance to yet? What interests you about these genres?

Yeah drum and bass. I started playing around with it and just remixed Prodigy’s ‘Speedway’. Other genres interest me because I love music and the geek in me loves learning how people achieve their sounds. Experimenting also keeps you on your toes as a producer.

Which producers have really impressed you this year? Who really makes you sit up and think “I want to make sounds like that!”?

Trentmøller on the electro scene has amazing production. As far as hard dance goes, Eskimo has some great production tricks. He is using old samples but puts them together in a unique way.

And finally – what makes you laugh more than anything?

I went to see Ricky Gervais do his live show the other night and that made me piss my self. Oh yeah and magic mushrooms ;-)

CLICK HERE TO CHECK OUT THE FULL EVENT LISTING