Rob Tissera interview We sat down with Rob Tissera, one of Dance musics true heroes. From being a world class DJ to putting himself at the front of the newly named Kiss da Funk, Rob always puts in 110%. We wanted to catch up on the gossip surrounding many of his latest projects. Name : Rob Tissera When I was a child I wanted to be… an actor You wouldn’t know this but I’m very good at… pocket billiards – he he he!!! I used to play semi pro footy but had to give it up due to dodgy ankles. The shop I can’t walk past without going in is… HARMONY in London – it’s the biggest adult shop in the country and their dvd section is stunning!! I drive a… BMW 330 sport It’s not fashionable but I really like… goin’ to the piccies When I’m cooking for people I usually make… monkfish wrapped in parma ham with asparagus and new potatoes. One of my Bessie mates is head chef at the best restauraunt in Leeds and he’s taught me a trick or two! Now Rob, there has been a lot of talk about your new night Kiss da Funk, can you tell us how it came about and where you see you are planning to take it over the next year… This is easily one of the most exciting projects that I’ve worked on in ages. After a dispute over the Funkissential name with Sundissential me and my business partner Glyn Tolley decided to distance ourselves from them. The success of the night in Leeds was mainly down to our hard work so we decided that enough was enough and we had to strike out on our own. KISSDAFUNK is already shaping up to be better than anything that we’d previously achieved. The support we are receiving from our already solid fan base is amazing and the attitude is quite simply outstanding. The night will be at Mission in Leeds on the last Friday of every month with the same team of awesome DJs and guests. And are you going to be pulling in guest DJ’s to top up your already excellent team of residents? We are very keen to continue with our policy of using our squad of homegrown talent such as the Trophy Twins, Dave & Huey, Marc Leaf, Gav Herlihey and Filthy Rich but we are also going to include some of the finest new talent around such as Tom Neville, Sonny Wharton, Oliver Lang, Onephatbillie and tons of others. I really don’t see the point in having loads of hugely over rated and over paid jocks coming into our club with a bad attitude and trying to educate our crowd when all we want and all our crowd wants is a flippin’ party! The bottom line is we aim to make it so that from the moment you walk in till the moment you crawl out you have a huge grin on your face. We have hired loads of entertainers to keep the whole thing exciting and we’ll spend hours on making the club look really special on the inside. What is your main role in the business and who are the other people involved? As I mentioned before Tolley is my partner and the trophy twins have a huge amount of input too. Our role is to do EVERYTHING from designing the flyers & posters to hiring the dj’s to actually playing the tunes!! It’s a mammoth task but I love it and the buzz for me is to see everyone having a ridiculously good time!!! The hard dance awards were something really good recently, how did you find presenting them? Did you have butterflies? It was a real honour to be invited to do it and myself and Anne had a ball. I’m nervous at EVERY gig that I do and this was no exception but I draw heavily on that nervous energy and once we got going it was a breeze. Last time we interviewed you your first CD had just been released, now we’ve heard rumours that you are mixing the next GoodGreef CD, is this true and if so what can you tell us about your involvement in it? I sure am and I can’t wait to get it on! Ben and Barry are two of the nicest promoters in the business and GoodGreef is a very special club. The audience is one of the finest I’ve ever played for so doing the album will be an honour and a pleasure. I’m just getting all the tracks together now. I’ll be putting in plenty of trickery and I’ll be mixing it live so it should feel really exciting when you listen to it. The intention is to make you dance on the sofa if you put it on in your living room and go too fast if you have it on in your car. How have you managed to sift the selection down, did you have a long process to shortlist them? There’s some hot shit out there at present so it’s a tough job to come up with the definitive list but I’ve been collaborating with loads of great producers recently (JAMES LAWSON, VINYLGROOVER & THE REDHEAD, ILOGIK & BK to name a few) so I’m hoping that there will be a few of mine on there too. You moved to Nukleuz artist management a few months back, what are the benefits of being with such a huge force in the dance community? Well I’m sure I don’t really need to tell you that they are probably one of the biggest players in this industry and the amount of international contact they have is far beyond any agency I’ve worked with over the years. It’s an exciting time in the world of Bobby Tee and I can’t wait to see what they will be able to bring to the table. Your Tracks “Stay” on Tidy and “Bring the lights down” on Y2k are set for success this year, how would you describe each of the tracks to someone who maybe hasn’t heard them yet or put a name to them in a club? STAY has the same vocalist that I used for ‘the day will come’ and it goes – ‘I’M BEGGING YOU TO STAAAAAY’!!! It’s shaping up to be a very big record and Mixmag are about to include it on their big tunes page in next month’s mag so I’m chuffed to bits. ‘BRING THE LIGHTS DOWN’ has a spoken vocal in it that says ‘ BRING THE LIGHTS DOWN,IF YOU HAVE A LIGHTER IN YOUR POCKET LIGHT IT UP…… ETC’ the vocal is a BELTER, DAVE PEARCE declared it as one of his top 3 tunes on radio one on Sunday which I think is voted by the listeners so I’m a VERY happy man at the moment!!
