Darius Bassiray and Daniel Banko, as a duo have gained much respect whether playing alongside their local peers or supporting Internationals such as James Zabiela, Habersham and Numinous, Jonathan Lisle and James Holden.

Through their promotional crew Darkbeat they plan to take their journey even further, and of course a whole lot deeper in 2006. Liz Charles caught up with Rollin Connection to get the story “straight”.

Where does the name Rollin Connection come from?
We are really into rolling music, which I guess in words is quite difficult to describe, but to us it's just really flowing, fluent and consistent timing of percussion and its relation to hi hats and snares in a track. One of our friends Luke Simpson came up with the name. We liked it so we liked it so we stole it!

Can you describe sound to give people an idea of what it’s all about?
Deep, techy, dirty and dark tech-house and the odd break beat mixed with percussive elements. I guess this is our fundamental sound. However, we always like to drop extremely twisted records in there too.

DJing partnerships are not too common. Why is it that you choose to play together?
We have a very similar style and have played together for a very long time, so it just feels natural when we DJ now. Even though individually we do have different tastes in some respects we find that when we really hit it – it is often when one of us introduces a certain element it forces the other to balance it all out, and then going back to our fundamental sound which is on the deeper, darker tip. We pretty much buy the same records and are always talking with each other when we are DJing and discuss programming and where we want to take it, depending on the gig. I think it has been the last six months that we have really found a good balance and it seems to be working well.

You have become regular guests at Melbourne’s most famous underground party, Sunny, a gig I am sure makes you the envy of many Melbourne DJs. What is it like to be part of this institution?
It is great to be a part of Sunny. It really is a one of a kind party. The resident DJs, the manner in which it is run and the crowd is second to none. We have always been very fond of the more traditional percussive deeper “Sunny sound” and it is one of very few places where you can play the deepest records and not blink and eye. You don’t ever have to worry “should we be playing records this deep?” So it is always great to play there.

Who have been your greatest musical influences?
Gab Oliver would probably be the biggest influence on us both in the beginning, in terms of the sound we developed, along with Phil K and the way he approached DJing and thinking outside the square with his programming. More recently Ozzie LA has always taken a keen interest in what we were doing, and really went out of his way to guide us and listen to us when we were a lot younger. He was the first to play my records to a full dance floor at Sunny, to give us the encouragement to keep going and belief that what we were doing was on track. Habersham’s style and productions have been a big influence, his consistency is unbelievable. We are really into a duo from Texas, at the moment called Opencloud who are making amazing music . Their brand new stuff is very aligned with what we are playing, along with all the amazing techy stuff coming out now.

Together with your DJing gigs you also run the Darkbeat promotional crew. What are your plans for Darkbeat’ in 2006?
In conjunction with Sunny, we have Lee Burridge playing an exclusive four hour set this month, so we are really excited about that. We have both worked really hard along with the other residents to make that happen so that’s wonderful. We are finding that more and more people are coming regularly to Darkbeat. It is transforming into something really special now which is good to see all the hard work paying off. It is only going to get bigger and better in 2006. We have more international acts lined up, and we plan to maintain the same sound structure that we have built up. We want to keep the mainstream type of stuff that is really becoming the norm around at the minute to a minimum and just push the sounds that we have always believed in since we started doing it.

Is there a particular gig that sticks out for you?
I think when we closed at Darkbeat’s 2nd birthday at Room was probably the best gig we have ever played. Everything just hit nicely and was on it. We explored a whole heap of different sounds and the room was full and really into it. We ended up playing for nearly 3 hours. We had to finish it up but I’m sure if we had the opportunity everyone would have just kept dancing right through the morning.

You have had great success with your productions. Do you have any music in the process of being released solely or as a duo?
Solely, as Darius Bassiray I have a tune I made last year called "Lorenzo" which is being released on Proton Music. It should be getting an official release at the Miami Music Conference. They are just waiting on Habersham who is remixing it. From my understanding it is near completion. I also have a tune I did with Stuart Mckeown called "Gyppo Funk" which is getting released on Brian Aneurysm’s Frame and Formed 3 Compilation which is coming out on his label, Iron Box Music. We really wanted to write another tune together before he left to go home to Ireland. The outcome of that was a tune called "Our Sound" which has just been picked up by Proton Music and will be released in November with Opencloud remixing it, which I am really happy about as I am such a big fan of their new material. "Our Sound" has also been signed to a compilation CD which is coming out at the end of this year – but I have to keep that under wraps! Keep an eye out for that one though.

Who do you believe will make it big in 2006 either locally or on an international level?
Locally, I think Dean Millson has been smashing it lately. His sound has changed somewhat, but all for the better. I think he is a DJ who is keeping it real, and not jumping on the accessible bandwagon. I have been really impressed with his programming and he has turned it up every time I have seen him perform this year.

Opencloud will be huge once the material they are working on at the moment is released in 2006 – that’s our hot tip! Stuart Mckeown is also writing really good records, closer to home, guys that have always been smashing it, Dan Mangan, Gavin Keitel, Ozzie LA, Lo-Step, Andy Page I think will continue to doing really great things, also a guy by the name of Rob Ride who is an absolute gun VJ is currently brewing mind altering stuff at the moment. I think he will continue to be the best in the business at what he does. Overall we think it will be an exciting year!!