Producer Masterclass SOLARDO

Mark Foster is certainly in a reflective mood, but with over two decades of music production in a wide variety of styles – perhaps too wide as we eventually discover – he’s got a lot to reflect on. After discovering music production by way of cheap looping software, he fell in step with Reason, became something of a dubstep and grime pioneer in the 2000s before a brush with celebrity and taking his eye off the ball left him with ‘one more shot’ at making it in music production. In Solardo and new music partner James Barlow just that shot presented itself… and he’s taken it with gusto.

The duo have certainly made waves with their cutting-edge blend of bass house that initially saw them borrow from the very roots of Manchester music – with acid house motifs and beats – to produce an updated Manchester house sound that’s won them fans from many genres, and collaborations/remixes with everyone from Calvin Harris to Duke Dumont and Gorgon City.

With sold-out shows across the globe, appearances lined up across Europe and releases with Harris’s Love Regenerator outfit lined up for later this year, Solardo are at the top of their game. A new sample collection with CR2 Records is out as we speak and it’s time for Mark to dissect one of the tracks he lays bare for that collection in this special Producer Masterclass. Before we get to that, though, there’s a lot of water under the Foster bridge to discuss. Lots of highs and lows and much of it intrinsically linked to music software – different versions, different titles, cracked and not cracked. Foster now believes in the power of attraction and positivity