Michael Burns a.k.a. Blue Haze

Michael has been producing music since 2002. His productions vary from deep house to chilled breaks and anything in between.

No matter what style of music he produces, there’s always a strong emotional aspect to it. “I find it hard to stray from melody. At the moment I think there’s too much minimal stuff out there, and it doesn’t do anything for me. I’m not putting anybody down by saying that, but I feel there’s a lack of raw musicality and emotion.”

A self taught pianist and guitarist, Michael’s introduction to music began by scoring compositions for his local theatre group. "It’s a great thing to create music live. We played to sizable audiences, and it was a mind blowing experience for me at such a young age”.

Michael started DJing at a few local clubs and developed an appetite for dance music. Torn between DJing and producing, he decided to focus solely on one goal. “Just playing music wasn’t enough and didn’t completely satisfy me. I’d rather produce music than play it” he adds.

His first claim for fame was in issue 46 of Computer Music Magazine. He produced a track under the name ‘Wrinkler’ called ‘Something Different’, which featured in the reader demo section. A short write up included: “Some real feeling has been injected into this one - send us more!”

Even though he enjoys producing dance music, his heart is set on other goals, because musically there are no boundaries. “Why should I stick to 128bpm 4 to the floor house grooves?, there’s more to explore”.

One of Michaels ambitions is to score a composition for a film. “I’m really into the idea of scoring a soundtrack for a film. I’m still inspired by soundtracks for K-Pax, Castaway, Love Story, Gladiator and a handful more. I’m not classically trained in any musical instrument and I can’t read music, so I doubt I'll get the chance to do this, but who knows?”.

Michael admits he would love to produce music as his career, but he also likes the idea of running his own label. “In an ideal world, I would like to generate my own community of artists, and release their music on my own label. The genre wouldn’t be important as long as emotion was involved. I’ve got to try and establish myself as an artist and hopefully take things from there”.

Michael has adopted a few production names along his travels, for each he tries to adopt a different sound. There’s:

Blue Haze - for his deep, moody and melodic tracks.

Panoptic - for peak time productions.

Cardboard - his earthy / organic outlet.

And Gazor - under which Michael and Andrew Best target the more techy sound.

His track 'Blue Haze - We Feel' is soon to be featured on DJ Mags cover CD, and with reviews like, "Sweeping synths hitting chords of unheard-of feeling. This record belongs in the case of every progressive house DJ in the civilized world”. Residentadvisor - it's set to be a big release.

‘Blue Haze - Greedy Planet’ has been kicking up a fuss since September 2002. Paolo Mojo was one of the first to pick up on it, and was closely followed by Chloé Harris, Sander Klienenberg, Chris Lake and a hand full of others… not forgetting to mention Mo Shic, who included it on his Essential Mix for BBC radio 1, and describes it as “a piece of art”.

Michael has recently done a remix of 'Echofalls - Shiver' which is getting a great response from the likes of Pete Tong, Steve Gerrard, Chloé Harris and Steve Smart who has played the track out on Kiss FM 100.

After a few experiments he played with the idea of singing on a few of his tracks, and came up with the production name ‘Cardboard’. “Under the guise ‘Cardboard’ I get the chance to really add some organic life to my tracks, ranging from pianos, Strings, guitars and even my own vocals.” Two tracks have already been snapped up by LMR and Cuba recordings, and a third set to be featured on possibly one of the biggest compilations due out this year, ‘Cardboard’ is looking to be his second main outlet.

With his latest tracks getting plays and support from the world’s leading DJ’s, his future looks promising in the music industry.

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