Mark Summers

This article is about the record producer. For the American television personality, see Marc Summers. For the Australian rules footballer, see Mark Summers (footballer). For the British casting director, see Mark Summers (casting director).
Mark Summers inside the studio at SCORCCiO Sample Replays in February 2012.

Mark Summers is the CEO, Sample Replay Producer, Sound Engineer and Music Producer of Scorccio Sample Replays, a division of Scorccio Records, a dance music company founded in the UK in 1996. He is also a guest lecturer and masterclass presenter on sample replay production, sound engineering, DJ culture, sampling and the music industry to BA and MA students at Leeds Beckett University, UK. Guest Speaker on the panel discussion "Can Derivative Works Double Music Revenues?" at the New Music Seminar in New York, June 2015.

First Recordings

Starting his musical career as a London club DJ at the age of 15 (playing Disco/Soul/Funk/Electro until a transition to House music in 1986), Mark Summers became a UK recording artist and studio engineer in 1989 with his involvement on the underground Rave track "Meltdown" by Quartz. Following a dispute over ownership and royalties of "Meltdown" between Summers and the other two Quartz members, Summers decided to release his own first solo work "Melt Your Body" - which was moderately based upon "Meltdown", made in retaliation by Summers after the dispute. By January 1990, "Melt Your Body" had outsold "Meltdown" by 3:1, it entered the UK top 100 sales chart, and in recognition of this Mark Summers was firmly established as a promising new UK dance music producer.

Due to big responses from playing his own tracks whilst DJ-ing, Summers signed a two-single deal with Island Records' offshoot urban dance label 4th & Broadway, in May 1990. The first single "Party Children" just missed the UK top 75,[1] whereas the second single "Summers Magic" climbed up the UK chart to peak at number 27, in January 1991.[1] "Summers Magic" gained instant recognition as the first ever dance track to heavily feature a sample of music from a children's TV theme tune, in this case it was the BBC's "The Magic Roundabout".

The Hardcore/Breakbeat/Techno ("Rave") driven kids' TV sampling phenomenon of "Summers Magic" seemingly provided inspiration for many other artists, including The Prodigy (also from East London/Essex), releasing their first ever single "Charly". Before entering the UK national charts, the majority of Rave followers believed "Charly" was possibly the work of Mark Summers and his follow-up to "Summers Magic". The Prodigy's track eventually charted in July 1991, almost 7 months following the ground-breaking "Summers Magic". "Summers Magic" was later to appear in the opening of the 2013 comedy film, "The World's End" (starring Simon Pegg), although it doesn't appear on the soundtrack album. During 1991-93, Summers produced and remixed tracks mainly in the musical styles first labeled as "Hardcore" and "Jungle", which later morphed itself into the breakbeat-driven music genre now commonly known as "Drum 'N Bass".

Artist Productions

Moving on from "Rave" and revisiting his preferred style of House music, Summers released 6 singles on the Hoochie Coochie label (1993–96) with fellow DJs Ben Howard and Dave Malone. During this time, he was hired as a sound engineer to work in the studios of Air Lyndhurst/Chrysalis Music (now Air Studios), co-owned by The Beatles producer Sir George Martin. Summers became the head studio producer within less than 3 months. He went on to produce and remix Chrysalis Music artists, and also for the offshoot dance label Tuch Wood/Tuchwood Records, co-owned by DJ-producer Dave Lee (Joey Negro). By the end of 1995, Summers had gained an immense sound production status to add to his post-DJ and dance artist qualifications, including recording and production work with notable artists such as Malcolm McLaren, Mica Paris, Jocelyn Brown, Aphex Twin and Kylie Minogue, amongst many others. Summers worked within various (mainly dance) music styles and genres, from R&B to House, Trance to Drum 'N Bass and even Pop/Rock, using his extensive DJ experience as the basis for his knowledge and technical skills acquired from Air Studios in different types of music production.

Scorccio Records

Fully inspired by 70's Disco, 80's Hip Hop and 90's House music, in 1996 Mark Summers launched his own label, Scorccio Records (pronounced "scor-chee-oh"), with releases that combined elements of those 3 dance music genres from the past 3 decades. The first release was the disco rapped "Inferno" - under Mark's pseudonym Souvlaki. "Inferno" reached top 20 in the UK national chart via the PolyGram offshoot label Wonderboy (coincidentally, it was also their 1st single release), and "Inferno" also appeared on the 1.5 million selling Ministry Of Sound "Annual 2" album mixed by Boy George, becoming a worldwide hit via international licensing. Using the label credit of "Scorccio Remix", the mixing skills and popularity of the "fired-up sound" Mark Summers produced instantly pushed JT Playaz to a UK number 1 dance chart position with "Just Playin", and the follow-up "Let's Get Down". Major label remix work followed, including remixes for Perfecto, Warner Brothers, EMI, Telstar and Universal. Success from the release of over 40 Scorccio tracks and remixes on various dance compilations and singles created a huge fan base for Scorccio, most notably in Japan. Key to success was Mark Summers using up to 10 different pseudonyms for his artist name, one of the most popular and often used being Ultimate Heights. Sony PlayStation 2 and Konami have tracks and remixes by Scorccio featured on their popular Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) console and arcade series of music video games. Dance Dance Revolution Extreme (2004 video game) featuring "Highs Off U" by 4 REEEL (produced and mixed by Summers), was the winner of the Video Music Awards in 2005 on MTV for * Best Video Game Soundtrack.[2]

Sample Replays

The Scorccio release of "Inferno" in July 1996 originally featured a sample of Dan Hartman's "Relight My Fire", which Summers was told by PolyGram (prior to their release) that the sample either had to be replayed, or that he should pay for the mechanical sample clearance ($15,000 USD). Avoiding financial loss, Summers decided to replay the sample, the first time he had ever undertaken such a challenge. Summers was determined to make the sample replay as close sounding as possible, and upon first hearing the replayed version PolyGram/Wonderboy believed Summers had simply re-EQ'd the original sample, until he played them all the separate stem parts to prove it had been fully recreated (including a 4 piece string section overdubbed numerous times). Since then, every Scorccio-related release has had replayed and/or revocalled samples.

Quickly establishing the world's first ever sample replay service, in 1996 Mark Summers took his venture into the next stage by working for a large number of major and independent music labels, DJs, producers and recording artists. Ministry of Sound, Defected, Positiva, Universal, Virgin, Sony-BMG (amongst others), soon became regular clients of Scorccio Sample Replays. In 2004, Positiva released "Lola's Theme" by the Shapeshifters, which featured a Scorccio replay of Johnnie Taylor's "What About My Love". The song went from being hugely popular in clubs to gaining a #1 national chart position in the UK, Italy and Germany, followed by a #1 spot on the U.S. Hot Airplay Charts. The following year (2005) saw Michael Gray's "The Weekend" reach UK #7, Italy #1, featuring distinctive keyboard riffs played by Mark (initially based upon a re-edited 1980's electro track). Other notable replays have included: "People Hold On", "Blue Monday", "Love to Love You Baby", "Love Sensation", and "One More Time".

In 2009 Mark Summers replayed "Street Player" (originally by Chicago) for the U.S. Billboard #2 hit "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull. The Scorccio replay of "Street Player" has since become the most successful usage of any sample replay in history, due to the number of sales and media plays of the Pitbull song world-wide. With over 400 Million hits to date on YouTube, the song is now ranked as the 3rd most viewed electronic dance music video in history. Another successful sample recreation in September 2010 was produced by Summers for the U.S. Hot Dance 100 #1 artist Duck Sauce, with "Barbra Streisand" featuring a Scorccio sample replay of the 1979 Boney M song "Gotta Go Home". The song reached #1 in dance charts world-wide.

Summers replayed 4 samples on the album The Day Is My Enemy, by English electronic music group The Prodigy, two decades after both Mark Summers and The Prodigy had first appeared on the "Rave" scene. The album was released on 30 March 2015 and immediately charted at number one in the UK, officially certified by the BPI with a Gold disc for sales in excess of 200,000 copies. It was released by Three Six Zero Music/Warner Bros. Records in the United States.

There are currently over 1,000 sample replays produced by Mark Summers via his SCORCCiO Sample Replay company. Studios located in New York, Barcelona and London are all connected to the Scorccio business, providing male and female vocalists, rappers, spoken voice artists and musicians for any type of musical genre or recording style required. In a music industry poll, Scorccio was voted #1 for outstanding service and the leader in the field of sample replays.

Discography

Singles

Remixes/Production

Albums

References

  1. 1 2 Mark Summers at chartstats.com
  2. ↑ "2005 MTV Video Music Awards Nominees".
  3. ↑ http://www.discogs.com/Interface-Keep-It-Comin/release/103832
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