New Zealand D&B producer Organikismness — who also moonlights with fellow Kiwi bass animals Soulware — is headed to Oz with both acts in tow.

Proudly New Zealand, what does bass music mean to Organikismness?
Well I reckon bass music is to the 2000s/ 2010s what dance music was to the late ‘80s and 90s — it’s a way to bunch together a whole lot of musical genres so people can categorise it easier. I'd like to think that I don't/ we don't really write bass music — just music (with heaps of bass).

For the uninitiated, is there a ‘typical’ set from Organikismness?
It very much depends on the time, the place and the occasion. It’s always 100 percent my own music, and I always try to play as full a spectrum of music as I can get away with, without compromising the audience or my own personal direction.

You’ve been quoted by Knowledge Magazine as ‘one of New Zealand's most diverse and prolific producers to date’. How do you react to such commentary about your work?
Pretty stoked if I'm honest. I think the review of Soulware in the Sunday Star Times last year was the most epic one so far; I was in Australia when it came out and I had so many people from my family call me on one day [which was a very ‘long’ Sunday] that I thought somebody had died; turned out to be quite the opposite. We'd actually been given the only five-star review of 2011 and everybody from my mother to Tiki Taane were bigging us up for it — that was choice.

You’ve toured with the likes of Pendulum, Spor, Andy C, Tiki Taane, The Mad Professor... do you watch other artists like a hawk when they’re performing, recording to further your own education?
In the studio yes, live, no. I don’t like to get in people's space, mainly cause I don’t like people in mine, well not when trying to work in front of 1,000s of people. But in the studio, you’re eventually sharing a creative space so studying and learning off each other is a very important part of the whole process.

Organikismness and Soulware play Manifest, at Bestbrook Mountain Resort, September 28-30.