The Story of Aponaut
Aponaut was a hard trance production duo and live act made up of Alex Beckett and Tarl Armes. Based in Toronto, Canada, from 2000 until 2005, Aponaut kept the dancefloors rocking and the clubbers sweating all over the world with our unique style of hard-bass acid trance.
The Beginning
Aponaut was first spawned in 2000. We had previously been working together under the name of “The Alliance” since about 1998 or so. Before that, we each had solo projects: Tarl experienced a deal of success as “The Alliance” and “Positronic Brain”; and Alex had been performing live PAs at raves as “Subconcscious” since the early 90s. When the time came to make a change, the name “Aponaut” was selected as a bit of an inside joke between us – something that would remind us why we were producing music in the first place: for fun!
Building Momentum
When we began playing shows as Aponaut, the crowd reaction was always great – there weren’t many people playing our style of music (especially in Toronto), and even fewer live acts who were doing it with the same high production values that we were. Being the perfectionists that we are, our sets were always tightly planned and flawlessly executed (well, mostly ;-)). The enthusiastic crowd reactions soon saw our new project playing large-scale events alongside top international acts like Derb, Nu-NRG, Misjah & Tim, Accuface, Chris Liberator, Mark EG and M-Zone. Our huge floor-shaking basslines, ripping acid lines and fat synths always went off at peak time, and it wasn’t long until we had some releases lined up.
Audiocode
We signed a deal with Audiocode music, a new label based out of Germany, which was run by DJ Norman Freeman. Norman had heard us at a show in Montreal and loved what he heard. Before long he had us doing a couple of remixes and had lined up our first release under the Aponaut name. Warpath/The Other Side of Darkness was released in 2003 and was very well received all over Europe. Over the following year, Warpath was featured on compilations around the world, including the hugely successful Tunnel Trance Force vol. 27. It landed on countless Top 10 lists and even earned us a major feature on www.tidy.com – the website for one of the world’s largest hard dance labels. In addition to Warpath, some of the other tracks and remixes were starting to appear on compilations and bringing us much international attention. We had always made our livesets available for download, and our server stats started to shoot through the roof, with transfers topping 120GB in one month alone! When the dust had settled, our work had appeared on a dozen compilations, alongside a diverse range of artists: Tiesto, Derb, the Donkey Rollers – from Progressive Trance to Hardstyle and everything in between.
When the time came for the next Audiocode release, the label had inked a new distribution deal with BASS-IC distribution, run by the one and only Sam Punk. The track scheduled for release was Bravo & Priest’s Pump Beat Kick Drum. The record featured remixes from us and scandinavian producer Scorpio, with our mix gracing the A side. After numerous delays, the track was released in October 2004, and was met with great reviews, even drawing comparisons to German hard trance legends DuMonde.
The Decline
2004 and 2005 saw a dramatic shift in hard music trends around the world. The popularity of Hardstyle grew to huge proportions globally (except for North America as usual), and as is always the case when this happens, creativity and originality were laregely abandoned in favour of recycled drums and basslines. Meanwhile, in Toronto, what was once a vibrant scene had become a shadow of its old self, and this trend continued through 2005. When the last Just 1 FiXX party ended in November 2005, it was the last regular event in Toronto to exclusively feature the sounds of Hard Trance and Hardstyle.
All Good Things...
In November of 2005, we decided it was time to put Aponaut to rest. The reasons are too many to get into here, but suffice it to say that our hearts just weren’t really into it any more. Bookings were drying up as Toronto’s after-hours scene abandoned what was left of the underground sound, Audiocode had ceased operations, and the final Just 1 FiXX party just felt like a natural time to let it go. Although we’re not producing new tracks under the Aponaut name, there is still a vast library of songs that were never released and are available for licensing.
Tarl Armes Tarl began his professional music career working for Quality Records in Toronto, where he gained experience doing both remixes and working on his own original projects. Soon after he joined Quality, he formed “Positronic Brain”. He had his first hit with a song called Mystify, which stayed on the Canadian dance charts for 12 weeks. Eventually Tarl left Quality (which later folded) and started a project known as “The Alliance”. In 1996 Tarl signed with UK hard-trance legend, M-Zone, on TYT Records (a subdivision of M-Zone’s well-known UK44 Records). After numerous releases on TYT/UK44, Tarl was joined by Alex, and they eventually re-named themselves Aponaut.
Alex Beckett Alex has been producing music and performing live at raves since 1993. Originally involved in a duo known as “Subconscious”, he started off writing jungle, drum & bass and hardcore. He gradually drifted towards the sounds of trance, and with 10 years of classical music training, the transition seemed a natural one. After meeting Tarl at a 1997 Subconscious show, he eventually joined The Alliance in 1998, and the two have been working together ever since. Alex has also released solo work on Warning Records UK, under the name “XLS”.
