MK: "We never looked at it as a Black and white thing. It just so happened that we were all Black"

There is not much Marc Kinchen hasn’t done. Since emerging from the Detroit underground in the early ‘90s, he has gone on to have a ridiculously varied career, working with everyone from Will Smith and Quincy Jones to Beyoncé.

His DJ bucketlist, meanwhile, has more ticks than a Dublin clock factory, with MK having played Ibiza residencies and the main stage at Creamfields. It might seem a little odd then, one might fairly surmise, that a debut album is only arriving now.

“Right,” he nods, joining us for a call from LA. “It’s funny. I actually had an album out in ‘92. But it was a different album from when I started. It wasn’t all house, there was some R&B stuff on it, some hip hop. And I did it fully by myself. For the most part, it was me making songs in my bedroom. I feel like this one is really my debut, a real studio album.”

That ‘real studio album’, In The Night Again, was announced earlier this year through a trailer which depicts a young MK in his bedroom in Detroit. Does he remember the moment this music stuff clicked?

“When I was like 13, I had a Casio keyboard and I would play around with it,” he begins. “That got me into music, and the whole electronic scene in the ‘80s, all the new wave, because they were all synth-driven: Depeche Mode, New Order, those type of groups. I was into drawing – drawing and music are tied to each other. You like drawing cause you like creating.

“And that’s the same feeling when you’re making music. I got into it at 14 and never looked back. I never wanted to be an artist or anything. I always wanted to be a producer and produce songs for people. I wanted to be in the background.”

His gear back then was basic, and expensive. Were those limitations good for creativity? “For me, yes,” MK says.

“My first synthesiser was a Roland Juno-106. You’re forced to learn every element of that synth because that’s all you have. Then you get a drum machine. You learn your drum machine, then you learn how to use your drum machine and your keyboard together. Then you realise you have to buy a sequencer. So I started producing from the bottom up.”

Detroit in those years was also the birthplace of techno. “Jeff Mills was a DJ on Detroit radio back when I was younger,” MK reflects. “He was going as The Wizard, and he would do midday mix shows and everything he played, he played double-time. He would play hip hop music, but play it fast, and it ended up sounding like what techno is today.

“Juan Atkins was probably the first I heard do techno. A few years later, I ended up meeting Juan, and Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson, Jeff Mills, and we all worked in the same studio. We all worked together by the time I was 18. Us kids in Detroit, we started forming cliques.

“Jeff Mills had Underground Resistance, Derrick May had his thing, Juan Atkins had his thing, Kevin Saunderson had his thing and I was with him producing. As a bunch of Black artists, we all worked together on this one thing. I think Richie Hawtin was probably the only white guy doing techno during that time! But he was one of us.

“We never looked at it as a Black and white thing. It just so happened that we were all Black.” MK has said before that he never cared all that much for playing live. Like he mentioned, making things was always the part he loved. It was only later in his career that he started DJing in earnest. Did that change the way he approached music?

“Once you play enough, you know how to read a crowd,” he says. “As a producer, if I listen to any type of music throughout my day, I always dissect it. So, when you DJ at shows, you’re also dissecting the crowd and how they react to different parts and elements of the song. I take that knowledge back to the studio. It changed my eyes on how I view things and how I put songs together.”

Does that dissecting habit ever get annoying? Say, when ‘Baby Shark’ comes on? “It’s a blessing and a curse,” MK says. “Imagine a film director watching a movie. You can enjoy it, but you’re still like, ‘Oh, that guy isn’t a good actor.’ And yeah, I do dissect ‘Baby Shark’, unfortunately.”

In The Night Again belongs to the studio obsessive. It wasn’t written and recorded in one burst of inspiration, as you might expect, but pieced together from right across his career. “There’s songs on there that are 30 years old, and there’s also songs on there that are a month old,” MK says.

“When I’m trying to make singles as a DJ, you’re trying to make songs that bang in the club. I was making songs I loved that weren’t club bangers, but they were really good records. I didn’t want to waste these records because I wouldn’t play it at 1am at Fabric. So, I thought maybe it’s a good time to do an album now.”

Alongside them are the records that made his name. “’Burning’ is one of my biggest records, my first big record. I think when people listen to the album collectively, they’ll understand who MK is.”

They might be separated by decades, but one thing ties the tracks together – the vocal features, which include the likes of Chrystal, Becky Hill, Teddy Swims and Clementine Douglas. “For vocalists, I’m looking for the lyrics, the vocal skill, how good the vocalists are,” MK explains.

“I produced R&B for a while, which relied on great vocalists. I can tell by someone speaking if they can sing. Sometimes I want a vocalist that doesn’t really sound like Mariah Carey. I want one that just is not that great, but has conviction when they sing.”

Of all the voices on the record, is there one that stands out? “I think Clem probably has everything in one package,” MK enthuses.

“She sounds great, her tone is great, her writing is excellent, her melodies are excellent, and what she’s saying is excellent. She’s the whole package – she’s a gift from God.”

A few years ago, MK told Hot Press that Ireland is his favourite place to play. Surely he says that to everyone. “No, no, I don’t. Definitely not,” he laughs.

“Every time I have a show there, I don’t feel pressure on, ‘Oh, what should I play? Are they going to be into it?’ They’re into it from the minute I walk in the venue. It’s like they have never seen another DJ before. That’s how they make you feel. And then when the show’s over, they don’t want it to end. It makes it one of the best places to play to me.”

Ireland aside, there have been plenty of high points. Last year, ‘Dior’ with Chrystal gave him his first UK number one under his own name, and it held on for a fortnight.

“Having the record number one in the UK for two weeks in a row was my biggest moment ever,” he says. “The other moments were probably like headlining Creamfields Festival main stage.” The biggest lesson he’s learned from it all, though, came from a baseball diamond.

“Music-wise what I’ve learned is you have to try to be unique,” says MK.

“It’s scary though, trying to be unique, because you’re thinking like, ‘What if they don’t like it?’ When I was younger, I was on first base. And the coach on the side wanted me to steal second base.

“My coach was giving the signs, he said, ‘Steal! Steal!’ I didn’t want to steal, I was scared! But I ended up stealing and got safe, and got to the next base. It’s kind of been like that with music. You can’t be scared. It’s music.”

• In The Night Again is out now.