Pure Substance Records

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. Melody is always the main factor, with each track featuring layer upon layer of intense yet uncluttered hooks, riffs and rippling melodies. A self taught pianist and guitarist, Michael's introduction to music began by scoring compositions for his local theatre group, which gave him invaluable experience with chord structures and melodic content. Just check out any of his works and you'll see what we mean. 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, Donnie Darko and a handful more. 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 - Deep, moody and melodic tracks. Panoptic - Peak time productions. Cardboard - Earthy / organic outlet. And Gazor - under which Michael and Andrew Best (Indaba) target the more techy sound. His track 'Blue Haze - We Feel' has been featured on DJ Mags cover CD, and with reviews like, "Sweeping synths hitting chords of unheard 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 Chloe 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". The track has been featured on the new renaissance compilation 'The sound of Renaissance volume 2', and has had 2 other licensing requests since then. Sasha seems to have caught the Michael-Burns-Bug as he's been playing out 'Panoptic - Surface', Showcasing the track from Glastonbury 2003, Live on Radoi 1. The reception it got was absolutely huge. Radio 1 even used the track for the online video they did! Michael has recently done a remix of 'Echofalls - Shiver' which is getting a great response from the likes of John Digweed (plays on his KissFM 100 show), Pete Tong, Steve Gerrard, Chloe Harris, Hernan Cattaneo and Steve Smart who has also played the track out a few times on Kiss. 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, one of which is about to be featured on possibly one of the biggest compilations due out this year, Sander Kleinenbergs 'everybody' album on Renaissance. He has collaborations coming up with Matthew Dekay, Bart Van Wissen, Chris Lake, Snake Sedrick, Subsky and Blue Room Project to name but a few, and with his latest tracks getting plays and support from the world's leading DJ's, his future looks promising in the music industry.